How to Feel Better and Better Every Year

AVAlexander Volchek

How can you make your life—our lives, everyone's life, and of course yours in particular—get better? Better for more than a day, better for more than a month, better beyond a year, without its development coming to a stop: how can you keep feeling better, keep developing, keep growing, and experience that powerful, enormous feeling of knowing, “I feel good now. I definitely feel better”? How do you feel? What's your mood like? What state are you in? That is the main reason, the single most important reason, a person does nothing. That is why you so often don't take the various actions recommended by people outside your life: mentors, coaches in programs, books, psychotherapy—whatever it may be. I suggest an incredibly powerful solution. You can always develop. Always. You still have an enormous amount of time for things to keep getting better. When you truly feel that, you truly grow as a person. Your whole life expands. This question of how to feel better and better with every passing year concerns practically everyone. The thought that something better lies ahead keeps appearing in your mind. It is a kind of hope for life in the future. You keep thinking about what will happen in the future in terms of your own inner state.

You keep thinking about how to start feeling good tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, in a month, in a year. One of the major problems here—one of the really major problems... By the way, the question itself is reasonable, isn't it? It isn't a bad question. Someone might say that this isn't living in the here and now. And yes, perhaps there is some anxiety in it. At the same time, it is entirely reasonable to ask yourself, “How can I feel better?” Especially if you ask it from the perspective of developing and growing as a person: my perception is expanding; my life is expanding. It makes sense that we keep talking about beginning to feel better as a person. How do you do that? There is a very interesting illusion here that actually confuses people. This question involves a person's gradual development: better and better. Notice that where there is “better and better,” there is no end. But if you look at what a person wants, they want to feel better at some particular point—two years from now. They say, “In five years, I'll earn a million dollars and move to Thailand.”

Or, “I'll buy an apartment, and everything will be good.” Or, “We'll have a baby, and everything will be completely fine.” Or, “I'll build a career at this job, then start my own business. Once I start my own business, everything will be good.” There is a stopping point. But when we examine “better and better”—better in a week, then better in a month, then in two years—the basic idea, the very first thing to explain, is that things always keep getting better. Listen to what that means. Before we even get to how, we need to understand the full force of this question. It means there is no limit to feeling better. It means things can get better. It isn't simply that you feel like a ten now and will get to a hundred. You feel like a hundred and will get to a thousand. You feel like a thousand and will get to ten thousand, and so on. No. When we talk about a better state here, we mean there is development all the time, all the time, all the time, all the time, all the time.

There is a kind of infinity to it. That is a very powerful way to approach this question. We will still get to how, specifically, you do it: what specific actions are needed to make it happen. On this channel, I talk a great deal about growing as a person and about real development. Every subject I focus on—professional growth, children, family, health, your personal inner state, spiritual development—concerns your growth as a human being and as an individual. Please support the channel: like the videos and leave comments. First of all, leave comments as a way of reflecting for yourself. They also really support the channel. Subscribe so you don't miss these videos, and like them. When you like them, these videos will be shown to you. I release videos on my channel at least once a week. There is an interesting paradox here: we're discussing “better and better,” but I want to devote a small part of this to feeling worse. We've just said that things can get better without end: there is an infinite possibility of feeling better. It is very important to remember that. But it is also important to remember that there is an infinite possibility of feeling worse.

Things can also get worse and worse—infinitely worse. In this video, we are examining how to get better, and we will certainly discuss specific actions. How can you make life keep getting better? That is one way to frame the question. On the other hand, there is an important question you can ask: how can you live so that things don't keep getting worse, so that they don't keep getting so much worse that they head toward an infinity of worse? If I know things can be bad at minus ten, how do I prevent that from becoming minus a hundred, then minus a thousand, then minus ten thousand, then a million? Minus a million. And as life shows, things can get very, very much worse. To continue with the question of getting better, let's examine what “better and better” actually means, so that we have a shared understanding of how we will assess a better state and how you will assess it. Will you assess “better” in terms of material wealth? Or in terms of health? Or in terms of how many people surround you? Or will you assess “better” by some other criterion?

