2 Actions to Restore Your Interest in Life and Sense of Happiness | Self-Development

AVAlexander Volchek

There is a state in which a person becomes completely empty and tells themselves, “Then I don't need anything at all. I'll just somehow exist somewhere.” In reality, they're trying to put their life on pause. But they can't put anything on pause. It's as if they're pausing it, but life—the river—keeps flowing. What would it mean to put it on pause? You'll hit different rocks, get caught in different avalanches; you might die. All kinds of circumstances will keep arising, but you won't feel yourself. You won't be living or feeling life at all. That state of indifference is very dangerous, incredibly dangerous. It creates new chains of cause and effect that make the whole situation worse. But this is how modern people live—huge numbers of people.

DMDmitry Mugenov

On autopilot.

AVAlexander Volchek

On autopilot, yes. People live like that for decades. It's an automatic, endlessly automatic process. Then there's the exalted version: “I live very consciously. Everything in my life is very clearly defined. In thirty years, I'll reach my goal and feel joy.” It's a constant series of races. When one race doesn't work out, the person says, “That's all right, I have a new race. That's all right, I have a new race. That's all right, I have a new race.” An endless race. Endless reflection on things that will never come to pass. And what's dangerous about being in that apathetic state—the other side of this whole picture? It disrupts many aspects of life, including your mental and physical health. It brings in an incredible amount of trauma when you supposedly put yourself on pause or tell yourself, “Whatever happens, happens.” That's unconscious. What does “Whatever happens, happens” mean? It's like turning on a gas stove and lighting some of the burners but leaving others unlit. “Whatever happens, happens.” But there's a high probability that it won't turn out very well.

I'm certainly not saying you shouldn't follow life, live calmly, and let things happen. But it's a different matter when you live with full awareness: “However things unfold, that's how they'll unfold.” That is a completely different state. Of course you can live that way with absolutely no goal. You can live with no goal at all.

DMDmitry Mugenov

What happens if someone in that apathetic state, or simply confused, decides to buy themselves another dose of joy by setting more ambitious goals? They're probably trying to shake themselves up somehow: new goals, new heights to reach. They think, “It didn't work out this time, but if I set a more ambitious goal and pursue it properly, joy will be waiting for me there.”

AVAlexander Volchek

The attempt and desire to set grand, ambitious goals. We need to look at what those goals are and where a person's desire for them comes from. The very idea of a “grand goal” is always an ego-driven motive. A grand goal means surpassing yourself, your parents, the people close to you—it doesn't matter whom. It's a desire for some kind of superiority. When you set such a goal and understand that desire to surpass others as its cause, you need to understand that there will be consequences in two directions. First, what happens if you don't achieve the goal? In general, whenever someone sets any goal, they should ask themselves what will happen if they don't achieve it. When I ask people with big, serious goals, “Please tell me what you'll do if you don't achieve this goal,” they say, “I will achieve it.” They don't even consider a situation in which the goal might not be achieved. But that's a mistake. Any grand goal involving superiority implies, by its very nature, that it might not be achieved.

That's what makes it grand: there is definitely a risk. But we live in a society, a social environment, where things are quite clearly measurable. If your goal is grand, its probability of being achieved is lower. That's all—lower. And if that probability is low, then in most cases—nine out of ten, eight out of ten, seven out of ten—it won't be achieved. What will you do then? How exactly will you feel? How will you live through it? How critical is it for you? Huge numbers of people die after failing to achieve a particular goal. In the extreme case, of course, someone takes their own life. But huge numbers reach the end feeling utterly worn out and exhausted. They could have lived a rich, interesting life and achieved half of that goal. Even half would have been enough. But to them, an unachieved goal is a complete, abstract loss. One of the problems is a person's deep conviction that they can control the goals they set and achieve them no matter what. That is an absolute illusion.

