You twist and turn it over in your head while you’re in the shower, on the train, at lunch; yet the decision sticks to your brain like bees to honey.

You've made the case to yourself a hundred times, multiple ways, different angles; yet you keep going around in circles and seem to land in the same spot every single time.

It’s frustrating, annoying, painful.

You keep weighing up the same evidence, with the same weary brain, using the same values you started mulling the decision with in the first place. A hundred viewpoints, but all of them yours.

And the reason the decision never resolves, never moves, is simple. It’s because you're asking the one person in the world guaranteed to tell you ‘exactly’ what you want to hear.

You.

And the longer you sit with your thoughts, the worse your own advice gets.

That’s because your brain doesn’t weigh options more carefully the twentieth time around, it just digs the same rut deeper, mistakes familiarity for certainty, and thinks exhaustion is a decision.

Well today you fix it.

How?

You'll build a small council of four great minds, all dead for centuries, and let them argue over your decision until you can see it clearly. They’re not there to answer for you, but to show you the paths you’re standing too close to see.

It's a 2,000-year-old trick with a new engine; and it started for me with the worst night of ‘loopy’ thinking I've had in quite some time. You know, one of those weird nights where I couldn't stop arguing with myself.

On repeat!

It was close to midnight on a Wednesday evening in Melbourne; rain and sleet frosting the windows even though it was nearing the end of Spring. Jade and my son were fast asleep in the other room, the house was silent and still.

I sat at the dining room table with a decision I'd been dragging around for a over a month: whether to put a deposit on a small clifftop block we'd found on the coast, the one with the ocean view, and finally build that holiday house we’d always dreamed of.

Or do I wait another year till our savings are a little deeper.

Again.

I made the case for yes.
Then I made the case for no.
Then I made the case for yes again.

Same two arguments, circling the table, getting louder and louder and not even getting close to a clear answer. By the time midnight struck, I wasn't thinking, I was just worrying in an endless spiral.

My thoughts spinning in a tighter and tighter halo of anxiety.

This went on for many hours.
And I felt even more lost than when I started.

What was the answer?

Then somewhere in the still of the night it hit me…

…the reason I couldn’t outthink the problem wasn’t the decision itself, it was that the only person in the room trying to solve my dilemma was me.

There had to be a better way.

As a former lay Zen monk and habit coach, if you’d brought me your version of a big decision, I'd have been useful.

Calm.
Clear.
Confident.

Full of creative, open questions that would have made you think outside the box. That’s because I'm great at helping others see patterns, gaps and shadows in their decisions and choices.

But not always so great at uncovering my own.

The same goes for you.

Because the trouble with asking yourself hard questions is that deep down you already know the truth. In fact, you’ve already answered the question, which means that when it comes to the crunch, you’ll tell yourself what you want to hear.

It happens to all of us.
And there's even a theory for it.

Psychologists call it Solomon's Paradox, after the ancient king who gave brilliant advice to everyone but made a mess of his own life.

In 2014, two researchers, Igor Grossmann and Ethan Kross, tested it on 693 people and what they discovered was that you reason more wisely about someone else's problem than about your own.

Same brain.
Same question.
Worse thinking.

Because it's your own.

You see when a problem belongs to you, you stand too close to it. You're inside the room with it, nose against the wall, and from in there you can't see the shape of the thing.

You’re blind to yourself.

But the good news is that Igor and Ethan found the fix.

When they got people to step outside themselves and look at their own problem as if it belonged to someone else, the gap closed fast and they were more able to visualise answers.

That distance from themselves allowed them to be wiser and better able to come up with creative and novel solutions to their problems.

Step outside your own problems, and you can better solve them too.

For example, think about the last time a friend asked you about their version of a major decision they’ve been mulling over. How fast did you give them an answer?

Now notice how long yours took to answer.

The fix is to bring other ‘different’ and unique minds into the room, so that one of them can see a new angle, a fresh pattern, or help you realise a brilliant aha-moment that you would never have never discovered on your own.

Let me explain.

Smart, wealthy, powerful people have borrowed other minds, like advisors, viziers, and consigliere, for centuries. Because even the most brilliant minds have blind spots.

When the stakes are high, thinking alone can become an echo chamber. The best leaders knew that a different perspective could reveal what their own intelligence, experience and ego couldn't see.

And often, the most valuable advice came from someone brave enough to disagree with them. However, these advisors would cost a small fortune to keep around.

