Transcription
Life truly begins at 40. Before that, you are simply conducting research. Affairs, sports cars, skydiving. The nature of this state is that a person simply has confusion and uncertainty. He finally gains freedom. Most people have no habit of managing their freedom. This video will save your family and your career. Life truly begins at 40. Before that, you are simply conducting research. Carl Jung. I think this is familiar to almost everyone. Either it happened to you, or someone close to you felt it. You know, a birthday adds one digit, one candle to the cake. Our counter grows by another unit. And at this moment, a certain fear arises in a person. Fear that, damn it, another year is behind us, what awaits us ahead becomes a year shorter. Maybe I didn't manage to do something. Maybe I'm not actually living the life I should be living. There may be a feeling that the best years are already behind. You know, these numbers or this number of candles are like a sentence. And the problem is as follows. People, of course, are afraid of numbers for no reason. You shouldn't be afraid of numbers, you shouldn't be afraid of years lived. You should be afraid of years lived meaninglessly. without getting real pleasure, without feeling that you are actually doing something, realizing, getting some cool life due to the feeling that the years you are ticking off were lived by someone else's life. And in this video, I will tell you why people are so afraid of aging, why at a certain stage many people just lose their minds, where such a thing as a midlife crisis comes from at all. Well, and of course, I will tell you from my point of view, was Carl Jung right. Does life really only begin at 40? I think you know this perfectly well. From childhood, we, each person, are shown a certain picture. It's a pretty simple picture. Son, you must learn to read, and you will go to school, and then you will learn everything very important at school, and you will spend 11 or 12 years there. And then, when you do this and do it well enough, you will be a good boy, you will go to some college or university, and then, when you get your diploma, all doors will open before you, and you will start working and building your career. At this point, this predetermined program, which is imposed on every person in this wonderful society, actually ends. The entire path drawn, the path of self-discovery, development, it actually ends. But this is exactly what people are instilled with from childhood, you understand? This is a law, a fundamental law of modern culture. School, institute, work, retirement, death. If you recognize yourself and if you can do a little retrospective and recall your vision of the future in childhood, and if you see that this program has really had a great influence on you, then like this video. And this is what many people never think about. That when you, like a good, obedient boy, follow this program, of course, trying to do it well for yourself and to please your parents, but in the end, you will reach the end of this program, and then no one will give you the next step. Congratulations, you've grown up, son. This is precisely the wonderful moment when you should start building your own life and development program. Let's be honest, most people are simply not ready for this. They don't know how to do it. Simply for the reason that, firstly, they were never taught this, and secondly, because from childhood they were accustomed that if you follow the program given to you by your parents, imposed by society, then everything will be fine with you. Do you understand? They were trained, they were accustomed to follow, not to create, they were encouraged for being good at completing another step of this program. They were usually not encouraged for inventing something, coming up with something, or deviating somewhere. They were usually punished for this, you understand? And as a result, a person is accustomed, trained, drilled for obedience, and not for listening to himself and understanding what is actually good for him. And if a person lives in this paradigm, approximately by the age of 40, when this wonderful program defined by someone ends, he suddenly discovers that he has no new program. And most people fall into a state that is actually called a midlife crisis. In fact, well, it's only a crisis very conditionally. The nature of this state is that a person simply has confusion and uncertainty before the fact that now he has finally received the opportunity to choose. Why at 40? Why do we talk about some magical 40 years? You know, the arrow, as they say, has gone past 12 o'clock, the carriage has turned into a pumpkin, or you turned 40, and then the crisis begins. Well, of course not. Why doesn't it necessarily happen at 40? But why doesn't it happen, for example, at 20? Simply for the reason that at 40, well, some may, of course, at 35, but it's not so important. A person is no longer in a rush, he has practically finished this program. Its inertia has already exhausted itself. Yes, at 40, usually, conventionally 40, he already has some income, he already has some housing, he has some basic comfortable standard of living. I'm not saying, by the way, that this is a super standard of living, but, you understand, when you live at some standard of living for 10 or 15 years, it still becomes comfortable for you. You get used to it. That is, he has a comfortable standard of living. And this is very important, because at 40, if he has worked well and honestly, become a professional, he has some usual successes in life, he usually already has children who have grown up and do not require so much continuous attention, you don't need to control them every minute. Here he gets something that can be called freedom or freedom of