The Future of Self-Education: How to Learn Throughout Your Life and Remain Relevant

AVAlexander Volchek

How do I build my own personal learning path?

OSOlga Stolyarova

We have a question to explore today, Alexander. What would you consider genuine, sound development for a person in today's world?

AVAlexander Volchek

I have spent much of my life working in professional education and business. For the past ten years, we have constantly heard about studying and learning throughout our lives. Now, with the arrival of artificial intelligence—I think I recorded an episode about AI on my other channel a few days ago—I was saying that every recommendation now points to the importance of continuing to learn throughout life. We hear how important it is to have a solid foundation of soft skills so that we can adapt quickly to new developments. “Develop your soft skills” has become something of a slogan. More than ten years have passed, and people keep saying it as though everything we did five or ten years ago was wrong, and now someone has finally discovered the right approach. In today's world, it is very important to ask yourself what you actually need to study. What should you pay attention to, and how should you learn? When someone makes poor decisions about education and learning, they do not merely waste time. They change their life for decades to come.

Other people's lives also depend on that person's choices. At one point I chose to study programming, then chose a job related to it, although I could have chosen something else. Those circumstances shaped everything about my subsequent development. Someone says, “I'll go into sales now because it will let me make money. Later I'll switch and make a different decision.” I remember that when I was at university, people who opened stalls at the market and sold things earned much more than programmers. I started working as a programmer in 2004 for a hundred dollars. Yet simply staying in programming clearly gave a person a guarantee of earning more than everyone else. I am talking about probabilities, about a guarantee. That was twenty years ago—twenty-one years ago, when I started my programming job. I entered university twenty-five years ago. Looking across the long stretch from twenty years ago to today, it was more advantageous to become a programmer for a hundred, two hundred, or three hundred dollars...

The salary changed a great deal. It was better in the long run than trading at the market for a thousand or two thousand dollars at that particular time. So how do you make the right decision? Not merely choose a profession or acquire knowledge that helps you make useful decisions in your work or earn more money. How do you choose where to learn so that you can act as truthfully as possible in every area of your life? Here we could even use the word “effectively”—in every area. I mean professional work and business. Many people say, “Business doesn't interest me.” It may not interest you now, but in ten years you could own a business. You may not want to manage anyone now, but in twenty years you may be a manager. Or you may manage people now and decide ten years later to become an ordinary employee. I also mean your personal development, your inner state and feelings, your relationships with other people, and your interactions with your family. And what people commonly call spiritual development, although that is a very broad abstraction that everyone understands differently.

What should I study in all these areas? What should I learn, and where should I spend time, so that I can make sound decisions, take the right next step, and truly grow and develop in all of them? I mean being effective not in how efficiently you spend your time, but in the truth of your actions. Someone decides to start a business, invests money for three years, opens it, does a huge amount of work, then realizes it is not right and closes it. We call that ineffective. But some people really needed to live through it, even if it was ineffective. Someone needed to open that business and have that experience. Someone else chose not to, although they actually should have gone into it and it would have brought them a good result. I am not looking at this in terms of obtaining the greatest advantage in the social world—money, contacts, or something else. I mean acting truthfully, and that takes different forms. Sometimes it means the truth of the world in relation to other people, according to the laws of the universe. I made a video about the laws of the universe on this channel a while ago.

You can watch it. Elsewhere, truth means sound decisions in the social world: being able to make the right choices because you understand how that world works. It is not simple. You often need a strongly strategic approach when someone wants to devour you, exclude you, underpay you, fire you, take advantage of you, or manipulate you—at the level of a country, a company, a family, anywhere. You need to be able to act strategically and understand which strategy is most effective. In all these areas, we need to understand what is worth studying and paying attention to. People once watched YouTube videos and courses or read Instagram to learn something. They wanted to acquire a skill or discover something. For the most part, that turned into a drug: no longer learning, but envying, comparing, resenting, compensating for what they lacked, spreading negativity, writing hostile comments, discussing, judging, and examining absolutely anything except themselves. They moved away from a genuine perception of what was happening. At the same time, an enormous number of new learning systems appeared around the world. Everyone says, “Look how many educational systems there are.”

