I am alive. I am fit. I am healthy. I am in a good state of mind. I am 30. I have love. I have faith. I have a purpose. I am 30.
To make this birthday memorable – I ran 100 KM. I ran for 13 hours, from sunrise to sunset. A celebration of youth. A celebration of health.
I set a goal that scared me. Anxiety was holding me by my arms. It felt like a numbness from my fingers up to the elbows.
Why run?
Because I can. Because I never did it before. To change the trajectory of my life, whatever it takes. I want to change. I want to become someone different. Someone I could enjoy living with. I want to move into a new world.
The first 50 km were relatively easy. Minor pains and indigestion. Everything beyond that – was uncharted territory for me. The pain grew. Pain killers did not make a difference. I was hurting.
The most challenging part of the run was the hill. Elevation gain of 1,200 m (3,937 ft) in 10 km. It took me three hours to climb that hill. And that’s after having run 60 km. The last hour of the climb went with no food or water. It was very challenging.
Meeting my friend at the top gave me an extra strength to continue. Cailan brought water and gels. Hallelujah. I came back to life.
I was about 30 km away from the finish when I separated from my friend and went down the trail. The plan was for him to drive downhill and ride his bike back up to meet me in about an hour. It didn’t go as planned and we met only 4 hours later. I got lost in the woods.
At the 90 km mark, I realized that taking the trail was a mistake. It led me nowhere. My phone was almost dead with about 5% battery left. It was getting dark and cold. I had left about two sips of water and two gels.
I attempted to call my friend but couldn’t reach him – no service on his end. I texted him my GPS coordinates and went off the trail, looking for a road. I was very tired. My lips dried out. No water. I was preparing to spend the night in the woods.
A long story short I found my way out. I was very happy to step back on the pavement. I made it! I was upbeat and cheerful. I was singing songs and laughing. What a day it was!
Piece by piece I build self-respect. I ran 100 km from Vernon to Penticton. I got lost in the forest and found my way out. I did many hard things in life, which thought me this: I CAN DO ANYTHING THAT I PUT MY MIND TO. I now truly believe that. Self-confidence is acquired and it is not something that you can be born with. I’ve built mine by doing the things that scared me. Repeatedly overcoming hard things build self-esteem and shows you that you are capable of more than you previously thought.
I continue setting goals for myself. I attempt difficult tasks. I am not often successful, but it doesn’t matter. I have balls to try. I burn out and fail. I cry and have depressive episodes. But I always come back smiling. That’s who I am.
I don’t need anyone to tell me what to do and what not to do. I don’t need anyone to decide for me which goals are too risky. I don’t need anyone to hold my hand and tell me that everything’s going to be alright. I overcame the illusion that there is someone who can make my life better. I know in my bones that no amount of money or medals will improve the quality of my existence. I can’t control anything. All I can do is my best. Things will happen, just the way they always do.
I have faith that makes me stronger. I am building someone who can do incredible things. With God’s help, I can be anyone and I can do anything. There is a plan for me and everyone else. All I am asking for is a chance. The opportunity. Everyone deserves at least one chance to become great. Everything I do now is a preparation for the opportunity ahead. It is bigger than me. And when the opportunity reveals itself – I will be ready. I will be at the peak of my capabilities. I will execute my part perfectly.
I didn’t waste my life. My life was filled with happiness and purpose. It is not the destiny of mankind to remain unfulfilled. What would really satisfy me is not getting slim or rich but feeling good about my life.
I strive to achieve control over psychic energy and invest it in consciously chosen goals. I then will grow into a more complex being. By stretching my skills, by reaching toward higher challenges, I will become an increasingly extraordinary individual.
Flow — the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it.
It is crucial for me to learn to transform my job into a flow-producing activity.
The universe was not created to answer my needs. Frustration is deeply woven into the fabric of life. And whenever some of my needs are temporarily met, I immediately start wishing for more. This chronic dissatisfaction stands in the way of contentment.
Religions, philosophies, arts, and comforts—help shield me from chaos. They help me believe that I am in control of what is happening and gives me reasons for being satisfied with my lot. These shields are effective only for a while; after a few centuries, sometimes after only a few decades, religion or belief wears out and no longer provides the spiritual sustenance it once did.
