This Video Will Save You 30 Years of Life. 2 Things I Wish I Had Known Before Turning 30

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

Let's imagine you've turned fifty and you're thinking, ‘If I'd known certain things at thirty-five, my life would have gone very differently. It would have been brighter and richer.’ Can you list some key points for people now that might, so to speak, save them thirty years of their lives?

AVAlexander Volchek

You're asking about people who reach a certain age after living their lives—whether they turn forty, fifty, or sixty—and say, ‘I regret not doing something,’ or ‘I feel uncomfortable; I should have done things differently.’ It's a very interesting point. We often watch well-known people and listen to them talk about how they live and develop. Then, at a certain point, that same person says, ‘You know, I was living the wrong way. I should have done things differently.’ There are an incredible number of businesspeople like that. In business, it happens a great deal.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

Even I've met people like that.

AVAlexander Volchek

Take Bill Gates, for example. At some point he said, ‘I should have spent much more time with my children.’

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

I hear that very often.

AVAlexander Volchek

Or take Tinkov in Russia. I think he explicitly said that if he'd understood certain things, he would have acted differently toward his country, his children, or something else. But wait a second. We were listening to that person before. He told us what to do, how to plan goals, how to work, how to live in that constant pursuit of achievement, what to pay attention to, what our values and principles should be. He lived in that element. Then the same person comes along and says, ‘Everything I said and everything I was involved in was a little off course. But now I know the truth.’ That's a huge problem. I'm using public figures as examples, of course, but overall it's a huge problem for individuals and humanity. I always want to say: if you've lived a long life and find yourself in that position, who said it makes sense to keep listening to you? Who said you're telling the truth now? Aren't you under exactly the same kind of illusion? If a person can't accept their life, their past life, they won't be able to accept their present life either.

It's impossible. You either perceive your life as a whole and understand that life is what it is, regardless of the events that took place. Yes, you understand that perhaps some events could have been different.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

Mm-hmm.

AVAlexander Volchek

You understand that sometimes you could even have acted differently. But that doesn't mean you want to change your life, replace it, or look at it differently. That's very important. If you perceive your entire life, you can't have grievances against it. No grievances, no desire to change it.

So when you ask which three things people should recognize, understand, and discover in advance in order to live their lives, at the very least they should understand the structure I've just described. Ask yourself: what do I need to do to avoid living in negativity? Not just talk about not feeling negative toward my past life or about feeling harmonious, but actually perceive my whole life as life, as a given. Notice that perceiving life as life, as a given, has nothing to do with being in a good or bad state or mood. For example, I have no intention of changing my life, and I don't want to change it. Have there been negative things in it? Yes, seriously negative things. Does that mean negative events may happen in the future? And if those negative events happen, I will also be in a state where I don't regret them. We're talking about different directions of movement. Someone watching this video might tell themselves, ‘I'll follow three important points and feel great and happy.’

Or, ‘I'll follow three points and feel my life so broadly that I won't have any grievances against it. I won't have grievances against my past life or my present life, and I'll be in a state where, at least looking ahead, I don't develop grievances against the future.’

A person needs to choose what they want.

If you want to be happy, that's one set of three pieces of advice. If you want to perceive your whole life fully, the question isn't happiness; it's your grievances against life. That's a completely different set of three pieces of advice.

There's a big difference. Most people will probably choose happiness: ‘Why choose the issue of grievances? If I'm happy, I automatically have none.’ But again, these are different things. Do you want to reach happiness, or to be in harmony with life right now? Being in harmony with life doesn't mean being happy. Harmony with life means accepting the different events that happen. I'm certainly not saying that suffering has to be an essential part. Recently, we were unpacking some material for content, and my editor, Olga, asked, ‘Is not suffering an option?’ Everything I said seemed to suggest to her that you had to suffer. When I say harmony doesn't equal happiness, she hears that harmony must mean suffering. I say, ‘It doesn't have to mean suffering. There could be a whole trainload of happiness, with a little cart behind it, or a whole trainload of unhappiness.’ The point is that harmony doesn't contain the concept of happiness as such. It simply isn't there. What does happiness have to do with harmony? Harmony is harmony. It's when different events happen and you relate to them in the same way in terms of harmonious perception, whether they're good and positive or negative.

‘Is that balance?’ You just showed a pair of scales, didn't you? Balance still sounds as though happiness and unhappiness come in equal amounts. But with harmonious perception of life, you might have ninety-nine parts happiness and one part unhappiness, or ninety-nine parts unhappiness and one part happiness. There doesn't seem to be a balance. Across all of a person's lives—for those who understand that a person isn't limited to life between birth and death—perhaps there may be balance overall. But within a single life, it may be very far from balanced. The same goes for ten years of a life. A person's life isn't only the years lived consciously. I'm forty-two; let's say I've lived consciously for twenty-two years and unconsciously for twenty. That's an approximation. When I assess a part of my life, I'm often assessing those twenty-two years, not the other twenty. I don't remember much of the first eighteen years of my life, for example. Things happened, there were events, but I don't remember them very well.

Maybe those first eighteen years contained ninety-nine parts unhappiness, while this part has ninety-nine parts happiness. I can't even compare those factors; it's very difficult. Comparing such things is complicated, if only because I wasn't recording my inner state back then. Over the past twelve years, and increasingly with each year, I've been noticing and registering what I feel. But that's a complicated mechanism, too: there are different qualities of observation and different states you can be in while doing it. Let's return to the subject. Imagine someone says, ‘I want to be happy.’ This is important. Essentially, that leads them into two states. First, you ask, ‘Are you happy now?’ They say, ‘No, I'm not happy now. That's exactly why I want to become happy.’ We've gone back to our original example: reaching fifty and feeling regret. They say, ‘No, I want to be happy.’ ‘Are you happy now?’ ‘Well, right now it varies,’ they say. ‘It varies.’

Then they aren't in harmony at this moment. They tell themselves there's a state of one, while perhaps they're at zero point four or zero point four five now. They'll reach a state of one hundred percent happiness, with nothing else. But in a state of one hundred percent happiness, there's no development. First, it's impossible; second, there's no development in it. I'm talking about one hundred percent happiness, being in ideal states absolutely. What's more, when someone sets themselves the goal of reaching happiness, what happens if they don't reach it? What's the risk? Why make such a huge wager—spending decades heading toward happiness and then—

Not reaching it? Everyone needs to recognize that. Look at the past twenty, thirty, or forty years of your life, depending on your age. What percentage of your life were you truly happy? How many days, seconds, minutes? If you weren't happy ninety percent of the time, or even fifty percent, then reaching that state is a risk. If it was fifty percent, there's a fifty-percent chance you'll be happy—and perhaps you won't be happy at all. So it's important to make a shift, tune in, and understand something fundamental. What we need isn't simply to be in a state of happiness, because happiness doesn't bring harmony in your perception of life. ‘I've reached a state where everything's fine, but I realize the past forty years went very strangely.’ That's why people so often lose their way and their sense of meaning. They decided they'd be happy if they earned a million dollars. Then they earn a million and say, ‘Well, it has nothing to do with a million dollars.’

