Welcome
to BNQ
Hi, I’m Ana Raman. Welcome to Bold New Quests, a space that supports personal growth and development – through the good, stable, and tough times.
I am driven by a simple but powerful belief – that you can become stronger and thrive because of the stressors, unpredictability, and overall craziness that life throws at you, not in spite of them.
I created Bold New Quests to explore this belief—and to invite others into this journey.
Context For My Blog
I’ve lived enough lives to know that strength isn’t about holding it all together when things get shaken up. I’ve successfully navigated the corporate world, changed careers mid-stride, packed up my life and started fresh in new cities, competed in amateur sports, and am raising a family, leaning into challenges and learning lessons throughout. None of it was easy. All of it shaped me.
This blog is where I share what I’ve learned—and what I’m still figuring out—about how to build a life that gets stronger in the face of adversity, stress, change, and uncertainty. Not just bouncing back to my baseline (resilience). But becoming stronger (antifragile) in a healthy and holistic way. I believe in honest conversations, testing ideas, and choosing to grow even when the path is painful.
If you’ve been through a few storms—professionally, personally, physically—you already know life doesn’t follow a neat script and take you on a direct path to success. However, those dips can be leverage points for something greater and more rewarding.
BNQ isPart Blog, Part Lab, 100% Exploration
Here, you’ll find grounded insight and real-world experiments: what works, what doesn’t, and what’s worth trying anyway. I’ll share stories from the trenches—leadership lessons, recovery breakthroughs, rituals that helped me stay sane and on course, mindset shifts that took years to earn, and systems to not just recover to a pre-existing baseline, but to grow stronger when hit with life’s shocks.
This is a space for those who are ready to build a life that is more enduring, joyful, and fulfilling – reaching across pertinent domains, including health and wellness, relationships, career, and finance. Let’s build lives that bend but don’t break—and come back even stronger.
What is Antifragility?
The term antifragile was coined by mathematician / philosopher Nassim Nicholas Taleb. It describes systems, people, or things that don’t just withstand stress and chaos—they thrive because of it. Unlike something that is merely resilient (which resists shocks and stays the same), the antifragile improves when exposed to volatility, randomness, disorder, and stressors. It’s a property of systems that gain from uncertainty. (Recommended reading: Antifragile: Things that Gain From Disorder, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb)