When I try to find happiness on my own, without the support of faith – I seek wealth, power, and sex. Those goals give direction to my strivings. However, I realize that the quality of life cannot be improved this way. Only direct control of the experience, the ability to derive moment-by-moment enjoyment from everything I do, can overcome the obstacles to fulfillment.
How I feel about myself, the joy I get from living, ultimately depend directly on how the mind filters and interprets everyday experiences.
For the majority of people on this earth, life goals are simple: to survive, to leave children who will in turn survive, and, if possible, to do so with a certain amount of comfort and dignity.The unwarranted sense of security sooner or later results in a rude awakening.
If I start believing that progress is inevitable and life easy, I may quickly lose courage and determination in the face of the first signs of adversity. I will realize that what I believed in was not entirely true. I will abandon faith in everything else I have learned. Anxiety and apathy arise.
Genuinely happy individuals are rare. How many people do you know who enjoy what they are doing, who are reasonably satisfied with their lot, who do not regret the past and look to the future with genuine confidence?
The shields that have worked in the past—the order that religion, patriotism, ethnic traditions, and habits instilled by social classes used to provide—are no longer effective for increasing numbers of people who feel exposed to the harsh winds of chaos.
The lack of inner order manifests itself in the subjective condition that some call ontological anxiety or existential dread. Basically, it is a fear of being, a feeling that there is no meaning to life and that existence is not worth going on with. Nothing seems to make sense. There no longer seems to be any point to the historical strivings of humankind. We are just forgotten specks drifting in the void. With each passing year, the chaos of the physical universe becomes magnified in the minds of the multitude.
As people move through life, passing from the hopeful ignorance of youth into sobering adulthood, they sooner or later face an increasingly nagging question: “Is this all there is?” Childhood can be painful, adolescence confusing, but for most people, behind it all, there is the expectation that after one grows up, things will get better. During the years of early adulthood, the future still looks promising, the hope remains that one’s goals will be realized. But inevitably the bathroom mirror shows the first white hairs, and confirms the fact that those extra pounds are not about to leave; inevitably eyesight begins to fail and mysterious pains begin to shoot through the body. Like waiters in a restaurant starting to place breakfast settings on the surrounding tables while one is still having dinner, these intimations of mortality plainly communicate the message: Your time is up, it’s time to move on. When this happens, few people are ready.
Wait a minute, this can’t be happening to me.
I haven’t even begun to live.
Where’s all that money I was supposed to have made?
Where are all the good times I was going to have?
Yet despite all these assurances, sooner or later we wake up alone, sensing that there is no way this affluent, scientific, and sophisticated world is going to provide us with happiness.
As this realization slowly sets in, different people react to it differently. Some try to ignore it and renew their efforts to acquire more of the things that were supposed to make life good—bigger cars and homes, more power on the job, a more glamorous lifestyle.
After each success, it becomes clearer that money, power, status, and possessions do not, by themselves, necessarily add one iota to the quality of life.
To overcome the anxieties and depressions of contemporary life, individuals must become independent of the social environment to the degree that they no longer respond exclusively in terms of its rewards and punishments. To achieve such autonomy, a person has to learn to provide rewards to herself. She has to develop the ability to find enjoyment and purpose regardless of external circumstances.
Achieving control over experience requires a drastic change in attitude about what is important and what is not.
We grow up believing that what counts most in our lives is that which will occur in the future. Parents teach children that if they learn good habits now, they will be better off as adults. Teachers assure pupils that the boring classes will benefit them later when the students are going to be looking for jobs. The company vice president tells junior employees to have patience and work hard because one of these days they will be promoted to the executive ranks. At the end of the long struggle for advancement, the golden years of retirement beckon.
Realize that seeking pleasure is a reflex response built into our genes for the preservation of the species, not for the purpose of our own personal advantage. The pleasure we take in eating is an efficient way to ensure that the body will get the nourishment it needs. The pleasure of sexual intercourse is an equally practical method for the genes to program the body to reproduce and thereby to ensure the continuity of the genes. When a man is physically attracted to a woman or vice versa, he usually imagines—assuming that he thinks about it at all—that this desire is an expression of his own individual interests, a result of his own intentions. In reality, more often than not his interest is simply being manipulated by the invisible genetic code, following its own plans.