Not so viable today unless you’re the CEO of a big company, royalty or a politician. However, you just happen to be the first generation who can now harness a board of advisors anywhere you have an internet connection and a computer.

The great part?

You don’t need to be rich, influential or have a court of councillors. All you need is a table, a PC, a late night, and a decision nobody else is awake to help you with.

Seneca had the same problem as you, even with an emperor’s ear. Power gave him people to advise, not people to think with. So he worked his own problems out on paper, for a friend named Lucilius.

Seneca was a Roman writer and politician who advised an emperor. He was also a Stoic, part of a school of Greek and Roman thinkers who trained this habit on purpose.

He wasn’t handing out a secret power.

He was describing a routine anyone could run, and he put it into words; choose a great human being and keep them in mind as a kind of inner witness…

Thousands of years ago he had a wax tablet and a good memory, but you have something infinitely better and much stranger.

You can plug into that same great mind and ask a direct question of it tonight. And not just speak to Seneca, but also Gandhi, Jesus, Abraham Lincoln, Agatha Christie, or whoever you want.

This is your ghost council.

The business world calls this idea a "personal board of directors", or in other words a handful of people whose judgement, wisdom and worldly knowledge you can borrow when your own runs dry.

In July 2025, MIT Sloan Management Review ran a piece on building that board with AI: personas modelled on real figures, living and dead, brought in to weigh on a major decision.

Vipin Gupta, the executive who built it, put his virtual board to work on a real business dilemma: should his company build new technology from scratch or buy a business that already had it?

His AI advisers didn't simply agree with him.

They challenged his assumptions, exposed hidden costs, questioned his biases and raised risks he hadn't fully considered. After several rounds of debate, what began as a simple either/or decision became a more nuanced strategy.

The real win?

AI didn't make the decision for him, it helped him see the decision differently before he made it.

That used to be a boardroom luxury where executives paid dearly for real people to challenge their calls before they made them.

Now the same kind of challenge is only one question away, on your own dining table, for the price of a late night and a few tokens. All it needs from you is a decision real enough to argue about.

The tech, AI, to do this is brand-new.
The framework and inspiration is ancient.

A few weeks back we sat three versions of you around a table and let them fight over a hard call.

Remember?

Younger you, older you, braver you.

That works wonders when the wisdom you need already lives somewhere inside you, but has simply been drowned out by the noise. However, some questions, especially big life decisions, need a voice, or several, that were never yours to begin with.

Voices like:

They all bring the one thing you can't; a whole life lived on totally different rules and experiences from your own.

So this week we swap the versions of you for people who lived in the past.

Four of them.
At your table.

And agreement is no use to you here. You want them to argue, to challenge, to pick apart your decision bit by bit.

To illustrate, look at the image below.

In the top panel: one person, one chair in use, the rest of the table empty. Now look at the bottom. Same table, same person, four more voices. The change is who is in the room, not the furniture.

Four voices with nothing to fight over will give you four polite nods and a mediocre solution to your problem.

The ghost council you create needs a real fork in the road: two paths, a cost on each, and a decision you can’t stop turning over. Bring that to the table and the disagreement starts on its own.

Bring a vague, wishy-washy worry, and you’ll get a comfortable answer instead of clarity. So before you seat them, name your choice as simply and as succinctly as possible.

Bring one decision to the table that you keep turning over and write down your options as simply as you can: “Do I buy now or wait?” Include any other route you’re willing to consider, no matter how small.

And keep in mind that you don’t have to squeeze a complicated choice into a false either/or.

Then choose your own four ghosts: deceased public figures whose work or ideas interest you. You could bring Seneca, Marie Curie, James Baldwin and Zhuangzi or choose an entirely different table of advisors.

Aim for different ways of thinking, rather than four people you expect to endorse your favourite answer. They also don’t have to be famous, they can just be people you admire.

If you get stuck, the prompt will help you choose.

Two things to remember, they must have a digital footprint that AI can pull knowledge from and they must not be deceased loved ones.

Once you’re ready, paste it into ChatGPT or Claude and answer one question at a time. The AI will clarify your decision, establish what matters, then explore it through four historically informed perspectives.

Remember that these are AI-generated interpretations, not the people themselves. Question their reasoning, correct anything that doesn’t fit and always keep the final judgement yours.

A word before you begin, these are AI-generated interpretations of historical ideas. Four voices from one AI are not four independent experts. Check important factual claims, especially where your decision depends on current financial, legal, medical or technical information.

You can pause whenever you need to and if you’re in severe distress or immediate danger, STOP. It is vital that you prioritise human support over continuing the exercise.