choice. This is when we no longer can do anything for ourselves, and only we ourselves can decide where to direct our trained body, our focus, our energy, our money, our time. It is this freedom that scares and creates this feeling of crisis. Freedom is a simple thing. It's when you can direct your time, money, energy, spend physical effort every day by your own decision. And now, son, you have to decide. This is an opportunity, right? This is an opportunity. You know, the definition of crisis, problems and opportunity. So, why do we call it a crisis here? Because an opportunity arises, finally, an opportunity to decide for yourself how to build your life further. And most people have no habit of managing their freedom. They never really had it, and it just suddenly appears. They just don't know what to do with it. And there is an interesting point here. The more caring, talented, and energetic people were around you in childhood. And at the same time, the more they influenced the trajectory you choose in life, the more, in other words, predetermined the program that was imposed on a person in childhood, the more he was trained and accustomed to the fact that he must follow the program, because his parents told him: "You will become a doctor, son." Because a doctor is a person whom everyone loves and respects. It's a good profession, it brings a lot of social good and blah-blah-blah. Or a lawyer. Lawyers are never left without a piece of bread. Parents were actually realizing their own program, which consisted in taking care of the child so that he would become independent. They were realizing some of their own vision of the world. Well, if they did that, it doesn't mean there's something wrong with them. They just did what they thought was best. But the more the environment actually controlled a person's life and development, the harder the crisis will be at 40. Because if the program was very smart, very powerful, very strong, very successful, then this person was simply in this tunnel for a long time and didn't even peek out, didn't try to find a door leading out of this tunnel. And the second side of this story is very interesting. After all, people often ask themselves such a question: "Why do these rebels, troublemakers, hooligans, or slackers, why do they often achieve more in life?" The reason is very simple. The more of a slacker a person was, conditionally, or, in other words, the more he did what he wanted, and not what the environment wanted from him, which imposed a program on him, the more, interestingly, the crisis at 40 will be easier for him, or maybe it won't happen at all, because he simply didn't have a strict program from childhood. He himself chose where to go to study, which college to enter or university, or not to enter college-university, to go to trade school, to master the profession of a welder, and then to engage in IT. That is, he chose himself. He has the skill, he has the habit of choosing what he likes himself. And as he grew up, he developed this quality for himself. When I analyzed this problem of 40 years, I, naturally, first of all looked at my own life. This is absolutely normal. I am now 55 years old. And I thought, when did I have a crisis at 40, when was it, when? And, you know, it was very difficult for me to discover it. I found only very weak signs of it. And then I asked myself: "Why? Why did this happen?" Well, I think the reason is that I never had any particularly strict program imposed on me. Naturally, the toughest part for me was the usual secondary school, ten-year school, because you couldn't get past this. And therefore, it was a ten-year school. But at the same time as the ten-year school, since I liked art, for example, I independently chose to go to art school, when I came to my parents and said: "Dad, Mom, you need to pay 30 rubles a month, I'm going to art school." My parents said: "Why, son?" I said: "Well, I just like it, it's cool, I want to learn to draw." They said: "Okay." I chose my trajectory from childhood. And I chose the university myself, the one I liked. I had a wild dream to become a super radio engineer, to design radio-electronic devices. There was a problem because my parents were not rich, they were, frankly, poor, ordinary workers. I could enter any wonderful university. But I chose a higher military school specializing in radio electronics. Simply for the reason that I knew that my parents would support me there, right? That is, they would feed me, clothe me, shoe me, and put me to bed. That is, I would be fully provided for there. Well, by the way, it was a great calculation, and everything was very correct. But I chose this trajectory myself, I chose the specialty myself. No one gave me much advice. And, of course, I bear responsibility for all mistakes. And then in the future, when I decided to engage in some business, I decided to engage. When I decided to sell a company and do something else, I never really fell into any crisis, rethinking, and so on. I never had this state, you know, everything I lived for, and so on. suddenly turned out to be untrue. Nothing like that for me. This is typical of those guys who follow some program. This can lead to a crooked path, of course. Therefore, I am not suggesting that you should not care about your children's development trajectory at all. In no case. But it can also lead to success. Well, and by the way, this is also interesting. What is your experience? Did your parents pressure you to choose a professional trajectory, or did you choose it yourself? And what did it lead to in the end? Write in the comments. It will be very interesting to read. This is what happens at the age of, conditionally, 35-40 years, when a person suddenly realizes that he has fully completed some program or when he