The person who cannot resist food or alcohol, or whose mind is constantly focused on sex, is not free to direct his or her psychic energy.
A person who cannot override genetic instructions when necessary is always vulnerable. Instead of deciding how to act in terms of personal goals, he has to surrender to the things that his body has been programmed (or misprogrammed) to do. One must particularly achieve control over instinctual drives to achieve healthy independence of society. For as long as we respond predictably to what feels good and what feels bad, it is easy for others to exploit our preferences for their own ends.
A thoroughly socialized person is one who desires only the rewards that others around him have agreed he should long for—rewards often grafted onto genetically programmed desires. He may encounter thousands of potentially fulfilling experiences, but he fails to notice them because they are not the things he desires. What matters is not what he has now, but what he might obtain if he does as others want him to do. Caught in the treadmill of social controls, that person keeps reaching for a prize that always dissolves in his hands.
If a person learns to enjoy and find meaning in the ongoing stream of experience, in the process of living itself, the burden of social controls automatically falls from one’s shoulders. Power returns to the person when rewards are no longer relegated to outside forces. It is no longer necessary to struggle for goals that always seem to recede into the future, to end each boring day with the hope that tomorrow, perhaps, something good will happen.
At certain times in history, cultures have taken it for granted that a person wasn’t fully human unless he or she learned to master thoughts and feelings. Among the British upper classes of the Victorian era, people were held responsible for keeping a tight rein on their emotions. Anyone who indulged in self-pity, who let instinct rather than reflection dictate actions, forfeited the right to be accepted as a member of the community.
Marcus Aurelius wrote:
“If you are pained by external things, it is not they that disturb you, but your own judgment of them. And it is in your power to wipe out that judgment now.”
Consciousness has developed the ability to override its genetic instructions and to set its own independent course of action.
A person can make himself happy, or miserable, regardless of what is actually happening “outside,” just by changing the contents of consciousness. We all know individuals who can transform hopeless situations into challenges to be overcome, just through the force of their personalities. This ability to persevere despite obstacles and setbacks is the quality people most admire in others, and justly so; it is probably the most important trait not only for succeeding in life but for enjoying it as well.
The mind has enormous untapped potential that we desperately need to learn how to use.
Most people, however, adopt “sensible” goals based on the needs of their body—to live a long and healthy life, to have sex, to be well-fed and comfortable—or on the desires implanted by the social system—to be good, to work hard, to spend as much as possible, to live up to others’ expectations. But there are enough exceptions in every culture to show that goals are quite flexible. Individuals who depart from the norms—heroes, saints, sages, artists, and poets, as well as madmen and criminals—look for different things in life than most others do.
The existence of people like these shows that consciousness can be ordered in terms of different goals and intentions. Each of us has the freedom to control our subjective reality.
In any case, an individual can experience only so much. Therefore, the information we allow into consciousness becomes extremely important; it is, in fact, what determines the content and the quality of life.
The mark of a person who is in control of consciousness is the ability to focus attention at will, to be oblivious to distractions, to concentrate for as long as it takes to achieve a goal, and not longer. And the person who can do this usually enjoys the normal course of everyday life.
European woman who is one of the best-known and powerful women in her country. A scholar of international reputation, she has at the same time built up a thriving business that employs hundreds of people and has been on the cutting edge of its field for a generation. E. travels constantly to political, business, and professional meetings, moving among her several residences around the world. If there is a concert in the town where she is staying, E. will probably be in the audience; at the first free moment, she will be at the museum or library. And while she is in a meeting, her chauffeur, instead of just standing around and waiting, will be expected to visit the local art gallery or museum; for on the way home, his employer will want to discuss what he thought of its paintings. Not one minute of E.’s life is wasted. Usually, she is writing, solving problems, reading one of the five newspapers or the earmarked sections of books on her daily schedule—or just asking questions, watching curiously what is going on, and planning her next task. Very little of her time is spent on the routine functions of life. Chatting or socializing out of mere politeness is done graciously, but avoided whenever possible. Each day, however, she devotes some time to recharging her mind, by such simple means as standing still for fifteen minutes on the lakeshore, facing the sun with eyes closed. Or she may take her hounds for a walk in the meadows on the hill outside town. E. is so much in control of her attentional processes that she can disconnect her consciousness at will and fall asleep for a refreshing nap whenever she has a moment free.
