Self-development has become an addiction

– Why is it not possible to change life, even though I read, study, and develop?

– Today, a person is absolutely convinced that they need to constantly learn and be engaged in something. There is a belief that this is a strict necessity. Society constantly transmits this: there is an assumption that one must always be in the process of learning and studying. Why? Let’s figure it out.

Let’s take the time of the USSR. I was born in 1983 in the Soviet Union. Of course, I was small and did not fully feel it. People who were born in the 50s–70s had a different mindset regarding learning and studying. But there was also a narrative that it was necessary to obtain a certain education in order not to be, for example, a factory worker. Although a factory worker at that time could earn much more than an engineer in an office—conditionally, since the concept of an office at that time was relative. Why was there such a mindset? It showed that a person was intellectually developed.

I graduated from school in 2000 and applied to a state university—this was important in the country. The university had to be good. There was such an assumption: if a person did not get in, it meant they were intellectually underdeveloped. This is how others perceive you, that is, comparison, elevating one person above others.

People say: “I studied more, therefore I am smarter,” “I know more, I have more opportunities.” A person was brought into a mechanism, and even if we take different time periods, it is clear that the perception of the 60s–70s in the United States or the 60s–80s in Iran, Russia, and China was formed differently.

Now we are approaching an important point from the perspective of human development. The question is why a person, on the one hand, wants to develop endlessly, and on the other hand, feels undeveloped and inadequate inside. There is a layer that I have just described. A key question arises: does a person see their own changes behind this, do they want to change?

If we consider a person as a source, in most cases they do not come to Earth for the first time. The soul has already lived lives and comes with a certain path. In the first decades of life, this path is formed. There is a combination of predestination and freedom. Even if there is something predetermined, it is formed as a path. This is very important.

There is a description: a child develops—was small, becomes big. And then what, dies? Then the body ages, degrades. There are doctors who say that development occurs during the first year, and then degradation begins; or development happens up to 14 years, and then degradation follows.

What happens to the system дальше? Does it degrade anyway or not? Is a person really developing, or are certain processes occurring within the physical body, formation from the point of view of awareness of life? By the age of 20, usually everyone knows how to read, write, walk, move their hands, recognize colors. There is a basic formation.

But a modern person evaluates formation through the information they have consumed or through the number of books they have read. Although many examples show that this is a relative formation. What does it show? Is it just the number of books or development? The number of books can lead to development, or it can lead to degradation.

The same applies to the number of flowers a person has planted. Is this development or just actions? The number of holes dug? The amount of coffee drunk? Is this development? People may laugh about coffee—they will say that this is not development. But what is the difference from books? I am talking about the consumption of books, specifically quantity.

Does a person develop at all? People constantly want development, want changes. But if you look in reality, people say the following: “You were a normal person, and now you have changed, become strange.” Or: “You were normal, changed, started drinking, became strange.” I am giving extreme examples.

The very change often does not please another person. Why? Because they constantly relate what is happening to themselves. A person evaluates all changes and processes relative to themselves, and not relative to another person, their life, and their path.

• What path does this person have? What life should they live? What should they encounter? What states should they experience? What kind of family, professional activity, life path should they have?

The question is not to compare whether it is right that they became a businessman, a politician, or an ice cream seller. There is no difference in that. What matters is something else—as a study, but what is inside—there is no difference.

I have many plants growing in my garden. It is like if the plants began to argue which one is better, which blooms for six months and which for two days. A plant is a plant, a flower is a flower. Someone likes one more, someone less.

From the point of view of relating to another person, it is important not to compare their achievements—neither in professional activity nor in knowledge. A person became a candidate of sciences, a doctor of sciences, defended many dissertations, wrote a large number of articles, spoke at conferences—relative to what are we evaluating this? What exactly are we comparing and what do we want to determine with this?

