Why People Chase Success and Lose Themselves

AVAlexander Volchek

We are living in a world with a crazy pace.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

Look, when we talk about this race, it seems as though it will never end. You never reach a point where you are satisfied with yourself.

AVAlexander Volchek

For one person, it is completely calm and natural: they have an inner impulse to undertake different projects, so they do them. Another person does not have that impulse and does not do those projects. There is no single formula for saying that it is good to have ten goals or twenty goals, or that having a million dollars is all right.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

Where is that healthy balance between ambition, striving for success, and at the same time paying attention to yourself and living your own path, including your spiritual path? The problem of success, right? I feel that this idea is already fading a little, because sooner or later this endless race for success causes psychological burnout in anyone. And yet it is still there. You know, I think social media intensified it, because we all seem to be in an endless race, an endless competition with one another. Recently I read a book that told a story about plans to open a McDonald's on the main square in Rome. All the Italians were alarmed, of course, saying, “No, absolutely not. We are completely against it.” Naturally, they failed to stop it because everything was corrupt. In opposition, they decided to launch the slow living movement. It began with slow food, as the opposite of fast food: enjoying your food slowly, preferably something made from a recipe invented by an Italian grandmother, and always surrounded by people you enjoy being with.

Then it grew into the concept of slow living, which I think is becoming quite widespread in America now, especially among people younger than us. I would be interested to hear what you think about that.

AVAlexander Volchek

It is interesting that you said the idea of success has diminished, as though people's striving for success has gone away. Tanya, I think that has to do with your own sense of when you were personally immersed in it or personally involved with it. You personally. It is your own impression. But if we really look at society, even if we take slow living and look at Silicon Valley—a seemingly progressive place—I hardly see slow living here, considering that people—

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

Stop.

AVAlexander Volchek

People here do not go for walks during the day or go to the ocean. Where are they? They are working. These are people who are always busy, always working, always moving at a crazy, endless pace. We live in a world with a crazy pace, where people consume an incredible amount of content: scrolling through reels, watching series, wanting to consume still more books—or, without consuming those things, retreating into their own desires. So what is success? You could say that someone is striving for success because they want a good job. Or does that not count as striving for success? Does it mean wanting to earn a billion dollars? A billion counts, but ten million does not? Or a trillion? The question is always what goals people set for themselves: these outward goals of success. What are those goals, and do people understand whether they fit their lives? Someone might think you are a person who is endlessly striving for success. They might come up to you and say that you want to speak publicly, for example.

We have a channel about artificial intelligence, and you are a regular participant there. Here you are a guest for the occasion; there you are a regular participant. Someone could say you are on that channel because you are striving for success. You might say, “I am on that channel simply because they asked me to be there.” Or, “It is just part of my life. A task came along—why not do it?” Or, “I am there because I want to understand how the technological world works.” Or, “I enjoy talking with those people.” There can be completely different reasons. So the question is always how people judge from the outside what success is and whether someone is striving for it—even if we ask whether that state and aspiration are normal. Another question is what you actually feel inside, and why you need it. Say someone tells themselves they want to increase their salary tenfold or become famous.

What goals lie behind that? What are the inner factors? What is behind it? That is the most important thing: what is behind it. Why is this particular person taking that action? And here we come to another question: who knows that? Who has the information about whether someone is striving for success? I know people who are very quiet and closed off, who do not put themselves out there or post things on social media, yet they have an incredible thirst for power, money, profit, for being everywhere. And there are very open people who post everything, everywhere. On the previous episode of ToTheMoon, someone wrote, “Well, Alexander, everything is clear about you. Enough telling us that you live a wealthy life.” I sat there wondering where they had got that impression. First, why did they decide I live a wealthy life? Second, why did they decide I want to tell them about it? If I wanted to tell them what kind of life I live, I would probably talk about some other things.

They are speaking from their own impression and understanding of another person's actions. Their own personal impression. And someone who writes, “No, that is not what is happening; this person is acting differently,” is also speaking from their own impression. When we ask how to look at all this, it is very important for each of us to notice whether it takes hold of us personally, inside. Does it take hold of you? When you post a photograph on Instagram or Facebook, or tell someone something, what is driving you? Yesterday I was talking with people I had not seen in a long time, and someone was telling me things. As we walked along, I observed why they were telling me this. You know how you meet up, someone starts talking, and you stand there thinking, “Why are they telling me this?” In the modern world, we have often become used to a mode of communication in which everyone says what they think needs saying, whenever they think it needs saying. People rarely listen to one another or come together anymore. They simply find themselves in a space, and each performs a role.

