#spirituality #selfdevelopment #personalitytransformation
Various Situations of Goal Setting with Life Examples
Let's start with a fundamentally important point. I will try to bring you as close as possible to understanding how crucial it is to think globally here and now, to let go, to see what will happen in 40, 50 years or after your life, how important it is not to create illusions regarding the words "values" and "mission," and how essential it is to firmly shape a person and a personality capable of scale, capable of achieving significant growth over a long period.
The first rule, or the first focus to pay attention to, is to clearly see the set goal.
We will discuss this using examples from business and work: it's crucial what and where you engage from a social environment perspective. For example, I'm involved in mortgage financing and real estate lending in the USA to make money; or I'm building a business, creating a large educational company to sell it in five years for 400 million dollars; or I'm making videos to find some opportunity in the future that I currently feel but can't describe yet, just knowing I need to do this right now; or I'm in business because it’s very important to my wife, and she has an incredible impact on my feelings and results.
A person took a job as a programmer because his wife wanted him to: specifically in this company, for this salary. A person became an architect because he wanted to make as much money monthly as possible. A person became a sales manager not to earn money right now and support his family, not to build financial castles, schemes, and make money daily. He became a sales manager to build a career and understand sales, aiming to become a manager in three years. He clearly sees this path ahead. He tells himself that once he becomes a manager, then he will think about money; at the moment, his clear goal is to become a manager. For instance, a sales department manager, a sales director, or a product director. A person starts a partnership because he knows that in a year or two, he doesn't want to be involved in operational activities; he doesn't want to work. This is his global goal: to have a business that brings income without him, and he achieves it through such a partnership where different businesses and opportunities unfold. In other words, a person can have absolutely different goals in work and business.
Moving to the USA, Silicon Valley, and Anxiety
I moved to the United States with my wife and four children a year ago. At that time, I was almost 40 years old. For the last 13 years, I lived in Moscow, and before that in Minsk. Is there a goal in moving to another country? Of course, and it varies. For example, people often ask me if we definitely plan to stay in the States, plan to live in Silicon Valley... "Will you be here while the children go to school? And then what do you plan? Did you move to live in Silicon Valley or to make money here? Do you have a job here? Is there a goal?" Some say I ran away.
I had a goal, and it was important for me to move to another country. Some people had a lifelong dream of moving to the USA. I know people who always wanted to move to the USA, and they moved. Some always dream of moving but never do. Some never wanted, don’t want at the moment of moving, move, and their whole life until the end they don't want to. Some never want, move, then circumstances change, and they feel incredibly happy.
When we dive in and compare our lives with others, we primarily start making conclusions based on our personal feelings. Some begin to worry when moving: what will the children do there, what is their language level, what will you do yourself, who will you communicate with, do you know the language, do you understand what kind of country it is, how will you feel inside it in terms of people, do you have acquaintances or friends, do the climate, prices, interaction, and communication culture suit you when you drive a car or come to a store?
Some people come and definitely want to get a job in a specific place; some want to work offline, others online. I always said that there are people who want to leave home for work time; there are people who categorically don't want to stay at home, want to leave at least for work time. Some want to feel free at least during work because they feel caged at home. People may feel this way at home because they are lonely or have certain circumstances at home regarding their family.
What Question Should You Ask Yourself: About Feelings, Sense of Freedom, and Worries
So, what is your goal in the actions you are doing right now? Do you know the real goal behind these actions? If you haven't fully realized it, then you have an inner state of faith, and you understand that what you are doing will affect your life in 20-30 years.
I have a feeling that what I’m recording on the YouTube channel will affect my life in 20-30 years. But this is my personal feeling. Any people who try to guide me regarding video preparation, editing, titles, promotion, advertising, build internal local goals without understanding mine. If I don't have a current intermediate or even final goal (for 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 years), other people won't be able to understand me. My team cannot understand me, it's impossible. I don't build illusions in this regard, trying to explain, adjust, interact. I allow for different types of videos, topics, questions, experiments, formats, and strategies, but I understand that only I myself must feel the goal ahead.