Recently I had an interesting discussion with my mother. We were discussing another person’s child, and she said: “His daughter is professionally engaged in sports.” I asked: “What does ‘professionally engaged’ mean? How is it different from my daughter doing gymnastics? By the name?” I asked: “Do you know how many hours a day she trains, with which coach, in which school, what her goal is? How did you determine that it is professional?” If my child trains every day for three hours independently, and another goes to a club three times a week called professional, then who is engaged professionally?

We live in a world of comparisons. What exactly are we comparing? I have recorded thousands of hours of video in my life. Do I have the profession of a TV presenter? No. Did I graduate from a specialized university? No. I didn’t even take courses. But I have enormous experience in organizing processes, working offline and online, holding conferences, interacting with speakers. Is this professional activity or not? Or should I have read many books? Or engage only in this all my life to get a “checkmark”? What should have happened for it to be recognized as professional? Who is better—the one who has been doing this for 15 years or the one for one year?

In the modern world, in the field of artificial intelligence, we see how young people aged 16–20 become millionaires because they entered the era of research and science in AI. And at the same time, we see that people aged 60 have fallen out of this race, although earlier they were engaged in programming or engineering. I myself was also a programmer, although I am not one now. People of my age, many of whom are engaged in programming, consider themselves top class because they have experience and will deliver results.

Is this really so? Why did those who are 60 fall out of the process? Why did this happen? This is just a micro-change that a huge mass of people could not handle. There are still generations that find it difficult to work with computers and phones. At the same time, the generation of my children already lives in a different reality. Their perception of technology is initially different. Although three of my four children do not have a phone. Only my eldest daughter, who is 15, has one.

We recently discussed: Australia passed a law banning all social networks until the age of 16.

I expressed an interesting thought at one conference where I spoke about AI: “If politicians had initially built a грамотный approach, then back in 2004–2010, when social networks were just developing, it would have been possible to introduce clear rules—similar to alcohol. And that would be it. There would be no current disputes, conflicts, restrictions. It simply would not have arisen.”

Someone may say that rules would still be bypassed. But they are bypassed in the case of alcohol as well. The point is different—about a unified approach in society, about the direction of thinking and attention, about how people generally relate to this.

If there were no restrictions on driving—in the USA from 16, in Belarus, Russia, Ukraine from 18—children would start driving cars at 10. Perhaps in some countries this happens. We see this in other aspects as well—for example, in the use of child labor or access to weapons. It is always a matter of approach: rules are either set or not. The same applies to social networks.

If we return to the question of human development, an important point arises. I recorded material and addressed a 24-year-old person. How does a person feel at this age? They will say: “I have developed. I have changed compared to who I was before.” But what does “developed” mean? From what perspective? Social achievements? Material results? Or from the point of view of knowing oneself as a spiritual being? Has the person developed or has development already almost stopped?

If we rely only on social and material signs, then we can see: in modern society, a person often stops developing around 24–28 years old. This is an important point. Reading books, attending conferences, watching videos—this remains an abstraction. The last 10 years humanity has lived with colossal access to information. In developed countries—full access. Even in less developed countries, there is access to YouTube and other sources. And what has happened over these 10 years? What has changed in society? Have people begun to treat each other better? Where does intellectual development lead? It is assumed that people become more literate, polite, cultured. Do we see this?

Recently I saw a Soviet video where women were asked what they want to receive on March 8. I personally do not perceive this holiday and have lived for several years without attachment to it, trying to treat women with attention every day, not on one specific date. In that video, women said simple things: “I want flowers,” “I want perfume,” “I want to be loved.” The same answers were repeated—flowers, perfume, attention. If you look at modern social networks on that day, the picture is completely different. Different consciousness, different perception.

I have experience reading spiritual literature, but in general I have read very few books in my life. In business—one, two, three. It was a long time ago. Perhaps in 2009–2013, and I am not even sure that I finished them. At the same time, I have extensive practical experience—managing companies, creating systems, working in marketing, sales, product, development. A huge number of implemented solutions, methodologies, approaches. And this is not because I read it somewhere or translated and packaged it.

