5 Minutes a Day: Do These Practices to Befriend Your Stress

AVAlexander Volchek

There are many questions about stress: what do I do about it as a person when I've started generating it myself? When I'm sitting there and the stress isn't even coming from external events, but constantly from inside me. It's like a kind of paranoia, something I create myself: negative thoughts, negative problems. I build illusions, hypotheses, unclear inner states. This anxiety is inside me, endlessly projected and generated. Today we'll examine it. Most importantly, we'll find two great, very simple solutions. I'll give you two methods in this video. Watch it to the end. My name is Alexander Volchek. You're on my channel about life, business, and spirituality. Today, we're talking about stress. Of course, your stress depends on where you are: where you live, the places you visit, what you do in the morning, afternoon, and evening, the people you talk to, your manager or boss, your employees or subordinates, your business, your wife, husband, children, parents, the people around you, the sky above you, the country you live in, the news you read or films you watch, what you consume, how much you sleep, and what you eat.

Absolutely everything affects your state. It's very important to learn to notice and identify moments during the day that cause stress, and understand where you can change something and where you can't. But you can't change everything immediately. If your wife or husband stresses you out—or, better yet, your mother or father—you can't change them. On the contrary, you need to learn to communicate with these people, find a harmonious common language, listen to them, hear them, and develop right speech, right opinion, the right state of observation, help, love, effort, and compassion for this person. Even if they really are at fault and endlessly cause stress in you, even if they're the external cause. Enter a state where this stress stops arising in you, even when that person behaves badly. You're walking down the street, and a poor person sitting there swears at you. One person will turn around and react aggressively; another will feel compassion. There are two basic practices for dealing with stress that are great to do every day. Five minutes a day is enough for this kind of reflection. If you can do twenty minutes, do twenty minutes a day, every day.

It's great if you also do it at the same time. You can do it at different times; it's just good to do it at the same time. Good to do it every day. For how long? For as long as you want to develop, expand, and grow. For the entire time you want to develop. Simply tell yourself, “If I don't practice, I'm not developing.” A simple principle. Or perhaps you're not doing some other practices: you're not developing. Don't look for a magic pill, some practice to do for two weeks and then go off the rails. You might deal with stress for two weeks, then make things even worse for yourself. Two practices. First: spend five minutes every day looking at how you treated other people throughout the day, your attitude toward them. Every person you met. How did you treat them? What feelings, expectations, stress, or negativity did you have toward them? Or love, joy, or happiness toward each person? Try to recall every situation during the day and pick out those where you treated people badly, negatively, for your own gain, wanting to get something.

Put that under firm observation and, in general, condemn it. Because you shouldn't do it. What shouldn't you do? Treat other people badly. Reflection on your attitude toward others is one practice. The second practice, directed at stress, is to look at the actions you take toward other people during the day. Again, sit down and spend five minutes recalling your actions toward others. Did they increase those people's stress? Specifically in terms of stress. With the first practice, we're looking at the action itself: did I do something bad or good? Sometimes I may have done something bad to a person without causing them stress. It was simply something bad I did to that particular person. For example, stealing something from them is a bad action. There are many such bad actions. Thinking badly of someone belongs to the first practice, right? Or judging them. That belongs to the first practice. The second concerns specifically putting someone into a state of stress, prompting them to enter that state, or wanting them to enter it.

Recall those situations, put them in front of you, understand that you shouldn't behave that way, notice them, and clearly tell yourself—condemn yourself, directly—that you shouldn't act that way. Condemning yourself doesn't mean whipping yourself. It doesn't mean putting yourself in a state of punishment. It simply means admitting to yourself that this is bad. That's enough. These two simple practices, five minutes each every day, can replace hours of other practices, retreats, meditation, anything. Retreats, trips, and even meditation for many people are isolated, individual events, while this is a daily practice. If someone can do it for a long time, that's incredibly good. Does the practice end? Probably not. It will be a very long, extended practice. But one point matters: most people can't take on a very long assignment, one for their whole life, even if it's the unique, best, ideal assignment they're searching for. What is five minutes a day? Every day spent doing this practice is already a gain for your development and your inner state.