realizes that the old program no longer works, he finally gains freedom, he already has some standard of living, and he begins, as they say, to indulge in all sorts of excesses. And this can manifest in different ways. Let's dye our hair green, some cosmetic changes in appearance, let's get tattoos and all that. You know, a person simply goes to a hairdresser and says: "That's it, I'm tired of it. Make me something completely different. I don't want to look like before anymore." He tries to change something. Do you understand? This is a rather basic, simple, low level of freedom manifestation. I always wanted to get a tattoo, finally I'll do it. And these small manifestations, if you see them in people aged 35-40, something like this, this is what begins to manifest, this energy begins to manifest. These are just signs of how it happens. But these are signs, in fact, of a much deeper question. This question is: "Who am I really? What am I really like? And what life should I really live for it to bring me real pleasure?" Yes, these small signs can lead to much more serious things, because a person understands, but he made some small cosmetic change in his life, but in reality, he doesn't feel any satisfaction from it, it doesn't save him. And so a person worked in the same company for 15 years, a great specialist, everyone loves and respects him, very stable and so on. From the perspective of others, he's losing his mind, and he says: "That's it, I can't do this anymore, I can't do it." He doesn't prepare in any way, you know, he doesn't try to gently change his trajectory, do you understand? He uses the capital, both intellectual and financial, that he has, to somehow change his life, he just freaks out, quits, flies away, leaves without a plan, without any new job on the horizon. Simply because he is just overwhelmed by all this. Do you understand? This dissatisfaction from following some externally imposed trajectory has overwhelmed him so much at some point that he simply can no longer cope with it. Very often in such a situation, people try to find an outlet in some intense sensations. They start doing things they've never done before. Do you understand, a person never really engaged in sports or physical education before 40. And now he suddenly decides to kill himself in marathons. suddenly starts skydiving. People who have had, for many years, perhaps decades, been in a good, comfortable, great, productive marriage. Suddenly they start breaking it all, destroying it, changing it. And statistics show this. at the age of about 39-40. Right in this specific period of life, when a person has practically completed his next third decade of life, according to research from the University of Pennsylvania, the probability of starting an extramarital affair increases threefold compared to adjacent ages. This is completely illogical, because, if we are talking about men, their testosterone levels decrease with age. That is, in theory, the probability of extramarital relations should be much higher at 30. But it's not. Statistics refute this. Many will tell me that, oh, you know, it's related to hormonal changes, changes in the body, and so on. Statistics actually say that no, it's not related. It can have some influence, but it's not the main reason. Not the reason why people suddenly start doing extreme sports, riding motorcycles, flying helicopters. making some crazy impulsive purchases on the principle of "I've always wanted to. Now I'll go for it." Embarking on some meaningless journeys. Meaningless journeys, I mean, these are those self-challenges, like "I will definitely travel to all countries of the world, I will visit all countries of the world." Then you ask: "Well, why? What are you closing? There are many countries in this world that it's better not to go to at all. Even if they force you and pay you extra, it would be good if your foot never stepped on that territory." No. That is, these meaningless challenges, having no relation to real pleasure, no financial sense, in general, bringing the person nothing. But all this happens for one reason. A person cannot find an answer to the question: "How should I live to be happy, to be comfortable, to be in harmony? What life should I live? Am I living the right life?" And so he starts to channel all this through such strange things. This is especially noticeable among business owners. Well, I talk about this because I constantly work with business owners. And in our business accelerator, called Business Booster, there are now several hundred companies worldwide. And by the way, recently, literally, the two-thousandth company has started in our accelerator, which is very pleasant. Therefore, I constantly work with business owners, and I see what is happening. And by the way, when this happens to business owners, everything I've told you is mega-destructive, because, well, okay, a hired employee, a corporate officer starts to destroy his life with some meaningless manifestations of creativity. When an owner does this, it's much worse, because a business owner is a leader, a person who sets meanings, a person who leads somewhere. And when this person starts to shake and loses some course stability, loses his vector, then, naturally, it immediately affects the entire company, and everything starts to go to hell. And, of course, in this situation, there will likely be no good future development for this business. And by the way, if you think you don't have such a state, I recommend you look into it. And for this, we even have a special test that you can use. The link to it is in the description of this video. And some go to extreme measures. The age of 35-40 is an age for which the fourth most frequent cause of death in the United States is suicide. These are not illnesses, these are not accidents, this is a conscious ending of one's own life. