We know that first impressions are important, so we’ve populated your new site with some initial getting started posts that will help you get familiar with everything in no time. This is the first one!

A few things you should know upfront:

1. Ghost is designed for ambitious, professional publishers who want to actively build a business around their content. That’s who it works best for.
2. The entire platform can be modified and customised to suit your needs. It’s very powerful, but does require some knowledge of code. Ghost is not necessarily a good platform for beginners or people who just want a simple personal blog.
3. For the best experience we recommend downloading the Ghost Desktop App for your computer, which is the best way to access your Ghost site on a desktop device.

Ghost is made by an independent non-profit organisation called the Ghost Foundation. We are 100% self funded by revenue from our Ghost(Pro) service, and every penny we make is re-invested into funding further development of free, open source technology for modern publishing.

The version of Ghost you are looking at right now would not have been made possible without generous contributions from the open source community.

Next up, the editor

The main thing you’ll want to read about next is probably: the Ghost editor. This is where the good stuff happens.

By the way, once you’re done reading, you can simply delete the default Ghost user from your team to remove all of these introductory posts!

You get the achievement.
You feel good for a moment.
And then… the pressure returns.

If you’ve ever wondered why the “success high” fades so quickly or why the next goal always feels urgent, you’re about to see something most people never discover:

The root cause isn’t your strategy, your habits, or your opportunities.
It’s the identity you’re using to live your life.

There’s an ancient system that explains this better than anything in modern psychology or self-improvement.

It’s called Advaita Vedanta.

A Clear, Simple Definition of Avaita Vedanta

“Advaita Vedanta is the ancient system that reveals the self you’ve been trying to improve is not the self that’s actually living your life.”

Let that land for a moment.

Because once you understand it, everything you think about success begins to shift—quietly, then profoundly.

But before diving deeper, we need to question something almost no one questions:

What is success, really?

Rethinking Success: The Definition That Actually Works

Most people inherit a cultural definition of success without ever examining it:

Success is the accumulation of achievements, status, money, and validation that will hopefully produce happiness.

That definition guarantees stress.

Because everything it depends on is external, unstable, and temporary.

Advaita Vedanta offers a more accurate—and more liberating—definition:

Success is the natural expression of a mind that knows its true nature, and thus its inherent wholeness, and is no longer working against itself.

That means:

• clarity instead of noise
• courage instead of fear
• steady action instead of procrastination
• wisdom instead of reactivity
• consistency instead of emotional swings

This definition is superior for one simple reason:

It makes success internal first, external second.
And the internal part is fully under your control.

The Hidden Weight Sabotaging Your Success

Most of your stress doesn’t come from your goals.
It comes from the identity you think is “you.”

This identity is made of:

• old memories
• labels
• insecurities
• past rejection
• internalized criticism
• comparison
• fear
• survival strategies
• childhood conditioning

And because you believe this identity is “me,” you’re forced to:

• protect it
• defend it
• validate it
• improve it
• repair it
• explain it
• justify it

This drains more energy than any goal ever could.

“You’re not just chasing success—you’re dragging a fragile self-image behind you.”

This false identity is fragile and defensive.
Which means criticism hurts, failure frightens, risk feels dangerous, and pressure tightens your mind.

Advaita Vedanta cuts through the entire illusion:

The “self” you defend is a mental construct.

The real you is the awareness that sees it.

Once that shift happens, something remarkable takes place:

External criticism stops feeling personal.
Internal self-criticism stops being meaningful.

And this is where success begins to change shape.

The True Identity: Your Untapped Success Advantage

When you recognize your true identity—not as a character in your mind but as the awareness that knows every experience—everything that once felt personal becomes neutral.

• A setback is just an event.
• A rejection is just an outcome.
• A mistake is just information.
• A criticism is just sound.
• A risk is just a possibility.
• A fear is just a sensation.

You become immune to both praise and criticism.
Your clarity increases.
Your emotional volatility decreases.
Your ability to execute skyrockets.

Not because you’re trying harder, but because there’s nothing attacking your sense of self anymore.

Why Achievements Never Deliver Lasting Fulfillment

Here’s a simple but life-changing revelation:

**You don’t desire the achievement itself.

You desire the feeling you think it will give you.**

Money? You want safety and freedom.
Status? You want self-worth.
Success? You want peace and validation.

Vedanta flips the entire formula:

Instead of chasing the object to get the feeling, find the source of the feeling inside you—and let achievements become expressions of that wholeness.

This is not philosophy.
It’s the most practical performance advantage available.

Because when you’re no longer trying to “fix” yourself through achievement:

• fear shrinks
• clarity grows
• creativity increases
• decisions sharpen
• relationships deepen
• burnout disappears
• execution becomes consistent
• action flows naturally

“When you stop needing success to feel whole, you become more successful than ever.”