But those roles are not even connected. You find yourself in a space where, willingly or not, you become a participant in these conversations, in this account. At that moment, you cannot say, “Listen, why are we discussing this?” In a social—

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

Some people do.

AVAlexander Volchek

Some do, yes. But in social life that brings things to a halt, limits the relationship, and leaves people unsure how to be with that person and communicate. One of the key questions is how much a person thinks about the people around them while spending time together, and how well they understand the main purpose. For example, I invited you here today to help me film a video. If you think about success in this video, how you look, how people will hear you personally, or about conveying your own ideas and opinions, you might accomplish those things. But you will not accomplish what you were invited to do. If you ask why I invited you—and you know why—I invited you to help me film this video, not to do all those other things we listed. Can someone do all the rest while helping and keeping the other person in mind? That is a person's social ability to live in and perceive society.

Someone might say that doing that would be manipulative on your part: helping me while also remembering that you want to look good, that many people might watch the video, and that it could attract an audience, which would be great. But that is normal and natural, and acknowledging it is normal and natural. It would also be normal and natural for you to come to me and say, “Sasha, I will help you film the video, but I would still like it to be done properly, with me in a nice setting, and so on.”

“How people perceive me personally matters to me.” That is normal. It would be the truth, a real human truth, not a lie. So when it comes to success, the fundamental, key issue is how a person actually feels. Then there is always the question of this subject taking hold of someone. Why does it take hold of them? Because they think only about themselves. If someone thinks only about themselves, of course it will take hold of them. If I make this video thinking only about myself, nothing good will come of it. I can convey information here independently of myself, as though from the outside: say what is actually within my consciousness and perception, within the impulses and thoughts that come from the spiritual world, across the full breadth of perception. I can try to answer the question truly honestly, again without thinking about what people will think of me. Considering what they will think of me immediately introduces a manipulative element that is also connected with success.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

Look, you have explained very interestingly how this race and these ideas take hold of people from the outside. But even inside, how do you measure it, as you said: ten million dollars, a billion, a trillion? It feels as though it will never end, as though you never reach a point where you are satisfied with yourself. You see another level of success, and another. Then your life is over. Where was that life? It feels as though it passed you by. On the other side, how do we distinguish someone who has no desires or ambitions, who is like an amoeba? That is considered wrong too. Where is the healthy balance between ambition, striving for success, paying attention to yourself, and living your own path, including your spiritual path?

AVAlexander Volchek

First, when we decide whether someone is an amoeba or not, that is another description we impose from the outside. Inside each person is a substantial process of life and perception. To truly understand it, you need to look with something other than ordinary sight; you cannot convey it through conversation. You can understand it only through broad, genuine perception—genuinely broad perception. How do you do that? The first thing to say and understand is that every person, absolutely every person, has an endless variety of these boundaries you describe, from minus to plus. Everyone has their own sense of balance in life, completely their own. For one person, undertaking different projects is entirely calm and natural because the impulse arises within them. They do those projects. Another person does not have that impulse and does not do them. The first person does them not because they are intelligent or have read books, but because that is how their spiritual system is, their entire system of soul and spirit, their spiritual being.

Those impulses arise naturally in them, not because they have some special physical body. People usually compare physical bodies, education, parents, and the family someone grew up in. But there is a whole range of influences within the structure of soul and spirit, much greater than being born into a sheikh's family or a beggar's, in Palestine or Monaco, or having a particular passport. Being born very beautiful or ugly, maimed, disfigured, or incredibly healthy: there are an enormous number of these characteristics. Again, in the spiritual world there are far more factors that affect whether particular impulses are present. There is no single formula for saying that it is good to have ten goals or twenty, that having a million dollars is normal but wanting ten million is not, that having a hundred dollars is good but wanting a thousand is bad, or that having two children is good but having ten is bad. From the standpoint of perceiving a person, that would be an absolute illusion. An absolute illusion. The main answer lies here: if people tried to perceive someone independently of themselves, their own opinions, social conventions, and accepted facts—including scientific and other facts—and tried to truly perceive that person.

