School of Positive Transformation

09/23/2026

During the last five years of her life, every visit with my grandmother
was an internal goodbye ceremony for me. I vividly remember standing at the bottom of the stairs as she waved at me, while I savored her and the
feeling of her hug. I can still close my eyes and relive that moment.

I knew it might be the last visit, so I looked at her more carefully. I smelled her unique grandma smell (I swear I can still smell it in my memory). I tried to absorb every detail that would normally disappear without my noticing. I left her home carrying the sadness of losing her, even though she was still alive. And only now I realize how helpful it has been for my mental health.

We tend to imagine goodbye as one definitive moment: the final conversation, the last embrace, the closing of a door. But emotionally, goodbye is rarely a single event. It often begins long before someone leaves and continues long after they are gone.

In Psychology, there is a name for the strange experience of grieving someone who is still here: Anticipatory Grief. You feel grateful for their presence, while another part of you is already mourning their absence. You hold them, yet imagine the time when you will no longer be able to hold them.

Anticipatory grief asks the heart to perform an impossible task: to keep someone close while slowly preparing to release them.

Perhaps, during those visits, some part of me believed that if I paid enough attention, I could preserve my grandmother. If I said goodbye properly, I might have fewer regrets. If I began grieving early, perhaps the final loss would hurt less.

But love cannot be paid for in advance. Grieving someone before they die does not exempt us from grieving after their death.

These internal goodbyes also carry a danger. We can become so occupied with preserving a moment that we stop inhabiting it. The visit becomes a future memory before it has finished being a present experience. There is a delicate difference between knowing that someone will be gone and treating them as though they are already gone.

A healthy goodbye does something different. It does not ask us to leave the relationship early. It returns us more fully to the person who is still here.
Awareness of limited time can remind us to listen with greater patience, ask the questions we have postponed, express our gratitude, and notice the ordinary details of someone’s presence. It encourages us to stop waiting for a “better time” to say what matters.

This reminds me of the idea of positive mortality (I'll write about it some other time), where we embrace our mortality so we can live fully.

I do not know whether those internal ceremonies prepared me to lose my grandmother. I suspect that nothing could have prepared me. But they taught me to notice her more carefully.

Years later, I can close my eyes and find myself standing at the bottom of those stairs again. She is still there, waving.

09/09/2026

Parents, this one is for you - you might not know it was the last time...

Psychology Today

Personal Perspective: The ordinary moments with your child that you believe will happen again are often the ones you miss most. Learn how to notice them now.

09/09/2026

We have 3 kids, and our little one is six. Yesterday I saw him playing with Lego by himself while narrating the game out loud – voicing the different characters. He was so absorbed in the game; it was joyful to watch. My other two children are older – they have left this way of playing behind - and I suddenly realized something: this might have been the last time I saw one of my children play in this way.

When something ends with a formal ceremony, we clearly recognize the ending. High school graduation is a good example: formally marking the end of childhood and the beginning of a new stage in life. The same applies to retirement ceremonies and funerals, they formally acknowledge that something significant has ended.

But most of life’s endings arrive unannounced. Silent.

How was I supposed to know last month that it was the last time my child asked me to carry him in my arms? This is a bittersweet ending – my kids are growing up, which is beautiful, and at the same time many things that I loved are ending. And I need to let go, whether I want it or not.

The last time your child reaches for your hand while crossing the road.

The last bedtime story.

The last spontaneous visit from a certain friend.

The last time your entire family sits around the same table.

The last time your body can do something effortlessly.

The last conversation before a relationship slowly fades.

As they happen, these moments rarely feel significant. Only later do we realize how special they were. It’s natural; the mind quickly turns repeated experiences into background scenery. Familiarity creates an assumption of continuation: if something happened yesterday and today, we expect it to happen tomorrow.

We neglect ordinary moments because we believe they are unlimited.

Think of Jaime Kurtz’s study on perceived temporal scarcity. She took two groups of college students and encouraged them to think of their graduation as being close or far into the future. Those who thought their graduation was coming up soon were more engaged in their college experiences and reported higher levels of well-being.