Some years ago, my wife and I discussed moving to the USA, we traveled there a lot. By the way, we didn’t even know that we were moving to America. On a Sunday morning, I said, "We will decide now, or maybe we won't decide, because in 10 years it will be a bit harder. We need to either make a decision or not." At that moment, I was the CEO of a large educational company, had 30 directors under my supervision, hundreds of thousands of clients, many partnerships, discussions, details of various formats. You live in a certain place, in a certain apartment, with a certain number of clients. We lay down and decided to move. We didn’t even know which country we were going to, we didn’t fully understand what would happen with our life, what I would do, what my wife would do, how we would feel. And this is the most important. "Let's agree initially: since we have four children, we won't worry about their school." Because the first question everyone asks is where we will work. And the second – what about the children's school? And we said we wouldn't worry about school because we know: children's happiness is not in the number of hours they spend in school but in how we feel during this time, how stable we are and can create an atmosphere of harmony, freedom, and development for them. I mean inner freedom. We agreed on the schools.
The road led us to the United States. And what’s interesting: if you live in a good area, you automatically have great schools. You arrive, rent or buy property – depending on the address, you have a specific school. We arrived, they tell us the school is free and you can enroll children based on where you live. Our children go to school, and my wife and I can’t believe they’re free because our minds couldn’t imagine this. I grew up in Belarus, and all my life I was sure that to study in good schools (maybe not in elementary, but in middle and high), you need a cosmic amount of money, and it's impossible to get in. But it turned out you just need to rent a house or apartment in the right place. Moreover, in this right place, at the right address, there are both expensive and cheap options – your choice. Schools automatically solved themselves because our goal was not that we moved because we need the right place, I don’t want to do my job, our children must have a good school. The foundation of our move solved something completely different. Knowing the goal is incredibly important everywhere.
"I Just Want to Start a Business"
Yesterday I had guests, and they said they wanted to start a business producing a certain product group. The first thing I asked was their goal: to earn a lot of cash, to receive a lot of money steadily, or to create something that can be sold for a lot of money? It’s immediately clear that people don’t have a focus in this business calculation. They came up with the idea itself, but the idea has no goal; there's just a desire to start a business. Is the desire itself a goal for you? It’s immediately visible. Some people just want to start any business. This is the goal, and it’s great. A person says he wants to start some business. He would open, for example, a bakery, a café, a coffee shop, or start providing services. He would start some business, just any, which is pleasant for the soul. This can also be a certain goal.
You can set some limitations in it. For example, to say this business must bring at least $1,000 a month or a million dollars a month; or that you should not spend more than three hours a day on this business. Here it is common. In Silicon Valley, you walk in some small town, and all the shops are closed. My wife always asks: “Why are these shops closed? Do they ever work? How do they even make money?” They have no goal to make money; most likely, this place belongs to them, or someone opened it as a hobby. And he said to himself he
doesn’t want to spend more than three hours a week. He comes, opens his shop on Wednesday and Sunday; people came, bought, and that's it. If he has a goal to make money – completely different time schedule, completely different conditions. This is an example that even in small things, it's extremely important to understand the goal.
I would like to emphasize another key point, about seeing yourself in five, ten, twenty, forty, fifty years: it's incredibly important to see the final goal, to build it very clearly, to try to describe it and move towards it. In doing so, you will find intermediate stages. Imagine you want to become a business owner, and that’s your goal. And you understand your goal is to manage the largest business in some area in the country. For example, your goal is to manage the largest medical clinic in the country. You ask yourself what you should do to achieve it. You start looking for ways to do it. Imagine there’s a doctor who worked for 20 years, and he was always a doctor but never a business owner. He wants to start his own medical clinic, and in 10-15 years he wants to become a manager of the largest clinic in the country. This doctor builds intermediate stages. He realizes he needs to go through the stage of opening his own business. He understands he needs to go through the stage of managing a business, managing teams, managing employees, managing marketing, managing finances, managing taxes, managing complaints, managing operations, managing reviews, managing complaints and reviews simultaneously. In each step, in each action, he is building towards a large goal.