E.’s life has not been easy. Her family became impoverished after World War I, and she herself lost everything, including her freedom, during World War II. Several decades ago she had a chronic disease her doctors were sure was fatal. But she recovered everything, including her health, by disciplining her attention and refusing to diffuse it on unproductive thoughts or activities. At this point, she radiates a pure glow of energy. And despite past hardships and the intensity of her present life, she seems to relish thoroughly every minute of it.
Attention determines what will or will not appear in consciousness, and because it is also required to make any other mental events—such as remembering, thinking, feeling, and making decisions—happen there, it is useful to think of it as psychic energy. Attention is like energy in that without it no work can be done, and in doing work it is dissipated. We create ourselves by how we invest this energy. Memories, thoughts, and feelings are all shaped by how we use them. And it is an energy under our control, to do with as we please; hence, attention is our most important tool in the task of improving the quality of experience.
The outside event appears in consciousness purely as information, without necessarily having a positive or negative value attached to it. It is the self that interprets that raw information in the context of its own interests and determines whether it is harmful or not. Every piece of information we process gets evaluated for its bearing on the self. Does it threaten our goals, does it support them, or is it neutral? News of the fall of the stock market will upset the banker, but it might reinforce the sense of self of the political activist. A new piece of information will either create disorder in consciousness, by getting us all worked up to face the threat, or it will reinforce our goals, thereby freeing up psychic energy.
When a person is able to organize his or her consciousness so as to experience flow as often as possible, the quality of life is inevitably going to improve. Even the usually boring routines of work will become purposeful and enjoyable.
“It’s exhilarating to come closer and closer to self-discipline. You make your body go and everything hurts; then you look back in awe at the self, at what you’ve done, it just blows your mind. It leads to ecstasy, to self-fulfillment. If you win these battles enough, that battle against yourself, at least for a moment, it becomes easier to win the battles in the world.”
The “battle” is not really against the self, but against the entropy that brings disorder to consciousness. It is really a battle for the self; it is a struggle for establishing control over attention. The struggle does not necessarily have to be physical, as in the case of the climber. But anyone who has experienced flow knows that the deep enjoyment it provides requires an equal degree of disciplined concentration.
Following a flow experience, the organization of the self is more complex than it had been before. It is by becoming increasingly complex that the self might be said to grow. Complexity is the result of two broad psychological processes: differentiation and integration. Differentiation implies a movement toward uniqueness, toward separating oneself from others. Integration refers to its opposite: a union with other people, with ideas and entities beyond the self. A complex self is one that succeeds in combining these opposite tendencies.
The self becomes more differentiated as a result of flow because overcoming a challenge inevitably leaves a person feeling more capable, more skilled. As the rock climber said, “You look back in awe at the self, at what you’ve done, it just blows your mind.” After each episode of flow, a person becomes more of a unique individual, less predictable, possessed of rarer skills.
The self becomes complex as a result of experiencing flow. Paradoxically, it is when we act freely, for the sake of the action itself rather than for ulterior motives, that we learn to become more than what we were. When we choose a goal and invest ourselves in it to the limits of our concentration, whatever we do will be enjoyable. And once we have tasted this joy, we will redouble our efforts to taste it again. This is the way the self grows. Flow is important both because it makes the present instant more enjoyable, and because it builds the self-confidence that allows us to develop skills and make significant contributions to humankind.
There are TWO MAIN STRATEGIES we can adopt to improve the quality of life.
Try making external conditions match our goals.
Change how we experience external conditions to make them fit our goals better.
The reality is that the quality of life does not depend directly on what others think of us or on what we own. The bottom line is, rather, how we feel about ourselves and about what happens to us. To improve life one must improve the quality of experience. This is not to say that money, physical fitness, or fame are irrelevant to happiness. They can be genuine blessings, but only if they help to make us feel better. Otherwise, they are at best neutral, at worst obstacles to a rewarding life. Research on happiness and life satisfaction suggest that in general there is a mild correlation between wealth and well-being. Instead of worrying about how to make a million dollars or how to win friends and influence people, it seems more beneficial to find out how everyday life can be made more harmonious and more satisfying, and thus achieve by a direct route what cannot be reached through the pursuit of symbolic goals.