At that particular moment, the person still feels unhappy. Can you feel happy with that sort of disharmony as your foundation? How? It's impossible, because the foundation of harmony isn't happiness. It's accepting what happens in life. The question is: how do I accept events calmly? Why is Vasya calm about earning a hundred dollars while I'm anxious about earning a thousand? Why is Masha calm about having one child, while I have two and worry that I don't have more? Why is Yegor calm working for someone else and earning three thousand dollars, while I'm worried in my own business earning thirty thousand? Why does Masha earn five hundred dollars in her business and feel satisfied, while I'm dissatisfied with my professional work? Why does this happen? Why do I worry when I see my mother? Why do I feel negative when I see my father, while someone else has positive feelings in what seem to be the same situations? That's what matters.

What matters is the state I feel. Here's another major problem. When you're young, at twenty, you think you have an enormous life ahead of you, that you'll live through and experience so much. Later, whatever state you're in, you still think you'll experience it all in the future. But now you have an experience of awareness telling you, ‘You won't experience anything.’ It keeps telling you that. You push it away: ‘That's nonsense. You're just grown-up, old people who've already lived, and that's it.’ But it keeps nagging. A person stops believing in life, closes off, and stops developing. Broadly speaking, people on the planet today stop developing at twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight. They stop. Look carefully at your acquaintances, friends, and the people around you: how they make decisions, how they reason, all the details. You'll see that their perception and development stopped long ago. Look at how a person actually understands the world around them, how they live, what decisions they make, what questions they have, what they study each day, what they observe and feel.

We'll see that the person has stopped developing. Then what harmonious perception of life can we talk about? It's impossible. A person stops feeling and hearing life, stops perceiving what's happening around them, and closes in on themselves more and more. They feel other people less and less. It's like falling into an abyss: the farther you fall, the faster you go. You pick up so much speed that stopping is extremely difficult and painful. In most cases, it means death. Even if a person fundamentally comes to a stop and becomes aware, their psychophysical system generally won't withstand the strain. It will mean death. The system simply won't work or sustain it. So I'd suggest framing the question this way: how do I remain in a state where I perceive my present life neutrally? Many people hear ‘neutral’ and think it means not caring.

Indifference. Neutrality is far stronger than plus and minus, far stronger than happiness and unhappiness. It's much easier to be unhappy or happy. Perceiving different events neutrally is a profound experience—being, overall, in a state of balance. That doesn't mean you have no emotions. You do: stress, suffering, worry, joy, confusion, sadness, euphoria, intense happiness. They arise, while you remain in a neutral perception of everything happening now. Perceive your past life and the time that has passed entirely as a given. ‘So is neutrality also balance?’ When you ask that, perhaps you're trying to connect it with your own term, ‘balance.’ Yes? I haven't used ‘balance’ today. No. That's why I'm very careful about answering yes or no: the word may carry a particular, substantial meaning for you. Again, what's the problem with ‘balance’? It can strongly lead a person toward the idea of equivalence.

That's exactly what I mean. Neutrality isn't equivalence. I told you the other day that I perceive a vast range of events very neutrally: drinking coffee, filming this YouTube video, having lunch together, going to a restaurant with you this evening, walking with my child, going to their school, having a business Zoom call, reading the news. What does ‘neutrally’ mean? I give them equal weight. That's actually very important. If every event in life matters, if all of it is life, then whether I lay on the couch looking at the ceiling for an hour, watched television for an hour, spent an hour planting something with a shovel, or did difficult work for an hour, it all carries equal weight. ‘Even if you did nothing?’ Of course. You lay there looking at the ceiling. Though perhaps that's doing something, too. I don't know what doing absolutely nothing means. But let's say you did nothing. Let's try doing nothing today.

Shall we try? Yes, doing nothing. I include sleeping, too. How do you relate to sleep reasonably and calmly? Incidentally, it's a huge process, but that's another subject. This is so important: we talk about relating positively to all of life. Why should drinking coffee matter less than stroking my child's head, walking the dog, seeing my mother, kissing my wife, or talking with an employee on Zoom? Or yelling at someone, arguing, firing people, spending money, or earning money? What's the difference? It's all the same life, all part of living it. Once we start assigning weights, we fall into a simple trap: ‘The past five days were filled with low-priority tasks. This one is high-priority, so I need to choose.’ I have to rank people by importance, rank children by importance: ‘You're more important; you're less important.’ Maybe this is more important, too.

Maybe something else is. I start dividing things up: this day was better, that one worse. Here it rained; there it snowed. Here I went to the ocean—perhaps that was more fun, or perhaps not. I start doubting and comparing. Comparison is a killer. It's always false. Why? Because there's always something better and always something worse. Always, without exception. So a neutral state means assigning no weights to the events that happen. No weights. A neutral way of living. Notice that this in no way removes the experience of tremendous stress, negativity, euphoria, a thirst for power or profit, suffering, pain, destruction, love, or vivid colors.

Vivid colors, incredible emotions, joy, samadhi, enlightenment, silence, love, all the limitless colors of life—none of that is removed. The question is how to relate to it calmly. Otherwise, there's a simple problem: you can always see a child who's better than your children, a partner who's better than yours, a better style than the one surrounding you, a better business than those around you. Most importantly, you may one day experience a state you've never experienced before and then spend your whole life remembering and longing for it. From the spiritual world's perspective, there can always be sparks of states that come only a couple of times in a lifetime. What should you do with that? Give it a weight of five hundred billion thousand, tick off everything else, and sit there saying, ‘This is boring; this time is wrong, it isn't real’? That's why people go through life saying, ‘You work too much,’ or ‘You work too little.’

‘You can't sit around resting that long. You can't work that much. You earn too little; you earn too much. You praise too much; you praise too little.’ Endless madness. If you want to, praise a thousand times; if you want to, punish a thousand times. I'm certainly not saying that living neutrally means killing someone today and giving money to children tomorrow. I'm not talking about violating the laws of the universe. I'm saying different events can happen in your life, events of very different kinds. There may be serious suffering or incredible happiness. It can come in such waves that you have no idea what's happening. You look for a catch, but the happiness and the events just keep coming. Looking for a catch is a problem, too. Happiness comes in enormous amounts, and you're already assigning weights to everything. Ten thousand events every day. You think, ‘What should I do? Maybe—’

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

What will happen?