If you set a goal—especially a grand one, I'll say it again—its very grandeur implies a low probability of success. But the person doesn't believe that. In fact, the grander the goal, the more strongly they refuse to believe they might not achieve it. That's how a person's internal system works. I'm speaking somewhat tentatively here, at the intellectual level, but in reality their entire mind-body system knows they won't achieve it. Where does a grand goal lead? As they move toward it, their whole internal system doubts that it will be achieved. That's an adequate description of what's happening. They'll spend that entire journey worrying. Not only does worrying throughout the journey reduce their chances of achieving the goal, but it isn't living. It's loss: lost time, lost inner well-being, lost emotions, lost health, lost relationships with people close to them, lost people around them. Losing themselves, losing a genuine sense of life. My God, how many people live like that!

Look at how many great people say this. Isn't what's happening absurd? Take Bill Gates, the head of Microsoft. I respect him a great deal. But when I hear people say, “You know, at a certain age I realized I should have worked less,” I think, “Wait a second. Fifteen years ago, you were publishing all kinds of books explaining how to run companies, move forward, act, develop, and what to pay attention to. Now you're telling us you lived with serious things out of balance. You made mistakes because you should have rested more, spent more time with your children, watched them grow up, paid attention to the people around you and your relationships.” The point isn't those people he's tied to himself. It's that he didn't feel life at the time. If we go deeper, the point isn't that he lost time with his children. He lost time with himself. He lost time with himself. So why should we have listened to that person twenty, fifteen, or ten years ago?

And why listen to him now? What's the point? It's one of life's phenomenal situations: not being present in the moment, not feeling life. I'm certainly not saying we shouldn't take the future or the past into account and should only live in the current moment, disregarding our life as a whole. I'm saying we need to remember different aspects of life, not only the future or only our lived experience. Suppose you once achieved a grand goal. That doesn't mean you'll achieve it again. If reaching a goal gave you certain emotions, that doesn't mean it will happen again. I know virtually no one who achieved a serious, grand goal and experienced a profound transformation of their inner state for decades to come. I'm talking about goals here. You're probably asking about material goals, material achievements, although we could consider a whole range of them.

DMDmitry Mugenov

Most of the time, that really is what we set for ourselves: “I'll have this income, close this deal, get this job, move to this country,” or something else. That will be success, and it will make me feel good.

AVAlexander Volchek

Look, there's an important point here. If a person doesn't know the real reason they're moving toward a particular goal—or, more precisely, that reason doesn't match what they think it is—they'll make mistakes. Again, they think they'll earn lots of money and have a happy life. But their impulse to earn lots of money comes from wanting to prove to their parents that they can. Suppose that's the situation. As they move toward their goal, however many decisions they make about how to achieve it, they'll make mistakes and use misguided methods because they've misunderstood the chain of cause and effect.

They want to bring about one thing—

DMDmitry Mugenov

And destroy things along the way—

AVAlexander Volchek

No, they want to prove something to their parents, for example, and achieve the goal for the sake of that proof. Then the way they've set things up doesn't make sense. It's like two business partners: one wants to sell the business in ten years, and the other wants to earn a salary every month. That's why the second person needs the company. Obviously, the first will do everything to grow the company, increase its money and capital, and build a strategy for selling it in the future. The second will arrange things so they can keep taking money out. Very often, those aims are incompatible. If they're incompatible, the system simply won't work. You'll destroy the business. So someone who, as you put it, uses different methods or practices to achieve a goal will make mistakes if they don't understand this chain of cause and effect. That's one of the remarkable problems. If you know and recognize why you want to achieve that goal, it's no longer a problem to start a business solely to prove something to your parents.

I don't think that's the right decision, but it's better to tell yourself, “Listen, this is why I'm doing it,” than to say you're doing it to make money or feel joy. Because proving something to your parents is unlikely to bring you joy. Or you might say you're doing it to build an asset—or, worse still, to create a useful product and benefit customers. But if you focus on resolving that specific issue, on wanting to prove something to your parents, you'll bring the business goal and that proof closer together. The whole thing will work quite effectively, and you'll use the approaches and practices that fit that combination. If the two are disconnected, you'll make the wrong decisions and nothing will work. That's important. We've been discussing this over the past few days. Since we're here in California, in the Valley, we've been talking about some tech projects in terms of venture capital.