I have a project in real estate in the USA. I do not participate in it operationally, but I participated in creating a new motivation system. With one colleague, with whom we have worked for 16 years in different businesses, I discussed this issue. I said: “This motivation system is not perfect. I came up with it in three days on a trip with a partner. I have never done such systems before. It is absolutely unique, new.” It may seem that all other motivation systems are meaningless, because a system is always tailored to a specific situation. I can talk for 10 hours about motivation systems, analyze their types, details, nuances—depending on the number of people and other factors. Everything depends on the specific case.

So, in business I read only 2–3 books. Then in my life there was a period when I began to actively read spiritual literature, and I encountered the works of Rudolf Steiner. He has more than 5000 lectures, many of them translated into books—about 300–500 editions, mostly compiled lectures. I began to read them by the dozens and encountered an interesting observation. On the one hand, it is amusing, on the other—it is the truth of life. And for a person it should be sad.

People who say that they have been engaged in spiritual development and esotericism for 20 years often do not study deeply the works of specific authors. They form an opinion after reading one book or watching one video, and then begin to constantly refer to this author. For example, they read “The Art of War” by Sun Tzu—and talk about it everywhere. But what else do they know about the author? What else have they read? What did he do?

This is similar to a situation where people listen to songs in English without understanding the lyrics. Sometimes they use them in an inappropriate context—for example, putting a sad song on a joyful event because they liked the melody. They do not understand the meaning, the content, what it was written for.

What, then, is learning?

My sister graduated from the philosophy faculty and said: when she later returned to the same authors in the context of spiritual development, she realized that earlier she perceived them exclusively academically, there was no such impulse and request, it was meaningless. It was memorization without understanding the material. But this is how people receive education—become masters, postgraduate students, doctors of sciences. Do they really understand the subject or is it a formal status? Is it lived experience or just a “certificate”?

In the USA there is a talent visa. There are criteria by which a person is evaluated, and many of them were created long ago. For example, if you have 30 YouTube videos with tens of thousands of views—it is not taken into account. But if you were written about in a major media outlet (“Forbes”, “The New York Times” in the USA; “Vedomosti”, “Kommersant” in Russia), it is considered significant. If you were a member of a jury in a competition—it is important that the competition was covered in the media. Even if 30–50 thousand people attended it, but there was no publication, it is not considered significant. What is this? These are “checkmarks” that are bought by people. Then you can observe how people make additional integrations, for example, in Kazakhstan or Malaysia. I give this example because it shows an important thing—outdated perception.

This is similar to the rule about carrying cash: once a limit of 10 thousand dollars was set. But 25 years ago and now—these are different amounts of money. At the same time, the rules remained the same. Recently, an acquaintance of mine was flying to the USA with 10 thousand dollars. At the border, he was asked how much money he had. He answered: “10 thousand.” He was told: “You are violating.” He explained that he had exactly 10 thousand, not a cent more. Then he was asked: “Why do you need 10 thousand?” He replied: “I came for two weeks.” He was asked the same question again. He said: “I want to buy a bag. And even that will not be enough.”

The questions remained the same, but reality has changed. 25 years ago, with 100 dollars you could organize a celebration for 15 people. Now with that money you can buy coffee and croissants for four. Time, prices have changed, money has become different. Even those who have savings from that time feel it: a million dollars in the 90s and a million now are different things. Today an apartment may cost a million, but that does not make a person rich, because it is just the cost of housing. This is a changed sense of reality, of ongoing processes.

So what happens to a person? Do they develop or not? All these energies are important for perception. I bring them not because I am deviating from the topic, but to show the scale—that a person at 40 remains the same person. I remember a specialist once told me during a psychotherapy session: “Do you think your mother is now different from the moment when she gave birth to you? It is the same person.” This is important to realize, but it is difficult.