Choosing used to be difficult even when there was little to choose from. Now it is difficult, and the range has become catastrophically large. Someone shouts that you need to become a programmer, and you rush off to study programming. How do you choose among thousands of programs? You pick something, but the chances of making a mistake are enormous, because many people providing education do not understand what they are teaching. Or they simply act on enthusiasm or a trend, rather than a real understanding of you as an individual. What do you want to do? What do you want to know? I did a great deal to introduce the term “personal learning paths” to the Russian-speaking market and followed their development closely. Yet most of what people call personal learning paths is an illusion—simply a deception. What personal learning path?

OSOlga Stolyarova

Why is it a deception?

AVAlexander Volchek

Because there is no personalization. No one actually knows who you are. No one has understood who you are now or who you will be in the future. No one understands how your life will unfold, your current circumstances, or whether this is truly important, necessary, clear, and right for you. Do you need to take these steps? Could they lead you to ruin your life? Do you understand the margin for error? There is a difference between an acceptable margin and a serious mistake. You order a steak in a restaurant. Most people like it, but in theory you might not—and you simply do not enjoy it. That is one kind of error. It is another thing to make a mistake and die. Some mistakes completely change a person's life. Of course, we usually associate death with doctors.

But there are also matters outside medicine, such as education. You begin studying something and stake your future on it, but it turns out to be difficult for you personally. Nobody was really interested in your personal learning path; they did not care. Perhaps there was simply hype. Look at how little people understand or foresee. They cannot predict earthquakes, tsunamis, or new diseases. What makes us think they can foresee how society or technology will actually work? Who among the people making the final judgments understands these things? Look at the people talking about them on YouTube, or bloggers and politicians: ninety-seven percent of them fundamentally do not understand the subject they are discussing. There are now so many young—and not only young—curriculum designers and teachers explaining how to create a learning program based on their own perceptions. They have explored a trend and read one, two, three, or four articles. They study something fashionable without understanding the consequences of implementing it or whether a particular person truly needs it.

UPUnidentified participant

Mm-hmm.

AVAlexander Volchek

That is not a personal learning path. So there is an important question to ask yourself: how do I build my own? Begin by understanding that no one else will build it for you. I have to make the choice, make the decisions, and understand that they have consequences. I might make mistakes that leave me earning less money or becoming poor. Or I might earn too much and lose my family. There are many different mistakes. I might move to another country for a job I never needed. A profession might make me emotionally stable and bring me joy and happiness, or make me unstable, leaving me in endless sorrow without understanding what is happening. Will this profession provide a strong foundation for my development? Will this knowledge help me develop? Or will it drive me into the ground so deeply that I cannot get out, introducing things that turn into negative aspects of my perception for decades afterward?

For example, a lack of confidence. How can a marketer promote a product if they do not believe in themselves? How can a teacher teach other people if they lack confidence? They will transmit that uncertainty along with their other energy. This is a very difficult aspect of people's lives. I will use my own programs to illustrate how I see a person's development through learning. First of all, it is perfectly natural to discuss my educational programs on my own YouTube channel. But I want to use them to show how someone can approach choosing an education, and with what degree of awareness. At one point we created IT education programs for children, with five or six thousand children studying in them. Alongside those programs, I held meetings for parents. Why parents? We also held them for teachers—both parents and teachers.

Why did we do that? Our main work was adult education: two hundred and fifty thousand people studied in our continuing professional education programs. Teachers also went through separate professional training. Why involve teachers and parents? So they would have a foundation and could make slightly more conscious decisions about their children's education. That is all. The information I am sharing here is intended to help you make more conscious decisions about what to do and how to approach trends, ideas, a course your friends have taken, an advertisement you have seen, or something that has become fashionable. What is worth studying, and what is not? It matters. Compare this with the 2000s, when computerization expanded rapidly. Many people in their forties, fifties, and sixties did not know how to type, did not understand computers, and never looked into that area. Why not? They were trying to see out their lives. It is interesting: they wanted to shut themselves off from what was happening in the world rather than understand or perceive it.

Many of them lived to a hundred, ninety, or eighty, and many are still alive. It would certainly have been easier to understand some of those things at forty, or at least to begin. That understanding could have helped solve many issues in their interactions with friends, acquaintances, children, companions, relatives, and people at work. This matters. If someone closes themselves off, refuses to perceive something, and will not look into it or invest effort, they need to understand what is happening at that moment. And that example concerns only technology. Today I want to focus less on technology and more on the range of things to consider in your own development. Suppose we identify different areas: professional development; business development, including understanding how to manage something; and personal development of your inner state, psyche, and attitude toward what you perceive around you. In principle, personal development includes all those areas. There is understanding family and relationships: with children, relatives, colleagues, bosses, employees, partners, other people, friends, and those close to you.

