Living from a State of “I Must”

AVAlexander Volchek

Were human beings really created to go to work twenty-four seven until they die? But if someone lives in that mode—and you're not that kind of person, right?—a mode of nothing but chasing achievement, nothing but endless bustle, that's a false sense of freedom. It isn't freedom. The world promotes so many endless goals and pursuits of achievement, but there's no life in it. Why spend six hours of every day of your life trying to extend your life?

DMDmitry Mugenov

Here's the question: is it more effective, or better, or better for you personally? Why is it better to run a business from some other state, rather than from “I have to,” chasing something, proving something to someone, and so on? What other state can you act from, run a business from, live from? Can you make the switch yourself, or do you need to wait for a crisis to switch into that state? Rather than chasing something or trying to prove something, doing business from a state of peace and clarity, from love, when you could seemingly choose not to do it at all.

AVAlexander Volchek

I posted a video on the channel with this same person asking me questions about how to handle quitting, being fired, or a change in your professional work. Looking at that question brings up an interesting point: many people feel they have to work. Or they approach things from the position that it's very important to make a lot of money or build a business. From that position of “I have to.” Just today, I saw a well-known blogger writing about how important it is to focus on childhood trauma and the desire to do something you wanted to do as a child. But if you focus on childhood trauma and something you wanted as a child, and start making it happen, very often you're not moving toward harmony. You're making that same childhood trauma worse. If a person—and in this case, you—says they live in this state... This is actually a very complex energy, complex in the way you've presented it, as though it's somehow hidden, not real, as though it isn't real. You've just presented it as though it isn't real, and you're saying you do many things in life from a state of “I have to.” Then there's a fundamental point to consider.

There was a situation in my life in 2018, around the transition from 2018 to 2019, when I suddenly had a lot of time. So much time that I found myself with nothing. I had no job, no business, absolutely nothing. You know that state; you remember that time. I remember very clearly that I didn't feel this “I have to” at all. I knew clearly that I didn't have to. But everything around me, everyone around me, said I had to. I wasn't telling myself I had to. Everything around me was saying it. That was the first time I saw this illusion of enslaving people through the idea that everyone is obliged—absolutely obliged—to work all day, their whole life, twenty-four seven. We're walking in Los Altos Hills now. This is Silicon Valley, the South Bay, San Francisco. Forty-nine percent of all Big Tech engineers, the top engineers in the U.S., live here in the South Bay, San Francisco. You would think it's a very wealthy region. Obviously.

What are top engineers? People who earn enormous amounts of money. Enormous amounts. I recently spoke with my close friend Sasha Mashrabov, with whom I co-host the To the Moon podcast about IT. He said something interesting: “Listen, I was just in China. Of course, salaries there aren't like those in America. Engineers' salaries are more like Russian ones. What do you think?” I said, “It wouldn't be easy for an engineer in China to earn half a million dollars a year. A million dollars a year.” He said, “No, half a million is possible. A million probably isn't.” We're discussing how well-off people live. You would think these people should live peacefully, both in terms of feeling they have to do things and in their inner state. But what do I see? There are people close to us here, eighty-six years old, who were our neighbors when we lived in another house. They live in a house worth millions of dollars, about five million, and they've lived there for sixty, fifty—fifty-three years. Other neighbors live across the street. She has told me several times that those people bought a house and property for four million seven hundred thousand dollars, and are building a new house they'll put several million dollars into.

She keeps emphasizing, “They're having such a difficult time. She was fired just when they bought the house.” Then I visited the elderly couple with Polina and the children, and she said, “Can you imagine? He's been fired too.” She said it like a tragedy. I thought, this is incredible. Imagine how incredible it is: on the one hand, people of that age are discussing being fired. On the other, people in the technology market, the IT world, who worked for major companies, are telling an eighty-six-year-old couple that they've been fired and will have difficulty building their house—while buying a lot for four million seven hundred thousand dollars, putting several million into renovation, and living in a house worth at least two or three million dollars. I know these people already have one house. What is this distress? Where did it form? What is it? Again, you would think it belonged to a particular place. We imagine this sense of “I have to,” this sense of hardship, comes from certain countries or places where life is difficult.

Incidentally, people often associate childhood trauma with things like, “I didn't have enough to eat. It was hard for me to buy anything.” Their examples are strongly tied to social status. But childhood trauma forms around completely different things too. I won't go into that subject. The point is what we focus our desire and movement on professionally. What is it based on? On our strength, a sense of freedom, the understanding that I have a life. It's a long life, and I still have at least twenty or thirty years of professional work ahead of me. That's two, three, four times more than my professional life so far, if you also look at that experience in concentrated form. I know there are still limitless possibilities for what can happen. I live in trust toward this life. I don't live expecting everything to be wonderful or everything to be terrible. I'm ready to work, ready to pursue professional activity. And if necessary, I won't work or pursue professional activity, if that's the decision I make. Obviously, I can decide to work more or less depending on different circumstances.