[ Start of Prompt ]

[ End of Prompt ]

You may leave the table with a decision or you may leave with a better question, a missing fact to check or a smaller step to try first.

Each gives you somewhere useful to go.

Keep the perspective that survives scrutiny, challenge the rest and close the chat when it starts repeating itself. The council has done its job when you can explain your next move in your own words.

Take my dining table decision; buy the clifftop block now, or wait another year.

I ran it with four ghosts.

A Stoic.
A scientist.
A painter.
And a Zen teacher.

Then they clashed.

The Stoic said wait until the numbers are boringly safe.
The painter said the kids are only small once in my life.

And in that argument I finally saw the gap I'd missed for a month.

I kept calling it a money decision, so I kept reaching for the spreadsheet, but it really wasn’t only about the money. I needed to clearly see the life we wanted, then check whether this particular purchase could support it without putting our financial footing at risk.

I was treating a question about the life I want as a sums problem, and sums simply weren’t going to answer it. My move wasn't buy or wait, it was to write down the one thing that block is really for, then weigh the numbers against that, not against my anxiety.

“Should I accept a promotion that pays more but involves regular travel, or stay in my current role? The extra money would help our family, and I’m interested in the work, but I have a young child and worry about missing ordinary time together. I haven’t decided.”

Tell it: “Suggest four people who would approach this decision differently. Explain what each adds before we begin.”

Choose the perspective they contribute and remember that fame alone doesn’t earn a ghost a chair.

Agreement isn’t proof.

Ask: “What is the strongest reasonable case against my preferred option, and what might this council be overlooking?”

If your choices share similar outlooks, swap one for a different perspective. You don’t need to manufacture a fight.

Pause and ask: “Which documented idea supports that interpretation? Separate what is established from what you’ve imagined.”

Check any quotation or claim you intend to rely on and if it can’t support the interpretation, discard it or replace the adviser.

Keep both in view. Wanting summers by the sea matters; so does being able to afford them.

Ask: “What smaller or more reversible option could serve the same aim within my true constraints?”

The council can help clarify what you value, but remember that you still need to check what’s feasible. Only you can decide that.

Ask: “What single missing fact would most change this decision, and how could I find it?”

If the facts are already available, write the trade-off you’re unwilling to accept, then choose a next step or a deliberate pause. You don’t have to summon another council tonight.

The next night I sat at the same mahogany dining room table to tackle that coastal property decision for the umpteenth time. It was still rainy and cold outside, but somehow the room felt warmer and more welcoming.

Perhaps it was because, this time, I’d pulled up four more chairs.

One AI, exploring four perspectives inspired by people whose ideas had outlived them. I knew these artificial advisers weren’t real, even so, there was a strange comfort in having a digital council help me examine the dilemma.

Of course, four historical names don’t know your life and an AI’s interpretation of their ideas can make mistakes, but those ideas can give you something useful to think with.

It might be a question you hadn’t asked, a trade-off you’d overlooked, or a reason to challenge the answer you were hoping for.

That’s the gift of this exercise.

More chairs at the table.
More ways to examine your choices.
Better answers to your hard questions.

I still needed to check the numbers, talk with Jade and decide what we are willing to take on.

My ghost council helped me awaken to the deeper questions I hadn’t asked and to see the essence of those conversations more clearly. Ironically, my dead advisors helped me feel more alive and excited about my decision than I’d ever been before.

So the next time that nagging decision comes back at a red light, at lunch or in the shower, try bringing a few different ethereal perspectives into the room.

Pull up four chairs.
Let the ghosts make their case.
Question what you hear.

Then cast your vote or write down what you still need to know.

You’ve been the only one talking in that room for long enough.

Go on; let your ghost council share the burden.

Hit reply and tell me the four you'd summon for your hardest question; I read every one.

Your AI stack should fit your life, not someone else's workflow.

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Then close your laptop and take your next step. And remember, don’t let someone who’s been dead for two thousand years make you late for dinner.

They’ve got all eternity.
You haven’t.

Ps. I think out loud between issues over on @cedricchenefront or @wellwireddaily, where we talk everything AI + wellbeing and self growth.

Talk soon,
Cedric the AI Monk; stay well, stay wired! 🧠⚡

I write a private, twice-monthly brief specifically for professionals like you. Inside you’ll find ways to harness AI to eliminate, delegate or automate your admin (notes, intake, referrals, etc), grow your wellness business and elevate your wellbeing, one working prompt or workflow per issue.

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