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

AVAlexander Volchek

It gives you incredible strength. Most importantly, it gives you clarity of perception. Whether things will go well or badly for me, whether the time will come when I run out of money. They used to work at a particular job, then became billionaires in dollar terms. I decided to start a business purely out of a desire for financial gain. If every person on Earth remembered this, how much suffering people would be spared. There's an inner illusion that things will still work out.

DMDmitry Mugenov

A chapter of my life has just ended, quite abruptly and quite unexpectedly. Basically, the business came to an end. That may happen to many people in their lives. In theory, both I and the whole team now have new possibilities ahead of us. The fear, the trembling, whatever it was, is subsiding now or has already passed. Some people tried to find a job as quickly as possible, some decided to take a break, some decided to change what they do, and some are looking for something. How do you see it? First, how can we get through periods like this as effectively as possible, and how can we make the best use of them, as a team or individually? Of course, I'm interested in what this means for me personally, as someone who can afford to stop for a little while, slow down, and look around. How can I make the best use of this opportunity, this time, to build a better life going forward, to make it better?

AVAlexander Volchek

The question you're asking is very broad. It isn't something a few people encounter occasionally. Probably almost everyone encounters it at some point in life, when they need to look for work, whether they've been fired, quit, closed their own business, or worked somewhere and decided to go into business themselves. Whatever happened before, absolutely everyone encounters this. When you encounter it, it's very important to have a truly broad perception of what's happening. You say, for example, that someone had certain fears and they've now passed. Or they felt different things and have now reached a certain point. But in most situations like this, especially when people are fired or laid off, or when they haven't been moving toward it for years as something clear and expected—and even if they have been moving toward something clear and expected for years—a whole series of different inner qualities takes shape at that moment. On the one hand, an overwhelming sense of fear emerges, along with not knowing what will happen next. On the other, a certain euphoria emerges: now I'll find something really substantial.

On the one hand, you feel loss and a kind of emptiness. On the other, you feel that new paths, new spaces, and new changes are opening up. Essentially, all these thoughts going through your head, from the deeply negative to the strongly positive, are an illusion. They aren't a true perception of what's happening, or simply an understanding that things could go very badly or very well. They're a restless state and an attempt to explain that state to yourself somehow. It's very important to come into contact with actual reality, with what's happening. You live with the feeling that you know how to find a job. You live with the feeling that you know how to start your next business properly. Perhaps you've already built four businesses successfully, so now you'll start the next one. You've worked in various places and are sure someone will hire you. But all this involves an enormous number of different causes, effects, and factors. There is a possibility for each person that nothing more will work out in their professional development or professional activity, that nothing will work out in business, or that they'll never earn as much as they earned before.

Or the opposite: circumstances and various details can come together. You're forty-five now, for example, and I would say you've probably lived half your professional life. Incidentally, some people at forty-five will feel they've already lived their entire professional life. I'd say half. In fact, knowing how your professional life has unfolded, I would say you've most likely lived perhaps a third of it, and perhaps two-thirds are still ahead. So circumstances can always arise in which you do something professionally that has never happened in your life, in terms of achievements or business, or find fulfillment in a business doing things that weren't even on your horizon. And that's before we even talk about earning money. If you look carefully at how much people earn, people very often make enormous amounts of money and become billionaires at an age—first of all, the majority are over forty. In fact, the forty-to-fifty and fifty-to-sixty age ranges account for a large share, a very large share. That doesn't mean you had to spend the previous twenty years in that business. There are many cases around the world of people starting a business at fifty.