What drives them inside? Why do they act that way? Why do those impulses arise at all? Why are twins born into the same family, yet one has an endless impulse to kill a kitten and the other to protect it? That is a very good example. Why does one child have an impulse to kill a kitten and the other, in the same family, does not? Where does that impulse come from? Everyone starts searching: someone said something at school, they watched something somewhere. But they all watched the same things, were in the same surroundings. The other child watched even more bad videos and films, read bad books, and spent time with questionable people. This one is a bright little kid, yet the impulse arose inside them. It simply arose. Without cartoons or social media, an impulse to kill a kitten appeared. They went and killed their own kitten at home, then said, “Somehow it just happened. I killed the kitten.” People do not want to study this now. Why? Because it cannot be analyzed through ordinary materialistic sight, ordinary materialistic vision. A person does not even want to look there or go into it. They do not want to explore it in themselves, or to understand other people's perception: how they feel, what is active inside them at a particular moment, and why that thirst is or is not present.

That thirst, that insatiability, can have different characteristics. We need to look broadly at where a person's impulses come from. These impulses arise from psychological and physical trauma or heredity. They arise from the life a person has lived and what they have acquired through it. Impulses arise from karmic causes and effects within their spiritual being. They arise within their spiritual structure itself. They arise from the country where the person lives. Where do these impulses come from? These impulses arise because the person interacts with other people: an impulse brought in from outside, not their own. It is not their noise. It is outside noise, outside noise that creates problems for them. There is a very good example, though it is difficult and hard to discuss. How would you discuss it? I remember someone once coming to me and saying, “I have realized very clearly that when I sleep with my wife, I feel very difficult worlds. So I will no longer share a bed with her.” Can you imagine discussing that?

Imagine that you have some difficult worlds within you, and at night they become very active and affect us, the people nearby—your husband, for example. Tanya, can you imagine how developed people need to be, how developed, to discuss something like that independently? Everyone immediately starts inventing explanations: he dislikes something, she dislikes something, he dislikes my body, or how someone snores or breathes. No, damn it, there are energies affecting me that I cannot handle. The person says, “For some reason, when I sleep alone, I sleep like a log. As soon as someone is next to me, I am done for. I feel as though I am dying. I wake up in the morning feeling as though I am dying.” Do people study these questions? They do not. Do they study the emergence of a particular impulse to start a business or become famous in their neighborhood? An enormous number of things depend on the energies among which people live. There are many dark energies and negative beings among us. But that is within a particular range of perception. There are different layers: you can go higher, and none of that is there.

There is only a kind of neutrality. Or only purity, or only light, or something else. If we live among harmonious energies, for example, there is an influence on the person, including the influence of their ego structure. Ego is incredibly strong. It is present in everyone and can manifest very different inner states. In some people it is heightened. One person may want to renovate their home just to prove to everyone how beautiful it all is—a beautiful renovation.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

Yes.

AVAlexander Volchek

Someone else might choose an expensive, beautiful design simply because they have an inner impulse toward beauty, an understanding of beauty. That is why, Tanya, I cringe when people say that the current fashion among wealthy people is the right one: wearing a single T-shirt or something like that. I say those people simply do not have that impulse.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

A dull sweater, right.

AVAlexander Volchek

There is no beauty, no impulse toward beauty, none of that energy. It is not a matter of this being right. They simply do not have the energy of understanding beauty. You could stand there for as long as you like—

explaining it, and they would not understand. Why, for example—

AVAlexander Volchek / Tatyana Tsvetkova

That is very interesting, by the way.

AVAlexander Volchek

does a sock have to have a hole in it?

AVAlexander Volchek / Tatyana Tsvetkova

Have they suppressed it, or do they not want to notice or feel it at all, or is it completely absent?

AVAlexander Volchek

Tanya, suppressed—

AVAlexander Volchek / Tatyana Tsvetkova

Does that happen?