AVAlexander Volchek

What will happen? Yes, you start being afraid. Afraid of what? Losing it. Everyone around you starts comparing, and you become afraid of losing those weights. There—you've fallen out of it again. So, wait, have I understood correctly? Happiness came your way. Let me tell you, happiness has no limit. There's no limit to the good, just as there's no limit to the bad. Anyone who thinks they have it bad—

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

It could get worse.

AVAlexander Volchek

I can tell you it could get so much worse that you wouldn't believe it. And for many people, your ‘bad’ is incredibly good. For many others, your ‘incredibly good’ is sheer hell. You can see that in the world. You don't have to look far.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

There's another aspect: many people wait for the perfect moment and put off decisions and actions because that moment will supposedly arrive. I think this connects with what you've said: that moment won't come; there's only here and now.

AVAlexander Volchek

The perfect moment is a very interesting construct. It appeared several thousand years ago; we won't go into that in this video. Over the past hundred and fifty years, it's been exalted to an extraordinary degree. The twentieth century was the exaltation of a particular perfect moment. The perfect moment is an excellent state for getting a person into slavery.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

Yes.

AVAlexander Volchek

It's the easiest state in which to enslave someone. ‘Tanya, for now we need to do certain things, and then a particular state will arrive and everything will happen. Don't rush. It'll all happen. We'll film videos with Sasha for sixteen years, and then you'll have a good, right, perfect moment. Then I'll tell you what to do. I know everything; I'll be there for you in the future. Polina, for now you need to work a little, live, look around. The children are growing. The moment will come soon.’ Polina comes the next day: ‘When?’ I say, ‘Why are you in such a hurry? What do you mean, the next day?’ ‘When should I come back?’ ‘In a year.’ ‘No, I won't wait a year.’ ‘All right, a month.’ She comes in a month, and you say, ‘In a year.’ Five years have already passed. She asks, ‘Where is it? Where's the moment?’ This is manipulation, both external and internal. We endlessly manipulate the space around us with this idea of the perfect moment. It permeates everything. It's a state of devaluing a person. One of the greatest problems is external devaluation: the whole system around you, other people, devalue you, tell you all kinds of things, and set limits for you.

All of it leads into this realm of the perfect moment and creates a feeling that there will be some moment when everything works out, when I'll act—some perfect event.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

Yes: ‘For now, I'll save my energy.’

AVAlexander Volchek

Yes, ‘I'll save my energy.’ Or someone puts beneficial classes on hold. I ask, ‘Why did you pause them?’ ‘There's too much energy somehow. I need to wait.’ You look at them… Imagine your business is growing and bringing in a billion dollars in revenue every day. Apple sits there saying, ‘We're growing too fast. We need to wait, to stand still.’ They announce it to the shareholders, and tomorrow their stock is gone. ‘We'll wait. There's too much energy, and too much energy isn't good.’ There's no such thing as too much energy. I think Apple is actually a very good example.

Thirty billion, fifty billion, a hundred billion, two hundred billion, three hundred billion, four hundred billion, one point three trillion, one point five trillion, two trillion, two point five trillion, three trillion, three point two trillion. What perfect moment?

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

I think goal setting and planning connect well with the perfect moment, too. Everyone is told they must set long-term and short-term goals, assign weights and priorities. I really like your videos about the list of goals you wrote some time ago. Sometimes it's even a little funny to hear how much you've grown as a person and how your attitude has changed. But even I still think, ‘I need to set a goal and move toward it,’ although I understand how shaky these constructs are. What can you say about that—how people are driven into a race after some illusory carrot?

AVAlexander Volchek

There are normal, perfectly reasonable goals in life. We might sit here and say, ‘I'd like my children to go to surf camp this summer.’

We looked into something in February; someone mentioned it. That's a normal task, and we set it. Is it a goal or a task?

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

A task, I suppose.

AVAlexander Volchek

Probably a task. It's simply something to do. But you could make it a goal for your child to reach certain grades at school or certain results at surf camp. Or set a goal of earning money. If I say I want to earn five thousand dollars, is that a goal or a task?

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

A task, as I understand it—

AVAlexander Volchek

It's a task when—

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

You'll develop that in the course.

AVAlexander Volchek

Yes, if I know how to carry it out, I suppose you can call it a task. For someone else, getting their child into camp might be a goal. It's straightforward for us, but someone else might set it as an incredible goal. Some things are perfectly normal and simple. Notice why you called camp a task and I said it could be a goal: it depends on your opportunities and capabilities. You, Vitalik, and you, Tanya, think, ‘What's the problem? Just sign up, and it's done.’ You don't see it as a goal. For someone else, it's simply an action they take without even setting it as a goal. It turns out we call things goals when they seem unattainable to us.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

Hard to attain.

AVAlexander Volchek

Or hard to attain. Sometimes we substitute one idea for another and realize they aren't that hard after all. We're often told to set something unreal, beyond reality, and something more balanced and achievable. So a person sets a goal. Again, some things are reasonable. But when people say that without goals your life has no meaning, that without goals you'll feel—

Lost, or that without goals you won't succeed, that's a lie. They also say, ‘Other people will set your goals for you.’ But whether you set particular goals or not, the question is who will achieve them. Will you achieve them? What happens if you don't? You've set goals—but what if they're false goals? What if one of your goals and the path toward it leads to your child's death? Can achieving a particular goal lead to your child's death? Yes, it can. You've changed things. If someone believes a goal can be accomplished for them, they need to recognize that in exactly the same way they can set a false goal themselves. What does ‘false’ mean? A goal they don't need, one that will ruin their life. I know a great many examples of people setting goals to earn money when that was a false goal for them, and ending up with enormous problems.

They would have been better off not doing it. Here's a simple example Sasha and I have discussed many times. Someone smokes, wants to quit, and makes quitting their goal. For two years they worry about it and think about how to do it, tearing themselves apart mentally. After two years, they finally decide to quit. They stop for a month, suffer and worry, then start again and keep smoking for the rest of their life. Did they need to set that goal? Nothing happened. They would have been better off not tormenting themselves—just living and smoking without that torment. ‘But it could have worked.’ I'm talking about a specific situation where it didn't. In that situation, they could have avoided the suffering. The same happens in business. People say, ‘I needed it for the negative experience.’ No, you didn't. You could have avoided that business, that job, that marriage. You didn't need to do it. You could have skipped the tourist trip where you'd have an accident and then spend three years in treatment.