Before that, they worked at a particular job, then became billionaires in dollar terms. Did they plan that when they left their jobs? Did they know for certain it would happen? In most cases, a person may simply have taken certain actions, and things unfolded in some way through various causes and effects. At that moment, it's very important to be aware of all these points, rather than live in illusions and thoughts about whether you're stressed or not, whether things will go well or badly. I think what I want to say is that even the idea that someone can afford not to work contains a certain illusion, because being able to afford not to work is an illusory state. How many years can you afford not to work? One, two, three, ten, twenty? Personally, I see no difference between one month and twenty years. What difference does it make whether you can afford not to work for a year or a month, or for twenty years? If you have to work in twenty years, that means the trigger will still be there inside you. Especially if you're asking this question, there will be a trigger: the time will come when I run out of money, when this person runs out of money, and once they do, they'll have certain problems.

In other words, they're taking a break because of certain social circumstances they've created for themselves. Then their money might be stolen, or prices might go up fivefold, or something else might happen and they'll lose the money. Or the opposite: something happens, they invest part of the money well, and suddenly make a lot. It will last them ten years instead of one. They won't understand how it happens anymore. The most important thing in this whole situation is to be in a state of honesty. Then, from that state of honesty, begin to truly hear the world around you. Truly hearing the world around you means trying not to miss the offers and opportunities that come from outside, while not giving in to illusory offers and opportunities that come from outside. I've personally lived through this external illusion many times. I have a mentoring program called V100. It's a monthly subscription about life, business, and spirituality. I explore a great deal there and answer everyone's questions, all of them. Recently, I was discussing this there. I have a series of videos there—

...which I'm posting and will continue posting for quite some time: “Mistakes in My Business.” I gave an example of one mistake. When I had no business and no job, I decided to start a business purely out of a desire for financial gain. What mattered to me wasn't a strategic vision of my life, following the values within me, or following the truth of life around me. What really mattered was gain. In that state of wanting gain, when you meet people or potential partners, you begin closing your eyes to many things: what these people are like or what kind of business they do. Essentially, at least in my case, I knew I was in quite a difficult state, even though on one level I seemed euphoric, thinking all kinds of things would work out. I made certain compromises with myself, which were really compromises with actual truth. I agreed with many people when I shouldn't have. I accepted them when I shouldn't have. I did things I didn't want to do because they conflicted with my values.

Looking at that whole picture closely and honestly, how good it is that I ended all those relationships. And how unfortunate that I lacked the true perception to see that desire for short-term gain, instead of understanding the causes and effects, where short-term gain leads. Short-term gain, the desire for a quick change, and not fully understanding your own strategy lead to major losses over the long term. This brings us to a very important point: what should a person actually do? At this moment, I suggest looking at your life through the following criteria and premises, perhaps. First, what I said at the beginning of this video: as a professional, you still have decades ahead of you. Unless you're sixty or seventy; then the answer is a little different. Yes, it's a little different if your job ends at seventy. And perhaps we're discussing many of these things partly so we can feel good at sixty or seventy. Many people don't understand or realize how important the things we're living through now will be when we're sixty, seventy, or eighty.

At that age, you begin thinking about somewhat different things. I know a very strong spiritual person. He always said that it's important to spend decades now doing many things you'll need at a different age. The feelings you'll need at a different age, that inner state—this isn't about accumulating money. It has nothing to do with accumulating money. It's about how you'll feel inside, how you'll live through the particular moments that will happen in your life. So having a sense that there's a great deal of time ahead—for you, for example, another half, or I'd say two-thirds, of your life—gives you incredible strength. If every person on Earth remembered this, how much suffering people would be spared in business and at work. If every person understood that every job and every business will end, always, without exception. For some reason, we're constantly being sold the illusion of how wonderful it is to have an eternal business, a business beyond your lifetime, a goal beyond your lifetime, a business that works and develops for two hundred or three hundred years. But every business will end, every relationship will end, absolutely every job will end. At the very least, you'll die. At the very least, you'll die. It will always end.