But this is not about development. There is no concept of “I became smarter” or “I became better,” but “did I act truthfully or not.” This is not an object for comparison, not an indicator. As soon as a person says: “I have understood more truth,” they immediately step off the path of their own development. Then all questions disappear. Is it necessary to reconcile, build relationships, separate, quit?

The essence is not that. The essence is to act truthfully. Events can be any, because there is no task to prove who is right, who is wrong. A person does not have a goal to build good or bad relationships. They have a goal—to treat other people well.

Then a person at 25 may say: “Am I correct in understanding that I am now quite mature?” Of course, at 25 you are formed in order to live life. And all questions about university, work—do they matter? You did what you were supposed to do. And if you did not—why? Because someone told you? And are you sure that now you will begin to hear yourself? Do what is needed? How did you realize this?

An interesting aspect. Many people, earning money, later say that they spent little time with their children or did bad actions. But they are not listened to for that, but to learn how to earn well.

– Why does a person more often focus on external, material development rather than on knowing the truth? Does this happen because society is structured this way and a person gets used to it? Or is there something deeper behind it? Why can’t one immediately direct attention inward and start with understanding the essence?

– A person cannot do this immediately. When they are just born, should they shout “Truth!”? Or should their first word be not “mom,” but “truth”? They develop at the beginning, they are influenced by people, society, social space, the energies of time. They have a certain type of soul, karmic cause-and-effect relationships, a huge flow in which they are flying, including with established delusions.

Imagine a person has a path. They must live many incarnations to come to solar energy and move to the next level of development—to come within the hierarchy even from the point of view of a developed spiritual consciousness, a being that no longer needs to incarnate. There is a point of creation and consciousness and a point of “here”—in fact, this is an abstraction, because they do not exist.

This is the same movement of life as before this point and after it. But even if we conditionally define them, since there is a space of time, we can talk about it. You are asking, being here, why a person is not immediately there. That is the point—they cannot be there immediately. To be there, they must live lives. They must live this path. Moreover, if you find yourself at that point, you will not be talking to me. If you find yourself there now, you will условно snap your fingers, realize a body of light, and disappear. You will not need life.

At that point, incarnations are not needed. There is no need to be born. Right now, you are interested in your personality, you want to continue living a good life. But from the point of view of a spiritual being, it looks different: “Great, this no longer needs to be done. There is no need to be born anymore. There is no need to follow this anymore.”

It is like moving to another climate. For example, I no longer need a winter jacket. I can wear it only in rare cases, if I go to the mountains or another country. But it is not a constant necessity. The same with winter tires, a snow shovel, a brush and scraper—they are simply not needed because there are no conditions in which they are used.

The same here: at that point, you no longer have a need for life.

Therefore, the question itself makes no sense, it is absurd. It does not diminish you and does not make you a foolish person—it simply does not relate to the essence of the movement of life. Then there is no concept of movement at all, everything is constant. But modern thinking says that a person must achieve endpoints—earn a million, buy an apartment, create a family, have children, get an education, build a career, create a resume, have a social profile, consume a certain amount of information, and so on. These are just things that are set from the outside as goals and achievements. Do they have any meaning at all or not? What will we measure by? A person opened 10 businesses, 20 or 30, or one—long or short, bought one dog, two or four, their dog knows 16 commands or 48. What exactly is being measured?

– It is simply more comfortable to live when there are resources.

– You are absolutely right. It is more comfortable to occupy a certain place and cell in society so that people can define who you are.

I live in Silicon Valley, in California. We attend meetings, and people approach my wife and ask what she does. She says: “I am with the children.” And people want drive, business, some actions. “I am with the children”—and it is as if there is no cell. People need to define. There are places where this is perceived calmly. And there are places where people look at you strangely: “What do you mean—with children? Don’t you want something else?” What is this? Is it an internal struggle or a natural state? Are you struggling or is this a natural action? This is important—is it a natural action or proving something to someone? Do you want to learn to play the piano to show others? Or is it a hobby? Or is it simply a natural action?