But this raises a concern almost everyone has…

“If I Feel Whole… Won’t I Lose My Ambition?”

No.
You won’t lose ambition.
You’ll lose fear-based ambition.

And fear-based ambition is the lowest-quality fuel.

It leads to:

• burnout
• overthinking
• choking under pressure
• perfectionism
• avoidance
• anxious goals
• protective behavior
• shrinking from big moves

Advaita Vedanta replaces that with a different fuel—one rooted in clarity, creativity, responsiveness, and inner stability.

A fuel that elevates your ability, not your anxiety.

This is exactly what the ancient master Transxu meant when he wrote:

“When the archer shoots for nothing, he has all his skill.
When he shoots for a brass buckle, he is already nervous.
When he shoots for a prize of gold, he goes blind.
The need to win drains him of power.”

When your identity is no longer tied to the outcome, your mind becomes unified, steady, and powerful.
You see one target—not two.

You perform with ease—not strain.

You act boldly—not fearfully.

Ambition doesn’t disappear.
It transforms.

The Mind That Hinders You vs. The Mind That Elevates You

Without inner clarity, the mind becomes an obstacle course:

• anxiety
• imagined catastrophes
• self-doubt
• comparison
• endless mental chatter
• emotional reactivity

Most people aren’t unproductive because they lack drive.
They’re unproductive because their attention is caught in internal noise.

Advaita Vedanta frees the mind from its own traps:

**Thoughts still come.

You simply no longer mistake them for commands.**

When thoughts are seen rather than believed:

• fear loses its grip
• doubt loses its teeth
• pressure loses its power
• procrastination dissolves
• creativity opens
• presence deepens
• resilience strengthens

This is the mental state peak performers chase through hacks, routines, and forced discipline.

Vedanta gives it to you through insight.

And from that clarity comes another profound shift…

Responding to Reality Instead of Resisting It

The real drain on your energy isn’t work.
It’s resistance.

People burn out not because life is hard, but because they fight life every step of the way.

• resisting discomfort
• resisting uncertainty
• resisting feedback
• resisting change
• resisting other people’s opinions
• resisting circumstances they cannot control

Resistance tightens the mind.
Responsiveness opens it.

A clear mind doesn’t fight what’s happening; it works with it.
It makes better moves faster because it isn’t clouded by “how it should be.”

This responsiveness becomes a superpower.

You navigate challenges with precision.
You adapt without fear.
You execute without hesitation.
You stay grounded when others unravel.

And this leads directly to the central paradox of Vedanta…

The Paradox That Changes Everything

When you stop chasing success as a way to feel whole, you begin operating from the clarity that produces real success.

Not forced.
Not frantic.
Not anxious.

Just clear.

Just aligned.

Just intelligent.

Pull-Quote:

“Advaita Vedanta doesn’t give you success.
It removes what once blocked your natural excellence.”

And when those blocks fall away, everything improves:

• your decisions
• your consistency
• your communication
• your emotional regulation
• your confidence
• your presence
• your intelligence
• your leadership
• your relationships
• your ability to handle pressure

This is why Advaita Vedanta quietly outperforms every modern strategy:

Because it doesn’t fix the symptoms.
It dissolves the root.

The Real Reason Advaita Vedanta Is the Greatest Success Secret

You’ve spent your life trying to strengthen, upgrade, and defend an identity that isn’t the real you.

And because of that misunderstanding, your mind has always felt noisy…
your goals have always carried pressure…
your success never felt quite enough…
and your failures felt personal.

Advaita Vedanta reveals the truth:

**The self you were trying to fix was never who you were.

The self you actually are was never broken.**

When this becomes clear:

• fear loses its power
• doubt loses its stickiness
• pressure loses its bite
• setbacks lose their sting
• ambition becomes clean
• action becomes natural
• success becomes a by-product
• happiness becomes your baseline

You become the kind of person others describe with phrases like:

“unshakeable,”
“deeply present,”
“focused but calm,”
“clear under pressure,”
“naturally confident.”

And none of it requires force.

It’s simply what happens when you stop living as the character in your mind and start living as the awareness behind it.

That’s the transformation Advaita Vedanta offers.

And that’s why it stands—not as a philosophy, not as a religion, not as a self-help hack—but as the greatest success secret ever discovered.

When the ITV news flash sign came on the TV screen everyone looked up. When the flash sign was immediately followed by a still of Elvis Presley, a quiet voice breathed, “Oh, my God.”

“Reports are coming in that Elvis Presley, the rock and roll singer, died this evening at his home in Memphis, Tennessee.”

About: Elvis Presley

We all looked at each other in disbelief.

“Elvis is dead!”

It didn’t seem quite credible. And yet it wasn’t the kind of shock that followed the news of J.F.K. being cut down. There had been so much speculation about Presley’s mental and physical health that his death was unpleasantly predictable.

