Surroundings and Success: Do You Need to Urgently Change Your Circle to Grow?

OSOlga Stolyarova

Alexander, today I would like to talk about the people around us and how they affect us. You often discuss this. In one of your videos, you said something like, “Don't be afraid to leave your beer-drinking circle,” because, as I understand it, that circle affects our development. But often the question is: how can you leave that beer-drinking circle when these are your friends? How can you leave them behind? For one thing, it is frightening to be alone; for another, you are afraid of losing people close to you.

AVAlexander Volchek

The whole subject of your social circle is worn out. People talk about it endlessly, especially the need to be in some particular circle: among people who know a lot about business, for example, or wealthy people. Or they say, “If you want to look like this, surround yourself with these people,” and so on. The subject has been talked to death. I think our task today is to examine it in two directions, from two angles. First, we can look at how your current circle affects you, then use the mechanisms we discuss in this video throughout your life. Lay that foundation and understand the fundamental influence of the people and the space around you over the course of your life. Second, we can consider different possibilities, or discuss the causes and effects of being in a particular circle at all. That means asking whether you have a choice and whether you can actually choose. I have seen many examples of people wanting to change their circle or escape from it. They entered what seemed like the right circle, but did not get what they wanted. Why does someone usually want to change their circle?

Because they want something, don't they? That is why it is so important to examine these two directions. Understanding them can help you grow and develop substantially, and use this subject as a foundation for your own development. The first question is: what do we mean by our surroundings? In today's video, we are probably talking about people. Of course, our surroundings have a powerful influence: the space we live in, the time we live in, the city, the house or apartment—not just where we sleep, but where we spend a lot of time. Our workplace, our office. There are many, many details. Today, I think our task is to look at the people around us. As you said at the beginning, how can you change your circle when these people are friends? You used the word “friends,” or people you have known for a long time. One of the fundamental problems in human development, and in discussing it, is how long we have known someone. If you have spent a lot of time with a person, it is assumed that you somehow owe them something, or they owe you. And if you have been together for a long time, why replace that with something new?

I think there are even sayings or proverbs about this. Why exchange something supposedly tried and true for something new? I believe that when this idea is passed on to people from childhood, it creates a great many problems. What problems? First, it is important to understand that spending a long time with someone does not keep either of you at the same stage. When you first began spending time together, that person was one particular person, in a particular state of development. By development, I do not mean their IQ or how much knowledge they had or how many books they had read. I mean the development of their whole system. You, too, were at a different level of development then. As time passes, whatever else we may examine, both of you change. Both people inevitably change in many different ways. In relationships between men and women, for example, you often hear a man say, “When I married you, you were one person. Now you are completely different.”

Or a woman says, “I married a different person. Now you are someone else.” But if we look deeply at many examples—at least the ones I see and encounter—people do not really remember what they were like ten or fifteen years ago. Did they record their inner state, how they felt, their threshold for stress, their range of emotions? What stage of self-knowledge were they at? In friendship, when someone says, “I have known this person,” or “I have been friends with them for a long time,” that creates an impression of knowing them. But as you change and they change, who actually knows whom? I can say that most people I have interacted with for a long time do not know who I am today. They know a small piece of my perception, certain details, my worldview. Just a small part. And that is despite how much I share. You would probably need to keep checking in, following along, spending time, to know even a certain amount. To know all of it, you have to be interested. There are people around me who take no interest in what I do in business, for example, or in my professional activity.

You can look even more broadly. They do not pay attention to any of that. Some people are not interested in my work with people or in how I help them develop. I have many different groups, contacts, communities, sessions, and meetings. People may not be interested in what is happening in my life. Some are not interested in what happens at home, for example, in my interactions with my children or my wife. There are many factors. People know only part of the picture; they always know only part. Even when someone is a public figure and shares that information. The question is how well you really know another person—your friend or acquaintance. I remember always having many contacts, acquaintances, and friends around me. Looking back carefully, I see that our interest in each other was often limited to what we did together. There were many details about another person that you might not know, especially if you did not know how to get to know them. Everything I am saying comes back to the passage of time. We were talking about time, after all, and that is what your question was about.

The point is that people develop and change. If you do not know them now, then as time passes that picture will shift dramatically. This brings us to one of the most important questions about relationships: should we measure them in time? Something very interesting happened recently. A friend from Moscow came to visit me. We first met about five years ago. I cannot say we have spent a huge amount of time together. We traveled together in several countries and met up on other occasions. Let us suppose we had met twenty times in total, for three hours each.

UPUnidentified participant

Mm-hmm.

AVAlexander Volchek

So suppose we had spent sixty hours together. Then he came to visit and stayed with me for three weeks. He shared my living space, which he had never done before. Interestingly, he is fifty, and he had never stayed with anyone like that—gone to visit and lived in their home. This is someone who has traveled to see many people and met a great many people.