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the CDC, 8.53 people per year in this age group. And these are people, you understand, who on paper have everything they need. Many could envy them. They have jobs, they have homes, they have families, they have money. It would seem, externally, when you look at it, they have everything a person could wish for and strive for. Well, and frankly, from my point of view, all these extreme dangerous sports are actually a kind of veiled suicide. A person may not even admit to himself that he wants to put an end to this life. And therefore, he chooses a much more socially acceptable and elegant way to achieve this. So, from my point of view, if a person does not understand how to go through this correctly, this midlife crisis will end, it is always regrettable. So, how to correctly go through this crisis? Well, I think it's already obvious that to get through this crisis, you need your own path. You need your own decisions regarding what your life should be like. And most people think that this path needs to be found. That is, you need to find something to live for. Finding means looking at what options exist. You need to try, touch, taste all these possibilities, try them on yourself. It's like trying to assemble a large puzzle, with the Eiffel Tower, just by trial and error. Just randomly trying, not imagining what the Eiffel Tower is. You're just trying to randomly rearrange these puzzle pieces to form a beautiful picture. An absolutely useless approach. Trying to find, to go through possible solutions and thus find a path and find happiness is absolute nonsense. In reality, this task is solved in only one way. You simply decide for yourself first. You make a decision about what you live for. It's like, imagine you come to a wonderful buffet restaurant in a good hotel, and you see a huge colossal selection of food. It's like in Dubai 15 or 20 years ago, I went to a five-star hotel for the first time. And there are endless buffets here. Here is Asian food, there is European, there is Italian, there is something else, and so on. You have one mouth and one stomach. The choice of food is huge, and you need to decide what you can put on your plate. There is no one to advise you. You have to decide for yourself. If you don't make this decision, you will either remain hungry, or you will create for yourself, you will assemble such a combination that you will simply feel bad as a result. It seems like you were at a wonderful breakfast, but in the end, you feel bad. This is exactly what happens in life. There is a very simple, natural, inherent, universal principle. A person lives for pleasure. Every person. But when I say pleasure, I don't mean physical pleasures. I mean pleasure in a broad sense. This is not about entertainment, but in a broad sense. Pleasure, for example, from having a certain well-being. Pleasure from your body serving you well, having good health. Pleasure from communicating with family members with whom you have excellent relationships. Pleasure from communicating with children and observing them grow and become more capable. Pleasure from doing work that is interesting to you. Interesting not only in terms of salary, but interesting simply because you like doing it. This is a wide spectrum of pleasure. And this principle of obtaining pleasure in a broad sense of the word, it actually underlies decision-making. Note, not choice, but decision-making about what your trajectory should be. And a good question arises: "Well, Alexander, you've explained so well about this pleasure in a broad sense. How will this pleasure help you choose your meaning in life, your trajectory?" You know, I was very lucky once. I was very lucky to meet many talented people on this planet. But in terms of choosing a life trajectory, one person helped me a lot. His name is Bernard Percy, he is known all over the world. He lives in the Bronx. And he is a professor who has helped people find their life vector for decades. He called it a life calling. And the essence of this approach is astonishingly simple. You see, he never gave people advice, and he never imposed on them what he thought they should do and how to do it, and so on. The only thing he did and does, I hope he is alive, is ask the right question. And when you ask a person the right questions, the person, by answering them, begins to look at his life, to rethink the path he has taken. And by answering these questions, he comes to understand what in his life, in his activities brought him maximum creative pleasure. And this knowledge is what is a very strong foundation for understanding how to live and where to move. His methodology worked with several such special key questions that allowed the person himself to unfold, you know, his inner map. Well, and the first question to answer is: what actually brings me pleasure? This is an important clarification. Actually, it's not just, you know, a speech parasite. I really mean real pleasure. By this, I mean, you know, the difference between what society supposedly should bring us pleasure and what actually brings some positive emotions. What do I mean by "should bring"? Well, society constantly attacks us with its standards, social networks, some bright covers, examples, promoting the idea of what life we should live and how we should dress, and what we should eat, and where we should travel, and so on. Well, in fact, you understand that this is marketing, but we are simply bombarded with it, imposing different ideas on us, ideas about what we should get pleasure from. But when I talk about this question, about thinking about what actually brings you pleasure, I mean something else. I mean some emotional uplift, creative inspiration that arises when you do something yourself by your own decision, without witnesses, without the evaluation of other people. And solely from the fact that you are doing this work, you get some pleasure and great satisfaction. And for different people, these are completely different things. For some, it's tinkering with technology, for some, it's soldering a computer or assembling something else, and for some, it's pleasure, it's meeting some interesting, inspiring people. And for some, pleasure is teaching another person something useful, valuable, you know, opening him up