You know you'll die, but don't want to admit it to yourself. This is very interesting, by the way. It sounds strange, but I recently voiced this thought again, and someone in the program came back and said, “Alexander, honestly, I absolutely refuse to accept the fact that I'll die.” That was a very honest statement. Most people are in that state, while thinking in a very narrow, immediate way, as if their life has ended because they've just been fired or something has happened. The fact is, being fired, quitting your job, or closing a business is simply the course of life. It's something you need to experience now, that's all. Even if you didn't need that experience, it's all right. There will be the next experience, the next job, the next business. In any case, it will happen. If you're a reasonably capable professional—even if you've made it as far as this video—there's a good chance, a good chance, that you'll have some kind of job or business. The problem is that you want something better, something better, or you don't want to end up in the same situation again. You've now had an experience that tells you every job will end, but fundamentally you don't believe it.

You start a business and say, “For life.” How many businesses and partnerships have I been in where, whenever we spoke, we thought it was for life. But it isn't for life. It can end at any moment, just as our relationship can end at any moment. When I was about to move to America, we didn't know whether we'd stay in touch. You're visiting for the second time in less than a year. This time you've come for a month, last time for twenty days. It turns out we've recently spent fifteen or twenty percent of a year together. Fifteen—that's so much! Fifteen percent of our time together is a hell of a lot. It's a lot. We haven't spent it yet, but—well, we've spent—there's a chance, yes. Yes. We've spent, or will spend, that much time together, but we didn't know how the circumstances would unfold. We didn't know what to expect from them. People are afraid of these details, these plans. Knowing that life is finite, while recognizing that at this moment of trouble or difficulty with work there's still a great deal of professional life ahead, actually gives you incredible inner strength. Most importantly, it gives you the ability to make genuinely sound decisions.

The ability to make genuinely sound decisions must also connect to the following understanding: your life, you as a spiritual being, you as a person. You can identify certain areas within it. I'll separate them, but in reality, you are you. I am I. That's why people say, “I am I.” We can divide things up and say your life has different areas: family, personal development, professional development. Your own professional development, in this life that will end, consists of an enormous number of different aspects. It certainly doesn't consist of that one job you had or that one business. A person's professional development doesn't consist of one particular workplace or one particular profession. If Sasha is filming here now, that doesn't mean his entire professional life consists of producing or filming. Of course it doesn't! Because our professional—then people get divided into these categories: you're a mathematician, you're a physicist, you're an artist, you're a singer, you're a systematic person, you're a creative person.

This division begins. That's why the division exists. Our professional life is very broad. It always includes both creativity and a systematic approach. If someone is systematic, say a programmer—someone says programmers are systematic. This morning you told me programmers are systematic people. But this person interacts with other people. They interact through different characteristics and qualities, and a living person emerges there, with an enormous amount of creativity, an enormous amount of creativity. When you identify this professional sphere of yours, you begin to understand what your goals are, what goals you have in your professional life at all. And here's the surprising thing: in a real sense, you cannot have a goal for your professional activity, because professional activity is part of you. A person doesn't have a goal as such. A person has values in life, certain guiding principles, certain laws they follow. Setting a goal always creates a limit in time and space. Always. Because what exists beyond the goal? What comes next? If I, in my pro—

...comes next. If I set a goal in my professional business, I've told myself my professional activity has limits. The only limit I can set is to say of my professional activity, “I will work until I die.” But that's hardly a goal. It may be a guiding value or a point of support; it might be a strategy, but it isn't called a goal. Understand that my professional activity and yours have no goal, but do have a foundation on which they rest. You need to establish that foundation. You need to understand what your professional activity rests on, which values. What strategy will you follow? What principles will you follow within it? That's what's important: the overall strategy and principles of your professional activity. There's a particular distinction here. A strategy can't just hang in the air on its own, and often rests on a goal. But in this case, I'm suggesting that you base your strategy and principles on a set of values that underlies your life, not just your professional activity.