Pleasure is a feeling of contentment that one achieves whenever information in consciousness says that expectations set by biological programs or by social conditioning have been met.
Pleasure is an important component of the quality of life, but by itself, it does not bring happiness. Sleep, rest, food, and sex provide restorative homeostatic experiences that return consciousness to order after the needs of the body intrude and cause psychic entropy to occur. But they do not produce psychological growth. They do not add complexity to the self. Pleasure helps to maintain order, but by itself cannot create a new order in consciousness.
First, the experience usually occurs when we confront tasks we have a chance of completing.
Second, we must be able to concentrate on what we are doing.
Third and fourth, concentration is usually possible because the task undertaken has clear goals and provides immediate feedback. Fifth, one acts with a deep but effortless involvement that removes from awareness the worries and frustrations of everyday life.
Sixth, enjoyable experiences allow people to exercise a sense of control over their actions.
Seventh, concern for the self disappears, yet paradoxically the sense of self emerges stronger after the flow experience is over.
Finally, the sense of the duration of time is altered; hours pass by in minutes, and minutes can stretch out to seem like hours.
The combination of all these elements causes a sense of deep enjoyment that is so rewarding people feel that expending a great deal of energy is worthwhile simply to be able to feel it.
In many ways, competition is a quick way of developing complexity:
“He who wrestles with us,” wrote Edmund Burke, “strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.”
The challenges of competition can be stimulating and enjoyable. But when beating the opponent takes precedence in the mind over performing as well as possible, enjoyment tends to disappear. Competition is enjoyable only when it is a means to perfect one’s skills; when it becomes an end in itself, it ceases to be fun.
It would be a mistake to assume that only art and leisure can provide optimal experiences. In a healthy culture, productive work and the necessary routines of everyday life are also satisfying.
The reason it is possible to achieve such complete involvement in a flow experience is that goals are usually clear, and feedback immediately.
The goals of an activity are not always as clear as those of tennis, and the feedback is often more ambiguous than the simple “I am not falling” information processed by the climber. A composer of music, for instance, may know that he wishes to write a song, or a flute concerto, but other than that, his goals are usually quite vague. And how does he know whether the notes he is writing down are “right” or “wrong”? The same situation holds true for the artist painting a picture, and for all activities that are creative or open-ended in nature. But these are all exceptions that prove the rule:
Unless a person learns to set goals and to recognize and gauge feedback in such activities, she will not enjoy them
In some creative activities, where goals are not clearly set in advance, a person must develop a strong personal sense of what she intends to do. The artist might not have a visual image of what the finished painting should look like, but when the picture has progressed to a certain point, she should know whether this is what she wanted to achieve or not. And a painter who enjoys painting must have internalized criteria for “good” or “bad” so that after each brush stroke she can say: “Yes, this works; no, this doesn’t.” Without such internal guidelines, it is impossible to experience flow. The reason why flow improves the quality of exper- ience: the clearly structured demands of the activity impose order, and exclude the interference of disorder in consciousness.
One of the most frequently mentioned dimensions of the flow experience is that, while it lasts, one is able to forget all the unpleasant aspects of life. This feature of flow is an important by-product of the fact that enjoyable activities require a complete focusing of attention on the task at hand—thus leaving no room in the mind for irrelevant information.
Enjoyable activities that produce flow have a potentially negative aspect: while they are capable of improving the quality of existence by creating order in the mind, they can become addictive, at which point the self becomes captive of a certain kind of order, and is then unwilling to cope with the ambiguities of life.
Preoccupation with the self consumes psychic energy because in everyday life we often feel threatened.
Whenever we are threatened we need to bring the image we have of ourselves back into awareness, so we can find out whether or not the threat is serious, and how we should meet it. For in- stance, if walking down the street I notice some people turning back and looking at me with grins on their faces, the normal thing to do is immediately to start worrying: “Is there something wrong? Do I look funny? Is it the way I walk, or is my face smudged?” Hundreds of times every day we are reminded of the vulnerability of our self. And every time this happens psychic energy is lost trying to restore order to consciousness.
Expand the concept of who we are. Loss of self-consciousness can lead to self-transcendence, to a feeling that the boundaries of our being have been pushed forward.