He has traveled widely, met many people, and visited dozens of countries. This time he came and stayed with me. I do not think I have ever stayed at someone else's home for three weeks—gone to visit and remained that long. He stayed, and every day we spent at least twelve hours together. Twenty days, twelve hours a day: two hundred and forty hours together. Before that, we had spent perhaps sixty hours together. What is two hundred and forty hours? We discussed it and said, “Imagine: I had close friends I would meet once a week, on a weekend, for three hours. That is twelve hours a month, and a hundred and twenty, a hundred and thirty, perhaps a hundred and forty hours a year. Let's leave it at roughly a hundred and forty.” This person spent that kind of time with me, but in a concentrated way: living together, doing different things, discussing everything from everyday life and health to professional activity and work, sharing different experiences, emotions, and events.

That is intensive shared activity. When someone lives in your house and you spend a substantial amount of time together, it is a concentrated experience of life—much more so than three hours once a week. In those weekly meetings, you often repeat the same cycle, doing almost the same things each time. People might go to a restaurant together, watch a movie, walk in a park, hike, play games, or do something else. They can spend any amount of time that way, but it is not living life together. It is not the continual experience of having breakfast, lunch, and dinner together, and going places together. That is a very important distinction. Just three weeks. So who is closer: the person you have known for many years? Who is really closer? This is an important question. With whom do you truly have that closeness? With the person you spent those three weeks with? In terms of hours, you might have spent that much time with another friend over three or four years.

And in terms of the depth of the experience, perhaps over ten years. So who is closer? We so often measure things in time, and that is the basis of a great many problems. “You have worked at this job for a long time and invested in it, so you should stay.” “You have spent so much time in this business; you should keep going.” “You have known this person and been friends for so many years. Why aren't you talking to them now?” Time leaves a strong imprint, and people start thinking in terms of time. When you ask about your social circle, it is important to keep looking at the causes and effects of being with a particular person. What do you see in the relationship? What do you want from it? Or, again, why does the relationship exist, in terms of causes and effects? At the beginning, you brought up the example of a beer-drinking circle.

First, that was probably a phrase of mine taken out of context, because there are different ways of looking at it. I often say that the people around you do influence you. If I meet people every day who do pull-ups every evening, I will start doing pull-ups every evening too. So the circle has an influence. I gave the example that if people drink beer, you will start drinking beer. I probably would not, given that I do not drink; the probability is low. The question is whether I would keep meeting people who drink all the time. Would I spend a lot of time with them? Not necessarily. It does not happen in my life now, and I would suppose it is not a given. Still, it all has an influence: the space you find yourself in. Of the people who have spent time with me, many begin to eat a little differently or pick up my habits, outlook, and places to visit. Just as I take something for myself from meeting others—their patterns of behavior, perceptions, and details. Again, the main point in your question is to start not with how much time you have spent with someone, but with what is really happening.

Of course, time spent together carries some weight in all of this. Time with a person is a factor, a parameter.

But it is only one parameter. There have been people I thought I would spend a very long time with, yet life took us in different directions. Many different people have been part of my life, and I think many more will be. Of all those people, there are many whose last names, or even first names, I cannot recall now, or whose faces I cannot quite remember. Yet we seemed inseparable, incredibly close. It often happens in childhood, but it happens in adult life too. You travel somewhere together—I remember going to Bulgaria as a child. You spend days together on a bus, then hang out and spend a lot of time together. You think, “That's it, we're friends now; we'll stay in touch.” Then life separates you, and you may never see the person again. It is not only travel. There have been so many circumstances like this: people in the same apartment building or entrance, neighboring courtyards, the same school, the same class, neighboring classes.

So many different circumstances. Then you cannot even remember the person's name, and it is hard to piece together particular memories. So when it comes to keeping in touch simply because we have known someone for a long time, it is important to look at the point of it. What is its purpose?

OSOlga Stolyarova

Returning to that popular saying that we are the average of the five people around us—you began touching on that too—many people who want to grow think, “I want to build a business, so I need to surround myself with people who are building businesses. I need to stop talking to my other friends, who are not interested in business development, who just have ordinary jobs and live their lives.” If someone sets a goal, do they need to be in a circle that will help them achieve it?

AVAlexander Volchek

You began with a very interesting phrase: you have to leave everyone else behind. Be only with one group, say, people in business, and stop spending time with those who are not interested in it. But life is not only business. There is this illusion that you can focus only on business, or only on family, or only on a garden, or running—everyone has their own priority—or only on relationships. That is an illusion: singling out something as especially important and neutralizing all the other aspects of life. Are you sure business is the only thing in your life? Or your profession, with nothing else? What matters here is a person's ability to interact in different ways with different kinds of people. Can they spend time with children and with older people? Imagine staying only in the business world. Then spending time with children or older people becomes unbearable—or impossible—unless the older person is Warren Buffett or Bloomberg. And when the person does spend time with children, they start saying it is something they have to do.