Some new facets of this world. And when we seek an answer to this question, you simply need to discard all these social films, you understand, just concentrate on your past, look at different types of activities, at different moments in life that you were engaged in, and find those very moments that brought pleasure simply from the fact that you were doing something specific and deriving pleasure from it. Not because you will earn a lot of money as a result, not because you will be praised as a result, and others will look at you with approval, how well you are, finally, you bought yourself decent shoes. No, but when you genuinely derived pleasure, simply because you were doing it. And this moment and this type of activity, it is precisely what lies in the vein of a person's true calling. That is, to understand your calling, you can simply scan, so to speak, examine your life and find such incredible moments. If you can recognize them, if you can fix them, you can then comprehend them and understand what I am actually talking about right now. Well, it happens that you try to examine your life, and the volleys of a thousand guns merged into a drawn-out howl. Some kind of constant pain, struggle, problems, and so on. What to do in this case? Well, in this case, I can say that it's not that something is wrong with you. The point is that you are simply too fixated on some current problems. And in this case, I recommend that you get rid of it a little. Take a week, three days, do nothing, solve no problems. Let your attention unfix, and then return to this question, and you will find the answer to this question. For example, when I started working with Brian Percy, and he started asking me questions, it was not easy for me to find the answer to this question either, but he somehow knows how to, you know, make you amenable to it. And I discovered that it always brought me pleasure when I brought order to something, made some scattered pieces work together. This manifested in different ways. That's precisely why, by the way, I enjoyed it when I was involved with technology, equipment, repairing something, making it work. Then, when I started working in production, I found a certain pleasure in organizing the production line well, so that it worked without failures, like a single mechanism. And then I realized that this is wonderfully applicable to almost any company, to my business, to a large group of people. and became fascinated with management, administration, building a system out of people. And this began to bring me even more pleasure. Yes, of course, in doing so, as a company owner, I earned money, gained respect, received recognition, awards, and all that. But in reality, I derived true pleasure simply from the fact that I take a group of people, organize them in such a way that they work effectively, and then I can take a couple of steps back and just watch, enjoy the result, and see how they work coolly and effectively. And I found my calling in this, and you can do it too, simply by looking at your life, finding such moments, and drawing logical conclusions and determining your calling. The next question that needs to be answered, but this is question number two. Pay attention, the first question is more important. The second question is: how do I differ from other people? What are my special personal qualities or natural abilities, or natural predisposition, or some type of thinking? Because, you see, when it comes to people, we are all, one way or another, involved in hiring. And usually we encounter such concepts as skills and soft skills. Hard skills are the skills, knowledge, abilities that a person possesses, often professional. And it is often considered that this is the main thing. Well, perhaps in some situations it is the main thing, but, you understand, hard skills are something that a person can acquire in life, through education, through practice, by gaining experience. And the second component is soft skills. This is what is considered human skills or personal qualities. Understanding your own soft skills is much, much more important. Do you know why? Because usually we cannot change our soft skills. We can develop them, of course, if a person is communicative, they can learn to communicate even better, and thus they will further reveal their soft skills, their communicativeness. Or vice versa, if a person tends to focus, to dig deep, to delve into details, and they have such a soft skill, you know, such tenacity in terms of focus and knowledge, they can also develop it. But still, fundamentally, we possess, out of the box, we possess completely different soft skills. For some, for example, it is characteristic to quickly, boldly find a solution and immediately move on to implementation. And for some, it is necessary to analyze, gather data, and only then start acting. And regarding soft skills or personal qualities, I can tell you, there are no good or bad ones. There are simply good or bad ones that are suitable or unsuitable for a particular type of activity. Because we cannot say that someone who is decisive and brave and immediately rushes into battle, necessarily wins on the life trajectory