Not everyone can actually make different choices. It also depends on your own awareness. It doesn't always depend on your financial situation. We know an enormous number of situations where people live in a village or small town, earn practically nothing each month, have their own garden and vegetable patch, and feed themselves from it. They live without a sense or desire that they have to do something, that something outside them is mandatory or necessary. Often this feeling of “I have to” is connected to something else. You need to find the true cause-and-effect relationship. It isn't the foundation. The foundation is fear that things won't work out. The foundation is uncertainty about—

Uncertainty about whether there will be problems. The foundation is the prospect that things won't be as they were before, or will be as they were before. The person puts the label “I'm acting from ‘I have to’” on that. When I was in complete acceptance of what was happening in 2018, I became frightened myself. But it wasn't fear as such, more a line of thought: what's happening? Why do I feel so calm when I'm not working? Were human beings really created to go to work twenty-four seven until they die? I'm not dismissing the importance of work. I believe a person should work. But what is work? Is it spending a great deal of time doing physical labor or going to a job? Or is work about truly perceiving, broadly and consciously, what this world is? Truly perceiving it broadly. Not wasting time on empty debates, doubts, jealousy of other people, oppositions, or endlessly digging around inside yourself, but working to help other people. I think that's a very important part of what it means to truly need to work. But if someone lives in a certain mode—and you're not that kind of person, right?

A mode of nothing but chasing achievement, nothing but endless bustle. That's a false sense of freedom. It isn't freedom. There's so much of it in the world now. The world promotes so many endless goals, pursuits of achievement, plans detached from life, plans for the next fifty years—social plans, health plans, divided into absolutely every category. But there's no life in it. There's a well-known American who is working on extending his life. He keeps saying he's made his joints like those of a twenty-three-year-old, his teeth like those of a twenty-two-year-old, or a sixteen-year-old teenager, and so on. He talks about how he'll extend his life. I keep asking myself: why spend six hours of every day of your life trying to extend your life? In total, that's an enormous amount of time. And he'll still die.

DMDmitry Mugenov

Perhaps even sooner, because he'll most likely make a mistake.

AVAlexander Volchek

Yes, that's more likely, because he's constantly taking risks. Constantly taking risks as well. Then there's the question of his inner state: how much does he understand the state he's in when he takes different substances, what disappears inside him, what state remains in his relationship with his children?

DMDmitry Mugenov

It's like you said in the prev—

AVAlexander Volchek

His family.

DMDmitry Mugenov

...in the previous video, in those videos: there's so much we don't know about how things will unfold. It isn't even up to us.

AVAlexander Volchek

And there are cases where you'll keep meeting people and it won't produce any result. People can often see this clearly in business clubs. A person joins a business club with certain expectations, thinking the contacts will bring them all kinds of things. They get to know everyone. There are so many people and circumstances, everyone discusses all sorts of possibilities, so much happens. A year passes, you look, and there's nothing.

DMDmitry Mugenov

At first, I bought business-class tickets because I thought I'd meet someone on the flight and we'd start a business.

AVAlexander Volchek

That's an interesting thing. The point is—

DMDmitry Mugenov

And everyone flying there is like that.

AVAlexander Volchek

The point is, it can happen: you fly business class and a business comes out of it. Or you might simply be standing in line somewhere, start talking to someone, and become best friends for life. You and I became close, became close friends, through an entirely chance meeting back at Business Molodost, when you were taking A Million for a Hundred and I arrived with Petya after boxing practice. Petya and I had been at boxing practice. We came over—I don't remember whether I was wearing sweatpants or what. I walked in, and somehow we just started talking. Then circumstances came together so that we began interacting.

DMDmitry Mugenov

We can't trace cause and effect, even if we want to. We can't. I'm interested in your view on some ideas I like. For example, one of a person's deepest misconceptions, deepest illusions, is thinking they're smarter than the forces that created them and can somehow hack those forces.

AVAlexander Volchek

The biggest problem here is that by hacking those forces, this blogger is hacking the lives of an enormous number of other people who watch him. And that isn't helpful. It isn't helpful. But people like it. People like it, including people with enormous amounts of money. These people live in endless bustle, the endless bustle of chasing achievement—and that pursuit often brings enormous trouble to other people. I'm not against big goals. I'm not against doing a great deal of work. I'm in favor of truly seeing whether it actually helps people or destroys other people while merely elevating your own ego. Someone who promotes being at work twenty-four seven and always having breakfast at work—is he accountable to other people for his words? Or is he simply helpless, living in an incomprehensible, endless state of stress?