They treat it not as simply living life, but as an obligation to fulfill. As for older people, perhaps they make an exception for their own grandparents and pay no attention to others, because those people are outside their area of interest. I have seen this in many people. I live in Silicon Valley, in California, south of San Francisco, and there are so many—

...older people with a reputation here. People who have done a great deal in the technology world, wealthy people, older or very old. Someone begins talking to them because they have accomplished something, rather than because they have lived a life. That sharp emphasis on what a person has done. In general, we have a habit of highlighting particular things: this person has a degree; that one won fifteen medals in a war; this one completed all sorts of educational programs; that one has a doctorate and teaches at such-and-such a place. Singling people out as interesting and spending time only with interesting people is a problem. What happens when you find yourself with someone who does not meet your criteria? Can you really choose to say that life is only professional activity, or only business, and nothing else? In effect, a person becomes someone who endlessly filters their relationships. They compare people. They engage in one of the most problematic things in human relationships: comparing people and treating them as their own possessions.

They begin to treat people not as people, but as objects with a set of parameters. That is one side of it. Another important point is that being among businesspeople does not mean you will become a well-known businessperson yourself. Here is an interesting example. One of my business partners was a dollar billionaire. He was on the Forbes list, and he definitely had—and still has—more than a billion dollars. At one point, he set up a group for people he knew or who worked on his teams. They joined, and he met with them for a certain amount of time each month, once a week or a couple of times a month. They spent time with him in a sort of learning group. By the end of the year, only two people were left. Why only two? At first, the group was packed. People want to be there because they think that standing next to a billionaire will somehow give them a billion too. Or someone says, “Spend time with wealthy people. They have the right mindset, and something will come to you too.”

But what mindset do they have? What exactly will come to you? At what point in their lives did it come to them? Perhaps they used to make money, but now they have lost their minds and can no longer do anything, and their finances will head in only one direction. Or perhaps they have realized something. Take Bill Gates. At a certain age, he said, “I regret not spending more time with my family.” Does that mean that if you interact with him now, he is no longer the Bill Gates who once built things and earned money? Or that the Bill Gates of that earlier period would lead you toward problems in your family? What you take from this, and what you pass on, depends very much on who the person is. People measure things in money. They like listening to people, going to talks, training sessions, and coaching where someone's profile lists achievements and impressive numbers. The whole system of this kind of education is built around it.

Not university education, where you are assigned an instructor and study with them—although modern students want to choose that instructor too. “Why should I study with you? Why should I listen to you? How do you know this?” Society tells people, “Spend time with people who have money.” Then the question is: did they earn the money or inherit it? Or did they get it because they had a smart partner and happened to be there at the right time? Do you know how many stories like that there are? A great many. People did something in partnership, and one made money because the other was strong and brought them to that result. Without that partner, it could not have been built or done; it simply would not exist. Being in a space where there is money is a very particular, difficult environment in which to become who you need to become. Many factors do influence you, of course. If you join entrepreneurs' clubs and keep meeting entrepreneurs and businesspeople, spending time with people who make money, you will be immersed in business. But that does not mean you will make money.

It does not mean you will succeed. It does not mean you will make the right decision for you. That is what matters: the right decision for you. And let's be honest: people who have made money do not want others to be around them just to make money. They do not want that. I know quite a few very wealthy people who are afraid of it—afraid that people stay close to them because of money, approach them because of money, that everything is about money. You can surround yourself with all kinds of things to get a particular result. My dog, for example, is beautiful and unusual for this area: a Russian borzoi. There are no dogs like this nearby, in my town, in Los Altos or Palo Alto, and probably not in Mountain View. I do not even know whether there is another one in Silicon Valley. Someone probably has one, but not in this part where I live. When you walk with this dog, every second person comes up and gives you a compliment.

Of course, they are complimenting the dog, and every third person starts a conversation with you. It is an external feature that lets you meet practically anyone. You have added something that creates opportunities to meet people. Wherever you go, the dog gives you that opportunity. If I sit at a fashionable coffee shop or a restaurant with a lot of foot traffic around here, people will constantly come up, introduce themselves, say hello, ask questions, and remember what I look like. They form a particular image of me. That lets me talk with them, including people who have money. But they approach because they are interested in the dog, not in me. And I am not necessarily interested in their interest in the dog; I do not need it. I did not get this dog so that other people would take an interest in it. Of course it is pleasant to hear what people say or see them pay attention when I walk down the street. Why wouldn't it be?

Overall, though, we are not on the same wavelength at all. We could get onto the same wavelength if we began discussing dogs in general. Since getting a dog, I have started noticing dogs too. My family even sends me dog reels on Instagram. I recently sent one to a business partner, and he said, “You've become a dog person if you're forwarding dog reels.” Or we might find another subject that interests us both. But that requires a particular set of circumstances to come together, and they may or may not. This raises a very important question: can you make money or start a business without being in, or interacting with, a circle of entrepreneurs? “Yes, that's just what I wanted to ask.” Can you earn money without being in that circle? Of course you can. Just as people became artists without belonging to an artists' circle. They became singers, swimmers, programmers, entrepreneurs. You can become anything. It is a question of your inner calling and interest. What is calling you? Why do you do it, or not do it? For example, I lived in Moscow from 2010 to 2022—or rather, the end of 2021.