This understanding gives you a really strong foundation, because when you discuss any job or business, it becomes a little clearer what will happen. If I apply for a job, consider a business, or receive an offer of a partnership or a job, I can then formulate fairly quickly what my goal in that particular job might be. That goal in that particular job will rest on the strategy and principles of my entire professional life. How well do you know this about yourself? How clearly and consciously do you truly understand your principles, your strategy in your professional life, and what your points of support actually are? Are there any goals within it? There may be. You understand that they aren't final endpoints. There may be goals set for your professional life as a whole, rather than for a particular workplace or a particular business. Then, when you become involved with a particular business, you compare it with that goal, those strategies, and those principles, without deceiving yourself about the other things. This gives you a very clear inner backbone. Again, it gives you a strong sense of freedom and firmness.

Most importantly, it gives you clarity of perception, together with understanding that a very large part of your professional life is still ahead. A very large part of it is still ahead, and you certainly don't feel it that way. There's an inner illusion that things will still work out. At the same time, there's a state of all kinds of very strange expectations. Feel this. Feel it more broadly. Feel it not for the sake of being in a good mood or a good state, not for the sake of wonderful things happening. As I said, a great deal of professional life lies ahead, but that doesn't mean everything will be amazing or better than before. Or even as good as before, or that you'll have a great business or lots of money. No, that isn't the point. Simply understand, very consciously, that a great deal of professional life remains. There's something many people do, and I've done it many times too: you sit down to plan and set business goals for five, ten, fifteen, or twenty years ahead. Very often—most of the time—this isn't done with the awareness that, a, life is finite, and, b, there's still a great deal of professional life ahead, with all kinds of changes to come.

In general, people don't want to face this. They don't want to face it, because if I face the fact—right now, I have a number of businesses. A whole number of businesses. And I have a whole range of other professional activities. I'm clearly aware that all of it will end. As I say this now, I'm thinking about some of those businesses and about the fact that they'll end. A slightly strange state begins to arise in me. I'm in a state where I won't feel anxiety right now, but I do begin to feel some very strange things, because I don't want to talk about this. I don't want to fully acknowledge it. But fundamentally, I don't expect these businesses to last forever, so I feel quite all right in that respect. I'm not building strong illusions here. Still, if I start discussing this with my partners in the businesses where I have partners, it will definitely create a negative state in the partnership. It definitely will, because it brings up an energy the other person doesn't want to discuss. They'll say, “Sasha, wait. Our partnership in this business has only just begun, and we're already discussing the fact that it will end.”

It will end. Of course it will end. From there, you can do a whole range of things that probably help you find the right job or the right business. People know all about them: ask different people for advice, for example. Some need to post a resume; some need to start the business they've dreamed about all their lives but never started. In reality, though, the things that are meant to happen in that person's life will happen. Some people know they need to post a resume, but never will, and they'll find a job through someone else's recommendation. Some people know they need to post a resume, post it, and no job comes. Some people know they need to post a resume, post it, and their very first interview brings their first job. Some people will have an enormous number of conversations and businesses, while others will keep meeting people with no result. People can usually see this very clearly in business clubs. Someone joins a business club with certain expectations, thinking those 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.

At first, I bought business-class tickets because I thought I'd meet someone on the flight and we'd start a business. That's an interesting thing. The point is—and everyone flying there is like that. 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. And I'll say again: you spent fifteen or twenty percent—fifteen percent of my year—we spent it together, living in the same house. Yet there were people I was in closer contact with, whom I also met. Let's be honest: at Business Molodost, I met thousands of entrepreneurs and an enormous number of people.

I discussed so many things. An enormous number of people studied with me, and an enormous number worked for me. But you're here, not someone else. Did we choose that? Did we know? The one thing we didn't do—and this is our inability to see and perceive things in advance—we didn't know we'd spend so much time together, or how much suffering and harm we'd bring into each other's lives. Those watching this video shouldn't think we seriously deceived each other or had enormous conflicts. We've always been very close. I have four children, Dima has three, and we've shared many wonderful experiences in life. When I say we brought harm and suffering, that's because we really did. There was a lot of ego, some deception, substitutions, illusions, expectations, doubts, arguments, tests, more doubts, more arguments, more doubts, more tests. If we'd known circumstances would unfold this way, why, on so many of those—

...unfold this way, why argue about so many things, discuss them, scrutinize them, or leave things undone? Still, I'll point out that you're one of the very few people in my life with whom I've almost always been in synergy, rather than conflict, in the social sphere.

