Tag Archives: Matrix


This is How the Personal Development Industry Failed Us

And this is how to set yourself free. Right now, your life is perfect. How do I know? If it wasn’t perfect, you would have already changed it. Every change you want to make comes with its benefits and costs. You look at the benefits and you desire them. But deep down, you are aware […]


The Principle that Explains All Human Behavior

Even the Most Irrational Ones You need to get this principle to understand human behavior. Not only other people’s behavior, but also your own behavior. Especially, your own behavior. Sometimes, you might have a difficult time understanding someone’s behavior. Sometimes, you might have a difficult time understanding your own behavior. Not anymore. All human behavior […]


The Psychology of Procrastination

Personal development literature provides us with lots of cookie cutter solutions to our daily challenges. Sometimes, it’s better to develop our own solutions by reflecting on our own psychology. Here’s an analysis that I made on myself. You can do the same analysis on yourself to find out why you procrastinate and how you can […]


The Ultimate Self-Motivation Guide

Our mind consists of two systems, a conscious system and an auto-pilot system. We spend most of our time in our auto-pilot system, which I dub Goliath. Our conscious system is intelligent, but not energy efficient. Therefore, we avoid using this system to the extent possible. I call this system David. Most of the personal […]


The Biggest Paradox of Mankind

The more I write about personal development, the more I appreciate the book Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel Laureate in Economics. The paradox explained in this book might as well be the biggest paradox of mankind. It might explain why we are still struggling in our lives as individuals and as […]


How to Find Your Direction in Life

There’s no doubt that having a direction in life increases your chances of success and satisfaction in life. I already shared an exercise about how to find your north star by writing your own obituary. It boils down to answering the following question. “What kind of a life would you like to have lived at […]


How to Update Your Mental Programming

Our mental programming has a great impact on our lives. That is good news and bad news at the same time. It’s bad news because of the following reasons. Our programming is mostly not our conscious choice. A significant portion of our programming is not based on facts. A chunk of our programming is counterproductive. […]


Why Do Your Personal Development Efforts Fail and What to Do Instead

We humans assume on an intuitive level that our minds consists of a single, monolithic entity. In reality, there are multiple entities active in our consciousness at different moments. Nobel laureate economist Daniel Kahneman identifies two main systems in his book Thinking Fast and Slow. System 1 is the autopilot state. It’s active all the […]

Burak Bilgin

Software developer with a Ph.D. and 15 years of experience. I write daily on personal development and life lessons. Sign up to my email newsletter to receive a weekly overview of my latest content on personal development and life lessons.