The end of 2021, yes. I did not grow flowers at all. My mother had always been interested in flowers, and I saw her quite often or flew to visit her. We discussed flowers, of course, but I was not interested in growing them myself. Then I came to California and became deeply involved in gardening. I have planted hundreds, perhaps thousands of plants by now. If you count the bulbs, it is probably in the thousands. I garden, and whenever friends or acquaintances come to visit, I draw them into it too. They end up spending time with me while I plant something, buy plants, or water them. I had previously been in an environment where everything seemed to encourage gardening, and it would have been easier. My mother has a large house in Minsk; Moscow is nearby, so I could have brought things or looked after something. Here, it all seems more complicated. Hiring additional help, different gardeners, is harder. Getting someone to pass a check is more difficult, or it costs more.

And—

Yet I spend a lot of time on it. Something arose in me, some quality I began working with, and I do it quite well. So can you be an entrepreneur without being in a circle of businesspeople or listening to them? You can, and sometimes that can be better for you. You might be in a business circle and join a club. I know many people who joined business clubs and whose situation became much worse. That does not mean the club made it worse. I also know many who joined a club and did better.

Someone says, “Look at our success story; things improved for him.” Are you sure that happened because of the club? Or if things went badly, are you sure that was because of the club? Perhaps the club actually kept the person from falling further. And in the other case, perhaps the club kept the person from growing more. Maybe they could have grown even more if they had not listened to someone, heard a particular idea, or joined a group that passed something on to them. Sometimes you do not need that opinion; you need a completely different one and a slightly different way of acting. This is a very important, very deep question.

Yes. Now we can move to the question: what does have an influence? What does?

OSOlga Stolyarova

Then let's move to that question. What affects a person, their development, and—if we think in terms of a goal—whether they get somewhere or not?

AVAlexander Volchek

Of course the people around you have an influence. We cannot say they do not. I have been explaining all of this to show how extensive the causes and effects are, and how differently things can turn out. You must never tell yourself that one particular circle is fundamentally the right place for you. Many people fly to the Valley and start going to all sorts of events and meetings, getting to know everyone, and it leads them nowhere. At the same time, someone might have a chance encounter: move in next door to another person, meet someone on the street, or happen to share a coffee with someone in a cafe. I am talking about chance encounters; they do happen. Some actions work like a funnel: the more people you sift through, the greater the potential result. In many areas, that works. In others, it is pointless. If you want to open a coffee shop, for example, that does not mean you need to belong to a club of coffee shop owners.

There is probably a benefit in talking to coffee shop owners about business and learning business details from them. But that does not mean you should adopt their lives, their personal space, how they interact and make life decisions, their family, and so on. I see so many people looking for role models. It is an enormous problem. You can see it in the comments under famous bloggers' posts: “You are my role model.” I know people here who say, “I have a role model. I like this person. I want to be them. They inspire me.” The question is whether you really know that person. Do you know how they live and what they think about the things they do not share publicly?

Would you like their life if you had to live every aspect of it—both happiness and unhappiness? Or are you picking out only the outward, happy factors? A successful business team, a successful director who manages and owns a company, someone who has made a lot of money without doing much, or, conversely, someone running a huge number of projects. What attracts you to this person as a role model? How are you looking at it? Someone says, “I like this person as a role model. They have a good business and a family.” Are you sure they are happy? How do they actually feel? How do they live through it all? What is a role model, then? Do you want to live that person's life? In effect, having a role model means wanting to live someone else's life, not your own. This is probably one of the greatest difficulties leading people into delusion and distress: the desire to live another person's life, also shaped by comparison. It is a very difficult issue. What is the fundamental problem? You will not be able to do it.

It is, from the outset, an unfulfillable dream. There are so many sayings about this, and the question is always how someone focuses on a goal. I recently saw a post saying how wonderful it is to dream, and how good it feels when all your hard work makes that dream come true. What if it does not? What if you were not destined to fulfill that particular dream? That is perfectly normal too. What happens to you then? The message about hard work is interesting: suffer now, then enjoy life. Live in a way you do not want to live now, and later something will happen and you will briefly live the way you want. Then something else will happen. There has to be a burst, a flash, and within it you are supposed to experience some kind of fulfillment. Then people begin arguing: it is not the result that matters, it is the process, and so on. They mix it all together.

OSOlga Stolyarova

I have a question. Does that mean the idea “I'll work until thirty-five, do something that lets me stop working altogether after thirty-five” is not a workable strategy? That it is not a very good approach? Am I understanding correctly?

AVAlexander Volchek

I think we need to examine the different aspirations behind it. Why does the person think that way? Is their main goal to stop working? If it is, then at least let go of the idea that you must work now in order to stop working. The main point is what you want to achieve. Perhaps you can stop working without first doing all that work. I am not talking about doing nothing at all. “Are you going to stop working now too?” There is a very good joke about this: someone is told to do a huge number of things so that they can finally return to resting. The other person says, “But I'm resting already. Why should I do anything to get there?” Why go through that whole cycle? It is important to think about this calmly and clearly. The most important question is why you want to stop working at all. Suppose that is what you want, and you have decided it for yourself. Then look at the options for getting there in the most beneficial way. Someone says, “If you do that, you won't be able to have a family.” You ask, “Could I do it with a family?” “If you don't do this, you'll lose your health.”

