Helping People Perform, Transform, and Flourish
Ion is a strategic advisor to entrepreneurs and executives. He helps them perform, transform, and flourish in an era of accelerating change.
Perform
I help people perform to their full potential by curating the best insights from business strategy to neuroscience. I upgrade people’s entire operating systems by guiding them to develop better health, fitness, decision making, habits, routines and processes.
Transform
I empower individuals and organizations to transform themselves in response to changing personal, social, economic or technological circumstances, and teach them the mindsets, skillsets and toolkit they’ll need to reinvent themselves repeatedly.
Flourish
Excelling at work is not all that matters in life. No amount of success will be satisfying if you don’t actually know what makes you happy. I ask questions that get to the heart of what makes a good life – for you. When we do that together, we start the journey towards what Aristotle called Eudaemonia, or “flourishing.”
Ion Valis
Is President of Prometheus Strategic Advisors, a boutique management consulting and executive coaching firm with clients worldwide. He has a unique combination of entrepreneurial and executive experience in the public, private and plural sectors. Ion has worked as a Press Secretary on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, helped launch and run a ground-breaking international mobile media initiative at a Fortune Global 50 company in London, served as a senior executive in a fast-growing technology start-up in Montreal, oversaw an international foundation dedicated to public leadership and since 2008 has run his own consulting practice.
The Book
Drawing on his two decades of experience managing people, projects, brands and budgets, as well as 6 years researching leading-edge thinking on peak performance from around the world, Ion has created an innovative personal leadership program and strategic framework that is described in his first book, “The Magnificent Mistake: How You Can Earn More from Failure Than You Learn from Success.”
Recent Posts
The Power of Subtraction — and why we miss out when we forget to cut out.
We have a bias towards addition. Psychological studies show that we always default to it when trying to make a change. But in an era characterized by “more,” the ability to subtract has become a superpower. Here are some subtraction strategies.
Do you have a “Personal Happiness Algorithm?” You should.
Do you have a “Personal Happiness Algorithm?” You should. Here’s mine.
How to Prevent Burnout: Close your Stress Loops
Burnout could be the official word of 2022 (and 2021, to be honest). So many people have had first-hand experience with it that you would think we’d understand it perfectly. But most people don’t really know what it is, nor what to do to prevent it. Burnout...
We Need to Talk about Dopamine | Part I
The modern world is set up to hijack our dopamine response, so we need to become aware of what we allow to hook our brains and overwhelm our biology.
Get Your Daily D.O.S.E. of Happiness Chemicals
We now know how to literally change our brains. We owe it to ourselves to do so with purpose and intentionality.
How to Know When to Quit Your Job (and Reinvent Yourself)
The 7 Red Flags Checklist We’ve all been in challenging work environments; sadly, it’s a constant of professional life as the dreaded off-site and - my personal least favorite - the office birthday party. But how can we know when the regular grind of work (they call...
The Modern World is a Dopamine Minefield. Here’s how to navigate it.
Have you had your mind hijacked by TikTok and wondered how that happened? Or maybe you’re the kind of person who gets most excited about planning your next trip? The driver of your behavior in both cases is a brain chemical called Dopamine, and you need to get familiar with it – right away. Whether you realize it or not, that neurotransmitter rules our world today. But while it has served a critical role in the propagation of our species, dopamine is absolutely terrible for our sense of satisfaction as individuals. Moreover, it’s being used to stimulate and manipulate us in ways that are distracting at best and addictive at worse. Dopamine is the new Nicotine. We need to reset our brains and go on a Dopamine Diet. Use my NOPA Method to get off the Dopa.
The S.I.E.S.T.A.S. Method for Beating Burnout
Are you near Burnout, or know someone who is?
I’ve looked at the science of what we can do to turn our situation around. It starts with stimulating the release of our body’s natural feel-good chemicals of dopamine, endorphins, oxytocin, and serotonin – and then proceeds to dial up the feelings – of control, hope and progress – that we intuitively understand will be beneficial to our mood.
Old Rules for a New Life in the New Year
People usually become contemplative as another year ends and a new one begins. For many, this is the season for reflection, resolutions, and perhaps even reinvention. I’m no exception to this ritual. The following thoughts came to me a few years ago in a feverish...