And spiritual development. I am separating it out again, although I will explain what I mean by it. I am deeply convinced—I know and see—that a person needs to develop broadly and comprehensively, rather than choosing one area, then one subarea, and narrower subareas within that. Someone says, “I'm not developing in any other field. Family doesn't interest me, nor does professional development. I'm interested in business now. I want to open a café selling coffee and buns. That's what I'll develop.” They leave out other aspects. You say, “You need a broader understanding of marketing, finance, relationships, or partnerships.” They reply, “I don't have any partners. I don't need that.” The same applies to family. People start learning about partnerships once they already have partners, about marketing when they are already doing it, and about children when they already have children. What is the problem? By the time you are living within a situation, you are already living it without awareness.

If no one has taught you how to work with partners, how can you start a business with one? Someone says, “You need to make mistakes; that's a good experience.” That is relative. A person needs to develop in different areas. It does not mean they will necessarily apply all of it, but they will have a broad enough perception of what is happening. It is not simply about having a broad personality. It is about being able to hear, truly know what is happening, and make the right decisions at the right moments. That is why I have separated my work into two programs. One is V100, my main program for a person's growth and development. It lets you develop in different areas: professionally, in business, and in relationships with a broad range of people. It helps you understand combinations of relationships, their different states, and how periods of time affect those states. It includes understanding how business works and recognizing that your professional life includes business. Your professional life is not merely what you do now. It includes the twenty, thirty, or forty years of life that lie ahead of you.

There is that much life still ahead. That is important. It is a completely different perspective. How much time is still ahead in terms of...

How much time remains for development and understanding? My second program focuses on spiritual development. A person directs their whole impulse toward studying spiritual worlds and spiritual science, perceiving the spiritual world, and recognizing that our life is spiritual. That is a different range of perception. It is very difficult to discuss business when someone asks, “What does this look like spiritually?” If they see a material world with a spiritual world inside it, while I see a spiritual world containing the material, our discussions of business will remain on different levels. With that person, I will speak on the level of business itself. I have a broad range of perception here. With someone in the spiritual development group, I will first speak from spiritual truth, rather than solely from business. Looking at it more broadly comes first. Suppose someone comes and asks, “How do I set up my company's CRM system?” Or, “How do I build the right team and hire twenty directors?” Or, “How do I strategically expand into other countries?”

“I want to launch in ten countries,” they say, “so that in a year my revenue will be four hundred million dollars.” But I see, for example, that this person will die in a year. Or that the business will close in a year and a half, or that they will sell it in two years. Is hiring people, setting up CRM systems, and automating things still the issue to address? Or should we look at another dimension? These are different levels of observation. As someone develops, they can choose the level on which they want to work, what they want to study and examine now, and what they are ready for. People in today's world are not ready for genuine, true spiritual development. They are not ready to enter it, study it, or look at it. I say, “There's no problem. Join V100 and explore a broad range of approaches, knowledge, and materials in different areas.” That does not mean you can do this only in V100. You supplement it with other literature and authors, your own experience, and other people's perspectives. But there is an important foundation that supports you. In both programs, I have always emphasized—and will continue to emphasize—the most important thing...

Regularity. That is why I made the groups subscription-based. It is not an activity with a fixed beginning and end. You can end your participation whenever you like, just as your life could end at any time, you could move home at any time, or anything else could happen. You have the right to stop. But the subject itself is ongoing and regular. It has no endpoint built into a teaching method, because such an endpoint limits your own development. In life, we need a foundation, programs, and people around us who support real, continuous development. Not this false terminology—my God, how much people are lied to through the whole model of endless education, “lifelong learning,” and so on. There is so much deceit in it. You need a sound, genuine educational foundation, driven by the understanding that this education helps you make the right decision at any moment.

OSOlga Stolyarova

How do you avoid turning this into a race or becoming greedy for knowledge? You say we need to study comprehensively across every area: business, professional development, relationships, and so on. When I do that, I personally feel as though I enter a constant race. Or the opposite happens: I see so much material that I lose the motivation to study because I feel I have already fallen behind. How can we approach learning across all these areas of life effectively when we choose an educational program?