I suggest that you begin assessing “better” using a criterion other than external social indicators: more money, for instance, or a better job, or better professional work. There is plenty said about that elsewhere; you can find it in many places. I suggest assessing a better state in relation to your perception of the world. Look: not better in terms of your state and sensations, not better in terms of your emotions, not better in terms of the circumstances unfolding in your life. Not better in that respect, but better in terms of how you experience this world at all: how much you feel it, how much you understand what is actually happening right now—what is actually happening right now—how much you feel everything, and how ready you are to notice your state at all. Is your state improving or getting worse? This is an interesting point, because it seems as though we're heading in another direction. But when you enter this state of assessment... I am not against—let me repeat, I am not against you asking whether it is bad to live in a better state. I suggest looking at how you will assess and compare it going forward, because you will be comparing and assessing it your whole life. Your whole life, whatever happens, wherever you are—wherever you are, whatever happens—you will be reflecting, simply reflecting on your own state.

There is a kind of reflection that leads to decline. That is when you are constantly dissatisfied with your own state, or excessively pleased with it, so to speak. I mean excessively pleased in this case: you aren't telling yourself the real truth, and at some point you stop assessing your life. You simply stop. You enter a state of total closedness. Life and the flow of life mean being in a state of constant assessment, constant observation, constant, endless observation. If you want to develop rather than stop—to develop—you have to keep observing your life and assessing what is really happening to you. What is your life actually like? How do you feel? What's your mood like? What state are you in? Where are causes and effects really taking you? What is actually going to happen? What is actually going to happen?

When you can calmly assess these things over a long period—five months, a year, three years, five years, fifteen years—when you can assess them over a very long period, that is a better state. Again, this is a very interesting aspect of observing yourself. Observe a better state from a standpoint other than external qualities and characteristics, other than your sense of how you feel. How you feel matters; it matters incredibly. It matters far more than how much money you have, far more than anything else that might be happening. How, specifically, do you feel? What particular state are you in at this moment? What is happening inside you? That is very important. But the most important thing is whether you are capable of feeling it at all. You may think—and many people may think—that everything in life is wonderful, that everything is good. But the person simply sees a very narrow picture; they simply don't perceive reality. They have become so closed off and so insensitive, so focused on reflecting only in order to evaluate this particular idea of “better,” that they are losing their life. There is one problem in this whole question of how to live better and better. We've looked at its different sides.

There is another very interesting side: a person doesn't acknowledge that anything in their life is wrong at all. Essentially, they think everything is already good. This is a fairly familiar aspect of egoism: a person reaches the state of asking, “Why should I do anything at all?” And people do nothing. They simply do nothing. Why does this state arise? It is a kind of apathy and inability to perceive everything that is happening. At some point in life, the person closed off their perception, and they were never taught how to perceive. They limited themselves, stopped developing at twenty-seven or twenty-eight, and simply drift along a particular current. As they drift, they say, “Listen, my life is already good. Why do I need it to get better and better?” Look, there are people who say, “I want to move to Thailand in three years. I want things to get better for me.” And there are people who say, “Everything is already good.” And they've stopped. This is the main reason—the single most important reason—a person does nothing. The primary reason a person does nothing. But what does doing nothing mean? Look at how they do nothing.

I said earlier that the most important thing you need to do for things to get better is to recognize the fact itself. We'll get to some actions shortly, but recognize the fact itself. It is very important to recognize that “better” means expanding your perception of what is happening. A person stops taking action because they don't fully perceive what is happening. They are afraid to perceive it. They are afraid to truly open up, afraid to truly see the world unfolding around them, afraid to truly tell themselves the truth. It is like a snowball. It builds and builds and builds and builds and builds and builds and builds and builds and builds and builds. The person has less and less desire to act, less and less desire to develop, less and less desire to calmly acknowledge to themselves that it matters for things to get better. Again, better in what way? They have lost their way. Feeling better in terms of their perception... It takes strength to honestly tell yourself and set this goal: “I want things to get better so that I can perceive more.” You just asked me, “How do I actually take action?” Let's examine where the right action comes from.