In other words, being aware that the ending might be coming soon can help us appreciate the experience and participate more fully.

And so, when I notice my child playing or asking to hold my hand, I pause and internally embrace the moment. Realizing that the end might be near makes me more present and more involved in the experience.

What meaningful “last time” did you recognize only afterward?

09/01/2026

I’ve spent most of my adult life immersed in personal development. I have explored countless modalities, activities, and interventions. In many ways, I have been a walking, breathing experimenter in my own personal experiment of growth.

As my career grew, I began sharing the practices that had been most impactful for me with my students. Many found them meaningful and transformative, but I also noticed that for some people, these practices seemed to reinforce the idea that they were somehow inadequate - that something was wrong with them and needed to be fixed.

This made me realize that we can approach self-improvement from two very different places.
The first is self-care:
I want to grow because I care about myself.
Growth then becomes an act of self-kindness - a way of supporting ourselves and creating a more fulfilling life.
The second begins with inadequacy:
Something is wrong with me.
I am not good enough as I am.
From this place, self-improvement becomes an attempt to repair an imagined defect.

Imagine two people beginning exactly the same journey. They may have the same goal and follow the same path, but they carry very different backpacks.
One backpack is filled with encouragement, curiosity, self-care, and the excitement of possibility.
The other is filled with self-doubt, shame, and the heavy belief that the person carrying it is not good enough.
Same journey. Very different weight impact.

Self-improvement is everywhere. We want to become healthier, calmer, more successful, more confident, more productive, or more mindful. There is nothing inherently wrong with these desires (in fact, they are wonderful). The wish to develop ourselves can be a beautiful and meaningful part of being human.
But beneath the question
What do I want to change?
there may be an even more important question:
Why do I want to change it?

Two people can pursue exactly the same goal: lose weight, meditate more, become more confident, improve a relationship - and psychologically be doing something completely different.
One may be moving toward something they value.
The other may be trying to move away from themselves.

When self-improvement is rooted in inadequacy, every goal can quietly become a condition for self-acceptance:

I’ll feel good about myself when I lose the weight.
I’ll accept myself when I become more confident.
I’ll be satisfied with myself when I become successful.
I’ll finally be okay when I stop struggling with this part of myself.

The difficulty is that the finish line has an extraordinary ability to move.
We achieve something, experience satisfaction for a while, and then another imperfection appears. Another goal. Another version of ourselves we believe we should become.

Psychology describes this as contingent self-worth: when our sense of worth becomes dependent on achievement, appearance, productivity, approval, or even emotional control.
This is one of the paradoxes of self-improvement.
Something intended to help us flourish can become another sophisticated way of telling ourselves that who we are today is insufficient.

Growth rooted in self-care feels very different from growth rooted in self-rejection. One expands who we are; the other attempts to erase us.

What is the foundation of your self-growth?

08/26/2026

I’ve always been an unusual mindfulness teacher.

I’m super energetic, full of zest, creativity, and vitality – things that people don’t usually associate with someone who teaches meditation.



When I arrive to teach a workshop, participants often expect a peaceful, softly spoken, slow-speaking teacher. Instead, they find this lively guy who doesn’t quite match the image.



That gap between expectation and reality has made me wonder if this goes beyond meditation. Seeing that expectation made me wonder if we sometimes confuse calmness with wellbeing itself.



But is that really true?



What if the healthiest person isn’t the calmest one? What if it’s the one who can move through emotions without getting stuck?

Someone who can feel anger and listen to what it’s protecting.

Feel sadness and acknowledge what was lost.

Feel fear and take wise precautions.



In that sense, wellbeing isn't about staying in one emotional state. It’s developing the capacity to move through our emotional life with awareness and wisdom.



From a psychological perspective, this has a name: psychological flexibility.

Rather than defining mental health as feeling good - or feeling calm - all the time, psychology points to the ability to experience emotions as they arise while still choosing how we want to respond.



It’s not about having less fear, less sadness, or less anger. It’s about experiencing those emotions without handing them the steering wheel.