AVAlexander Volchek

The most important question is why you are learning. Why are you doing it? That is an excellent question. When I say it is important to keep studying throughout your life so you can make sound decisions and take the right next steps, that gives a person a particular orientation. A person does not live in order to earn lots of money, be happy, feel joy, achieve the greatest possible social success, have twenty children, or win a Nobel Prize. They live because they live. That is the essence of life: you live because you live. The development I am talking about, taking the right next step, is intended to help you know yourself better and connect more deeply with yourself, to truly perceive the causes and consequences of what surrounds you. The race arises in only one situation: when someone wants specific achievements and social markers. They want abstract career success, or to find a husband or wife—the best husband or wife—or to earn enough money to have children.

The race comes from looking at education in a limited way. What does that mean? Much of the upbringing provided by institutions in the Russian-speaking world—in the Soviet Union, in Belarus and Russia, and really in many countries—works like this: at home, you are told, “If you don't get an education, you won't have a job. If you don't get an education, you'll be worthless.” The central idea is that you will somehow be inadequate in society: you will not make money or find work, or you will be an outcast. Where is the idea that a person needs to know themselves? Where is the idea of truly perceiving the world? It is absent from that framework. The goal is finite. Parents have a finite goal: for the child to move successfully from middle school to high school, as it used to be, enter tenth grade, and then go from eleventh grade into university.

And then find a job. Once they are at university, though, that becomes their own problem. Those are the goals parents often set and monitor. They are not trying to understand how the child's life will actually unfold. They look at it through their own problems and frameworks of perception. Their life's task is not, “I want to keep discovering my child throughout life, to learn who they truly are.” Instead, they try to construct a road or a system for the child. Many say, “I didn't succeed, so at least you should.” Others say, “I succeeded, so you should succeed in the same way.” But the focus of this question needs to shift. Again, a race arises when development has a fixed final result, and that is a mistake. There is not necessarily anything wrong with choosing, within your wider development and education, a specific course designed to help you get a job, or an education directed toward particular concrete goals.

Or acquiring knowledge that will help you get to know another person better. There is no problem with that. The question is how broadly you perceive it, what larger system it belongs to, why you are doing it, and how it affects other parts of your life. Listen to enough people and someone will say, “Don't spread yourself thin. Focus on one subject and become a professional in it.” Someone else says, “Try many different things and become a professional in several.” Someone says, “First you have to work hard for a very long time...”

“...and only then enjoy the rewards.” That produces the idea: first work for fifty years, then have a child. Someone else says you should enjoy what is happening now and turn your attention to other things later. There is now a tremendous problem with birth rates around the world. Today I read an interesting article—a scientific, materialistic, unfounded, abstract article. I keep saying people should be put in prison for deceiving others. It said people used to think the world needed, I believe, 2.13 or 2.3 children per woman. Now they think it needs 2.7 and that there is already a shortage. In America, I think it is 1.66 or 1.33 children per woman. There is a steep decline in many countries, especially wealthy ones. People channel their prosperity into enjoying it and having a good time. The article included a comment from Elon Musk that people want too much to remain in an illusory state of freedom. I am not promoting Elon Musk as a philosopher—certainly not. I am simply talking about the subject itself: how you understand cause and effect, where it will lead, what truly matters, what will actually happen, and what to pay attention to and do.

Imagine that in five years AI could do absolutely everything people do and earn money for everyone. People would just chill and relax. I live in California, in Silicon Valley, so I'll borrow the English word “chill.” People would relax and even receive extra money to buy things. All these systems would keep working. What would that mean? Everything people had been told about professions, development, and education would be an illusion. What endless learning? The same people who talk about universal basic income—governments paying people money simply to live—often promote endless education as well. Why? The question is which country we live in and how it views life. Does it see life as life, or divide work and hobbies into separate categories? I have a good video about hobbies on this channel: people set hobbies apart, while work is just work. In America, there is a phrase. Always pay attention to why a particular country uses a particular phrase.