And moreover, the source of this impulse may differ greatly from the reasons of other people. Is this better or worse than, for example, running a marathon? Or opening a unicorn company? Better or worse? Or are these just different actions and coincidences of circumstances?

Then you need to look at the person themselves: where they are, in what state, what impulses they have, why exactly such impulses. Why does one child sit and draw a lot, while another tumbles? Why does one have an impulse to communicate with one person, while another—with hundreds? Why are there people who want to communicate but meet no one, and those who do not want to—and they are constantly surrounded? You need to look at the person. The fact that they are surrounded by people does not mean they know how to communicate. We know many famous people who do not know how to communicate. And there are deep people, with developed perception, who are in isolation. They may simply work and be unnoticed, but internally be very open.

In modern society, people are often evaluated by the external—how a person looks, dresses, what makeup they have. But what is inside? What drives a person—greed and doubts or freedom and love? Circumstances are different for everyone: someone was born a sheikh, a prince’s son; someone was born a sheikh and their family was killed; someone was born rich and remained so until the end of life. We see that even people with the best education may be involved in criminal activities. Here is your education and presence in incredible societies in terms of consciousness and transmission of information.

People continue to evaluate: “This one is from a village—stupid,” “this one is smart,” by speech, by form. But they do not look at the essence of a person as a spiritual being and truth. When you begin to look at a person from this perspective, the very idea of a race and development disappears. It simply disappears. Life remains. You then understand that all of this is social tinsel. Life is lived through ordinary actions: not through uniqueness, not through recognition, not through the amount of attention. Everything becomes very mixed.

I currently have more than one hundred thousand subscribers across all channels. Tens of thousands of people watch me—weekly audience for sure. And I do not perceive these numbers. For me, tens of thousands of people is just some small number. I do not perceive it. Hundreds of millions—that is a number. But tens of thousands—what is that even? Why does this happen? On the one hand, I have a calm perception: whether tens of thousands or one person. But even from the point of view of the social world, my perception of these numbers has shifted.

I remember, as a child, at my grandmother’s house there was a newspaper with my father’s photo hanging on the wall. He worked with different countries then, and he was published. This newspaper hung on a wall that a certain number of people saw, but the feeling from it was very serious. The question is how you perceive it. This is important. If you do not perceive it neutrally, as a layer of tinsel, then the emotional state changes, the vector of perception of life changes. A person begins to seek truth in social aspects and feels loss rather than movement in life. Even if you have embarked on the path of movement toward truth, it is important to simply continue. Without evaluative judgments about the past—whether it was good or bad.

There are simply interesting things. Some time ago, my son and I went to dinner. He asked what my first car was. I said it was a VAZ-2109 and showed it to him. Then—Volkswagen Vento, then Audi S8. It means nothing to him. Then Porsche Panamera, then Mercedes. I say: “I had a Rolls-Royce.” I showed him—a Rolls-Royce Phantom Art Deco. There were three of them in the world. He asked how much it costs. I said: “750 thousand dollars.” Before that we discussed prices: 60 thousand, 80 thousand, 130 thousand. He was telling me that the cheapest car costs 617 thousand, the lightest car weighs 70 kilograms, the heaviest—30 tons. Some things he told me, some sizes, something he heard somewhere.

I say: “If your friends ask what cars your dad had, you say that your dad had a Rolls-Royce. That is always very interesting.” It would have been very interesting to me if I said that my dad or grandfather had a Rolls-Royce at 30. I say that I bought it at 30. He, of course, does not realize it. But it is important how I relate to it. I relate to this Rolls-Royce at 30 in the same way as to the fact that I read two business books. I have a good feeling about the Rolls-Royce at 30. I am glad I had it at 30. I do not make conclusions like people who bought it at 60—that is, it is good to get it at different ages, states. It shows how interesting that period of life was. It is a very good car, I have never refused and will not refuse a Rolls-Royce. Circumstances may vary, but I am very open and calm.

