You Are Changing, but Your Loved Ones Are Not: How to Preserve Your Relationships

AVAlexander Volchek

Some people ask themselves, deep down, how not to lose their personal relationships. Why do so many arguments arise? Because we need to prove something to that person now, at this particular moment. Right now, we want to shove our own opinion into their head. Real scaling isn't growing twofold, threefold, fourfold, fivefold. A person doesn't have that many close people around them in life. And some people ask themselves, deep down, how not to lose their personal relationships, how not to lose their relationships with the people around them when they themselves are changing. And here's an interesting point: when you start doing something, people often ask, for example, “Does your wife do that too? Do your friends do it?” I remember when I began pursuing spiritual development: various practices, meditations, trips, meetings. When I arrived on these trips, some people would ask, “So is your wife involved in these activities, or isn't she?” And you say, “No, my wife doesn't do them.” They look at you very strangely. Why do they look at you strangely? Because there's this sense, something that's communicated in a great many places, that a husband and wife should move forward and develop in the same way.

That friends should develop and move forward together, that partners should develop and move forward together. But we live a life in which every person has an absolutely unique path. Because that path is unique, even if we develop and move together in one particular direction, there may be completely different roads in another direction. And looking at it, probably, since I was asked this question about my wife and spiritual development a little over ten years ago, I can say that over ten years my relationship with my wife has improved, improved enormously, improved many times over. I've definitely come to love this person in a completely different way. Although you might think: it isn't that initial state of passion, joy, all those things. But in reality, the love and passion now are much greater. They exist in a completely different experience, on a different plane of experience, on an entirely different level. Even though my wife doesn't devote her life to, or join me in, many of these states of spiritual development: specifically, meditations, practices, trips, reading books, meeting with various groups and clubs, or even watching these videos.

In other words, she doesn't do these things. Would I like her to? Probably I would, as Sasha Volchek, basically just a person living a social life. But from the perspective of my inner state, my spiritual being, myself as a whole, I understand that there's no need for it at all, because everyone has their own path and their own movement. And when we look at this and ask ourselves how not to lose personal relationships, or when your mother says, for example, “Listen, you used to be friends with him. Why aren't you friends now?” Or when we see that we've started a new business, and because we've started that business, we're spending less time talking with people who were very close to us before. Or we see that a new business has appeared, a new circle of people has appeared, and we've stopped spending time with the old circle. This doesn't necessarily happen in business. New interests appear, new activities appear, your perception changes, your circle changes. In one group, people drank alcohol. A new group appears that you start spending time with, and there's no alcohol. You realize you don't need alcohol, that it's poison. And people in the other group don't understand you. They ask you an enormous number of questions: how can this be, what is all this?

And you feel out of place. You find yourself in a kind of fractured space. And it's a very difficult space to be in. On the one hand, you tell yourself, and people around you tell you, that you've abandoned the people close to you, your friends, your relationships, that everything will disappear and change. You start experiencing, to be honest, considerable fear about what's happening, and you don't understand whether things should be this way or not. Because an enormous number of people start judging you from the outside. On the other hand, you enter a state of strong ego, saying, “Listen, I'm the one who's developing. Let them live wherever they want. I'm the one who's moving forward. Let them stay wherever they want. I'm the one who's scaling up. Let them stay wherever they want. I'm the one who's started earning more money, so let them stay wherever they want.” Let's use the word “ego” for that today: a somewhat different territory. On the one hand, fear, self-doubt, and not understanding what's going to happen. On the other, this exalted state of ego. And essentially, these two spaces will arise in a person's life in any case, in terms of change and these losses of relationships with other people.

Basically, they will, basically, they will arise in a person in any case. It's worth looking at each of these states separately and understanding what solution there is to all these things. The first thing to tell yourself, if we look at this first area concerning your own fear and the changes taking place, is this: it's important to tell yourself that the fear arising in you doesn't actually arise because you're going to lose personal relationships, but because you're unsure about what you're doing yourself. Because you're unsure about what you're doing yourself, you want other people's support. You've joined a new club, or taken up some new creative activity, or started reading new books. You want another person's support; you want to do it with them. It's just like starting a business with friends. People often start businesses together with friends, or when they're young, not so their results will be better, not so, as they say, one plus one will equal a hundred, but so it will be easier to fail. It's surprising, but that's the fundamental reason. People often start together because it's easier to fail together.