You could have avoided it. Someone sets a goal of learning to skydive, jumps, and dies. Don't you know stories like that? I do. Or someone sets a goal of traveling around the world, then falls ill on the trip, or something happens. What's the point of setting that goal? ‘So you don't set goals?’ Again, there are perfectly reasonable things in particular situations. Of course I set goals. There are business goals. Doing business without a goal would be complete nonsense. I have businesses where there's no goal—but that's a slightly different arrangement. There actually is a goal; it simply isn't formalized as a revenue or profit figure. It exists, and it breaks down into a strategy, principles, tasks, and various parameters. I set very clear goals in business. I always tell people right away what the specific goal is, along with its parameters and details. They immediately lose their bearings. There are no details; it's impossible to make sense of it. In their profession, too: why do you work? What's the goal? ‘I want to earn money.’

‘I also want professional experience.’ I say, ‘Wait. What about this? And this? And this?’ They're completely lost. There are areas where, of course, I set goals, and others where I don't set any at all. As you said, I posted a video about goal setting, and I've talked about it a lot lately. Vitalik and I were walking and discussing it. If someone sat me down now and asked me to write a hundred goals, they'd all focus on one thing: how do I sustain the fullest possible exploration of myself? How do I remain in the study of truth? That's the only direction I could set for myself. Even that shouldn't really be written as a goal, because it's a person's main task. It's a task, not a goal, because a goal is finite. A goal is always finite; it stops my development. The only thing I could set in terms of a goal concerns my existence as a whole. That's why I'd never set myself the goal of a vacation, seeing my mother, meeting friends, opening a business, or earning ten trillion dollars.

I wouldn't set that now. I could write it as a joke. Want me to? Go ahead and look at my old goals. ‘They were ambitious.’ They were damn ambitious, Tanya! How many people do you know who wrote twelve years ago, ‘I want a five-hundred-trillion-dollar company. I want a company with two hundred thousand employees and three billion dollars in monthly revenue’? How many? I was told to write goals, so I did. Number one on the Forbes list was there—a whole range. I didn't even read out all of them. There was a perfectly normal goal, too: a hundred Brioni suits. I have nothing against a hundred Brioni suits. Would I object to a company worth half a trillion dollars now? No, I wouldn't. I'd like one. And what about a hundred suits? That's interesting: I don't need Brioni now. I remember something funny. I had a Rolls-Royce Phantom and sold it. Then I bought a Mercedes as another car. My neighbor in Moscow came out and asked mockingly, ‘So, is the Mercedes better than the Phantom?’

I said, ‘No, of course not. The Phantom is better.’ Or people ask, ‘You've probably had enough of it and realized you won't buy another one?’ I say, ‘I'd happily buy four more Phantoms.’ It's a damn good car. I don't know a better one. Do you? Personally, I don't know a car better than the Rolls-Royce Phantom. Of course, tastes differ. Someone might prefer a Bugatti—a sportier car. I'm probably not in that category. I can't say those cars make that sort of impression on me. I like the Phantom. I have nothing against a hundred Brioni suits, even now. That goal hasn't changed, incidentally. Twelve years have passed, and I'd happily have them. Tanya, you'd understand me, wouldn't you? ‘I'm not sure about Brioni, but…’ You'd definitely understand. ‘Certainly about the Phantom.’ If I ordered a hundred Brioni suits, they'd put together an impressive whole setup for me. That's the question. Now here's something interesting: when I described my goals, number thirty-two was to have only one wife.

Another goal was to have three children. I have four now. Someone said, ‘So, Alexander, what's your point? You've achieved some goals and not others. What's the point?’ It isn't about whether I achieved them. At the time, having only one wife carried the same weight for me as creating a company worth half a trillion dollars. I set it as a goal. I wouldn't set it as a goal now. Why? We're back to exactly the same thing we discussed about surf camp. Someone will say, ‘Oh, Volchek, what are you going on about? Go on, build that half-trillion-dollar company.’ But surf camp isn't such an easy task either. It may happen, or it may not. I need to relate to it just as calmly and neutrally. If I set goals as some final destination, either I reach them and stand at the summit of that ending, after which the only possible feeling is disappointment—

Because what comes next? At that point, you have to snap your fingers, dissolve, jump into the next life, and run after goals again. Or I don't fulfill that goal or list, and I feel what? Disappointment about what happened. Life has gone by, so again I have to snap my fingers and run into a new life, like Mario: crash, die, start again, die, start again, over and over. Then you finish a level and sit there in the game. Anyone who's played computer games through to the end knows this. You finish and, on one hand, it feels great; on the other, you're disappointed. Or you finish an interesting book and feel disappointed: where's the next one? That's the huge problem with goals. How do you learn to stay balanced about it? How do you use goal setting reasonably and easily, as a help in life and development rather than something negative? What the world has learned incredibly well is to use goals to degrade and manipulate people.

Imagine I come to my children and say, ‘Everyone is so worked up about figuring out what you like in life so you can choose your calling. They always ask what you liked in childhood and what you like now. Let's fix that in place now. Focus on it, and we'll throw everything into it.’ ‘How would you put it again for yourself: what is a goal or a task to you?’ First, there won't be a goal. The concept of a goal won't be there. ‘A life goal, or a goal as—’ There won't be a goal in life.

UPUnidentified participant

Or as—

AVAlexander Volchek

There won't be a goal in life.

There won't be a goal in life, or overarching goals, because those lead to the structures I've described. I can set directions of movement, perhaps with certain points along the way. Want to call them goals? Go ahead. But looking at life as a whole, there can't be one single point. There can't be a goal of life, because that point is finite. If you move toward a finite life goal, the only one you can set is to die. I can refine it: to die without fear of death. You won't be able to assess it afterward, describe it, or discuss it with everyone, but what other final point could there be? If we're talking about this life and limiting ourselves to its material aspect, the only final goal is to die. If I place the goal before the end of life, that would mean there's no life beyond that point.

If we equate a goal with the meaning of life, then reaching a point at seventy means there's nothing afterward. What comes next? If I'm destined to live to a hundred, do I just chill for the next twenty years? My grandmother died at ninety-three. She was such a kind person, but at seventy she bought herself a suit and said, ‘Bury me in this.’