People always ask, “What do you do for a living?” Literally, what do you do in order to live? They do not ask which job you work at. In Russian, people never ask it that way: “What do you do for life?” I think it would puzzle someone. “What do I do for life? I drink and eat.” In America, people answer, “I'm a programmer,” or, “I'm a sales manager,” or, “I have my own manufacturing business.” They answer a question about living in terms of business and professional activity. It is fascinating. Why does that happen? What does it mean? It is strange: does that make work life and everything else something other than life? Or is there no life without work? What would everyone with that belief do if people suddenly stopped working? Suppose they did. Today there is some probability of it. The best-known people on the planet talk about a ten, twenty, or thirty percent chance, but say it will happen in twenty years, not now. There is a real possibility. There is also a chance that AI will take everything and people will become slaves.

People talk about that possibility too. It matters that it is possible. What happens then? How do I adapt? What truly matters for a person? Someone in my V100 group asked, “I've made money and provided for myself. I spend more than I earn, but I'm trapped in a city like a cage.” He is in Kyiv and feels caged in. He said he had met his basic needs. So what is a basic need, really? Money? Having a husband or wife, or children? Having a cat, a dog, a hamster, a beautiful bed, walls, a house, or an apartment? Is it going on vacation every three months, every six months, or every year? Think about it. Is it having twenty million dollars, thirty million, a thousand, or ten thousand in the bank? What is basic? Or is a basic need a person's inner state? A person's basic need is to move toward connection with themselves, to understand cause and effect and truly hear themselves. But decide for yourself what a basic need means to you.

If you want to make twenty million dollars a basic need, go ahead. But immediately ask yourself: do you realize you have completely deceived yourself? One hundred percent. If grenades are flying, you can stick that basic need wherever you like. What if someone steals it? Your bank account is emptied, the state takes the money, criminals break in, your spouse takes it, your children steal it, it burns, or there is a currency redenomination. The country defaults. AI arrives. Countries no longer exist. What has happened to your basic need? You need to know what can be taken from you and what cannot, what belongs to you and what does not. Understand this calmly and naturally. Most people do not really perceive that they will die. They know everyone dies, but when they lie down at night, they are sure they will wake in the morning, or still be here an hour from now. It is not part of their awareness. Your perception changes greatly when you understand what comes into being, what dies, what does not die, and what cannot be taken from you.

So what is a basic need? Mine is not that. Obviously, I need to breathe, eat, and drink. But there is a nuance: breathe what kind of air? There are many different kinds of air you could breathe. What difference does it make? Someone might die the next day after breathing bad air; someone else might die in seventy years. Either way, you will die. Fine—there is no issue with recognizing these things. The question is what else to consider. The race you describe, Olya, and the endless goals arise when you live in a limited world you have imposed on yourself, with nothing higher or beyond it. Someone says, “You need to see the next step in business, not just set one goal. Look further.” Really? Your final step in business is clear: the business closes, or you die. You close it, sell it, or leave it; eventually the business closes. Or you die before that, whether you still own it or not. There is no other final step. All of it will die. Shall we keep digging all the way to that step?

We can reach it. Then what? What does it mean to see the next step? It is a very finite task. If we ask what we need to learn to achieve these short-term goals—and they are always short-term goals: finding a job, getting hired, making money—that is what parents set for us. Such a very good approach. Then the person runs like a squirrel in a wheel, often no longer understanding what is happening. Today there are a billion coaches they can watch, explaining how to set goals and what to do. Each has something new to say about how everyone needs to pull themselves together now. My favorites say, “Now is the time to pull yourself together.” I think, “Let's rewind this coach five years.” There they are, saying, “Now is the time to pull yourself together.” It reminds me of Russian-language television: “We'll pull together now. Right now. Now everyone must really pull together.” You want to say, “Could you go ahead and pull yourselves together while I attend to my need to understand cause and effect properly? You can rally, strain, watch, and do absolutely everything...”

“...while I study cause and effect, because I want to truly know and understand my first, second, third, and fourth child.” I have four, so I stopped there, but I could go on to a fifth or sixth. I want to know myself more and more and understand more about genuinely living life. You need a constant in that perception. In my mentoring group, for example, that is the constant I provide. That is what it is for. If you want to leave, you can leave and continue your life with the same constant. I simply reinforce it here. That is why joining is inexpensive and straightforward: currently fifty dollars, or thirty dollars for spiritual development. It is a simple constant, day after day: the wish to study spiritual science and to perceive the world as spiritual, always, without arguing with it. Someone comes and says, “I wasn't spiritual today. I yelled at my wife.” Wait a second: you were spiritual, and you yelled at your wife spiritually.

