My name is Dorian Minors. I started btrmt. over a decade ago as a way of sharing the psychology I was studying with people who weren’t, or couldn’t. We each live such peculiarly turbulent lives, “the halt, lame, half-made creatures that we are.” Psychology seemed an incredible way of applying rules of thumb to transform some of the chaos of this human experience into meaning. Why, then, should these rules only be accessible for people with the right degree?

I’ve since continued. Six years in the military. A PhD in brain science at Cambridge. Now Associate Professor at Sandhurst. Clinical practice, teaching, research. All of it looking for some instruction manual for this device in our head that seems to hold such potential to smooth the rough edges of our lives.

Sadly, I didn’t find one. Anyone who tells you they did is lying.

But I did find something. The more you study the brain, the clearer it becomes: the main thing this device does is map the world to patterns of responding. Rituals of thought, which become rituals of behaviour. Because we’re animals first.

But we’re animals with an extraordinary gift. Of all the creatures, humans have the greatest capacity for nurture. No other animal can come together and share ideas the way we can. We look to each other to cultivate ourselves—it’s our defining quality.

And our defining travail. That same impulse to cultivate ourselves gets shaped by a world of animals. Power. Productivity. Status. The habits of thought, feeling, and action that shape us—they’re graceful solutions to an impossible complexity. But most of them were given to us, not chosen by us. Absorbed from the world around us. And we rarely pick them up and examine them. How could we, when our attention is routinely directed towards the economy of shame, outrage, yearning, and terror that floods our media streams.

These ideas we inherit are karstic things: pretty landscapes that obscure the sinkholes, caves, and rivers beneath. Better to look where you tread.

So, that’s btrmt. Without the vowels to remind us that betterment is empty without checking what we’re being better for. Here, I gather the patterns we inherit and examine them, so you can choose the ones worth keeping.

I also speak, and I coach. Keynotes, masterclasses, and one-to-one work, grounded in brain and behaviour science. If you want me to do that for your people, this is where. Or find me on LinkedIn.