For that desire to arise—look, to want to act, you have to want to do something. You also have to understand: what am I actually going to do? What am I actually going to do? And you have to know what you need to do for things to get better. That is a separate, major, fundamental question. To want things to get better, you have to at least work out what “better” means. Otherwise, there will be a problem. If we take “better” to mean getting our child into a good school, or owning a home, or having a lot of money, or our wife not getting hysterical, then we will arrive at actions aimed at those events. I suggest considering and arriving at actions aimed at events connected with feeling better because you perceive more of everything that is happening. When you perceive more, you gain an incredible tool, an absolutely enormous tool. You gain the ability to choose what to do, because right now you aren't choosing what to do. A person who doesn't want to develop, a person who wants to feel better in the short term, a person who thinks absolutely everything is already good, or a person who endlessly remains in a state of “everything is bad”—endlessly, whatever happens, “everything is bad”—is, first and foremost, someone who doesn't perceive everything that is happening around them.

They have an inner state of apathy, an inner state of anxiety, an inner state of irritation, an inner state of depression. I think everyone knows, and every possible means has demonstrated, that depression has absolutely nothing to do with how much money is in your account or how many children you have in your family. Yesterday I met with a very well-known... I'm in California, in America, and I live here. Yesterday I met with a very well-known American entrepreneur, and we got into a conversation. One of his employees came over and sat down while we were talking at the table. He said, “He has four children.” He meant me. “He has four children.” And he said, “I don't know how you manage.” I said, “But you have three.” He said, “No, four isn't three.” I told him, “Listen, four is even easier than three.” He said, “No, two was easy. I thought three would be the same, but three turned out to be very hard.” But that is his state. This particular person finds it hard, while I feel calm. It has nothing to do with the number of children. It has to do with some inner state.

I am not saying a person can't find tasks like these difficult. This is a very difficult task. What's more, different tasks come into each person's life. While my wife and I feel good spending time with our children and feel joy, many people need a large number of nannies in order to be with theirs. Or many people say, “We feel good,” but they feel good because they have various forms of support in their circumstances at that moment. For example, we never wanted to live with someone outside the family, to have a nanny living with us. We never wanted that. We felt that our space should be just for us, without someone else staying overnight. But many people, because they can't spend time with their children, surround themselves with additional tools. It is very important to examine those tools. What does it mean to have someone outside the family living with you? When someone else lives with you, they can bring you far more depression, negative emotional states, and difficulties than a child does. You think it is the child, when it is actually the other person. And very often, you aren't living through the experience of raising your own child. You simply aren't living through it.

You aren't there, you aren't continually involved in raising this child. Someone else is raising your child. That person lives with the child, and that other person raises them. The same thing happens when we surround ourselves with additional arrangements at work, in business. We say, “I don't want to handle the financial accounting in my company because it doesn't interest me, I don't like it, and it stresses me out. I won't do it under any circumstances. My finance person handles it.” The person is simply running away from resolving this issue.

They don't want to approach the issue openly and calmly acknowledge that they are running away from resolving it. The situation with children and the situation in business are very similar. They are very similar, very similar. Again, I am not saying you shouldn't have nannies. This doesn't mean you shouldn't have CFOs. The question is how fully you perceive the situation that is unfolding: whether you are making it worse, or whether you understand the cause-and-effect relationships and truly understand what is happening. Truly understand what is happening. Not abstractly, not in an illusory way, but truly understand what is happening. How fully do you actually take account of all of it, of what is happening? For example, people go to a psychologist for psychotherapy and are given specific solutions, specific things to do, but they don't take those actions. They simply don't, for some reason. They don't take those actions for particular reasons. They see that they've been given an action to take, and they don't take it. Why don't they take that action? Again, this person doesn't have the strength to take that action. They don't have the strength to grasp the action at all. It isn't a matter of not believing in it. They don't understand what it is at all.

Nothing connects—not just their neural networks; nothing in their whole system is connected in a way that would allow them to take action. Because taking action isn't a matter of the brain. It involves your entire spiritual being in order to take a real, powerful action. Many people's problems are visible, and the actions are often very simple. You tell someone, “Call your mom this evening. Call her, and your whole state will transform from there.” The person doesn't call. You tell someone, “Talk with your husband. Just spend some more time talking together.” The person doesn't have that additional conversation, and no transformation happens; there is no movement forward. There is, however, another side to this. It is important to remember, and you should remember it: any advice from outside has two sides. On one side, the advice may be very useful, right, necessary, genuine, and true. On the other, it may be advice that drives you into decline, into a worse state. Everything depends on whether the person giving the advice sees the whole picture. An enormous number of people don't see the whole picture.