Paradoxically, trying not to feel something often gives it more influence over us. Making room for our emotions, while staying connected to what truly matters, tends to give us more freedom, not less.



And this is where mindfulness enters in a different way.

The more I teach mindfulness, the less I think it’s about becoming calm.

The more I think it’s about becoming present.



Mindfulness doesn’t ask us to remain permanently serene. It helps us cultivate the capacity to stay present with whatever is within us. It gives us a steadier place inside from which to meet our experience.

Calmness will come and go like any other emotional state.

Presence is different.

Presence can hold the full weather of our lives.



So maybe the real question after practice isn’t:

“Am I calm?”

But:

“Am I more present with my life than I was 10 minutes ago?”

08/18/2026

We like the idea that our self is stable and consistent, something that feels reliable. In reality, different parts of us emerge depending on who we are with.

One of my therapy clients described this fluctuation: There are people around whom I become funnier. Others make me quieter. Around some people, I find myself apologizing before I have done anything wrong. Around others, I speak with a confidence I didn’t know I have.

For years he believed that his personality belonged entirely to him. Through our work together, he began noticing that different people seemed to summon entirely different versions of him.

Think of the person around whom you feel most like yourself. Now think of someone around whom you become smaller, more careful, or less recognizable. Perhaps one of the most important questions we can ask about a relationship is not simply, ‘Do I love this person?’ It is, ‘Who do I become when I am with them?’

We do not carry one fixed personality unchanged from room to room. Different relationships awaken different memories, expectations, defenses, and possibilities within us.

Others’ expectations can shape our sense of self and our behavior. People who have known us for a long time may unintentionally continue relating to us as our old self. In their presence, we can find ourselves returning to an old role long after we have outgrown it.

This leads to a more challenging insight about relationships: we can love someone deeply and still dislike the person we repeatedly become around them. Evaluating a relationship may require us to look not only at how we feel about the other person, but also at how they shape our own way of being.

In psychology, we call it the Michelangelo phenomenon: close relationships “sculpt” us toward - or away from - our ideal self. People who recognize and support the person you hope to become can make that version of you easier to find and express.

This is not about blaming other people for the versions of ourselves that emerge around them. Relationships are co-created, shaped by both people’s histories, expectations, fears, and patterns. Still, the person we repeatedly become in a relationship is important information.

Every relationship is a room with its own emotional climate. In some rooms we stretch out and breathe deeply; in others we instinctively make ourselves smaller.

We may not choose every relationship in our lives, but we can become more conscious within each one. Sometimes, simply noticing who we become is the first step toward choosing a different way of being.

Which relationships allow more of you to exist?

08/04/2026

Whether you realize it or not, you are performing on a stage. Every decision and choice you make, and every action you take, is performed on life’s stage. The only question is, who sits in the audience? For whom are you performing?

I remember writing a social media post – and as I was going to post it, it suddenly hit me: this post had nothing to do with who I really was. It was not written from my heart, and it was not meaningful to me; instead, I wrote something that did not feel aligned with my values or the topics I’m passionate about, just because I thought it would interest others.

In that moment, I was acting on life’s stage, with the audience being my followers rather than my core values.

This imagined audience becomes harmful when we begin to satisfy others’ perspectives, demands, or expectations, leaving behind our own heart, values, and intuition.

This audience is not real. It is simply embedded in your mind. You are trying to impress your parents, younger self, ex-partner, old classmates, social media, strangers, the child inside who never felt they were enough. You are performing in front of ghosts.

This imagined audience then becomes part of what shapes your choices: should you leave the relationship, start a business, move countries, write the book…

What would happen if there had been a fire alarm at the theatre and the entire audience had been evacuated? You would be performing only for yourself.

Can you imagine how it would feel living without an audience? Nobody to judge, admire, criticize. Would it then change your choices? The answer to this question determines what truly belongs to you. It shows which path or choice is rooted within you.