And so, concluding this important topic: never waste time on small things, set big goals, feel them and move towards them.
"I Just Want to Start a Business"
Yesterday, I had some guests over, and they said they wanted to start a business producing a certain product. The first thing I asked was, what's their goal: to make a lot of cash, to get a steady stream of income, or to create something they can sell for a high price? Right away, you can tell they don't have a clear focus for this business. They came up with the idea, but the idea itself doesn't have a goal; there's just the desire to start a business. Is the desire itself a goal for you? It's obvious. Some people just want to start any business. That's the goal, and that's cool. A person says they want to start some business. They might open, for example, a bakery, a café, a coffee shop, or start providing services. They would start some business, just any, which is pleasant for the soul. This can also be a certain goal.
You can set some limitations in it. For example, to say this business must bring at least $1,000 a month or a million dollars a month; or that I should not spend more than three hours a day on this business. Here, it's common. In Silicon Valley, you walk in some small town, and all the shops are closed. My wife always asks, "Why are these shops closed? Do they ever work? How do they even make money?" They don't have the goal to make money; most likely, this place belongs to them, or someone opened it as a hobby. And they said to themselves, they will work 2 times a week for 3 hours. It's their right. Just like it's my right, when I make videos, to make them 5 minutes long, 10 minutes long, 30 minutes long, 3 hours long, 5 hours long. To make them once a month or every day. It's my choice, my right. Why? Because I am in control of this choice.
In this project, I manage my goal, I manage it, not the business managing me when you are trapped in the business and don't understand what's happening, and you are constantly being pulled, pulled and pulled somewhere, when you are no longer capable of making your own decisions, your own peace.
Aligning Personal Goals and Business Goals
One of the fundamental problems of goal setting is when a person's goal intersects with the business goal or professional activity.
Let's imagine: there's a business, two partners, and it generates $10,000 net per month. One of the partners needs this business to generate $5,000 for him (they split 50/50) because he spends all $5,000 on rent, children's school, feeding his family, and maintaining his entire life. This is his minimally necessary standard of living.
So, every time in business, when planning any month, this person goes to work and thinks about whether he will earn these $5,000. This is the essence of business: it can be profitable or unprofitable. When you are hired for a job, you know that you will receive a salary in any case. I am not considering any critical circumstances like an earthquake that destroyed your company's building, the banking financial system collapsed, something else happened. Basically, when a person goes to work, they know they will get a salary at the end of the month. Or they have been working in the system and laws for a long time where, for example, they cannot be fired, or they work in a great company where nobody gets fired, or they have a role that cannot be fired, or they work in this company, for example, as a sales manager, earning $3,000 a month and know they can easily make this money in any other company.
But if you have your own business, you earn $5,000 a month, you need to work a lot, you are involved in operations, and without you, the business won't earn $5,000. Plus, you see periodic risks when sometimes you can earn $8,000 and sometimes $1,000. You understand that if you earn $1,000 three months in a row, not only will your business go bankrupt, but so will you. At this point, you start making false decisions about your business every day because you have a dissonance between your personal goal and the business goal.
The First and Main Advice
The first thing I recommend doing is always trying to take the side of the business in these situations when planning discussions with a partner and making plans and conclusions based on the business, not on personal goals.
Many people, when planning a business, think about how much they will earn in two years. This is not a bad thing; it's necessary. If you're earning $5,000 in some business and want to earn $50,000 monthly in two years, but you know your business will never make that much because it's just a small café. At its best, it can bring in $10,000, even if it's fully booked all the time. That's perfectly fine.
Then you say, "I know the business can bring me $10,000, let it be, I'll think of something else." You go and create a parallel second, third, fourth, or fifth line of movement.
But the important thing: in any business, you clearly see the set goal, you know in any work, action, what exactly you want to achieve and why you're doing it.
Of course, a highly developed person in terms of value, personality, and spiritual state is one who can do all actions this way. When performing any action, they understand what will happen next. This doesn't mean the person is not free and lives only by some unclear plan.