There is no such division in the spiritual world. Do you really think there are no people with highly developed spiritual abilities, high positions in hierarchies, contacts, and the ability to see and perceive different worlds who also kill people? It would be strange to think they do not exist. Do you think spiritual development is paradise, daisies, and light? If your starting point is the material world, the spiritual world becomes a daisy: a little circle of spirituality created within it. Then people say, “But there is also some spiritual thing that isn't a daisy—the devil, Lucifer.” That becomes another point, not here at all, somewhere out there. I won't even go into it. Or there is a material world with a spiritual world next to it. Not here, but beside it. I do not understand how it can be beside it. We live here in the material world, and the spiritual world is next door, and I can switch into it and out of it. And there are daisies. Look very clearly at the fact that you live in the spiritual world.

It is very easy to demonstrate to yourself. You do not even need to go anywhere. I always say: if you think otherwise, change your inner state an hour from now. Suddenly generate stress in yourself. Switch it on instantly, then switch it off instantly, on and off. After all, if you can fully control reality and matter, you should be able to do everything from within the material world. Saying that the spiritual world contains the material world is itself an abstract way of communicating the idea. But to understand it a little better, consider that every action you take in the material world also takes place in the spiritual world—including killings and misfortunes. Human beings are interesting creatures. They deceive people, steal, do all kinds of extraordinary things in their thoughts, and manipulate others. At the same time they say, “Why was that person's child born ill?” or, “Why did this happen to me? What did I do to deserve it?” What do you mean, what did you do? You are living in endless psychological trauma.

That is why I have a substantial, subscription-based spiritual development program. I also have closed subscription groups, such as Life, with a limited number of participants. There is a simple, easy entry point for establishing a daily state of perceiving, hearing, and truly knowing the spiritual world. The point is not particular teachers, religions, teachings, esoteric movements, clans, mountains, caves, or special practices. The point is for you yourself to develop your ability to hear and perceive what is happening, without intermediaries, movements, or restrictions. Develop yourself, and where necessary, draw on additional literature, knowledge, and practices. Learn whom to interact with and whom not to, whom to listen to and whom not to listen to.

OSOlga Stolyarova

You keep saying that everything is spiritual, yet you have separated these two programs: the spiritual life program and V100. Why separate them? Isn't there a kind of dissonance?

AVAlexander Volchek

They are separate because people today still have a particular focus. Some have a very strong focus and say, “I don't want to enter that layer. Sorry, but I see the spiritual world as part of the material world, and I want to remain there and study from that position.” Of course I will guide them, broaden their knowledge, and show them more of reality. At the same time, I can calmly discuss effectiveness, business development, earning money, and professional work through personal experience and perception, occasionally adding spiritual aspects. All of this is part of living too. But we will not enter many of the deeper, essential layers. We still need to know how to brush our teeth with a toothbrush, not only understand what happens spiritually. There is a simple action to perform. Learning to ride a bicycle is not a matter of spiritual study; it requires a repeated sequence of actions. In the spiritual development program, however, my focus is on explaining and guiding people toward spiritual science and spiritual worlds, and toward perceiving through the spiritual and through energy.

Learning to see and broaden perception where someone does not yet know how. The programs complement each other well. Some people participate in both. They simply provide different entry points. Someone says, “I want to enter spiritual study specifically. I can absorb it and remain in that space.” Someone else says, “I'll join V100 now and stay there. That's something I can engage with.”

OSOlga Stolyarova

That was exactly my question: how do I, or anyone else, know which to choose when there is spiritual development on one hand and V100 on the other?

AVAlexander Volchek

If you feel drawn to different environments, join both groups. The cost of entry is straightforward: fifty dollars and thirty dollars. Those are not complicated or especially difficult prices for a person. If they are difficult for you and you want to join both, choose one. You know better where you want to direct your impulse and attention. There is no rule. I cannot tell someone in advance without knowing them; I cannot build that answer into this video. The point is not to be afraid to join, to try both, or to experiment. That is part of the purpose of a subscription. Give yourself the opportunity to stay with something over time. Everyone constantly wants short programs, bite-size ideas, short books, or a quick summary. People praise the apps and software that make this possible. Now ChatGPT can pull a single conclusion out of a book for you very quickly, or read fifty books at once on your behalf.