Could you avoid losing your health? Clearly there are ways to work through all these questions. That is one side: examine it from that perspective, instead of “I have to work hard now so that I can stop later.” At the same time, consider what happens if it does not come about, because none of it is guaranteed. On the other hand, examine the situation, the circumstances, and the conditions under which you want to stop working. Have you actually defined them? Also examine why you want to stop working at all. What does that mean? Why does a person want not to work? What are the circumstances behind that desire?

Take my wife. The last time she worked professionally, in the sense of earning money, was fifteen years ago, when she was twenty-seven. She did not set herself the goal of working so that she could stop later. She simply stopped at twenty-seven. So can you stop working and never work again? Why work like that now? You can stop. Can you keep your family at the same time? You can. Her family life only grew: we had four children in that time. She spends a lot of time on herself, but she has not worked. It is a straightforward example of something that really happens. How did it happen? It happened that way. Someone will say it happened because she got a husband. Not necessarily at all. Plenty of women get husbands and have to work even more. I know many women whose men tell them they must work under absolutely all circumstances. Sometimes a man cannot work that much; sometimes a woman has a strong need for professional fulfillment. It varies. My wife is a very simple example: she did not work. Or take my mother. I think she stopped working in 1993.

She has not worked since 1993. It is now 2025. Thirty-seven, thirty—how many? Thirty-two years. She has not worked for thirty-two years! She stopped in 1993, at thirty-seven. As you said, she probably had not set herself that goal. If she had, and had known it would happen, perhaps she would have approached things differently from the start: her career, profession, education, the time she gave to different areas, or her understanding of what that time meant. She has her own explanation for why she did it, of course. Everyone does. She says she did it for her children, for example. My wife does not give it any particular explanation. She says, “It just happened.” So everyone will experience it in their own way. But why do you need it? Why stop working? What comes next? And what about now?

You could stop working now. Here is an interesting possibility people often overlook, and I suggest they consider it: take a two-year break now. Do not work now. Some people can afford that. Or reduce some of your wants. There are people who can afford not to work right now. Then do not work now. Someone says, “First I will achieve what I want, and then I will stop.” Stop now instead. If that is your ultimate dream, do it now. Live it now. Spend two, three, four years in that state now. Why wait if this really is the ultimate dream? Especially when waiting involves a risk. I said at the beginning that it may never happen. None of those things is guaranteed. None of them. The one thing that is certain is death. Everything else is uncertain. After death, you will not consciously go on living through those experiences. So live them now. My nephew recently had various circumstances around applying to university, and at one point he might have needed to take a break.

I said, “Let him take a break and do nothing at all. Or, on the contrary, let him prepare for the universities he wants to enter, perhaps abroad or somewhere else.” That brings up difficult feelings. From childhood, especially for people born in the Soviet Union, the message was: “What do you mean, take a break? You cannot take a break. You must go and work during that time. You cannot live off other people.” It is like the way people discuss inheritance. A very interesting subject. Someone says, “I will leave an inheritance,” or “I will not.” Or, “I will leave an inheritance, but I am going to live a long time, so my children will get it late.” First of all, who said you will live a long time?

Why not give your children that inheritance now? Why do you think that would be wrong? Who said your child will not earn more and help you? Do you want them to help you? Can you accept that comfortably? I am comfortable with helping my children, with their helping me, and with nobody helping anybody—neither me helping them nor them helping me. Any of those things could happen. If I insist on one particular outcome, that would be a mistake. I can think whatever I like about an inheritance now, but in five years all my assets, money, businesses—everything—could be wiped out. I could become disabled and have nothing left. I know a woman who was a millionaire, a well-known person in Germany, an entrepreneur of the year there in the 1990s, a famous fashion designer. Her son had an accident, and she spent every bit of money she had on him. Her insurer has still not reimbursed her. Many years have passed—more than twenty.

What inheritance? There is an example for you. And her son was left injured and unwell. What inheritance can we talk about in that situation? I may hold one worldview now. I gave you the example of Bill Gates, whose worldview suddenly changed. There are many people—famous people of all kinds—whose views have changed about money, inheritance, other people, and so on. Why does someone make such statements? Is it a grand pronouncement, an expression of fear, or an attempt to instill something in their children? Imagine telling my children, “I will leave you an inheritance.” Time passes, and I cannot. Or I promise one, then decide not to leave it. Or I say I will not, then decide I will. They will have formed a certain perception of me. Does that matter? Perhaps they will not need the inheritance, because they will live in a time when artificial intelligence means everyone receives the same income. People will not earn money at all; it will simply be paid to them.

Perhaps your inheritance will be of no use to them. Perhaps you will be under sanctions, and it will be of no use for that reason. Perhaps your views and relationships will diverge and they will not want a single penny from you. Perhaps you will not want to give it to them. Or one of you may die first. What inheritance are you talking about? It is an illusion, a complete illusion. A very good example of the illusions around why we earn money. But today we are talking about relationships and the people around us, and those people really do influence us in many ways. Here is the next question. Small talk is very common now: you go somewhere to meet people, or join a club, and they say, “Get to know one another.” Some people say you should start by explaining how you can help someone, how you can be useful. That is not my format at all. Of course people can do it. But how can you get to know forty people in two hours? How can you learn who they are? How can you understand all of that?

