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How getting depressed led Ryan to a new theory of mental health – After spending over a decade researching the psychology of well-being, and even writing his first book on the topic, it took a career conflict, a neurodivergent diagnosis, and a struggle with his own mental health for Ryan to integrate the data he had studied to form a groundbreaking new psychological theory. In Become Who You Are, Ryan introduces Virtue Self-Signaling Theory, a new synthesis of research from neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, and cognitive behavioral therapy into a unified account of human virtue, self-esteem, clinical depression, and eudaimonic well-being.

How to stop managing anxiety and start mastering it – Most people believe anxiety is best treated with medication, meditation, or other remedies that ease feelings of panic and worry. But counterintuitively, science shows that the things most of us do to relieve our anxiety actually make it worse. Avoidance is the active ingredient in anxiety, so anything that allows us to escape anxiety in some way will actually reinforce it in the long run. In the Anxiety Algorithm Program, Ryan covers the four As of anxiety, the most effective treatments, and the surprising principles behind anxiety elimination.

Why our intuitions mislead us about our own happiness – In Become Who You Are, Ryan introduces a model for navigating our lives in “three dimensions,” arguing that most of us only live on a two-dimensional “circumscape,” maximizing pleasure and gain while true well-being emerges from our admirability, or virtue. Through the lens of this model, Ryan explains why our emotions so rarely respond to our circumstances in predictable ways. And drawing from Stoic philosophy and modern psychology, he shows how we can harness this understanding to overcome depression and achieve the state of peak flourishing ancient thinkers called eudaimonia.

Using psychitecture to rewire your mind – In his first book, Designing the Mind: The Principles of Psychitecture, Ryan coined the term “psychitecture” – the conscious design of one’s own psychological software. He explores how various psychological algorithms in the brain cause us to systematically misperceive reality, act against our own values, and suffer. Most importantly, he covers how snippets of open-source cognitive code – wisdom from philosophies like Stoicism and Buddhism – can help us to rewire our mental patterns.

How to discover who you were meant to become – “Become who you are” is a phrase attributed to 19th-century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Like all of his work, it is cryptic and ambiguous, but he scatters clues for understanding this profound sentiment throughout his writings. Ryan follows Nietzsche in arguing that our unique personal virtues and ideals hold the keys to our highest fulfillment. The act of becoming who you are is the act of carving your ideal self out of the hard stone of your psyche—of bringing greater and greater refinement to the crude shapes of character that exist in you now.