AVAlexander Volchek

Tanya, the thing is, it does not happen that way. For the most part, people live entirely without awareness. In the modern world, people are not aware, and that is very important. They have developed a very powerful capacity for thought that will allow them to become aware of life and understand it. But most people move through a multidimensional river, an ocean of air with its own spaces. It is a train moving through ten-dimensional space, and it cannot be stopped. A person is moving along in that train. Do they take actions and exercise freedom? They do. But you need to understand that freedom is chaos. When you introduce a little freedom or take an action—for instance, you want more money, and suddenly it appears as if your wish has been magically granted—you need to understand that your entire life has changed in other respects.

And it has also changed for an enormous number of other people. So the idea would be that someone suppressed their sense of beauty and therefore wears socks with holes, or suppressed their understanding of aesthetics, beauty, or a state, and therefore does not wash their hair—as though they had pushed it down or removed it, or because that is right, or because it does not use energy. The point is that it does not use energy. At all. You and I know very well, Tanya, that our understanding of beauty is completely different in many ways. But even where it overlaps, where we both say something is beautiful, it does not use energy or require more time. It does not. You either feel and recognize it from within somehow, or you do not. Then there are many other layers: skill, experience, putting effort and attention into it, developing particular states, and everything else. But there are impulses that are switched off in a person, and whatever they do, they will not bring them back.

For example, a mother may have an impulse that makes spending time with a child easy. Easy to spend time with a child. I find spending time with children quite easy, and there are different aspects of my perception when I am with them. I notice them and observe my thoughts and states a great deal. You know how it is for me with four children. Tanya, you could bring me your three and I would not bat an eye. I would not even question it. If you called and said, “Sasha, I need to go away on Saturday. Can I bring my three children over?”—you have a little daughter—I would not even think of saying no. If I were free, I would say, “Bring them. What is the problem?” Just tell me what your little daughter needs, how to feed her, what to do for her. Because she is very small, I would have to set aside time. As for your other two young children, if you simply asked to bring them over, fine: I would keep them safe, and then it would be up to me whether to play with them. If you said, “Sasha, you have to plant things with them, give them a lecture, or something else”—

Then I might object. But otherwise it is my choice how to spend that time. I am at ease with children. There are mothers who are born with more than ease around children: they have an endless outpouring of love. They simply do not know what to do with it. It pours and pours and pours out of them. Yes, they face the same difficulties. They also get annoyed when someone pees somewhere, makes a mess, or fails to do something. But the feeling they have while spending time with the child outweighs those things. It outweighs them.

AVAlexander Volchek / Tatyana Tsvetkova

I think that describes Polina, your wife.

AVAlexander Volchek

And there are people who cannot spend even a minute with a child. Every time they see one, they begin to tremble inside. It is very important to look at what is actually happening. I find it easy to spend time with children, for example, but I can say this very openly. I am simply a very open person and observe all these things. I keep saying, “We do not know what is really happening with Polina, including inside her head.” You can play different roles, be in different roles at the same time. That is important: what role are you in, and what are you showing? I know exactly what states sometimes arise in me, and whether I am willing to discuss them. If someone openly says they cannot be with a child, we need to understand what specifically arises in them, what that state is. That same person may have a whole range of energy that lets them do certain things with children very easily. Just as my wife cannot handle the organizational side of things with the children or plan their lives.

She can spend time with them, but she cannot plan their lives with them. For example, she cannot plan a child's future financial footing together with them. She can let that subject go, easily let it pass—in one ear and out the other—but not plan it. That too is about the presence of particular energies, energies of different kinds. I am not belittling anyone or elevating anyone. Quite the opposite: I am showing this.

AVAlexander Volchek / Tatyana Tsvetkova

No, I do not think anyone can cover the whole spectrum.

AVAlexander Volchek

Bingo! That is why I am showing how important it is to acknowledge these factors instead of trying to argue with them. For example, I have a fairly good sense of beauty in many aspects of interiors and elsewhere. But there are things I do not understand how to do. They do not arise in me. It is not even a question of experience. It is simply absent. I look and cannot understand how it should be. I do not have that sense. And I know that if I ask you, you will say, “Pfft, put this thing here, do something over there,” and there it is. A particular area of thinking is absent in me. This is a problem for many people in modern society. Everyone wants to be super smart, to say they understand everything or simply lack some education. It is not about education. It is about whether that perception is there at all. In many areas, I see far better than a doctor. In many areas, I see better than any psychologist or psychotherapist. In many. And in some areas I see less well because I do not have that perception or that knowledge. I simply do not have that knowledge. What do I do with that?