And every year she was dying. She'd come and announce it every year. Perhaps she'd reached the goal of her life—I'm only supposing—and said, ‘That's it; now we wait.’ So she waited. But she wasn't waiting alone: everyone else waited with her. That's a fact. She influenced everyone else's opinions, decisions, and states, and had an enormous effect on how my mother felt. You'd visit, and she'd say, ‘This is probably the last time.’

You'd come again: ‘Probably the last time.’ And again. She'd seen so much that it all began to get mixed up in her head. She was a very sensible person. I think she even knew all the car brands. She wrote things down—a normal, sensible, intelligent person. Yet she started getting confused: ‘Do I need to have my own rug or not? Is your television your own?’

I'd arrive in a three-hundred-thousand-dollar car, for example, and say, ‘Grandma, a rug?’ Or she'd ask whether we'd bought a television for our home or whether it belonged to the rented apartment.

My monthly rent costs as much as ten televisions. Imagine the span of a world you've lived through: from standing in a lake during World War II and getting frostbite in your legs to an absolutely extraordinary transformation. What's more, she lived in a family that moved around and did all sorts of things. Children, grandchildren, everyone on FaceTime. It was wild. One child was born—‘Wonderful!’ A second—‘Wonderful!’ A third—‘What? A third? Why a third?’ Then a fourth. ‘What do you mean, a fourth?’ Yes, a fourth. She'd lived through so much else, too. Her son died at twelve, her husband died, my father died—people close to her. She had five siblings, or however many; they all died. She outlived everyone. What a vast amount of life you perceive. Yet at seventy you came with that suit, set that point for yourself, and locked yourself into it, because everyone says you need to prepare.

So you've prepared. It's a kind of manipulation, an incredibly serious manipulation of yourself. Setting a single goal, a single meaning of life, one point, is meaningless. We come instead to the importance of values and true guiding principles: act and live truthfully, love life, and accept it as it is. The only goal I could possibly draw out of myself is to try to accept life as it is for the rest of my life. But I don't think that's really a goal, is it?

AMAlexander Mineev

Right.

AVAlexander Volchek

It's a very strong foundation, what I orient myself toward: remaining as fully as possible within that sound perception. Someone might say, ‘Sasha, what if you develop an illness and can't perceive things normally?’ Then that will happen. Notice that the goal itself falls apart. I might begin to see that I've stopped thinking clearly, that signs of losing my mind are appearing. Does that mean I haven't achieved the goal? No—there can't be that kind of goal. I can simply set myself the task of trying, of trying to move in that direction. If my task is to try to perceive the truth and I become ill, at least I know that was my task. I keep trying to perceive it.

Whether I perceive more or less of it isn't the point. That depends on a huge number of events and circumstances: how capable I am of perceiving it, how strongly, and for how long. In any case, every person will die. That's an important point, too.

AMAlexander Mineev

The only inevitable thing.

AVAlexander Volchek

In any case, perception at the level of an incarnated person will end. Whether it ends ten years earlier because of some brain episode that leaves the person in a coma for ten years, twenty years earlier because they develop Alzheimer's, or twenty-five years earlier for some other reason is a separate question. People want to extend their lives. Many work on that and talk about it endlessly.

AMAlexander Mineev

Biohacking.

AVAlexander Volchek

But there's a spiritual account that states clearly: if you extend life in that direction, your state of perception will shrink in the other direction. The more you live, so to speak, unlawfully, the less you'll perceive the world around you, and you'll develop a brain disease. That's incredibly important. You keep extending your life, wanting not the allotted span but a number you set yourself: ‘I want to live a hundred and forty years. I want to hack the state.’ Life says, ‘Maybe you'll manage it. There are plenty of ways now. But in the other direction, we'll reduce your perception.’ Reduced perception is interesting. There are conditions described as brain diseases, but there's also simply no longer feeling joy when you see trees. Looking at the ocean feels the same as looking at a bathroom wall or a television. You see your child and don't understand what happened. They're just some person; you've stopped perceiving them. Yet you seem to think clearly, with vigorous mental activity.

Look at how many older people, politicians, or famous wealthy people are extremely sharp.

In many ways you can plainly see that they're hacking their health. Some people live into old age because nature, life, or consciousness gave them that, and they live in all the fullness of life. Others are hacking life. It's important to understand that their range of energetic perception will narrow, which is far more frightening than anything else. Essentially, you become a vegetable that can move around, open a phone, perform certain actions, even give speeches. People will even gather to visit you. The question is: what do you experience in that state?

What do you experience inside yourself? Can you experience anything at all? A great many people at a certain age or in certain states feel nothing. It isn't just that there's no joy, even a little joy. There's a kind of anxiety so great that the person doesn't understand what's happening. Can you suppress anxiety with pills? Of course you can. Absolutely. You can balance systems in different ways. Again, the question is perception. I was leading a meeting this morning, and the birds were singing loudly outside. I feel the birds—what a wonderful state. Imagine sitting there with birds singing and not understanding what it is at all. What does the world say? ‘Why do you need birds singing? Turn this on. I have birds singing, too.’

AMAlexander Mineev

On an iPhone, yes.

AVAlexander Volchek

Yes, you switch on an iPhone and birds sing. Put on glasses, and everything appears: the same room, the same view. That's where everything is heading, isn't it? Everything is rendered in full. But in science-fiction films where people wear glasses that generate all their views, there's always someone at the top who steps onto a real balcony with two real trees, three shrubs, and a little river flowing by—or opens up a patch of real sky to look at. That's always there.

AMAlexander Mineev

You were talking about the perfect moment. I noticed it with my mother, at least. While she was suffering and drinking—she was already an alcoholic—she really believed she'd suffer for now, with her husband, our stepfather. Someone had told her fortune and said this had to pass, and then a man would appear and change everything. Now I—

See that he never came. I've noticed this wasn't just my mother's problem. It was mine, and it's a problem for many people I see. It's not only waiting for a moment; it's waiting for a miracle, a savior. I wanted to ask where that comes from, because many people probably have it.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

There's also that fairy tale—

AVAlexander Volchek

A fairy tale, yes.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

Sleeping Beauty.

AVAlexander Volchek

A savior, exactly.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

Yes, a prince will come.

AVAlexander Volchek

It's an ideal situation for studying yourself and your ego. On one hand, a person says they can do everything, will get everywhere, know exactly how to do it all, and are completely certain they control everything and find every solution. Yet they want some incredible event to occur and change everything around them. And notice: they won't be the one to do it.

They won't do it. This exaltation of the perfect moment really is Sleeping Beauty: believing in a prince, a chance occurrence, an event, or an acquaintance. So much is based on it—clubs for meeting people, various gatherings. A great deal is built on the idea that a particular event will happen. So what do we come back to? If you, watching this video, are waiting for that wonderful, amazing moment, it means you're living—

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

Outside it.