My favorite psychological framework for the above is self-determination theory. It says that we are all motivated by the need to grow – and this motivation is internal, not external. You experience greater wellbeing when your actions are driven by personal values and intrinsic motivation rather than by approval (“yayyy, they like it”), status (“ahhh, at last, im senior manager”), or some external reward (“I’m going to the gym – mostly so that my ex would regret our breakup”).

Another psychological element that I love, and is highly relevant here, is authenticity. Everything in this newsletter is asking you the simple question: do you live an authentic life? When your actions align with your values, you then live more authentically - and, as a result, you experience greater wellbeing.

Authenticity is all about making decisions that still make sense when nobody is watching.

As time goes by, and I observe my own life, I realize that the greatest luxury in life isn't having everything.

It's having nothing left to prove.

And then the audience recedes into the background, loses its impact, and you are left with yourself, your core, your heart, your personal compass to navigate your life’s choices.

07/16/2026

I frequently hear from clients about their imagined version in which they chose the “right” partner, moved to this beautiful place around the world, and left or joined a certain job. That version of themselves always seems to be happier and more fulfilled than their actual life experience. Does it resonate with you in any way?

What we frequently forget is that this unchosen life has an unfair advantage: the life you rejected remains protected from reality. Because you never lived it, it hasn't disappointed you, hurt you, exposed your limitations, become boring or repetitive, or developed the difficulties that accompany every real life.

This imaginary life is like a honeymoon – full of beautiful promises before we face the real-life challenges of marriage.

This is an important realization because many of us are invested in an imagined, alternative life, rather than the one we have actually chosen.

You can make a decision while remaining internally uncommitted. This division makes it difficult for you to fully invest in the relationship/job/location because part of your energy that could have been devoted to building intimacy, mastery, meaningful relationships, and belonging is actually tied to an escape route.

I am not saying you have to stay where you are. If the relationship, career, place you live, or any other choice does not feel right, you can choose to move in a different direction. All I’m saying is that as long as you choose to stay where you are – you might as well truly and fully invest yourself in that experience.

I remember my transition from academia to entrepreneurship, starting the School of Positive Transformation. While it held some wonderful benefits such as independence (that was the big one for me – calling the shots and creating my own path), increased financial gain, and endless creativity, there were also disadvantages. For example, I pulled away from my circle of colleagues, which was painful. I also missed the wonderful collaborations that led to fascinating insights, books, and research. I then made a conscious choice to accept both the advantages and disadvantages so that I could fully bring myself into my new entrepreneurial adventure, instead of getting lost ruminating about what I had lost or left behind.

We plant ourselves in one garden but keep carrying half the water to gardens that exist only in our imagination. Then we interpret the dryness of our real garden as proof that we planted ourselves in the wrong place. In reality, we are wasting water in imagined gardens, while the one where we are actually planted is dry.

In psychology, we have the concept of “counterfactual thinking”. It refers to the mind’s ability to imagine how the past might have unfolded differently. “If only I had stayed with my ex…”, “if only I had waited at the previous job…”, “if only I had moved to Thailand…” – This kind of thinking pulls us from our actual life experience into a dream world that is often filled with regret and frustration.

Keeping every possibility alive may feel like freedom, but it can prevent us from developing the depth that only limitation and commitment make possible. True freedom sometimes comes from willingly closing a door.

If you don’t offer your full energy, care, intimacy, and heart to the thing you have chosen, how will you ever know whether or not it is right for you?

07/01/2026

The first time it happened, I felt surprised: I was discussing politics with a friend. Well, discussing is a gentle word; there were definitely elements of an argument there. He was trying to persuade me that his perspective was the right one. I was going to reply when I realized something tantalizing: I have zero interest in persuading him.

Like a snake, I was shedding the need to be right. The need to show that I know more, know better, and know how. Something in the internal motivational mechanism that drove that need was crumbling.

In a tug-of-war rope, sometimes the only way to stop losing energy is to stop pulling.

And just to be clear: I still enjoyed having the knowledge, or perspective, and being able to share it with myself and others - what dropped was the need to prove that MY argument is better, the right one.