DMDmitry Mugenov

“Synergy” is a good word.

AVAlexander Volchek

In synergy, rather than conflict. But that synergy, that absence of conflict, didn't come about because we knew we'd be around each other for so many years. We don't know what lies ahead. We don't know what lies ahead. If we knew what lay ahead, where we'd all be over the next twenty or thirty years, we'd think differently too. We'd pay a little less attention to our own importance, our own expectations, our own desire for some personal benefit, and defending our own opinions. We'd understand causes and effects a little more broadly, and understand what's happening a little better. Everything else comes down to this: you're wonderful with my children, and I'm wonderful with yours. I always have been, and you always have been. That comes from who you are, not from knowing we'll be together for a long time. It comes from who you are, not from wanting to visit each other in different countries and stay in different houses. That isn't why. You weren't kind to the children so you could stay at my place in the States now with this view.

No. It's simply because that's the kind of person you are. This knowledge, this strength, would of course help each of us not only in life but also in our professional activity and professional development. It would help enormously. We wouldn't have made many of our mistakes. I'm not talking about mistakes because I want to change my life. I'm speaking quite reasonably and calmly. We do need to acknowledge many things. You and I started a children's education business together, didn't we? That happened. Together with a very well-known person on the Forbes list.

DMDmitry Mugenov

No, first we started the thing that's still working today.

AVAlexander Volchek

Ah, yes. Yes, I agree. I can't say my involvement was substantial. I agree, yes. But that separate venture of ours was very good. We started it and did a great deal to spread one of the educational systems for children. You helped, really. Yes, I made a small contribution. Then we launched a separate business. And I think that business, at that time, was built without the understanding we're discussing here now.

DMDmitry Mugenov

You've touched on a really important point, and I'd like to ask about it: the unseen in business. There are some very useful ideas here: repeated actions bring in money very effectively. A well-tuned machine begins generating money. Well-tuned. These recurring systems that generate money are built well by fairly materialistic, technocratic people. But what actually underlies the start of a business—this is a hypothesis you can confirm, or I'll bring it around to your contribution to the Zhokhov system. Very often, a business rests on things that are completely unnoticed, unseen. Take the iPhone. One of its starting points was Jobs's sense of beauty. He wanted to keep great fonts and have great design, for instance. With the Zhokhov system, those five hundred classes—there are four hundred now—some private schools, and so on, which have continued operating for more than ten years: their standard, their momentum, their drive were clearly set in part by Business Molodost. That seminar you held with Zhokhov set the process in motion. Before it, Fedorenko was doing things; afterward, I was doing things. But you set the starting point. And essentially, you built that factory for running events.

AVAlexander Volchek

No, if in 2014—

DMDmitry Mugenov

What am I getting at? For me personally, in business and in relationships, this unseen element and recognizing the contribution of people who usually aren't counted or mentioned anywhere make up ninety percent. I live by it. I feel this unseen element. That's why you and I assess your contribution, Petya's, and so on differently. I certainly don't rate your contribution to launching the Zhokhov system lower than my own.

AVAlexander Volchek

Well, look—

DMDmitry Mugenov

Because you understand what I mean, right?

AVAlexander Volchek

Look, this is a really great topic, a very big topic. It's about understanding, truly understanding cause and effect. Truly expansive thinking means thinking with an absolutely broad perception, when we can truly understand causes and effects, rather than make—

DMDmitry Mugenov

There's another good word here: gratitude.