AVAlexander Volchek

On one hand, not in harmony with life, not actually living it. It isn't a question of joy or happiness; I'm not even talking about those anymore. If this is present, what kind of state can we talk about? Most importantly, you aren't perceiving what's actually happening. And you want to shift your responsibility. It's a very simple, ordinary act of shifting responsibility onto someone or something else. A person says something else is to blame for their problems, and that same something else will bring them everything and resolve it all. ‘Some situation will happen, and I'll be absolutely happy.’

The only solution, and it's an incredibly significant one, is to work on your own state of perception. Understand that you can always expand your perception enormously: life's causes and effects, events, other people—seeing, knowing, feeling them—and your own life in all its broad, many-sided colors. While remaining neutral. The interesting thing is that the more neutrally you perceive life—relating to drinking coffee as evenly as to walking with your child—the greater your ability to notice things. While drinking coffee, you can notice wonderful ideas, thoughts, and events. Where are you? Who's around? What is the space like? What state are you in? You can take in a certain energy. It's the same with your child, instead of thinking, ‘Am I behaving well or badly with my child today? Is this meeting better than the last one or not?’

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

People often narrow their perception, probably because it gives them a sense of safety. You see a person, label them, and put them in a box. You might see me and think, ‘A woman, a blonde,’ as people like to say on our podcast, and conclude I'm this, that, or the other. It differs by country. In America, things are a little easier when it comes to being a woman and so on. But every culture still has labels: IT professional, spiritual guru, spiritual teacher, man, woman, racial categories. Suddenly a mass of expectations weighs on you. People look at you that way, you begin to feel they expect something, and you act accordingly. It's as though they've put a cage around you and you can no longer step outside it.

AVAlexander Volchek

It's a huge problem.

A huge problem for people is living with everyone around them—their environment, community, country, government, work—putting them into a particular box. Everyone always has to go into a box.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

To be classified.

AVAlexander Volchek

Look how far classification has gone. People are absolutely certain the world is material, yet they say, ‘You're probably a Gemini, and you're probably a Virgo.’

I had a partner who told me, ‘You can't be a Pisces. It's impossible. There must be some deception. You couldn't have been born then.’ I said, ‘Here's the birth tag.’

He said, ‘No, something's wrong. You can't be a Pisces.’ You think: are you talking about the material world or the spiritual world? Isn't that amazing? We were born in, or spent much of our lives in, a Christian country where newspapers printed horoscopes every day.

Did Soviet newspapers print horoscopes?

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

Probably not. There wasn't a God in the Soviet Union yet.

AVAlexander Volchek

They didn't, right?

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

There was no God at all.

AVAlexander Volchek

Right, they didn't print horoscopes in the Soviet Union, but they did here. I remember horoscopes in all the newspapers throughout my childhood.

It's amaz—

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

That was already—

AVAlexander Volchek

Isn't it amazing? Why? They put you in a box and lock you in. ‘Today, everyone born in this month will feel this way.’ They've divided everyone in the world into twelve groups and said, ‘You'll all feel like this.’ Why should we? We're different ages; someone is blind, someone deaf, someone has five children, someone four, someone lives on the sixteenth floor, someone in a basement, someone is an alcoholic. We're all different. Are you sure? This boy will die today; he won't be able to feel anything. This woman gave birth today; how will she feel? Yet people believe it and follow it. People are put in boxes everywhere, all the time. Someone watching this video right now is putting someone in a box.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

Yes, one hundred percent.

AVAlexander Volchek

From a guru, someone amazing, to an asshole—

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

Who wants to sell us something.

AVAlexander Volchek

Or something else. A course-selling con artist.

I don't know what words they'll use—a scammer, anything. They classify you and put you in a particular box everywhere. Some judge by clothes, others by cars, bank balances, or the number of children. Boxes everywhere: lots of children makes you parents of a large family; open businesses as well, and now you've got a large family of businesses. You're put in boxes everywhere. It's a huge problem in the outside world, and it damages people enormously. But what's the problem? Everyone does exactly the same thing to everyone else. One tremendously powerful first step is to meet another person and say, ‘I don't know who this person is at all.’

That's one side. On the other, do you know what leads to extraordinary development, including making money and advancing professionally? When you talk with each person, look at the box they've put you in.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

Yes, that's interesting.

AVAlexander Volchek

Because when you're talking with someone and realize where they've placed you—

At a certain point, you stop taking in that false layer coming from them. You begin responding differently in terms of yourself, your faith in yourself, your happiness, and your actions. People throw advice around on a huge scale, in every possible way. You look and say, ‘Wait a second. Are you sure I need that? Maybe I don't need it at all. It isn't my life. I don't need to be in it or live through it.’

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

Yes, they say, ‘Don't deny it. You're in denial.’

AVAlexander Volchek

‘You're in denial, so you—’

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

‘Must need it.’

AVAlexander Volchek

‘You need it one hundred percent.’ When you start noticing the box you're being put in—I was explaining this in my personal development group in V100—it's a very powerful cheat code.

Stop and look: what does my wife actually think about me?

How do my children perceive me? Not how I perceive my children—

How they perceive me, not how I perceive them. Do people ask themselves that? You know how parents often perceive children? There's a child doing something, but essentially the child only does something when they say something to me. The rest of the time, they don't exist.

They have a life. You don't even know them.

You spent three hours with them, but they have twenty-four hours. Things happen, processes take place, all kinds of currents flow. You pick up only a little of it. What do they actually think of you? What do they communicate to you? A child can walk into the kitchen, say a few words, and leave you upset for the next six months. Imagine a fifteen-year-old daughter walking into the kitchen and saying, ‘Dad, you know, you're a strange person. I've looked at other parents, and you're strange.’ Then she leaves.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

Now live with that.

AVAlexander Volchek

Live with it. What does the person really think? That's a very important point. First, reflect on yourself. Second, avoid the trap of those boxes.

The second benefit—I didn't mention money and social opportunities for nothing—is that it really can help you earn money and gain advantages in society, as well as develop. It's a very quick way to understand what's happening everywhere. Listen to people at work and observe what they really think of you. Asking them is pointless, for anyone who thinks you should just ask.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

They won't tell you the truth.

AVAlexander Volchek

They might tell you the whole truth or a complete lie—anything along that spectrum. Again, you won't be able to tell. So should you explore it? You need to study it, perhaps ask something carefully from time to time. It's a substantial process. The other side, which leads a person toward development—and its opposite degrades their harmonious perception of life—is not putting other people in boxes.