How can you know how you might help someone if you do not know them? Your statement about how useful you can be is an abstraction coming from nowhere. The more I see people proclaiming how useful they are to everyone, the less I see them sincerely helping people and being ready to help in every way. If you say you are ready to help people with something, are you truly ready to help everyone you say it to? Will that definitely happen? When it comes to meeting people, do you need that many introductions, or just one? And those relationships that usually arise in life—a husband, a wife, childhood friends—are you sure you chose them? Did you choose the neighbor on your landing? The person who traveled with your group on the bus? Did you really choose those people? Did you choose your husband or wife, boyfriend or girlfriend? Some people even say they chose their children or their parents. Did you really—

...choose them? The likelihood that it was your choice is tiny. There is a very good description of how people think a kindergarten group or school class comes together at random. It is actually karmically predetermined. At that age, children end up in a group or meet that class for reasons that are not random at all. These are not random events. Yet if you look at your friendships as they happened, you see circumstances that arose entirely by chance. In my childhood, or up to the age of thirty, all the circumstances were chance ones. The same is true of various businesses: there were so many other places where I did the same things, or wanted it even more, and it did not work out. Quite the opposite.

OSOlga Stolyarova

But chance is not really chance. In this context, are you saying that all those chance encounters are not accidental after all?

AVAlexander Volchek

First and foremost, I am speaking within the particular subject of today's video. We are discussing a specific aspect of it. When I use the word “chance,” I am not moving into a discussion of whether it is karmic or inherited, or connected to events in a country or place. I am simply showing you that most things happen not because you ordered them or determined them in advance. The idea “I chose to be in this circle, and this circle brought me a particular result” is often an illusion. A circle can often lead to a certain result, yes. But can you repeat it? Could you have done something differently? Many people were born among professors and became alcoholics or murderers. Many others were born among professors and followed their parents' path. Some children grow up saying, “I will have nothing to do with any of your fields.” Others continue what their parents did.

It all varies enormously.

You might meet someone who seems to know nothing about business, but who strengthens and supports you. You tell them you want to start a business, and they say, “You can do it. You're doing great—go for it.” You go ahead and do it, and get a result. What you needed was someone who simply supported you. That can be much more important than expressing your idea in a group of businesspeople who point out negative factors and explain why it will not work.

Much more important, much better.

OSOlga Stolyarova

I have another question. If we separate it out a little, we have been talking about the future: how a circle might influence someone who wants to enter the business crowd because they want to develop in business. What about the destructive influence of your current circle? Can you grow while remaining among people who smoke, drink, complain, gossip, and so on, when for some reason you cannot leave and keep talking to them? Does that affect me, or other people? And how?

AVAlexander Volchek

When you describe smoking, drinking, and so on as negative things, you are starting from your own perception of what is negative. The other person may not see it negatively at all or say that it harms their life. That matters, because each time you meet, you will probably convey your view, and that will create inner tension and conflict between you. In interacting with someone, you single out the fact that they drink, for example. And then there is a question.

Imagine you want to go into business. There are people who make a lot of money in business, but they drink. Would you refuse to meet them too? Or would meeting them be fine because they make money, while this other person is a negative influence? Those people would also be affecting you negatively through what you believe alcohol does, while simultaneously having a positive influence on your finances. Are you willing to take that dose of negativity for money, but not in the other case? This is a major question: how do you perceive another person's negative influence? Then you say, “I can't do anything about it.” Usually, the people it is hardest to do anything about are those closest to us: children, parents, brothers, sisters, a husband, wife, boyfriend, or girlfriend. Even then, people abandon parents, children, husbands, and wives. All kinds of things happen. But generally it is difficult. Some people find it hard simply to say no to any acquaintance they have known for a long time, or to avoid adapting to a particular pattern of behavior and interaction with that person.

Even that adaptation raises questions. What impulse causes it? Why do you do it? What do you like or dislike? What are the advantages and disadvantages? I will not make the same blanket statement in every situation: “These people drink, so they are a negative influence. Stop spending time with them.” I will not do that, because someone who does not drink may harm you more. Drinking does not always determine the influence. Another aspect: I have spent quite a lot of time with people who have a particular outlook on life simply because I had known them for a long time. I noticed that. What happens next is my choice. If someone starts drinking, I can say, “I will not stay with you while you drink alcohol.” That is my choice. Not meeting someone at all because they drink is also my choice. You have the right to make that decision: do I want to be with this person or not? Which principles am I willing or unwilling to compromise, and what am I willing to do in order to continue—or not continue?

Notice: not because the person is bad. It is very important to remain humane and understand that many people are deeply dependent and find it very difficult to make certain decisions. Their lives are complicated, and in general they need help. The question is how, and from what impulse, you make your decision. This brings us to the most important aspect of our discussion. People come to relationships with expectations, looking for something specific. That is number one: something specific. Some want praise; some want recognition. Some want money and spend time with a person because that person has money. Someone has a pass that gets you into a club; someone else has delicious food at home. Everyone has their own things. You might spend time with someone because they have good company or good friends around them, because they smell good, or because they look attractive. There is a reason you spend time with them. Many people have a range of expectations. The question is how to be with that person humanely, how to remain human in the relationship.