AVAlexander Volchek

Gratitude, absolutely. One hundred percent. If we get into the unseen itself, what you're talking about is understanding cause and effect, even without gratitude: understanding cause and effect. I fully realize that if I hadn't taken the initiative to hold a big event, if I hadn't insisted on making this event happen—we held a webinar then. There were thousands or tens of thousands of people. I don't know how many there were. There were a great many people.

DMDmitry Mugenov

And I was standing there criticizing: you're doing something wrong here.

AVAlexander Volchek

Yes, we did it, and then—such energy came into it, a surge. An enormous number of people appeared who wanted to support the system, who wanted to open their own classes. Teachers appeared, all kinds of parents appeared. So much came out of that particular point of growth. The other thing is that, without it, we very probably wouldn't be talking about this system. None of this would exist, right? Just as, perhaps, if I hadn't come—

DMDmitry Mugenov

And it would have been lost by now, by the way.

AVAlexander Volchek

Yes. It would have been lost by now. A system through which tens of thousands of people have studied, right? Or hundreds of thousands.

DMDmitry Mugenov

And are still studying.

AVAlexander Volchek

And are still studying. In the same way, if I hadn't come to Petya's home with him after practice, with Petya Osipov, after boxing, then very probably we might never have met, or wouldn't have seen each other somewhere, and so on. Although, of course, I would suggest that, given how much time we've spent together in life, with our families, children, everyone—the connections with our parents, mothers, everyone are already so close. In tents, on hikes, in the mountains, everywhere we've been together—there's simply so much. People and friends have mixed together; everyone is already connected in every possible way. These circumstances probably would have arisen. But this ability to see cause-and-effect relationships broadly, to understand why I found a job—since today's subject is work and business—why I found one job or another, or one business or another, to truly understand causes and effects, to try to understand them more broadly rather than abstractly, to hear a little more broadly: why has life brought me to these circumstances? This is incredibly important.

You've actually touched on a subject that's very difficult to describe and difficult for people to face. People don't want to be in something that's hard to measure. You used the word “unseen.” People don't want to be in that. They don't want to face the clear sense that they weren't the ones who brought themselves to this job. There's a very interesting text I'll read now, a very interesting text on this subject. I just posted it in V100, in the V100 mentoring group. There will be a link under this video, by the way, if you're interested. It's inexpensive. Right now, I think it's a hundred and twenty dollars a month. I'll just read this very interesting text. Since we're having this discussion, since we're having this discussion, I'll read it. Wait, don't rush. Wait, don't rush. It matters. It matters. I think this text matters a great deal, and it gives—since we've already ventured into the unseen, and you are on my channel, where I talk about life, business, and spirituality in this broad way.

An excerpt from a book: “And yet, for all your knowledge of the greatness of the human journey on Earth, none of you can find enough freedom to be joyful and happy. Why is there no contentment within any of you? Why is there no peace? Because each of you attributes the qualities of your gift to yourself, to your own labor in this particular incarnation. The idea that each of you has earned your position, that you owe everything you have to yourself alone, is the starting point and foundation of each of your lives. Yet the concept of ‘having earned it’ does not dwell in the thoughts of a liberated person, just as fear, self-love, curiosity, jealousy, envy, and so on do not dwell there. This idea of reward for certain—

...virtues is a concept belonging to a single earthly life, corresponding to the human law of justice. In the universe, everything moves according to laws and purpose; everything is subject to the law of cause and effect. There is no superstition in the universe. Everything follows the law of eternal motion precisely. No celestial body can shine brighter or before its time, even if it and billions of lives believe it deserves more. But catastrophes can occur around it, the disintegration of the worlds closest to it. If it is in harmony with those worlds that perished without it, it will draw the light of dying celestial bodies to itself and shine brighter.” I wish all of you, and you too, the chance to shine brighter and draw the radiance of dying celestial bodies to yourselves. Until next time on my channel. Subscribe, like, and support the channel.