I tell myself so calmly and honestly. That is very important: calmly and honestly. A person needs to learn to acknowledge and show themselves different aspects honestly, to try to see them rather than dismiss that area. Not just notice a torn sock, but look at why they are wearing those torn socks. Sometimes I notice a question like that in myself. I do not know whether it comes up for you. I might change clothes four times in a day and put together what people now call “looks.” That sounds funny to me, because I do not have a concept of a “look.” Sometimes when I am going into town—or anywhere, even walking the dog—I notice a little stain on the inside of my sleeve, right here. I am wearing a jacket and going into town to pick up my daughter and stop at a store to buy tomatoes. You might think, what difference does a little stain on your sleeve make? You will not come into contact with anyone; nobody can see it. But I do not go out with that stain. I catch myself doing this, because I observe many factors and encourage everyone to do the same. I encourage it.

I keep looking at whether that perception is natural or distorted. If it causes no pain, tragedy, or suffering, but is simply your healthy feeling, a certain sense of cleanliness and beauty, what is the problem? Go and change your shirt. That is all. If, on the other hand, you feel you were given an assignment in coaching that you must not wear a dirty shirt, and you do it only for that reason, that is a problem. If it becomes a kind of psychosis, undermines your emotional stability, makes you late, changes circumstances, and keeps you from setting the right priorities—so your daughter has to stand in the cold or rain, for example—that is inappropriate. You are unable to set the right priorities. But Tanya, if we really look at the situation, it is very difficult to judge from the outside. Only the person themselves can truly discover and understand it. You mentioned my wife in relation to children. When I look at you and how you interact with children, I see someone with an extraordinary capacity to perceive them.

I see how easily you inhabit that mode of perception. You may have all kinds of limitations, fantasies, details, or other things, but those are additions of your own. You have simply decided to act that way. It is like this: when I live with my wife and children, I act in one way. As soon as I am alone, I act completely differently in some household matters. It is not because I decided to shift responsibility for ironing or something else onto my wife. That is simply how the process developed and how things worked out. If I am alone, I immediately arrange for a service to handle it. It does not mean it is difficult for me to do. It becomes a question of how I allocate my time, for example.

How time is allocated, for example. Someone might say, “Am I right that you value your own time more highly than your wife's?” Please do not think that for a moment. I do not do that. But I have an enormous number of other tasks that I do, so that is my choice—

UPUnidentified participant

Tasks you do better than ironing.

AVAlexander Volchek

Of course, it is a choice between different priorities and areas. And I know what happens to me next if I take certain actions. Everyone has their own way of understanding. Some people plan twenty steps ahead. They can do that because they have those impulses and that amount of energy: they can foresee an enormous number of mistakes that might happen. That is how their system works. They do not wait for things to happen. My computer, for example, is connected to an uninterruptible power supply. I know that if the power goes out now, the computer will stay on. I did that automatically, not because the power had gone out ten times. It is a mechanism built into me that works automatically. That is simply how it works. In other people, it does not work that way. However much we try to get it from them, it is difficult for them to do. They will suffer, and we will suffer, because we will think they do not want to do it, do not want to think, or are stupid.

But they are not stupid. Their system of perception is different; they operate on a different layer. The question is whether we can relate to people in this way. I relate to my children as I do to yours and to any children on the street, whoever they are. I try to do that. All children—and I try to relate to you as I would to any woman. Any woman. There is no woman you love more or less. That is a very bad direction for thought. Relate to everyone equally, absolutely everyone. At the same time, I understand that this is my child, my female friend, my wife, my mother, my father, or someone close to me. Similarly, when it comes to carrying out tasks, I understand that this person is as human as anyone else, even if they cannot walk, move, or do anything, even if their mind does not work that way, they do not understand all the technologies of artificial intelligence, or they cannot read other people's thoughts. The list could go on forever. That is one side.

On the other hand, at a particular time I may choose not to work with that person because I understand that they cannot carry out this task. And I have that right.