It's a positive sign you shine into the world, showing that you're moving along the right path. Even if you do it for one week, try it for one week. If committing to a long-term practice is difficult for you, doing that for a week is still incredibly good. Just do it for one week, especially if you react negatively to doing good things over a longer period. Imagine telling yourself, “I'm not ready to take on this practice because I'd have to do it for ten years.” Am I right in understanding that you're not ready to watch yourself, your attitude toward others, and the bad things you do to them? If you're not ready to keep observing throughout your life how you treat others badly, you're effectively admitting that treating others badly is natural and normal. Then perhaps you're in the wrong place, and perhaps this isn't the right time. Maybe you should watch this video a little later: in two years, five years, or forty years. Maybe not in this lifetime. You have to arrive at this. I won't deceive you about it. Here on the channel, I talk about business, life, and spirituality.

Why those areas? Together, they're a range of areas and directions that allow a person to expand, grow, and develop personally. Development takes a long time. I've just launched a program called V100. It's a monthly development program with me. It has no end and, in a sense, no beginning. You can join at any time, right now. Right now, below this video, there will definitely be a description and a link to join V100. Joining gives you the opportunity to stay within a system of development for an affordable monthly fee. Since you may watch this video at different times, the monthly fee may have changed a little. It may be a hundred dollars, a hundred and twenty, or a hundred and fifty. It's roughly in that range, but it will very likely rise every month, so it has probably increased. The starting price was a hundred dollars a month. That's the price you pay to be in my circle, among the people around me, in a state of observation and moving forward through the various actions a person can take. Of course, a person needs help. They need a teacher, a mentor, an observer, a group of people.

This is where you can find that. It's a program for incredibly powerful forward development, where I, Alexander Volchek, am personally interested in helping you constantly see your next step. There are many next steps, not just one. If you see the very best next step you can take for your personal development right now, you take it. There's a next step you need to take...

There's a next step you need to take in your work or business. A next step in your family. A next step in your health. A next step in your thinking, in what you do. A next step in your spiritual life. There are many next steps. Join V100. People often say they can't manage something at work. For example, making fifty sales calls. Yet that exact same person opened Instagram or Facebook forty times during the day and scrolled through a thousand posts. Or a social media marketer at work: you tell them they need to keep creating storytelling content and posting Reels. They say it's incredibly difficult, unrealistic, impossible, very hard. Yet in a relaxed setting, they post thousands of photos of themselves. The fundamental difference is that in one state, the person approaches an action easily and simply. They don't experience stress or see it as difficult at all. In another state, they see it as difficult, and immersing themselves in that difficulty, they experience stress. For example, if you asked me right now to cook lunch for fifteen people, I wouldn't find it difficult.

I know how to do it. I approach it very easily. I'll do it without any stress, and may even really enjoy it and say, “Damn, that was great! We all got together. I cooked. Everyone ate.” For someone else, simply doing something for another person will cause stress. Or some variety in life will bring them into a state of stress. They try to avoid it. Some avoid it by buying it; others avoid it by simply going without. For one person, going outside and planting flowers causes stress. For another, it creates a calm, wonderful state—actually, a feeling of joy. They really enjoy it, take pleasure in it. So one person hires others to plant the flowers. They don't even experience it, don't go through it themselves. Another simply doesn't do it, so they have no flowers or, for example, no time in nature at all, because it involves stress for them. The solution is, of course, observing your life, constantly tracking these different events and understanding the reasons—the real reasons—why we don't do one thing or another.

So many people say, “I don't plant flowers in the garden because I don't like it, it doesn't interest me. I don't speak in public because I don't like it, it doesn't interest me. I don't work at a computer because it doesn't interest me. I don't negotiate because it doesn't interest me. I don't learn anything about children because it doesn't interest me; I don't need them. I don't interact with children because it doesn't interest me. I'm interested in doing other things.” A person puts up a barrier against something that could potentially cause stress and avoids it. Every time we don't want to do something, the first thing to examine is whether it's really that we don't need it, or whether it causes us stress. I don't want to take on a new project because it causes stress, not because I don't want it or because it carries risks. I don't want to call this person, not because it would be empty talk or because they're, I don't know, aggressive, but because it causes me stress.