When you fail alone, you're alone. When you fail with someone, it's always very easy to explain things to each other. It's a little harder to explain to yourself that the others were wrong, that the world wasn't right, that it was certain circumstances, while you did everything correctly. You have each other's support. When the other person says, “I like what you're doing.” That sort of praise, or doubt. So, accordingly, when there's that sort of praise... Accordingly, when you have this sense that you may lose your personal relationships because of your own development, you first need to look inside yourself and understand that this state arises not because you're afraid of hurting the other person, but because you have inner self-doubt. As a consequence, if you change this cause-and-effect relationship, you automatically harm the other person. Automatically harm them, because in that state you start communicating something to the other person. For example, trying to convince them they need to read these books, or that they need to go into business too, that working for a company isn't fashionable. Or, on the contrary, convincing them that they should work for a company, that being in business isn't fashionable and they should stop messing around with all that nonsense.

In other words, you start either trying to convince the other person, on the one hand, or disconnecting from them, on the other. You arrange things so that you'll never be near that person again, so you won't hear any complaints, illusions, expectations, details, or anything at all from them. Because other people can behave in completely different ways. Someone may be supportive. An enormous number of people will be negative, because many people don't want you to change: your changes, of course, trigger their own state of not having those changes. It's an entire chain, an enormous, endless one. And if you're in this illusion, this illusion of these two states, the important thing is that you set an endless chain in motion, both for yourself and for the people around you. It's a cancerous tumor that you've planted inside your own changes from the outset. By acting this way, you actually disrupt your own changes, your scaling, and introduce an error into your own life. Imagine you worked somewhere, earned a salary, and decided to start your own business. You tried doing it. You start launching your business, and at the same time you're in conflict with the people close to you. You're trying to prove to some people that they should start a business too, and you're disconnecting from others.

This whole storm of negative things becomes a root of your own business. And that's called a business built on an error from the very beginning. A business built on an error from the very beginning is trauma, it's tragedy. Because it will be very hard for you to find the cause-and-effect relationship there afterward. Very hard. Almost impossible to find. On the other hand, there's the state of your changing. You begin to change, and certain events start happening. For example, you find a new circle of people. The best thing you can do with regard to the relationships that existed... And this thing is actually—

It's actually fundamental. It's understanding that, on the one hand, everything in our lives develops. Absolutely everything. I keep repeating that development doesn't necessarily move in a positive direction. What a person considers positive. You can develop in a negative direction too, if we use those words. So, on the one hand, everything in life develops because everything moves. But on the other, everything in life dies and ends. And the relationships that arise in your life with different people will end at some point in any case, at least in this life. When we are within an understanding of spiritual worlds, of the spiritual, of ourselves as spiritual beings, and an understanding that you have many lives and experiences of living, that you aren't twenty or thirty or forty or fifty years old, that your spiritual being is much older, then, of course, these relationships could have existed before or could yet be born. But the point is that, in any case, every relationship will end. Every relationship will end, every relationship will die. The very act of acknowledging this, of understanding it, stops placing two people in a state of dependence on each other.

If I know my relationship with a person will end, I don't keep holding them close to me all the time. I don't live in a state of anticipating complaints, hurt, or problems, expecting something to happen. This gives me the opportunity to look at our relationship truly, sincerely, as a whole, with an appreciation of its value; to look at what is so essential in this relationship that it should continue to exist or should end. Precisely the understanding that your relationship will die in any case. The very act of acknowledging this, specifically acknowledging it, rather than simply making commonplace arguments at the level of theory. “Well, of course, Alexander, what are you even talking about? Obviously, every relationship will end. Obviously, every person will die.” But the question is one of acknowledgment: do you really understand, really feel with your whole being, that death could come right now? Do you really feel with your whole being that every relationship will end, that everything is born and everything dies, all the flowers and trees, absolutely everything, everything is born and everything dies? Relationships too, including the closest relationships, and not only relationships with your parents, not only with a husband or wife, not only with your children. Absolutely all of them, without exception. Just like any partnership.

And here's the question: do you feel inside that a relationship can come to an end neutrally, simply, truly, as though moving on? Or must a relationship necessarily end negatively, or necessarily end positively? But the point is that it simply has to pass. It doesn't matter whether that's negative or positive. The very act of measuring a relationship in terms of a negative or positive state is absurd. Imagine you've lived alongside someone and been friends with them for several years, say ten years, and your relationship is wonderful. You haven't even had a single conflict. And imagine your relationship ends with an argument, and then life somehow takes you to different countries, and you no longer talk to each other. Does that mean your relationship was bad or good? Does it mean your relationship ended badly or well? And what does “ended” mean? Is it the last second? The last ten times you met? The last single time you met? The last two years, three years, ten years? What is it? What does “ended” mean? What period is that, anyway? Can it be measured in time? And if we say that ninety-nine point nine, nine, nine percent of that relationship was spent in love and feeling wonderful, what difference does it make that this one conflict happened at the very end?