You see someone and think, ‘Got it. I understand this person,’ and put everyone in boxes. It's incredibly difficult not to. I'm involved in a large social system with many businesses, interactions, and people. Whether I want to or not, I start sorting people: ‘An employee—let them work; set boundaries for them.’ You have lots to do, and an automatic mechanism starts operating. It's important to stop and say, ‘Fine, this person is a sales manager in my company. I see them as a sales manager, but I won't attach other labels. I don't know who they are, their inner state, where they live, what they do, or why they chose this profession.’ It could be anything. They could be a billionaire or penniless, a tremendously strong spiritual person or a complete nobody, a murderer who might kill me someday. They could be anyone. Agreed? Yet we need a box. Someone visited me about three weeks ago and asked, ‘What do you do, Alexander?’ I said, ‘I have this business, a stake in that one, another business here; I work on strategy here, and I'm an adviser in these other places.

I have a lot going on: I practice piano every day, do some gardening, have a dog. There are the children, moves, meetings. I've invested here; we've got involved in some startups there and are discussing them. I have an IT company, and I make videos.’ He looked at me and said, ‘But what's your main occupation?’

As I've already said, watering the garden is the same to me as meeting some great guru here in Silicon Valley.

What's the difference? I could easily spin him a story that would give him plenty to think about. But he wants to put me in a box and doesn't like it. He says, ‘So, have I got this right? You earned some money, invested it in projects that now produce income, and you're basically chilling.’ He concluded I was chilling. Meanwhile, people who know me often can't understand how I do so much in the time available.

But he got the impression I was chilling. He didn't like my answer.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

It doesn't fit his picture of the world—

AVAlexander Volchek

Most likely, he had expectations. Of course he did, perhaps some preconceived ideas. People need a box so they can work out their next steps. If they can't put you in one, they don't know how to interact with you. You can't be controlled or manipulated. They can't plant notions like ‘There will be a perfect moment,’ ‘You need goals,’ or ‘Here's a strategy.’ There's no point telling you about Vasya or Masha earning or losing trillions.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

‘Women should do this.’

AVAlexander Volchek

It's pointless, because you're sitting there drinking tea with them, and that meeting is the same to you as the Zoom call before it, the dog, the piano, or counting the money in your account. ‘Or a lynx turning up.’ What? ‘Or a lynx turning up.’ Yes. It's exactly the same state for you. You're attentive and present with them, watching, open to them in your attention. Meanwhile, they're looking for a way in, a structure, a box to put you in. It becomes impossible for them to interact with you. You understand how hard it is to communicate with people like that. Or it's easy if you know how to manipulate it: you've understood how others relate to you and what to do where.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

I think so.

AVAlexander Volchek

And you can act quickly. I understand this fairly well.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

You know which buttons to press.

AVAlexander Volchek

You know me. In many respects, I have a pretty good understanding of how to reach an agreement with different people.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

AVAlexander Volchek

What to do where, which strategy to choose. But this is still a social environment, and the social environment—

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

A social game.

AVAlexander Volchek

All right, social games. When people talk with you that way, though, they freeze and don't know what to do next. They tell you something, and you say, ‘Actually, I sometimes feel rather strange.’ You mention something going badly, then something good, then bad, then good again. It blows their mind; they have no idea what's happening. They try to feed you something: ‘Well, you moved, so you probably had this issue.’ You look at them: ‘What are you talking about?’

You can't understand how that's possible. So these boxes are all about comparison.

Give us the chance to live without putting people in boxes.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

Still, when you put someone in a box, you aren't putting yourself in another box. You're putting yourself above them, like a puppeteer: ‘Here are my little boxes of puppets.’ It's still somewhat of a position of superiority.

AVAlexander Volchek

Sometimes you put someone in a box as a guru and yourself in another as the Padawan who's come to them.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

Yes, that happens, too.

AVAlexander Volchek

There's that aspect of defining someone by their profession, for example: ‘You're a designer.’

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

‘Right, we've got you figured out.’

AVAlexander Volchek

You say, ‘Wait, I'm a designer, a businessperson, a chemist, and a programmer.’ ‘An investor.’ ‘And an investor.’ ‘Hold on. Everything's linear for us. Decide who you are.’ People often ask about my wife: ‘What does she do?’ I say, ‘She lives. She does lots of things. She spends time with the children.’ ‘So she looks after the children.’

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

‘A homemaker.’

AVAlexander Volchek

And they put her in a box.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

‘So that means…’

AVAlexander Volchek

What difference does it make what she does? The question is how she feels, what state she's in. My wife doesn't care what you do. Tell her you earn a hundred billion dollars or a thousand dollars, and she'll look at you the same way—as a person. There may be something she likes or dislikes, but believe me, that number means nothing to her. Start talking about the numerical achievements you want, and a wall comes down. She's thinking, ‘What is he talking about?’ Later she tells me, ‘He was talking about something—’

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

‘But I don't remember what.’

AVAlexander Volchek

‘Sasha, I feel strange because I didn't understand any of it. I nodded politely, but I didn't understand.’ That's interesting. Those things don't interest her; other things do, and she enjoys them. I've often said some people are blessed with being mothers, for example. It's very difficult to have a child, spend every day with them, and be happy. My wife has read to the children every evening for fourteen years. I'll say right away: I couldn't do that under any circumstances. We have some conflict around it.

There's a bit of conflict because she won't let me join in during the evening either. She says, ‘Go on, off you go.’ And the children say, ‘No, we were waiting for Mom tonight.’ It's a habit, a kind of dependence. Yet she's read to them for fourteen years. What kind of strength do you need to read a book to your children every evening for fourteen years? I haven't done anything for fourteen years—apart from brushing my teeth.

AVAlexander Volchek / Tatyana Tsvetkova

Want me to give you the answer? Karma.

AVAlexander Volchek

I brush my teeth. Can you do something together for fourteen years? Apart from going to bed, right?

AMAlexander Mineev

Because it's her nature.

AVAlexander Volchek / Tatyana Tsvetkova

Yes, ri—

AVAlexander Volchek

That's a very interesting point. It's an action that happens naturally, and that makes it a powerful, genuine, wonderful action.

AVAlexander Volchek / Tatyana Tsvetkova

She doesn't force herself.

AVAlexander Volchek

She doesn't force herself to do it. My wife definitely doesn't force herself to do things like that. If she didn't want to read, she absolutely wouldn't. I guarantee it.