I don't want to move to another city because it causes me stress. I don't want to help this person because it causes me stress, simply stress. I don't want to sit down to meditate because it causes me stress. I don't want to call my mother, not because she's bad, but because it causes stress. I don't want to read this book because it will make me reflect and stress me out because I don't understand how to do it. I don't want to write a list of reasons I want to leave my job because it will cause stress, and I'll have to enter that state and experience it. I don't want to face it. I don't want to try a new sport because it will cause stress. I don't want to work on my body because it will cause stress: I'll have to acknowledge this fact and pay attention to it. I don't want to build a personal relationship because there will most likely be stress in it. Personal relationships first and foremost involve people interacting, and interaction brings various difficulties, disagreements, and limitations.

That causes stress. Here's an incredible thing you can do for yourself: whenever you get stuck on absolutely any task, assignment, action, or idea that comes to mind—someone else's or your own—ask yourself, “Do I not want to do this because I really don't need it, or because it causes stress?” If I say I really don't need it, look again: is there stress there? Be completely honest. Check it. Go and check. Say, “All right, I don't need it, but I'll check once more. I'll go and see whether it causes stress or not.” If I've checked several times and see that it doesn't cause stress, I simply don't like it or don't want to do it, then don't get into it. Doing something you don't like or don't need, and realizing you don't need it, shouldn't cause stress. Doing unnecessary things, let's call them that, shouldn't put you under stress. If an unnecessary action causes you stress, that's already a signal to pay very close attention.

The point is, when you say, “Other people have nothing to do with my stress. I'm the one with a problem with my stress because I generate it myself. I worry. Bad thoughts arise in me. I invent things, build illusions, imagine the future, and then it doesn't happen. I set myself a goal, fail to achieve it, and get upset. Or I set a goal, achieve it, realize it's the wrong goal, and get upset. I humiliate myself, belittle myself, make myself happy, punish myself, and so on. I put myself under stress. What does your recommendation, Alexander, about paying attention to other people's stress have to do with this?” That's precisely where the fundamental solution lies. It seems I generated all the stress myself and am to blame for it. If we kept examining this together, you'd say other people also generate stress and create problems for you. In reality, a person's development depends greatly on how they treat others. If you stop generating stress for other people, you'll stop generating stress inside yourself.

Because the cause of generating stress inside yourself is connected to your generating stress for other people. This applies to absolutely everyone. It doesn't cover a hundred percent of difficulties and stress, but it's definitely a fundamental point for your development. An incredibly important point for powerful development. Direct your attention toward other people, not to get rid of your own stress, but to stop creating problems for them. If you stop creating problems for others in order to get rid of your stress, there will always be a substitution: “I'm doing something for another person so things will be good for me.” That won't remove your inner anxiety. It won't. You simply need to start doing this toward other people and observe it. Just start doing it. Even if you check a box saying this was an assignment to work with your own stress. On one hand, it's an assignment to work with stress, your own stress. On the other, it's important for me as a person to learn to do this because I've heard it. “I heard this from Alexander Volchek. Inside, I believed him and felt I wanted to do it.”

“I simply started doing it.” Because if you knew for certain that your generation of your own anxiety and stress was connected to this, you'd automatically resolve it. You wouldn't have that stress. It wouldn't be generated.

UPUnidentified participant

Okay, I understand.

AVAlexander Volchek

Because that would be real awareness. But when you tell yourself, “No, my stress has nothing to do with other people,” you're denying...

A fact that I, for example, can see. I see this fact. I'm telling you: approach it from the other side. Here's your human capacity to accept a simple assignment and carry it out, even if it causes you difficulty and stress. For many people, doing something good for others causes stress. That's a paradox. Tell yourself, “Am I right in understanding that I want to do something good for Masha, Polina, Katya, Sasha, Petya, Vasya, and as soon as I want to do something good, I feel bad inside and become stressed? What's wrong with me as a person?” That's what you need to ask and tell yourself first. Then work through it and start repeating these actions. Do it, and do it, and do it, and do good, do good, do good, do good. A good action should bring about an inner state of love. That inner state doesn't arise—not because Katya is bad, or because she stresses me out after I've done something good, but because you don't know what love is.