It means the person's system is so strong that they can do various actions every day with an understanding of what's happening, being present here and now, without fuss, with a calm inner state, with a sense of inner freedom, lightness.
Range-Goal: On Physical Feelings
I follow the education market, infobusiness, EdTech and HR Tech, the tech market, and see how many people don't see a goal ahead. They see a short-term goal, and if they are in business and set a short-term goal, their life is completely out of sync.
I didn't know for sure that I would be living, loving life here in the USA in 2024. I first visited Silicon Valley in 2007 or 2006, came to the USA for the first time in 2004. Then I had a lot of trips around the States, but I never had a clear goal to move here and live with my family. I didn't plan the move, the documents, the school, the business, the work. I didn't do it not because I didn't know the technique of how to do it, not because I had other plans and goals. I didn't do it because I know: such big changes in life, like moving, happen not because we set some goal and follow some protocol, some rules for this goal every day or do some actions every day.
Moving is an incredibly fundamental, important, difficult, free, strong, big, light event in a person's life. Any move to another country incredibly affects your life, fate, and everything happening in your life. And not only yours but also everyone who moved with you: husband or wife, children or parents, your friends and acquaintances. It affects not from the point of view of work, money (that too), but primarily your inner state, how you feel. In one place you will feel calm, in another - tense, and every morning you will feel: something is wrong, something is happening inside me, I want to change it. This will be caused by the place where you are. You will translate this to your diet, communication, business, work, state, practices, trips, retreats, books, movies, music, but the place will also play a big role in this. Everything else, of course, too, because there are a lot of interconnected things. Now every day in my house I observe an incredible view. My brain couldn't even imagine this. It couldn't draw this picture, in such proportions, details, with an understanding of what kind of view and people are needed. What kind of flow of circumstances should there be for me to even imagine this and get to this place?
About Harmony with Oneself
Yesterday I was driving to San Francisco, a poor man was sitting in front of a very beautiful place and looking into the distance in a detached meditative state. There are a lot of sayings, proverbs, and jokes about people dreaming of spending their old age with an ocean view: what kind of view is it, who are you at that moment from a social point of view, a parent, a son or daughter, friends, close ones, acquaintances, partners, your inner state? Fixing and understanding different goals here and now give you an incredible inner freedom and peace, making many tasks ahead so easy, so as not to rush and know: I don't mind doing a YouTube channel for the next 30, 40, or 50 years until I get old and die. I don't know for sure what will happen ahead, but I do know that my current action is well-considered, it aligns with my inner core of freedom, which further sets, generates, and creates an incredible number of goals in my life.
I discussed a lot with one person about how many people want the person they listen to be sincere. Someone will say it allows them to feel the same. But the thing is, the sincerity of the person you listen to or with whom you are together is not the same as them becoming or being the same as you. When we want to feel in another person's state ourselves, for another person to be like me, or for me to be like that person, we want to change the other person. Someone else has to adapt to this.
For example, as a person who records videos, I should adapt to other people so that they feel similar to me. Or this person wants to be like another person and adapt. But a real person is unique, all people are totally different. The amount of dissimilarity in us is much greater than the amount of similarity. And everything similar, we already know: basically, a person has two ears, two eyes, a nose, two hands, each hand has five fingers. There may be some deviations, but usually, people are very similar in these things.
How can you truly understand the state of the person who is telling something, his state, which he experiences in his real life, communicating with children, parents, wife? When he is alone in this country or another, works as a director, owner or employee, when he goes to the store? Every time a person will carry their uniqueness. Therefore, if I start thinking that it's incredibly important for people to feel similar to me, give them this point, they usually say you have the same pains, fears. No, not the same. Do I have pains? Of course. Do I have fears? Yes. Are they the same? Unknown. This can be compared, but it will take a lot of time.
I have four children from one wife. They are all totally different not only externally: it would seem they are from two parents, probably they should be similar. But what does "similar" mean? You can find much more similar people in the city than among themselves in terms of their height, color, some external manifestations within the physical body. But how incredibly different they are inside and what different lives they live at a certain moment in time!