Fire of Ethics
30 days of working on character, not on mood
Who you become on an ordinary day — and who finds things a little easier with you around. Evenness when everything is on fire; a word carried through to the deed; honesty where it would be easier to say nothing; warmth towards the people nobody usually notices. We took twelve such qualities and built thirty days in which they are not discussed but tried by hand — inside your own day, the one with the chats, the traffic and the tired evening. There is one measure: not “what did I get out of it”, but whether it got easier for the people around you.
Honestly about the roots: the method draws on the Russian ethical tradition with a century of history. We ourselves name its books on Day 15: from that day on you know what stands behind the practice and can check every word. If you want to know sooner, open the folded block on the About page. Not hiding, but protecting your meeting with it — experience before the label.
What a day of practice looks like
Twenty-five minutes — but not in one block. The day rests on four short points, and your ordinary life goes on between them: that is exactly where everything happens. Nothing to quit and nowhere to travel.
No magic: three questionnaires — before the start, on day 30 and on day 90 — with a diary of facts beside them, so that you look at deeds rather than impressions. The whole first day, free and with no sign-up → · How the month works and what we count as a result →
Three questions — and it becomes clear whether this is your story
This is not a spirituality test and not a funnel. Three honest questions about your day today, so that you can see for yourself whether this door is yours. The answer stays in your browser: we never receive it.
Qualities are what a life is made of: yours and that of the people around you
We rarely let people down for lack of knowledge. We let them down in the second when we snapped at someone close; promised and did not do it; chose the urgent over the important. Years are assembled out of such seconds — ours and those of the people who live and work beside us.
Relationships and family
People unerringly feel whether they are being looked at — or looked through. They stay not with the brightest but with the one beside whom they can be wrong and alive. And one day a quiet, simple thing comes out: you were the last to be told what mattered. Not because they stopped loving you — because beside you it was not safe.
What it is assembled from: love · humaneness · gratitude · selflessness
Mechanism: not to “attract”, but to become the person beside whom it is warm and safe. It cannot be acted on a date; it can be grown over months.
Work and the job in hand
At any workplace you can see whom the work rests on: who stays even when everything is on fire, and whose “I’ll do it” means done. People bring them the hard things and trust them with what matters; the whole team is calmer beside them. It is not a technique and not an image for an interview: it is what a person gathers one kept word at a time.
What it is assembled from: equilibrium · keeping your word · constancy · honesty with yourself · courage
Mechanism: evenness under pressure makes you someone others can lean on; a kept word turns into trust.
Decisions without expensive mistakes
The most expensive mistakes do not come from stupidity. Ten years in the wrong direction, a loan for the wrong thing, a quarrel over the wrong thing: every time the word “urgent” and the convenient version of events won. The price is paid six months later — and not only by us — when it is too late to say you had your suspicions.
What it is assembled from: honesty with yourself · trust · equilibrium
Mechanism: a fact written down instead of the convenient version, and a pause before answering. One protected main task a day beats eight “urgent” ones.
Health and energy
You know the swings: Monday — “a new life”, Thursday — self-reproach on the sofa. The body pays not for the load but for the slips and for a background grievance against the world — which does not look like a problem. It looks like tiredness, poor sleep and irritation at people who have nothing to do with it. Here the fuel is different: the even fire of small actions, and joy as a support rather than a prize at the end.
What it is assembled from: constancy · equilibrium · humaneness · gratitude
Mechanism: coming back after a slip instead of self-reproach — a missed day stays one day and does not become a habit. The practice does not cure: it changes the behaviour a condition is made of.
Why I am doing this
My name is Boris Ivanashchenko. I am forty-four, I have two daughters, and in September 2025 I lost my wife Yulia: the practice described here held me through the hardest year of my life. I manage large IT projects. Thanks to my father I grew up in the ethical tradition this course rests on, and I have spent my adult life working on myself one quality at a time: I look honestly at where it is thin, choose one quality and train it inside an ordinary day — in meetings, in traffic, over dinner with my daughters. More on the “About the project” page. I am not a guru, not a coach and not a “life mentor” — an ordinary person who held on to very simple things when there was nothing else to hold on to: a pause before answering, three honest lines at night, one thing carried through to the end. Laughably simple — and they worked where books, motivation and bursts of willpower had not.
I did not put this together in order to build an organisation. I put it together for one minute — the one where a person’s day, or life, is falling apart and instead of snapping they take a pause of three breaths and answer evenly. Not because they are strong, but because for a month they trained that pause on trifles: on a barb in the chat, in a queue, on “redo this, urgently”. Everything else here — the thirty days, the circles, the Wheel — was built for one purpose: so that this minute happens to you.
I am not selling you anything: participation is free, the project is non-commercial — the practice here is not a product. If our thirty days coincide, I will be there every morning, alive, with the same notebook. If they do not — leaving here is as honest as staying. I mean that.
