If you're afraid of something specific, the Aztecs would suggest practicing by facing smaller fears in different contexts. If you struggle with self-discipline, start with activities that require small amounts of effort, something you can manage and build upon. In this way, you gradually develop the tools to handle more challenging situations.

The Aztec method for developing good habits—what we would call virtues—relies on progressive exposure paired with reflection. Great courage is built through small, everyday acts, just as prudence, temperance, and other virtues are.

Fluid synchrony refers to the seamless coordination of actions between individuals without the need for explicit discussion. It is similar to the way professional dancers move in perfect harmony on stage. In the task where the children were required to chart the shortest course through a model grocery store, they had to navigate obstacles as

The art of living well consists neither in cultivating inward peace exclusively nor in learning the practices of war, but in growing deep roots.

To bridge Aztec and ancient Greek ways of thinking, you could say that the basic sources for a lack of harmonic balance derive from: (1) metaphysical reasons, (2) observations about the complexity of the human psyche, and (3) observations about the role of moral luck. Even if we discard the Aztecs' view on metaphysical cosmology, the latter two

The Aztecs would argue that luck plays a much larger role in our successes and failures, even in our moral successes, than most of us in the "West” generally recognize. The world is simply too complex and too unpredictable for luck not to play a significant role. We come into life "unbalanced," unprepared to avoid falling. It is for this reason

In the Aztec view, our psyche is not like a rider on a horse, as Sigmund Freud suggested, or even a rider on an elephant, as the contemporary psychologist Jonathan Haidt has put it. Ideally, it is a fluidly coordinated jazz ensemble, where each player improvises in their own way, none of whom is distinctly responsible for their coordination. In

Thought thus "blooms" as it works its way up from local concerns (that joint pain in my bad wrist) to conscious awareness (that I need to move my hand) to vocalization ("ouch!") to dialogue with others who can help me to better understand the pain. This model of thinking, beginning with a seed incident that blooms into progressively more involved

These three points, that we are all bound to slip up, that even our cosmic existence is ephemeral, and that happiness, or at least pleasure, comes and goes just like any feeling, form the scaffolding for Aztec philosophy. Any philosophical outlook that ignores these points, the Aztecs would say, is naive.