After all, you and that person lived in an incredibly wonderful state together for ten years. But we put the emphasis on this particular moment. Why do so many arguments arise? Because we need to prove something to that person now, at this particular moment. Right now, we want to shove our own opinion into their head. We want to do it now. We don't approach our relationships with a broad perception of them, with trust in the love within them, in their solidity, in their importance. We approach them somehow or other. Here, I'm filming on the grounds of my home, and I have quite a large property. There are many different areas. There are areas where I plant flowers or other plants myself. And recently I was traveling, and when I came back, rabbits, hares—or hares; there are all sorts of animals here: snakes, deer, turkeys, you name it. And the hares had eaten a huge amount, part of the garden. On the one hand, you can stir up this state: “Damn, why did this happen? Why did I plant a garden? I spent so much time on it.” On the other hand, you can tell yourself, “It's very easy for me to do. So they ate it, they ate it.”

“What difference does it make? I'll plant new ones.” And from a third perspective, you can simply treat it as an event. Not try to find a problem in it by thinking that I spent something on it, put in work, and something of mine was destroyed. And at the same time, not try to recreate the beautiful picture again. Just respond to it calmly. It's simply the flow of life. It's simply the flow of life. What does “they didn't eat it” mean? What difference does it make, anyway? All the flowers will wither this year regardless, and something new will be born. They'll wither, and something new will be born from them. I don't even know which of these flowers, which of some of the flowers, are annuals and which aren't. Anything could happen, all sorts of different events. This takes no effort. It's simply a natural flow, a natural experience of living through events. That natural experience of living through events exists within relationships too. Again, the very question of how not to lose personal relationships through the process of various changes happening to you, or changes happening to the other person. People who've taken up something new are usually particularly inclined to ask this question. The question itself actually contains this trauma. It actually harbors a little of this poison.

There's a little poison in it. There is poison. Because at that moment, we forget that every relationship in life dies. Again, it seems like a very strange solution, but resolving this question at a deeper level lies in seeing life a little more broadly. And when you direct that perception toward your relationships, toward any relationship you're in, even those where everything is harmonious right now, it brings incredible things from you to the other person, because it begins to break down your own expectations of them. It begins to break down doubts about the other person. It begins to break down everything. Why? Because you know these relationships will end and die. So why build illusory expectations within them? Let these relationships simply exist at the time when they're meant to exist. And that's an incredible key to success. A key to incredible inner happiness and joy in experiencing a partnership with anyone. Let me remind you that partnership isn't only in business. It's partnership in the family, partnership on a team, partnership with friends, partnership with bosses and subordinates, partnership with the people around you. That kind of partnership, real connection, hearing each other, truly hearing each other, hearing each other in a way that matters.

On the one hand, without expectations of the other person, and on the other, without illusions. “You know, I'll first bring you something positive and good, and because I bring you something positive and good, something good will happen between us.” There's no damn guarantee it'll happen that way. Because when you want to bring something positive and good in exchange for something, that means you're in a state of manipulation. It's manipulation. When you hear that from someone, know that it's manipulation. It's manipulation.

It's pure manipulation, simply expressed beautifully, colored by the spiritual world and these interesting terms. But it's manipulation. It's like manipulation in terms of karmic management. There's manipulation in the very term. “Do a good deed, and a good deed will come to you.” Do a good deed because good deeds should be done. Do we have an inner understanding that when we do a good deed, good things probably happen in life? You can indeed think that. But in reality, when you do a good deed, life simply happens. It's just that when you do a good deed, that is real, valuable, real, truthful life: a sunny, heartfelt, real life. In this video, I'll say again that I hope you'll rewatch this video from time to time, return to it, especially if you've watched this far. If this is your first time on my channel, subscribe. My name is Alexander Volchek. I talk a great deal about life in a broad sense, about business. I have extensive knowledge of business, management, business, starting businesses, and a great many things within them. I talk about spirituality, about real, pure spirituality. I give you things through which you yourself can broaden your perception for real, true development and scaling.

Real scaling. Real scaling isn't growing twofold, threefold, fourfold, fivefold. Real scaling is something else. It's a change in everything. It's hard even to compare it with growing a hundredfold, two hundredfold, a thousandfold. I wish you well!