The programme is dedicated to my wife Yulia. Why the dedication — and what I do on 17 September.
The month is built like a good story — with a setup, a turn and a climax
The days are arranged by drama, not by topics. First you simply try. Then the material starts to resist — and that is not a fault. On Day 15 everything receives its name. And you walk through the same doors a second time, now holding the keys.
The first six trials — without names
Each day one trial the size of a single day: see the person rather than the function, carry a promise through, wait for the right time instead of pushing. Not one term of art. On Sunday — a circle where each speaks for a few minutes and the rest simply listen.
It gets hard — and that is the most interesting place
The trials get finer and resistance appears — your own: do a thing not for yourself and tell no one; catch one convenient version of events and write down the real one. Resistance here is not a fault but a signpost: where the reluctance is strongest, that is where there is something to grow.
The climax: the Day of the Name
For two weeks you trained nameless things. Today they are given names — and what you called “a pause” turns out to be a quality with a thousand pages and a tradition behind it. And it becomes visible what you have really been doing these two weeks.
The second turn: the same doors — but now you have the keys
What in the first week was simply “look at the person” now gets a name and a depth — and that is something you can work with.
The last trial and the mini-Wheel: the first map of yourself
The finale is not “congratulations” but an instrument: you rate yourself honestly across all twelve qualities. For the first time you see your character as a map: where it holds and where not yet — on paper, not in feelings.
Map of all thirty days
The titles and paintings of all thirty days. Day 1 is open in full — the rest reach participants one card a day.
And after the thirty days — the whole path
30 days — a course with a leader and four circles
Two weeks of experience without names, Day 15 — the Name, the second half — the same twelve qualities by name. Every Sunday — an hour in a circle of 6–8 people. In the same month the circle may choose one small deed for people outside it. Free, like everything that follows.
Two weeks of noticing — and the Wheel on Day 45
After the finale you simply notice facts. On Day 45 — the Wheel of Qualities: twelve axes, a score only for a fact from the last 14 days. It is a mirror of deeds: it does not measure the growth of the spirit.
Choosing one quality is up to you
After the Wheel there are candidates, and none comes first: the quality your heart is drawn to; a weak spot confirmed by the facts; the root of your own word, once it has come up in two Wheels in a row. You may also take what life is calling for right now. You take one.
A season of one quality — about three months
An ordinary day or the two-minute minimum — but every day: in the morning one decision made concrete in a deed, in the evening three lines. The circle meets weekly or every two weeks. Once a month you reread your notes. After the season — two light weeks on the minimum. How a season works →
The Wheel again — and on at your own pace
At the end of the season — a new Wheel and a new choice: another quality, or the same one if it does not yet hold everywhere. Up to three seasons a year, with breaks. Once a year — a look back over your notes. There is no ceiling: a path the length of a life.
These are not levels but an order: you can stop after any step — that is a full result, not “dropping out”. And the other qualities — generosity, humility, tolerance and a hundred and fifty more words — are not trained separately but grow together with their axes: grow the root, measure by the branch. And if your heart is drawn to your own word itself, you may take it — the season still runs through its root. How this works →
The whole programme, to the end and with no “you’ll find out later” →
Roerich’s paintings — a way into the idea without a single word of doctrine
Every morning: one painting and one minute of silence before it. This is not art history — a canvas holds the state of a day better than a paragraph of explanation, and it asks nothing of you. Twelve qualities, twelve paintings: each one tunes its own day the way a tuning fork sets a note.
Questions people ask before joining
Answered plainly, with no “I’ll explain that on the webinar”. If your question is not here, write and I will answer personally.
Will this help with money and relationships?
We won’t promise that: nobody who measures honestly can give guarantees here. This course is not about what you will get, but about who you are on an ordinary day and who finds things easier with you around.
Is this a cult? Is it a religion? Will I have to believe in something?
No — and check that by the signs rather than by our word for it. You can leave any day with no explanation. There is no guru. We take no money for participation: it is free at every step, and a gift to the project is voluntary and only after a completed step.
Why free? What’s the catch?
There is no catch, and here is how it works. The project is non-commercial: participation is free at every step — now and later — and no profit is taken. Not one step of the practice opens for money.
Join a cohort
16 places, two circles of 6–8: not marketing scarcity, but the size of a circle in which everyone can be heard. Start — 26 October 2026, 07:30 Moscow time (UTC+3), if at least eight people join. If the places run out, we will sign you up for the next cohort, without any rush. The first cohort’s circles and audio are in Russian; if you need English, write to us first and we will tell you honestly what is possible. Write one word — “in”. On the other side there is no bot and no “sales department”: I reply myself, personally, within the day.
You can change your mind at any step — before the start and after, with no explanations. If you disappear, the leader writes once — and will not bother you again.