I was telling you that, for example, when people in Russia receive venture investment, they can hardly use it to pay themselves substantial sums—to make a lot of money from that venture capital. They can pay themselves a small salary. At one point in the Valley, a decision was made that startup founders could pay themselves some money so they wouldn't worry too much about it. People mention amounts like $150,000, $200,000, or $250,000 a year. There's a reason for doing that. Even so, that isn't the money the person is in business to earn. They aren't building a business to earn that salary. They're doing it to make a completely different amount of money through the business. You've been given venture capital because the investors want a fiftyfold, fortyfold, twentyfold, or hundredfold return. They didn't give it to you simply so you could draw a salary.

Otherwise the whole business structure falls apart. Many people want to raise venture capital so they can earn a salary now. And it isn't just about now. They say, “It's temporary. I just need the money.” But in reality, that's how they intend to make their own living. I know huge numbers of people who lost out because of this—an incredible number. I once had a business with Andrey Rogachev, a dollar billionaire. We were fifty-fifty partners, and there was outside investment capital involved. I ran the company as CEO and earned a salary in that role. I was building the business to make hundreds of millions of dollars from it in the future. Those were roughly the figures we had in mind, if you remember. Maybe billions—I don't know, we were setting big targets. Andrey was probably thinking in billions; I was probably aiming to earn tens of millions of dollars. At the same time, it was important to me that if I worked in that business as an employee, I would also earn what I was worth as an employee.

That introduces a certain imbalance into the system. It's very important to understand how ready everyone involved is for that. I know huge numbers of people who ran their businesses for years, almost decades, without earning any money beyond a minimal salary. Then, in the end, they couldn't make an exit, couldn't sell, couldn't get anything out of it. Their whole framework of a goal and the right way to move toward it fell apart.

DMDmitry Mugenov

How do you bring some drive and joy back into life without changing everything abruptly, tearing everything down, or going away to live a simpler life or meditate in the mountains for months? How do you regain that feeling of life, that sense of drive?

AVAlexander Volchek

That's a very important question. The first thing to consider is that feeling drive and joy in life is very often unrelated to any changes you might come up with in the material world. What kind of changes? Changing jobs or businesses, opening or closing a business, moving from professional employment into your own business or from your own business into professional employment, getting married, getting divorced, having children. With this connection between drive and joy, the first thing to tell yourself is that inner happiness and joy do not correlate directly with any of those events. They're not connected to the events at all. Essentially, they aren't connected to those events. That's the first conclusion you need to draw for yourself. Notice that this is a fact, but not everyone will be able to live a joyful life. That's very important to understand. Huge numbers of people will never feel joy. Huge numbers will experience very mixed states. There is no single state in which a person contains only joy, only sadness, only good, or only evil.

All the components of every emotional state are present. It's a question of one state or another becoming heightened or awakening. People often feel good, then ten minutes later feel lousy, then good again. It's a madhouse. Huge numbers of people won't reach a carefree, happy, joyful way of living. Why am I saying this? So you can begin observing what actually causes joy and happiness. Make that a subject of observation. The very act of doing this is your strongest advantage in moving toward a good, happy experience of life: telling yourself that joy has no connection to the material events taking place, and making that an ongoing subject of observation. Then what really causes joy to arise? What really causes happiness? What really brings about inner quiet? When someone feels completely lost, the very act of framing the situation this way begins to bring them out of that lost state.

If a person lives with that focus of attention for a week—at least a week—they'll pull themselves out, or begin to pull themselves out, of that state. They won't get themselves out of it any other way.

DMDmitry Mugenov

Let me ask again, then. If you're in that confused state, where success comes but doesn't bring joy—

AVAlexander Volchek

And you're confused altogether. You simply don't understand.

DMDmitry Mugenov

You don't understand.

AVAlexander Volchek

That's very important. I think the person is confused, lost in life. When someone is in that state—

DMDmitry Mugenov

Losing the meaning of life.

AVAlexander Volchek

Losing meaning, of course, and losing any sense of certainty about what will happen.