AMAlexander Mineev

I like the process.

AVAlexander Volchek

She definitely wouldn't. One hundred percent. You'll never see her somewhere she doesn't want to be. Of course, sometimes you can force her with something, but it's very difficult.

AVAlexander Volchek / Tatyana Tsvetkova

And you'll regret it afterward.

AVAlexander Volchek

It's very difficult, and nothing good will come of it.

There's your box. People also frame others in relation to themselves. A child is born: ‘That'll probably be difficult.’ A second: ‘Probably difficult.’ A third, and someone who's never had that experience says, ‘Are you out of your minds?’ They impose their own box, imagining how they'd experience it and how hard it would be for them. I'm driving through town with my mother and say, ‘Mom, we've decided to get a dog.’ She says—

AVAlexander Volchek / Tatyana Tsvetkova

‘Don't you have enough—’

AVAlexander Volchek

‘Don't you have enough problems?’

AVAlexander Volchek / Tatyana Tsvetkova

I've heard that one.

AVAlexander Volchek

At that moment I want to say, ‘Shh! Out of the car!’ But I'm not going to leave her in Los Altos Hills; it's a long walk to Minsk. Fourteen thousand kilometers, or however far it is. She won't make it. So I don't put her out of the car. We keep driving, and she projects her own view. She doesn't understand what it means to me. Can you imagine—

AVAlexander Volchek / Tatyana Tsvetkova

And she wants the best for you.

AVAlexander Volchek

Can you imagine—

AVAlexander Volchek / Tatyana Tsvetkova

As a mother.

AVAlexander Volchek

I'm sure you can't. I want to say one thing: she knows me. She knows the tasks, achievements, and things I've done in life. She can compare their weights a little. Clearly, getting a dog isn't the biggest or most difficult thing I've done. For me, buying a dog is about as demanding as going for a thirty-minute hike this evening, in terms of—

AMAlexander Mineev

The strain.

AVAlexander Volchek

The strain. I don't even know which would be harder for me tonight. Sometimes taking a thirty-minute hike is harder. It's simply an action, and then I have tasks. Someone may think, ‘That asshole bought a dog and mistreats it.’ No, I have a Borzoi that I take care of. At first, no one was working with it at all. There's a lot of training involved, and so on. Polina helps a great deal now, and I get the children to do things, but it's primarily my responsibility. The dog needs care, study, and analysis; there's a lot to do. I've also created a planning, travel, and moving problem for myself. It's much easier to manage fewer people than more, and then there's a dog. Today I asked my wife, ‘Can we get a second dog?’ She said, ‘If I leave the house, you can.’ I said, ‘But you want another child.’ She said, ‘A child is easier.’

Funny, isn't it? Tanya, you know Polina.

For her, another child really is easier than a dog.

AVAlexander Volchek / Tatyana Tsvetkova

Although I think California has more dogs than children.

AVAlexander Volchek

It's nonsense. What kind of dog are we talking about? If you got a little pooch, you could get another little one. Some are like plush toys.

AVAlexander Volchek / Tatyana Tsvetkova

There are robots now, too.

Even more convenient.

AVAlexander Volchek

There are difficult dogs, and there are plush toys. Yours, Sasha, is a plush toy.

Right? Such a lovely little dog, though you can worry about it as much as about a child. Mainly, you have to make sure the children don't destroy it. Mine are a total disaster in that respect; it's better not to let anyone near them. That's a very interesting point.

AMAlexander Mineev

It seems like we're being programmed. When I was little, people asked, ‘When were you born?’ I said, ‘In April.’ ‘Oh, you're an Aries, so you're stubborn.’ They told me four times. The fifth time I answered, ‘I'm stubborn,’ myself. It's self-programming: people program you, and eventually you really start believing it.

AVAlexander Volchek

Of course. It can't help happening. People endlessly impose the designer label on Tanya. I know her life fairly broadly, and design is roughly one percent of it. They attach you to some construct or circumstance, or remember one particular thing and hang you on that hook. Vitalik's sitting here. We were talking, and then he said, ‘I'm a professor.’ You thought, ‘Hold on!’

Because you might already have put him in a box. He can tell you more about who he is, and you think, ‘Wait, could you not tell me that?’ Certain programming definitely happens. The more people repeat things to you, the more significance—or insignificance—you'll give them. That's—

AVAlexander Volchek / Tatyana Tsvetkova

The most unforgettable—

AVAlexander Volchek

Guaranteed, especially with children. At school, for example, I was constantly told my pronunciation was poor, I couldn't draw, or I couldn't write essays. But I hardly seem like someone who can't write an essay. I've been talking since eight this morning, and it's four in the afternoon. Eight hours—well, maybe I was quiet for thirty minutes. Seven and a half hours of talking without a break. How many pages would that make as text? A hundred and fifty, perhaps, or a hundred. I don't know; a large amount. Is that an essay? Obviously. We have an extensive discussion here, a complex structure. The same goes for languages or drawing. I remember starting to learn Chinese and drawing about four hundred characters. Someone came up and said, ‘Your characters are so beautiful.’ I said, ‘What? Me and drawing?’ He looked at me and said, ‘They probably told you at school that you couldn't draw.’

AVAlexander Volchek / Tatyana Tsvetkova

Yes, I hear that all the time.

AVAlexander Volchek

Then pronunciation. I said, ‘My pronunciation is probably bad.’ He said, ‘Who told you that? Your Chinese pronunciation is very good. They probably told you that at school.’ People constantly tell you things and attach huge labels. Sasha, of course you'll label others, and they'll label you: ‘What kind of businessperson are you? What could you possibly do?’ But being a businessperson is relative. You happen to meet a neighbor, and he thinks, ‘Why not give him ten percent of my company in return for making videos for me?’ You make some videos; the company's worth a billion dollars, and suddenly you have a hundred million. You run out saying, ‘I've become a businessperson,’ and start holding forth. Then someone happens to suggest buying crypto. You buy it, and suddenly you have three hundred million. ‘Now I'm an investor.’

You'll make a video: ‘From Editor to Investor,’ ‘From Producer to Millionaire,’ ‘How to Move from a Village near Irkutsk to Silicon Valley—’

AMAlexander Mineev

‘And Chill.’

AVAlexander Volchek

And chill. Those are the circumstances. People say, ‘Sasha, you're so easygoing.’ Incidentally, when money comes, people become very easygoing.

AMAlexander Mineev

When money appears, ease appears.

AVAlexander Volchek / Tatyana Tsvetkova

Not everyone. I wouldn't say that.

AVAlexander Volchek

Well, yes.