This is an interesting circumstance, a question: how to relate to it, what to look at. Is this a final achievement or just some action? This action has exactly the same memory as meeting someone, or the same memory as going somewhere. The same as a funeral—it is just a memory, a life event.

A trip not from the point of view of time, meetings with people, age, but simply a trip: “There were cool trips somewhere.” I remember going by bus to the Czech Republic when I was 9 years old. Exactly the same memory, some flash of memory—as memories of a summer house or some business. I remember many businesses. These are just memories for me. There were partners, you open photos, look at them, you moved somewhere.

My mother gave me many photos, and there were pictures of me in Paris, around 2005. And I was in Paris in November 2025—20 years passed. You look—it is the same places. But it is just some memory. I could not remember who photographed me there. Just a single line: there is no division into past and present. Of course, I wondered what I ate then, which restaurant I could go to. Then, probably, I could not go to certain restaurants as I can now. But if you look in fact, the state is the same.

How to feel the same state? What difference does it make in which restaurant to eat? Many people eat the same sandwiches. I have a slightly different type of food, but in general people eat approximately the same. Then I could drink beer, now I can only drink water, tea or coffee. Then I could also drink tea, I did not drink coffee—I started drinking it when I became older.

This is a very interesting feeling, a state—that everything is the same.

I do not have the feeling that the VAZ-2109—my first car, the “nine” at 18—is something special. What memories do I have of it? Some alloy wheels, maybe I did not tint it, or maybe I did, I do not remember. I installed some radio, we drove with friends—there are some memories. But I do not have some super strong impression from it. I clearly understand: the VAZ-2109 is old stuff. And the Audi S8 was already a different feeling.

This is the reality of sensations, understanding of reality. This is not a question of a childhood memory of bread with butter, that it is tasty—to spread butter on a loaf. People often have childhood flashes: when looking at old photos, a huge number of certain states, flashes of energy arise. It is very important to try to live through these energies and observe them.

They will have to go into the spiritual world, more and more people will have an opening toward the spiritual world. Because otherwise they will not understand where reality is: where their real memories are and where the illusion formed by photographs is. When you look at photos, an illusion arises: you do not understand whether you really saw your grandfather or just remembered him from a photograph. Do you really remember him?

If you ask my children whether they really remember certain moments, they will say they do. But do you really remember it, or because everything is recorded on video back and forth, and you constantly rewatch these videos? You have watched them so many times that you say: “Of course, I remember.” If from the age of five you watch videos of the apartment where you lived at that age, and you do this for twenty years, then by twenty-five you will have a full feeling that you remember that apartment. But do you remember it from the video or is it your real consciousness?

I had a partner, Andrey Rogachev, who said: “I remember how I fell off a chair at one year old.” This was very interesting, because I do not remember myself: for me, everything before 18 seems turned off. There are maybe 2–3 flashes before 10, and even then I am not sure—are they real or is it an invented reality. And there are people who remember themselves at one, at two.

And then the question arises: what kind of memories are these? What are they? And are they needed at all? What are they based on? Because keeping in your head 40–80 years of life for 24 hours (well, even if you subtract sleep, let it be 16–18 hours), holding all this in memory for decades is not an easy task.

It is interesting to turn to this information as to cells, as to events in the world. There are such spaces as the Akashic records. There are different spaces that can be accessed for information. Just as there is a library, there is also a library of spiritual knowledge. No library in the world contains them fully. That is, when you can easily return any event and see what really happened there: what states there were, what you actually experienced, what was happening at home, at work, at that moment in time—this becomes truly interesting.

Try to give yourself a very clear statement: you have not changed over the past 10 years. This is a very important state in order to move forward.

Read my other materials and watch my videos.