I was fired, what should I do? I lost my business, what should I do?

#spirituality #selfdevelopment #personaltransformation

Prospects After Failure. About Personal Efficiency

– My business just ended, and it happened quite suddenly and unexpectedly. Many people probably go through something like this in life. Theoretically, both my team and I now have new opportunities. Fear, tremors, or whatever we were feeling have somewhat passed. Some people quickly tried to find a job, others decided to take a break, some are thinking about switching careers, and some are still searching for something. How do you make the most of such periods, and how can the team or individuals benefit from it? As someone who can afford to stop for a bit, slow down, and look around, I’m interested in how I can use this chance productively to build a better future for myself.

On Perceiving Change

– This is a very broad question. Almost everyone faces it at some point in their life, whether they need to find a new job because they got fired, left voluntarily, lost a business, or decided to start one. Everyone goes through this. When a person faces this, it’s really important to stay present and have a broad perception of what's happening. You mentioned that the fear is gone; the person felt differently before, and now they’re somewhere in between.

In most of these situations—especially when someone gets fired, or if they didn’t see it coming for years (and even if they did!)—a person goes through a whole range of internal emotions. On one hand, there’s a total feeling of fear and uncertainty about what comes next. On the other hand, there’s a kind of euphoria, “Now I’ll find something huge!” So the person feels both loss and emptiness but also a sense that new paths, spaces, and changes are now open.

Basically, all the thoughts a person has, from very negative to very positive, are illusions. It’s an unreal perception of what's happening, just a thought about how things could be “really bad” or “really good.” It’s an uneasy state, and we try to explain it to ourselves somehow. What’s crucial is to stay grounded in reality.

A person may feel like they know how to find a job, how to open the next business. Maybe they’ve done it four times before and succeeded, so they think, “I’ll do it again.” Maybe they’ve worked at different places and are confident they’ll get hired. But all of that has many different causes, effects, and factors. There’s always a chance that things won’t work out professionally anymore, whether it’s business or earning the same money as before.

On the flip side, sometimes someone, say at 45 years old, feels like they've already lived half their professional life, while someone else at the same age might feel they’ve only lived a third, with two-thirds still ahead.

How Long Can You Afford Not to Work? About Your Earning Potential

So, circumstances might arise where someone professionally achieves things they’ve never done before in their life, in terms of success or business, or maybe even money.

Looking at earnings, people often become billionaires after turning 40. In reality, the age of 40 to 50, or 50 to 60, opens up huge opportunities. That doesn’t mean you had to be in business for the last 20 years. There are many cases where people start businesses at 50, after being in a specific job, and then become billionaires. Did they plan for that when they quit? Were they sure it would happen? Most people were just taking action, and things happened because of various reasons. At such moments, it’s essential to recognize all these points and avoid illusions like, “Am I stressed or not? Will things turn out well or badly?”

However, I want to point out that it’s an illusion that some people can afford not to work. It’s a certain illusion: afford not to work for a year, two, three, ten, twenty years? Personally, I see no difference between one month and twenty years. What’s the difference if you allow yourself not to work for a month, a year, or 20 years? If you have to work after 20 years, you’ll still have that trigger inside: there will come a moment when your money runs out, and you’ll have certain problems. So, you’re taking a break because of certain social circumstances you’ve created. Or maybe someone will steal your money, prices will rise fivefold, or something else will happen, and you’ll lose it all. Or, on the contrary, you’ll invest part of that money and make more than you expected, turning a year’s worth of savings into enough for ten years. You won’t even understand how it happened.

The Most Important Thing in This Situation

The most important thing in this story is to stay honest and truly listen to the world around you. This means trying not to miss out on the offers and opportunities coming your way and avoiding illusions.

I’ve personally gone through many illusions from the outside. I have a program called V100 about life, business, and spirituality. There, I answer everyone’s questions. I have a series of videos that I post—and will continue to post for a long time—called “Mistakes in My Business.” I gave an example of one mistake when, at a time when I had no business or work, I decided to start a new business solely based on profit. So, I wasn’t concerned with the strategic vision for my life, or following my internal values, or the truth about life. What really mattered to me was making money.

At that moment, when you meet new people or potential partners, you start ignoring many things: who these people are, what kind of business they’re in. Understanding that I was in a difficult position, although I was feeling euphoric, thinking I would succeed, I made certain compromises with myself, and really, with the truth. I agreed with people, accepted them, even though I shouldn’t have. I did things I didn’t want to do, based on my values.

If you analyze the whole picture, it’s good that I ended all those relationships. But it’s bad that I lacked real perception to see the short-term desire for profit and not understand the long-term consequences. Because short-term profit, the desire for quick change, and the lack of understanding of your long-term strategy lead to bigger losses.