Previously, people wanted a summary of one book. Now you can have a summary of a thousand books—a single reading summary of a thousand of an author's books. That is the direction everyone is going. Fine; it is their choice. But to understand even what I am conveying, you have to give it time. You need to watch many videos, read articles, and spend time together. Otherwise, any conclusion you draw is an abstraction, untrue. When I interact with people, I know for certain that I perceive only a little of them. This is one of the most useful exercises: remind yourself that you know this person only partially. It lets you live vividly, if you do not immediately assume you know how a country works...

...how a country works, how a person, politician, business, or program works. Instead of immediately saying, “I know my wife, husband, parents, and children,” allow yourself not to know them. That is where the vividness and color of life come from. Ask someone a question, and in two seconds they say, “I know everything.” Ask a quick follow-up and they say, “Ah, yes, I don't know that part.” Then you were lying; you were deceiving. Every day you talk to people who deceive, lie, and lie again. I reply, and they say, “Oh, yes, it's different there.” You are deceiving yourself, and that is unacceptable. That is the thing not to do. Do not deceive yourself. What is a genuine foundation and backbone for life? Not deceiving yourself. Give yourself the chance to stop deceiving yourself for at least a little while. Recently, by the way, I created a file called “66 Elements of Scaling.” I would never have chosen that number myself, but my editors helped me compile it.

It became “66 Elements of Scaling,” and it is a terrific file, completely free. We will leave a link below the video so you can download it. Some of these elements are intended to bring results quickly, within a week or a month, while others bring results over time. Remember that some things produce quick results, but you always need a lasting effect: something that works for years, even if not immediately. Many people take a trip and want an instant effect. An effect that lasts for the next twenty years would be much more interesting. People finish watching a video and ask, “Did I like it or not?” Instead, consider that the video or practice may influence your next twenty or thirty years. That is interesting.

OSOlga Stolyarova

We were talking about choosing whom to learn from. Does it matter which person you go to? How should you choose, and what should you base the choice on?

AVAlexander Volchek

I would build on what I have just described. What exactly are you going to study? If it is a particular piece of knowledge, you will use a range of criteria. Perhaps you like the teacher, or know the program produces the specific result you want. It always comes back to your goal. If your aim is to plant a seed for a life of clear perception, understanding cause and effect, and effective action, choose someone who wants to explain and offer that to you. Go where that is offered. I think the offers are quite clear if you look into them, stop deceiving yourself with illusions, and see what is really there. Choose what is actually being offered to you. Remove illusions from the selection process and look at the offer. That is the most important thing. From the beginning, I have explained the kind of learning I invite you into. And you must take responsibility for it yourself. It is your responsibility.

OSOlga Stolyarova

How do you learn to tell the difference? As you said, there are so many pseudo-coaches and others, if I understood you correctly. How do you distinguish between them? Or does it not matter who the person is and what they bring? They might lack competence. Does that matter, or is it more about what I myself can take from a program and what my goal is?

AVAlexander Volchek

Whom you go to matters a great deal. I said at the start that you can go to people who make things worse. The question is whether you see the patterns behind a particular course of learning. There are interesting things in today's world: a program may greatly increase your income. You begin earning fifty times as much, but perhaps it takes something else away, or brings something else into your life. How aware are you of that? How clearly do you see it, and how ready are you—and everyone around you? The question is your ability to make a sound decision and take the right step. That is why I created V100. Participating makes it easier to make decisions about other programs, courses, manuals, files, books, people—anything. That is the point, and exactly what I discuss there. There is no single easy answer. Perhaps, Olya, you want a golden wand you can wave to get an answer. But there is no golden wand. Only the person themselves can make the right decision, because everyone has so many individual characteristics.

As I have said many times, people have very different values and ranges of perception. Some consider it acceptable to kill people. Others do not consider killing acceptable, but think stealing is fine. Others reject stealing but accept lying. Others reject lying but harm people. Others do not harm people through their actions but harm them in their thoughts, and so on. Everyone has their own extremes. You often tell someone, “That was a bad action. Someone else kills, and you do this.” They say, “But it's not murder.” Each person chooses their own boundary, their own limits. That is why there is no single golden solution I can give you. I cannot give it to you; it is impossible. Please support my channel. My videos currently come out on Wednesdays and Sundays, and I lead meditations here on Fridays. Leave a comment on this video and give it a like.

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