It is impossible to have every encounter in life without expectations. Some encounters can be free of them. It would be good to meet your mother, father, or child without expectations, for example. Probably even your husband or wife. But it is unlikely that you can meet employees, business partners, or management without expectations. When you meet, you still have certain expectations. How do you remain human with those expectations? Notice how easy it is—

...to tell an employee, “You have to do this. These are my expectations.” But you cannot say it that way to a friend, acquaintance, or random person. That is the problem. You have explained everything to the employee and reached an agreement. With the other person, you have not discussed it. You meet someone, and during the conversation they realize you are meeting them because they have beautiful eyes, or a lot of money in their wallet, or because they pay for lunch. How should they react? Or you meet them because they are a pair of ears willing to listen while you unload and tell them things. Or you meet to get a particular insight. Understand that there is always a response to all of this. That is what you need to examine, and try to live with truthfully and sincerely. It is not easy. I have some new neighbors who invited us over to their pool yesterday. You sit there wondering whether to go.

You have your own things to do, you feel a little lazy, but perhaps you should go because you need to maintain relationships. Then you start asking why. What do you want? To be friends? Spend time together, just meet, have breakfast together? Help each other? Make use of certain connections? Learn more about people? What exactly do you want to do, and why? Immediately, you move into a kind of manipulation, without even fully understanding it. You say, “All right, I'll go. Perhaps I want to have a good time.” But perhaps you will have a bad time. A few weeks ago, some people invited us over, saying it was a personal invitation. A friend was staying with me. We came home and said to Polina, “Please make us lunch.” She said, “But we're going out as guests.” We said, “No, we want to eat at home, because there may not be food there—or food we like.” My friend said, “There definitely won't be.

“I can feel it.” It is interesting how you automatically form expectations. I know that when guests come to my house, there will usually be a generous spread, with different kinds of food. I will put effort into it, cook, and give it time and attention. Someone might not come at all, or arrive and say they are full, that they just ate, or have their own preferences. You did not agree on those details. Or you would have to agree that everyone is coming for dinner, everyone must arrive exactly on time, and if they are late, they are in trouble. You reach an agreement, and I have certain expectations. When I meet people, expectations could arise. I do not have them, but in principle they could arise. Then I would expect others to behave the same way. Why do I do something? When I visit someone and bring flowers, is it because I expect them to bring me flowers too, or simply because I wanted to give flowers? Can I visit without bringing flowers?

Can I go to a birthday party without bringing a gift? Am I comfortable when someone does not bring me one? This is a whole issue. My son recently had a birthday, and many children came. Some brought very expensive gifts, some very inexpensive ones, and some brought none. Is it bad if a child comes without a gift? Perhaps not at all. Maybe they did not have time; maybe something came up. Or perhaps that is how they see it. They may believe that is the right thing to do, and they have the right to believe it. You did not invite them saying they must bring a gift worth at least a hundred dollars. Some people make wish lists. You open one and find that everything on it is expensive. You look at it and think: perhaps you do not want to give something from a wish list at all. Perhaps you want to choose something yourself, something you personally think is the right gift. How do you avoid getting lost in all of this? This is one of the major foundations of relationships: noticing these things in how we relate to one another.

It is very important. A very important point.

OSOlga Stolyarova

How do you learn not to build expectations? Speaking for myself, in friendship I have no expectations at all. But in another area, such as a relationship between a man and a woman, expectations appear. It varies with different people: sometimes there are expectations, sometimes not. I would like to learn to build truly human relationships without expectations. How? What should I do?

AVAlexander Volchek

I think that when you say you have no expectations in friendship, that is not true.

It is not true in this sense: perhaps, with the people currently in your life and their current behavior, you feel as though you have no expectations. But the boundaries of your principles and other factors most likely still exist. You expect a person to behave in certain ways. Could your female friend do something shameless with your boyfriend, for example? You would say, “No, I have expectations there.” I can immediately come up with an expectation. Or could the person steal something? “No, I probably have expectations about that.” Do you allow for absolutely any behavior? What does having no expectations mean? That you allow for the possibility of any behavior from that person. As they behave in various ways, you understand that your relationship to them shifts and develops. It is one thing today and may be something completely different tomorrow. You understand that you do not control that relationship. The person may feel very close to you now, but after some time—a week or five years, it makes no difference—something may develop within you and you may find them repellent. And you allow for the possibility of going through that.

So saying that life can be free of expectations is a rather dangerous idea. You need to be extremely careful with it. What about the areas where you say you do have expectations? Most likely, you notice them precisely because you do not have an established relationship that creates the illusion of having none. Suppose you had a personal relationship in which everything was wonderfully harmonious, and you had lived through a great deal together. You might say, “I have no expectations at all in this relationship.” Could that feeling arise? Yes. The question is whether it is real or an illusion. I probably do not know a single person toward whom I have no expectations. Somewhere deep inside, even at the psychophysical level or perhaps in my genetics, I carry automatic patterns: expectations of how another person will act, and how I will act toward others. They are there in any case.