The Importance of Understanding the Future

!!! And here we come to a crucial point: what should a person do? At this moment, I suggest that a person look at their life based on certain criteria and assumptions.

First: as a professional, you have many years ahead of you (unless you’re 60 or 70, which is a different scenario). Right now, we’re discussing many things to help ensure that at 60 or 70, you feel good. Many people don’t realize that what we’re living through now will be very important at 60, 70, and 80 years old—because then you’ll start thinking about other things. I have a deeply spiritual mentor. He always said it’s important to do things now that you’ll need in future decades—like inner peace, feelings. This has nothing to do with accumulating money.

It’s about how you’ll feel inside, how you’ll experience certain moments in life. That sense that you have a lot of time ahead of you gives incredible strength. If everyone on Earth remembered that, there would be much less suffering in business and work. If everyone understood that any job or business will end—it’s guaranteed.

For some reason, there’s this illusion being promoted everywhere that it’s great to have an eternal business, one that lasts for 200–300 years, to have a goal that goes beyond life. But business, relationships, and work will end—at the very least, you’ll die. People know they’ll die but don’t want to admit it to themselves. This might sound strange, but recently I repeated this thought on the program, and someone came back and said, “Alexander, honestly, I categorically refuse to accept the fact that I’ll die.” It was a very honest statement, and most people are in that state. They think very narrowly and locally, as if their life ended because they got fired. The fact is, your or anyone’s firing, the closing of a business—this is just life moving forward, and it’s something you need to experience now. And if you didn’t need it, no big deal—there will be another experience, another job, and another business. But it will happen one way or another.

The problem is, you want something “better” or not to end up in the same situation as before. After all, you’ve learned from experience: any job will end, but people fundamentally don’t believe it. They create a business and say it’s for life. How many times have I been in businesses, in partnerships, where every conversation started with the assumption that it would last forever? But no!

This can end at any moment, just like our relationship. When I left for America, we didn’t know if we’d stay in touch. Now, you’re visiting for the second time in less than a year: this time for a month, last time for 20 days. So, in a year, we’ve spent 15 or 20% of our time together, that’s a lot! But we didn’t know how things would turn out, we didn’t understand what the forecast would be.

And people are afraid of these details, these plans. Knowing that life doesn’t end with one’s professional life, even during problems or struggles at work, and that there’s still a lot of time ahead, gives incredible inner strength and the ability to make the right decisions.

Professional Development and a Whole Life

And this opportunity should be found in the following connection – understanding that as a spiritual being, as a person, some spheres of your life can be highlighted. I will separate them, but in reality, you are you, I am me. You have family in life, personal development, and professional development. So, your professional development consists of a huge number of various aspects, but it’s definitely not about one job that was or one business. It doesn’t consist of one specific profession.

If Sasha is now filming this place, it doesn’t mean that his entire professional life consists of producing or filming. If so, then people are divided into mathematicians, physicists, artists, singers. One person is systematic, the other is creative. That’s where the division exists. Our professional life is very broad and always consists of systematization and creativity. Some say that programmers are systematic, but this same person interacts with others through various characteristics and qualities. That’s where a living person comes in, a huge amount of creativity.

About Values, Principles, and Strategy

And when a person highlights their professional environment, they get an understanding of what their goals are. Here’s the surprising thing – in truth, a person can’t have a goal in their professional activity because it's a part of who they are. A person doesn’t have a goal per se, but they have values, certain guides, laws they follow.

Forming a goal always creates temporary limitations in space. But what exists beyond the goal? What’s next? If I set a goal in my business, I’ve told myself that my professional activity has limits. The only limit I can set for myself is to say that I will work until I die. But that’s hardly a goal. It could be some kind of value guide, a point of support, a strategy, but not a goal.

In my and your professional activity, there is no goal, but there is a certain foundation on which this type of activity relies, and you need to form it. You need to understand what your professional activity relies on, what values, strategy, and principles you will follow. That’s important!

The thing is, strategy can’t be based on nothing, and it often relies on a goal. But in this case, I suggest basing the strategy and principles on a set of values that stem not just from your professional activity but also from your life. This understanding gives a great foundation because, later on, when discussing any job or business, it becomes a bit clearer what’s going to happen.

If I respond to a job, think about some business, someone offers me a partnership or a job, I quickly formulate what my goal in that specific job could be. This goal will rely on the strategy and principles of my entire professional activity. How well do you know this? How well do you really and consciously understand what principles, strategy you have in your professional activity, what support points exist? Are there internal goals? They might be. You understand that they aren’t final, that some goals are set from the perspective of professional activity and not from the perspective of a specific job or business.