As a ripple effect, this change spread to other moments in my life: arguments with family and friends, professional discussions and debates, and other situations where people show their knowledge. I didn’t care.

I remember a moment in which I was discussing/arguing with a friend over an educational approach towards our kids - I believe in firm boundaries while he advocated greater freedom for the child and looser boundaries. At some point during our debate, while each of us passionately delivered his arguments, I had a light-bulb moment of realization: I don’t care whether or not he agrees with me. I don’t care whether my approach is showing as the right one. I can let go. I no longer feel the need to win this argument. Wow, it felt incredible.

One of the strangest signs of growth is discovering that some of your old goals no longer feel worth pursuing.

There are a number of psychological elements involved in such a transformation of growth:

The first is the socioemotional selectivity theory (aren’t we great in psychology when it comes to finding big names for our theories :-). Research shows that as you age, you often become less interested in status and more interested in meaningful experiences and relationships. Boom, the motivational drive to be right is dropping naturally, like an overripe fruit from the tree.
The strongest person in the room is often the one who no longer needs to prove it.

Another psychological element is the development of our ego involvement. When we attach our identity to winning arguments (as most of us do from a relatively young age) we eventually crash into a wall of pain when our perspective is not winning or accepted.

There is also a strong element of intrinsic motivation (based on my own internal experience) vs. external motivation (based on others’ reactions). Earlier in life, we are often motivated extrinsically, by recognition, status, or validation. Over time, you discover that internal focus creates deeper satisfaction. This influences the need to prove ourselves to be the winners of an argument or discussion, because that need is extrinsic.

Freedom often begins where the need to impress others ends.

Detaching that element of winning from our identity is an incredibly freeing experience: You claim you know better? No worries, it’s perfectly fine by me. I’m good whether my approach is accepted as the “right” one or not.

Growing older is not only about learning what matters.
It is also about learning what doesn't.

Like a heavy backpack filled with stones, I abandoned this need along the road, moving on lighter, more free, in life’s journey.

Do you find a similar change within you?

06/23/2026

There’s a beautiful spiritual concept that claims you came here to learn certain lessons. Your soul is seeking lessons related to pain, love, loss, relationships, abundance, scarcity – and your life’s experiences are then shaped to allow you to learn the particular lessons most relevant to you.

Psychology offers a similar insight: have you ever wondered why certain challenges seem to stick to you, as if you were a scented flower and they were a bee? Different partner, different city, different career – and yet the same challenge or frustration keeps on appearing again and again. Different props, same play.

Life is not necessarily repeating events. It is often repeating lessons.

There are 2 psychological concepts I really like, that allow for in-depth reflection on your life’s repeating lessons:

1. Attachment Patterns: The child in you, growing up under certain circumstances, learned to attach and connect with others in a certain way. You will then seek, consciously or unconsciously, to replicate those known attachment patterns (whether they are healthy for you or not) simply because that’s what you learned. It requires laser-focused observation over your own behaviors and psyche to crack those patterns and create a shift.

2. Emotional Avoidance: I write a lot about it – because it’s a big piece in solidifying some of our patterns. When you experience a challenge (especially a trauma) and avoid the processing of its emotional backlash, these emotions are stored within you instead of being released. They will then navigate your choices and behaviors from the unconscious, leading to recurring lessons.

If you recognize your own repeating patterns, it is important to see them as a friend instead of a harmful enemy. The recurring challenge is not evidence that you are failing – it is evidence that you are still invited into growth in this area.

And frequently, the repetition evolves with time. You might be struggling with rejection at 25, dancing with the pain of rejection at 35, and at 45, rejection might still hurt. But like a spiral staircase, taking you higher with every step, you grow through this journey of rejection.

You learn more and more about yourself, you get to know your triggers better, you recover faster, and you learn to build less and less of your identity around it.

The lesson returns, but so does a wiser version of yourself.

Keep on doing the work, don’t give up, believe in your ability to create a shift – reading this newsletter, observing your own patterns, it’s all part of your journey of growth.

I believe in you,
Itai