over someone who analyzes in detail and so on. No, of course, because, yes, perhaps when it comes to sales, yes, such a person will win, but when it comes to long-term investments, they will definitely lose. And the best investors are very cautious, very rational people who analyze a lot, calculate, and only then act. And they earn, by the way, a lot of money as investors, unlike brave entrepreneurs who are used to rushing into battle thoughtlessly. And why am I talking about soft skills now? If a person tries to do a job that does not correspond to their soft skills out of the box, they will expend a lot of effort, they will not experience pleasure, it will be very difficult for them, they will most likely get mediocre results. And if they suddenly achieve outstanding results through discipline, through effort, they still won't get any enjoyment from it. Therefore, it makes no sense. Therefore, it makes sense to understand what your soft skills are. I am not an expert in this, I am quite superficial, but nevertheless, when I studied socionics, from my point of view, socionics is the best methodology existing today that allows you to type yourself, type people, logically analyze what is strong in you, what is weak in you, and consequently understand yourself better. That's why I use socionics myself. We use socionics in the company when we hire people, to answer the question: how comfortable, natural will it be for them to perform a certain job and interact with people around. I found this answer in socionics. Well, and I recommend that you find the answer to your question about who I am, what types of activities are more characteristic of me, in what types of activities I will succeed naturally without strain, and what types of activities it is better to even stay away from. But pay attention, this is the second most important question. And there is also a third most important question. And here I am not going to sell you anything. I am simply sharing, as it were, my own experience. For me, it is socionics. I can't tell you much about socionics. Google it, and you will definitely find answers to your questions. Because there is an incredible amount of absolutely accessible and free material on socionics on the internet. The third question, to which it makes sense to find an answer after you have answered the first two. Who, actually, inspires me? Who is emotionally attractive? Who would I like to be like? This is a person whom I look at and think: "This is the kind of activity I would like to pursue, this kind of life, this is what I would like to do." And this is a good question, actually, because when we have such role models, we unconsciously try to imitate them. In essence, they are a picture for us of what we would like to be or what kind of life we would like to lead. Well, I am not talking about states or bright pictures on Instagram now. I am not talking about all of that, not about that. I am talking about what a person does in life, how successful they are in business, what they do in business, what kind of family they have, how they interact with others, with friends, with society. Therefore, when you imagine your ideal, beautiful life, well, it's not bad to have such a role model. It's not necessary that you should find it. No, of course, but it's quite good to have it. So, if you have answered these three questions, I will emphasize again that the first question is the most important, the second is less important, and the third is even less important. But if you have found answers to these three questions and you have formulated this main idea for yourself, which I have formulated for myself as my calling - it is to bring order, it is to build systems, that's how I formulated it for myself, and you have formulated it for yourself in some way. It can be any wording. I congratulate you, because you have not only gained awareness of your own path, but you have also received some additional bonus. And the first bonus is that now that you have found the answer to this question, you can think about what you really need to do next in life? And the answer to this question will allow you to painlessly go through the very midlife crisis that I talked about at the beginning of the video. And the second bonus that comes with it is that you stop being a puppet manipulated by this society through social media, through marketing tools, through the opinions of government authorities, and so on. You start to truly live your own life, and no one is pulling the strings, you understand? It becomes practically impossible to manipulate you when you know what you really want, what is really important to you. What do you actually get pleasure from? This is a wonderful state, for which it is worth spending some time and engaging in such self-analysis. Well, and a third such bonus, you know, a technical one, when you understand your path, and your calling can be imagined, visualized as a path along which you walk in life. Remember that story? A samurai has no goal, he has a path. They meant exactly this: that the path is more important than the goal. Because goals are just some milestones within this path. When you understand your path, it is quite easy for you to set these milestones, that is, to set goals and then achieve these goals. Because both the movement towards the goal and the achievement of the goal are within the framework of your calling, which means it brings you pleasure. Well, and if, by the way, you want to understand more precisely or get recommendations on how to set goals, then I have good news for you. You can go to my Telegram channel, and I have a post there about how to set goals. Well, and the link to the Telegram channel is in the description of this video. And don't forget to subscribe to the channel.