Then, when connecting with a specific business, you compare it with the goal, strategies, and principles, not deceiving yourself in other aspects. This gives a very clear backbone, a very strong freedom and firmness, and most importantly – it gives clarity of perception tied to the understanding that your professional activity is still ahead of you. It’s still very large, and you definitely don’t feel that way. There’s an internal illusion that everything will still work out, while there is a state of very different expectations. You need to feel this not for the sake of a good mood, state, or cool things that will happen, because as I said, your professional activity ahead is big, but that doesn’t mean it will be better than it was before; or it will be at least the same; or there will be a cool business; or there will be lots of money. No, not for that. Just consciously understand that your professional activity is still very large.

Goals for 10, 15, 20 years: what people forget when setting goals

There’s a story that many people deal with (I’ve done it many times too): you sit and plan, set goals in business for 5, 10, 15, 20 years. Mostly this isn’t done from a state of: a) life is finite, b) professional activity is still very large, and there will be different changes. People, in general, don’t want to face this.

Right now, I have a series of businesses, there’s still a whole series of various professional activities. I acknowledge that all of this will end. When I say this and think about some businesses that will end, I start to experience a bit of a strange state. I’m not in a state where I feel anxious, but I start to feel very strange moments. Because I don’t want to talk about it, I don’t want to acknowledge it. But I’m basically not in the expectation that these businesses will be eternal, so I feel pretty good about this part. I’m not building strong illusions here, but if I start discussing this with my partners, it will definitely create a negative partner state. It’ll be raised energy that the person doesn’t want to talk about. They’ll say: “Sasha, hold on, we just started a partnership in this business, and we’re already discussing its end.” It will definitely end.

And then you can do a whole range of things that probably help you find the right job or business. Everyone knows this: consult with different people, some need to post a resume, others need to start their own business they’ve dreamed of their whole life. But in fact, things will happen that should happen in this person’s life.

There are people who know they need to post a resume but won’t do it and will find a job through a recommendation from someone else; there are people who know they need to post a resume, will do it, and there won’t be a job; there are people who know they need to post a resume, will do it, and the first interview will become a job; there are people with a wide circle of acquaintances and businesses, but where they’ll meet different people and it won’t bring any results. You usually see this in business clubs. A person who comes to a business club has some expectations. They think contacts will bring a lot of things, so they meet everyone: lots of people, circumstances, potentially discussing everything, tons of things happening... A year passes, you look – there’s nothing.

– I used to buy business-class tickets at the start because I thought: I’ll fly there, meet someone, and start a business with them.

– That’s an interesting thing: it can happen. But sometimes you’ll just be standing in line somewhere, start talking to a person, and you’ll become best friends for life. That’s how you and I became close from an absolutely random meeting back at “Business Youth” when you were studying at “Million for One Hundred”. I came with Petya after a boxing training, and we somehow just started talking, and then circumstances aligned that we began interacting. And again, I’ll say: we spent 15% of the year together, living in the same house. And there were people I was in closer contact with, meeting with. At “Business Youth” I met with thousands of entrepreneurs and with a huge number of people, discussed a lot, many studied with me, worked. But here you are, not someone else. Did we choose this? Did we know this? The only thing we didn’t do (and this is our inability to foresee) is that we didn’t know we’d spend so much time together and how much we would bring into each other’s lives – sufferings and evil.

It’s not like we cheated each other hard or had huge conflicts. We were always in very close relationships. I have four kids, Dima has three, and we’ve lived through a lot of cool things. I say we brought a lot of evil and suffering because it really was. Ego, some deceptions, substitutions, illusions, expectations, doubts, arguments, tests, more doubts, more arguments, more doubts, and tests. If we had known that circumstances would turn out like this, why conflict on many topics? Although, I’ll still note that you’re one of the few people in my life with whom I was practically always in synergy, not conflict, if we talk about social space.

– “Synergy” is a good word.

– But still, synergy and conflict didn’t arise because we knew we’d be together for so many years, because we don’t know what’s ahead. If we knew the future, where we would all be over 20 or 30 years, we would reason differently. We’d focus a little less on our own significance, our expectations, desire for some benefit, on defending our opinion, and would understand the causes and effects a little more broadly, would understand the things happening more. And the rest is based on your attitude towards my kids and mine towards yours, we’ve always behaved well with them. It comes from a person, not because we know: we’ll be together for a long time or want to visit each other in different countries and live in different houses. Not because of that. You behaved well with the kids not to stay with this view now at my place in the States, but because you’re just that kind of person.