DMDmitry Mugenov

And then you need to ask yourself—

AVAlexander Volchek

They keep making things up, coming up with things. And every day—

DMDmitry Mugenov

Inventing illusory goals for themselves.

AVAlexander Volchek

Every day they tell themselves, “Damn it, I'll get myself together and everything will work out.” But it's like Groundhog Day, endlessly going around like that. A rat race. An endless, pointless rat race.

DMDmitry Mugenov

So you need to stop inventing illusory goals and new achievements.

AVAlexander Volchek

You need to stop looking for joy.

DMDmitry Mugenov

You need to observe what—

AVAlexander Volchek

Number one: recognize that joy depends on something else. Number two: stop looking for joy. That's very hard to do. You can find joy and happiness only by giving up on that pursuit, only by giving up on that pursuit.

DMDmitry Mugenov

On searching, on achieving.

AVAlexander Volchek

Only by giving that up. Do you see? If you understand how it works, look at why you need to give it up.

DMDmitry Mugenov

But how do you give it up? Say, “I won't”?

AVAlexander Volchek

Look at why you need to give it up—or at least make this a subject of observation. You can disagree with me, but observe it. Why give it up? If we understand that huge numbers of people cannot and will not ever be in a state of joy, there's a chance you could be one of them. If you don't give up that pursuit, you're moving toward a goal that carries a possibility of failure from the outset. That's simply destroying yourself. So setting yourself the task of giving up the desire for joy and success removes the whole problem. Imagine saying, “I feel cornered. I don't understand how to achieve success and joy.” I say, “Give up that whole pursuit.” You do, then say, “So there's no problem anymore?” None.

Why give it up, at least for—

DMDmitry Mugenov

And how do you feel then?

AVAlexander Volchek

Obviously, that's somewhat abstract, but the problem is actually gone. It doesn't exist. Huge numbers of problems exist because we've chosen to be in them. Here's a simple example. From time to time, I worry about earning money. I think about it and work on it. My wife hasn't worried about earning money since 2009—or 2010, but probably 2009. How long has that been? Sixteen years. She definitely hasn't worried about earning money for sixteen years. She might worry about whether she has enough, whether there's a lot or a little, or how it's being spent, but definitely not about where to earn it. That concern simply isn't there. She doesn't have that problem. I have it; she doesn't. That's a very important point. The problem doesn't exist for her at all. We can think whatever we like, but she doesn't have it. And it isn't because she has a husband who earns money. I know huge numbers of people whose husbands earn a thousand times more than I do, and their wives worry incredibly about wanting to earn money themselves.

But she doesn't worry about it. That's a blessing. I can tell you that the absence of that worry is quite a blessing, because it's one of humanity's great concerns. Vast numbers of people worry about it, and she doesn't. Imagine: she's socializing with my acquaintances, and women start telling her how to make money. She looks at them and thinks, “What on earth are you talking about?”

DMDmitry Mugenov

Sasha—

AVAlexander Volchek

“What are you even talking about?”

DMDmitry Mugenov

I've heard two approaches. First, make it a subject of observation. Second, say, “This goal is so difficult and constantly worries me. Well then…”

AVAlexander Volchek

You don't have to give it up. I'm not suggesting you give it up right now. I'm suggesting you start observing the fact of it.

DMDmitry Mugenov

What does it mean to actually start observing? Could you—

AVAlexander Volchek

Make this something you consciously think about. Remember what I've just said.

DMDmitry Mugenov

What, write it in a notebook?

AVAlexander Volchek

Sometimes it does mean writing it in a notebook so you don't forget. The point is simply not to forget. People forget the simplest things. I once posted a video on my channel about things to do every day—eight practices. They're quite simple. For example, when you meet someone, observe your speech. What are you saying to them? Are you speaking consciously, or out of a desire to gain something from that person? Or listen carefully and try to hear what they want to convey. As life shows, it's very hard to make that an ongoing observation. You think, “That's it, I'll observe. I'll listen to everyone.” Then the day flies by, and in the evening you wonder, “Who did I actually listen to today? Nobody. I only listened to my own ego.” Make it a subject of observation.