They think that if they solve this particular issue now, everything will get better. But by solving one issue, they set off a whole chain of enormous other problems that begin to occur in this person's life. Over five to ten years, far more negative events than positive ones happen to the person, precisely because of that decision. That is why you so often don't take the various actions recommended by people outside your life—mentors, coaches in programs, books, psychotherapy, whatever it may be, various teachers—because your spiritual being understands that you shouldn't follow that advice. You shouldn't follow every piece of advice you are given. Here we return to the original question: what is better? Better means perceiving more broadly. Perceiving more broadly means seeing cause-and-effect relationships more broadly. Seeing cause-and-effect relationships more broadly means understanding truth and real truth more fully. Understanding truth and real truth more fully means having more strength to do something, more strength to act in accordance with truth. And understanding the truth means being able to make the right decisions. It also means having these possibilities, having these options at all. Not everyone has opportunities and options. We can sit and discuss at length how we don't want to tend a garden, how bad it is, but that doesn't mean everyone has the opportunity to tend a garden.

Some people have the opportunity to tend a garden; others don't. We can sit and discuss at length how good it is to take trips, but traveling is easy for some people and difficult for others. We can sit and discuss at length how great it is to start your own business. But not everyone can start a business, because there are daily responsibilities. You can't just stop and switch off your work if, for example, you're working two or three jobs to feed your children or your family. You simply can't do it. You can't switch; you don't have those opportunities. A switch like that could destroy everyone involved. Many people can't go outside because rockets are flying there. There is also the question of whether a space even exists that allows these things to happen. I will definitely make a video about the environment a person needs around them. And “environment” doesn't mean people. People are one part of an environment. An environment includes a great deal. What is in the air? What are we breathing? Ten years ago, in 2014, I asked a well-known doctor a question.

I asked him, “Could you tell me how much diet affects a person's health?” He looked at me and said, “Sasha, before talking about diet, it is important to understand that the first thing affecting a person's health is the air they breathe. If you live in Moscow...” I was living in Moscow at the time. I'm originally from Minsk, and my family and I moved to Moscow in 2010. Now we live in the United States, in California, a little south of San Francisco. He said, “It's the air.” That made me think: wow, that's interesting. That's fundamental. My whole system is constantly taking in a particular kind of air with particular components. If I'm somewhere with polluted air, that is how I will feel. So when people live in Dubai, for example, what difference does it make how much money there is? The question is: what are you breathing there? What, specifically, are you breathing? The second component he mentioned was water. Water isn't just what we drink. And an enormous number of people drink very questionable water, too. There is also the water when we take a shower—that is water we use—as well as water outside, everything our body takes in and comes into contact with.

He went on to say that diet comes only third. And then he said to me, “Should we keep talking about food?” There are many other environmental factors, too, involving the places you enter every day. What does the space around you look like? What kind of space is it? How does it make you feel? There are places that cannot evoke positive feelings. There are places that will evoke only negative feelings. Whatever you do, if you go somewhere with fifty drunk people, it will evoke particular feelings in you. You can't do anything about that. Whatever you do there, however much you meditate there or work with a psychologist there, you will feel bad. If rockets are flying outside and alarms keep sounding, you will feel bad. This is very important to remember. When we talk about getting better, when we talk about a person not taking action, we have to remember that there is a particular space we inhabit and that there will be certain limitations. That is a huge lock keeping a person stuck, because they want things to get better.

First, they want a finite kind of better: they want things to be better two years from now. That is a finite kind of better. Second, they want that better state within a limited space. I suggest an incredibly powerful solution: approach a better state as a state in which you perceive broadly, a state in which you perceive much more of the life that is unfolding. Then your surroundings no longer matter. At the same time, when you understand that “better” is infinite, you understand that you can always develop, regardless of your age. You can always develop. Always, even if you're seventy or eighty. Many of you watching now are thirty-five or forty; some are a little younger, some a little older. You need to understand that you still have an enormous amount of time for things to keep getting better. What's behind you? It was simply one part of your life. Feeling that is an incredible happiness. When you truly feel it, you truly grow as a person. Your whole life expands. It isn't some ordinary threefold or fivefold growth. It is something completely different: a different fullness, a different life.