The question is whether they are essential to life, whether they are important. Am I willing to set them aside? Am I ready for the person to change their behavior, and to reconsider that behavior myself? That is the one factor that lets you truly work with expectations: being prepared for someone to behave in any way at all, regardless of anything, to do absolutely anything. That is the only way to orient yourself toward having no expectations. But if we look at it, Olga, the problem is not the existence of expectations. That is not the problem.

OSOlga Stolyarova

It is my attitude toward them.

AVAlexander Volchek

Your attitude toward them, of course. It is perfectly reasonable and normal to say, “I expect to earn this much at work.” The question is your attitude toward it. Or, “I expect a man to behave in a certain way.” Is that a normal expectation? Absolutely. Hypothetically, your expectation might not fit any man in the world—though there is always someone. There are simply too many people on earth. It might not match the views of your friends, acquaintances, books, or anything else. You have every right to it. The question is whether you give another person the right not to meet your expectations, and whether you know how you will respond. You say, “I don't like it when my manager swears.” Then you tell yourself, “If he keeps swearing, I will leave the job.” Or you do not like an employee failing to carry out duties or arriving late. You establish your principles and dismiss the employee.

You calmly reach that understanding with yourself from the beginning. There are difficult areas, such as children. You might say, “I don't like it when my child does certain—

“I don't like it when my child does certain things.” But you cannot fire your child or end the relationship. They remain your child. The only thing you can do is reduce how often you see them. That is the only thing you can do; you cannot do anything else. You can reduce your contact, but that does not remove them from your life or make them cease to exist. What you can do is understand that every person has the right to do what they do. Remember that in any case. What happens next is your situation: are you willing to accept it or not? Imagine inviting guests, and they arrive without flowers. You say, “I won't accept that.” Then do not invite them again, or tell them, “Our evening together is over.” They ask why. “Because you didn't bring flowers.” “What flowers? You never said anything about flowers.” “I assumed it from the start. I thought you were intelligent people and knew that.” Of course it has nothing to do with intelligence; I am exaggerating.

Could that happen? Yes. You have the right to act that way. Would it be reasonable? No, clearly not. But you have the right. Recently, a neighbor came over to see Polina. They do not generally talk or see each other. She came into the house and said, “Hi. I'm feeling a bit strange. Could I lie down for a little while?” She had brought her son. She lay down on the couch and fell asleep, slept for an hour and a half, then got up and said, “All right, I'm going home.” To us, that looks completely inappropriate. Completely. How much more inappropriate could it be?

But to the person who did it, it is clearly a normal, unremarkable thing to do. I cannot imagine going into the home of people I barely know and saying, “You know what, I want to sleep,” lying down for a nap, and then saying, “Well, I suppose it's time for me to go home.” But if the person did it—

...then it is quite normal for them. So if you went to their house and did the same thing, they might not give it a second thought. Perhaps they would not; perhaps they would. Perhaps not.

OSOlga Stolyarova

There is another question: what do you do about toxic relatives? While researching this subject, I saw people asking that. This is the case where I cannot give up on the person—a child or a parent, for example. What should I do? Stop talking to them? How do you stop talking to your parents? That creates a conflict.

AVAlexander Volchek

The expression “toxic relative,” that word “toxic,” can, again—

...be perceived differently. You see a person as toxic; someone else does not. You really need to look at what it specifically means to you. Again, you have the right to make your own decision. Suppose you have a toxic relative and a toxic billionaire nearby, worth a hundred billion dollars, whom you have the opportunity to meet. Would you meet them or not? I know that ninety-nine out of a hundred would choose to meet the toxic billionaire and stop seeing the toxic relative. They would choose, make a trade-off. It is important to see where your own boundary lies in terms of principles. But some people would not meet a toxic billionaire under any circumstances. For some, another person's money is not a plus at all. You could say the person has a trillion, and they would say, “Forget it. What difference does it make how much money they have? What does that have to do with me? Why should I meet them or have any dealings with them?” In this respect, a relative is like anyone else, whether related to you or not.

It is your right to choose. You decide what to do. There are simply people with whom you are unlikely to end the relationship, such as your mother or father. It probably makes sense to keep working through those relationships in some way. Yet there are relationships in which you should not meet your mother or father at all. Likewise, there are situations in which parents should not meet their children. I know situations in which people should not see their parents. The parents have done things—we do not need to invent examples. Someone could be a murderer.

Could they? Yes. Someone might steal when you meet. Could that happen? Yes. Or meeting them could put your life, or your children's lives, at physical risk. Could that happen? Yes. You would probably choose not to meet. There is always a boundary, just as there is with other people.

Exactly the same boundary as with other people. It is your own choice. You decide what to do and what not to do. What matters is to understand honestly and naturally, for yourself: am I aware of what is happening, or am I acting without awareness? Do I understand the situation with this person, or not? Some believe you must work things out with your parents no matter what, because the person will die, because of ancestral ties and heredity. There are things you will not be able to work through. Some things can be worked through; others cannot. Not everything needs to be worked through, and not everything can be. Absolutely not everything.