These knowledge, strength, of course, would have helped each of us not just in life but also in professional activity, development. We wouldn't have made many mistakes. I'm talking about mistakes now not as something I would want to change in life but speaking quite adequately and calmly. Many things still need to be acknowledged. We started and helped a lot (rather, you helped) with the spread of one of the children's education systems. And then we launched a separate business, which at that moment, I think, was based without the feelings that we’ve discussed here now.

The Invisible in Business

– You’ve just caught a very cool moment, and I’d like to ask about it. It’s about the invisible in business. Very well illustrated by the idea: “Money comes in very well from repeatable actions.” That is, a well-tuned machine starts generating money. Such repeatable systems that generate money are often built by fairly materialistic, technocratic people. That’s my hypothesis, which you can confirm, and I’ll now lead into your contribution to the Zhukhov system. Very often, business is based on some completely unnoticeable, invisible things. Let’s say, the iPhone – one of the starting things. This was Jobs’ sense of the beautiful, he wanted to defend cool fonts and design, so to speak. And the Zhukhov system (those 500 classes, 400 still exist, private schools, etc., which have been functioning for over 10 years), their standard, including dynamics, the drive, was clearly set by “Business Youth.” The seminar you and Zhukhov held started this process. I mean, before that, Fedorenko did something, after that I did something, but the starting point was set by you guys. And you essentially built this factory of events. Personally, for me, in business and communication, it’s this invisible and the recognition of the contribution of people who are usually not considered or mentioned anywhere that is 90%. That’s what I live by, that’s what I feel. It’s this “invisible.” That’s why we evaluate the contribution to the start of the Zhukhov system differently: yours, Petya’s, etc. I don’t evaluate your contribution, for example, as less than my own.

– In this case, it's a very good and big topic. And it's a topic of truly understanding causes and effects. True large-scale thinking is thinking that has an absolutely broad perception, when we can truly understand causes and effects. If we delve into the very fact of that “invisible” you’re talking about – it’s an understanding of causes and effects.

But I really fully realize: if I hadn’t been the initiator inside of organizing a big event, if I hadn’t insisted on holding this event, we would have done a webinar, and there would have been thousands or tens of thousands of people. And then such energy flowed in, a huge number of people appeared who wanted to support the system, open their own classes, there were teachers, various parents, based exactly on this point of growth. Another thing is: without it, most likely, we wouldn’t be talking about this system, it would be lost now – the one by which tens or hundreds of thousands of people studied and are still studying.

It’s the same thing: if I hadn’t gone there after training with Petya, most likely, we wouldn’t have known each other at all or would have never crossed paths, etc. Although, of course, I assume: since we spent so much time in life together with families, with children, with parents, with moms, in tents, in mountains (we’ve been everywhere together!), there’s so much of everything, we are just all intertwined in every possible way – this circumstance most likely would have been. But this ability to broadly see cause-and-effect relationships, to understand why I found this job or business, to truly understand causes and effects, not abstractly try to figure them out but to really figure them out, hear a bit broader why life brought me to these circumstances. This is incredibly important. You touched on a topic that is hard to describe, hard for people to face. People don’t want to be in what’s hard to measure, what you called invisible. People don’t want to be there, don’t want to face the feeling that it wasn’t them who brought themselves to this job.

An Important Text from V100

There’s a very interesting text on this topic, I’ll read it out now:

“And yet, for all the knowledge of the greatness of the human path on earth, none of you can find such liberation as to be joyful and happy.

Why is there no contentment in each of you?

Why is there no peace?

Because each of you attributes the quality of your gift to yourself, to your own labor in this very incarnation. The thought that each of you deserves your position, that everything you have, you owe to yourself is the starting and main point of life for each of you. Meanwhile, in the thoughts of a liberated person, the concept of ‘deserved’ does not exist, just as concepts like ‘fear,’ ‘self-love,’ ‘curiosity,’ ‘jealousy,’ ‘envy,’ and so on do not live there. This idea of reward for some virtues. This concept is one of earthly life alone, corresponding to the human law of justice. In the Universe, everything moves in accordance with the law and purposefulness, everything is subject to the law of causes and effects. In the Universe, there is no superstition: everything follows precisely the law of eternal movement. Not a single celestial body can shine brighter or earlier than its time, even though it and billions of lives may think it deserves more. But in its surroundings, catastrophes, the collapse of worlds closest to it, may occur, and if it aligns harmoniously with those worlds that perished without it, it will attract the light of the dying stars to itself and shine brighter.”

I wish all of you to shine brighter and attract the light of the dying stars to yourselves!