It was almost impossible to know what to think. My first impulse was to pick up the phone and call a couple of people. I tried two numbers, but they were both busy. Obviously other people had reacted the same way. It was the kind of news that demanded to be passed on. Elvis had always been there. For more than two decades he’d maintained a unique position in too many people’s lives.

The End of an Era

Despite all the depressing rumours it scarcely seemed possible that he’d gone, that Elvis Presley was dead at 42.

I guess the only word I can use is numb. Numb, and just very slightly embarrassed at the way I was reacting. It wasn’t the ordinary kind of grief that you feel for a personal friend. There was no voice telling me that I’d never see Elvis Presley again. Jesus Christ, I’d never seen him, ever. I didn’t even regret that I’d never get the chance to see him. The Elvis Presley I’d have given my right arm to watch was the wild hoodlum in the gold jacket who vanished into the US Army and never returned. I’d mourned his passing many years ago.

Access the post settings menu in the top right hand corner of the editor.

Post feature image

Insert your post feature image from the very top of the post settings menu. Consider resizing or optimising your image first to ensure it’s an appropriate size.

Structured data & SEO

Customise your social media sharing cards for Facebook and Twitter, enabling you to add custom images, titles and descriptions for social media.

There’s no need to hard code your meta data. You can set your meta title and description using the post settings tool, which has a handy character guide and SERP preview.

Zapier

You can connect your Ghost site to over 1,000 external services using the official integration with Zapier.

Zapier sets up automations with Triggers and Actions, which allows you to create and customise a wide range of connected applications.

Example: When someone new subscribes to a newsletter on a Ghost site (Trigger) then the contact information is automatically pushed into MailChimp (Action).

Editing your theme

One of the biggest advantages of using Ghost over centralised platforms is that you have total control over the front end of your site. Either customise your existing theme, or create a new theme from scratch with our Theme SDK.

You can integrate any front end code into a Ghost theme without restriction, and it will work just fine. No restrictions!

Here are some common examples:

• Include comments on a Ghost blog with Disqus or Discourse
• Implement MathJAX with a little bit of JavaScript
• Add syntax highlighting to your code snippets using Prism.js
• Integrate any dynamic forms from Google or Typeform to capture data
• Just about anything which uses JavaScript, APIs and Markup.

Using the Public API

Ghost itself is driven by a set of core APIs, and so you can access the Public Ghost JSON API from external webpages or applications in order to pull data and display it in other places.

The Ghost API is thoroughly documented and straightforward to work with for developers of almost any level.

Alright, the last post in our welcome-series! If you’re curious about creating your own Ghost theme from scratch, here are some more details on how that works.

From the classic Andalusian architecture of Seville and Córdoba, to the Moorish style of Granada, the elegant Baroque and Renaissance details in Salamanca, and the mix of Gothic and Modernista styles in Barcelona – here are five Spanish cities that will have you falling for their beautiful architecture.

Seville

A medieval city, Seville is one of the most beautiful and most romantic in the country, largely due to its impressive architecture. Think tiny alleyways with whitewashed buildings, cobbled streets with overhanging, intricate wrought iron balconies, and charming boulevards with mansions painted orange and lemon. Begin your architectural tour in the old Jewish quarter of Barrio de Santa Cruz, walk along the Guadalquivir River and across the bridge to the old gypsy district of Triana, known for its ceramic and tile workshops.

Some of Seville’s standout buildings include La Giralda, a Gothic cathedral with an Islamic minaret; the Plaza de España, created for the Ibero-American Expo of 1929 and flanked by sophisticated towers and small pavilions; the Moorish palace of the Real Alcázar; and the Plaza de Toros (bullring), one of the oldest in Spain, dating back to 1765.

Step number 1 

From the stunning Samsung Galaxy S10 Plus and super slick Apple iPhone XS Max, to the insanely fast OnePlus 7 Pro, onto the photo-taking majesty of the Huawei P30 Pro, or the movie-watching joy delivered by the Sony Xperia 1, these truly are the best mobile phones on the market today.

So sit back, relax, and let us take you through the contenders…

Every quality phone worthy of your consideration can be found in our best phone 2019 guide – we’ve tested every aspect of each phone, from screen quality to battery life, from internal specs to camera quality. That way we can make very clear recommendations of what each phone’s strengths are and who they would be perfect partners for.

Step number 2

As phones are very important tools in our everyday lives, we’ve also spent some serious time with each handset in our best phones list as well, so we can let you know exactly what, say, the Google Pixel 3a, Xiaomi Mi 9 or Huawei Mate 20 Pro smartphones are like to live with on an extended daily basis.

We only include the absolute best phones in this list, so you can be sure you’re reading about the very latest, cutting-edge devices. We’ve listed all the phones in order of preference, too, so there’s no confusion – the first phone is the best phone that you can get in 2019.

• Huawei Mate X review
• Check out the best Android phones
• And here are the very best cheap phones