The term “autotelic” derives from two Greek words, auto meaning self, and telos meaning goal.
Autotelic activity is a self-contained activity, one that is done not with the expectation of some future benefit, but simply because the doing itself is the reward.
Playing the stock market in order to make money is not an autotelic experience, but playing it in order to prove one’s skill at foretelling future trends is—even though the outcome in terms of dollars and cents is exactly the same. Teaching children in order to turn them into good citizens is not autotelic, whereas teaching them because one enjoys interacting with children is. What transpires in the two situations is ostensibly identical; what differs is that when the experience is autotelic, the person is paying attention to the activity for its own sake; when it is not, the attention is focused on its consequences.
Many people feel that the time they spend at work is essentially wasted—they are alienated from it, and the psychic energy invested in the job does nothing to strengthen their self. For quite a few people free time is also wasted. Leisure provides a relaxing respite from work, but it generally consists of passively absorbing information, without using any skills or exploring new opportunities for action. As a result, life passes in a sequence of boring and anxious experiences over which a person has little control.
We should reconcile ourselves to the fact that nothing in the world is entirely positive; every power can be misused. Love may lead to cruelty, science can create destruction, technology unchecked produces pollution. An optimal experience is a form of energy, and energy can be used either to help or to destroy. Fire warms or burns; atomic energy can generate electricity or it can obliterate the world. Energy is power, but power is only a means. The goals to which it is applied can make life either richer or more painful.
Much of what we label juvenile delinquency—car theft, vandalism, rowdy behaviour in general—is motivated by the same need to have flow experiences not available in ordinary life. As long as a significant segment of society has few opportunities to encounter meaningful challenges, and few chances to develop the skills necessary to benefit from them, we must expect that violence and crime will attract those who cannot find their way to more complex autotelic experiences.
A sense that one’s skills are adequate to cope with the challenges at hand, in a goal-directed, rule-bound action system that provides clear clues as to how well one is performing. Concentration is so intense that there is no attention left over to think about anything irrelevant, or to worry about problems. Self-consciousness disappears, and the sense of time becomes distorted. An activity that produces such experiences is so gratifying that people are willing to do it for its own sake, with little concern for what they will get out of it, even when it is difficult, or dangerous.
In our studies, we found that every flow activity, whether it involved competition, chance, or any other dimension of experience, had this in common: It provided a sense of discovery, a creative feeling of transporting the person into a new reality.
Desire to enjoy ourselves again pushes us to stretch our skills, or to discover new opportunities for using them.
Cultures are defensive constructions against chaos, designed to reducethe impact of randomness on experience. They are adaptive responses, just as feathers are for birds and fur is for mammals. Cultures prescribe norms, evolving goals, build beliefs that help us tackle the challenges of existence. In so doing they must rule out many alternative goals and beliefs, and thereby limit possibilities, but this channelling of attention to a limited set of goals and means is what allows effortless action within self-created boundaries.
Although average Americans have plenty of free time and ample access to leisure activities, they do not, as a result, experience flow often. In fact, working people achieve the flow experience—deep concentration, high and balanced challenges and skills, a sense of control and satisfaction—about four times as often on their jobs, proportionately, as they do when they are watching television. One of the most ironic paradoxes of our time is this great availability of leisure that somehow fails to be translated into enjoyment.
Opportunities alone, are not enough. We also need the skills to make use of them. And we need to know how to control consciousness—a skill that most people have not learned to cultivate. Surrounded by an astounding panoply of recreational gadgets and leisure choices, most of us go on being bored and vaguely frustrated.
What is important to realize is that attentional disorders not only interfere with learning but effectively rule out the possibility of experiencing flow as well. When a person cannot control psychic energy, neither learning nor true enjoyment is possible.
A less drastic obstacle to experiencing flow is excessive self-consciousness. A person who is constantly worried about how others will perceive her, who is afraid of creating the wrong impression, or of doing something inappropriate, is also condemned to permanent exclusion from enjoyment. So are people who are excessively self-centred. A self-centred individual is usually not self-conscious, but instead evaluates every bit of information only in terms of how it relates to her desires. For such a person everything is valueless in itself. A flower is not worth a second look unless it can be used; a man or a woman who cannot advance one’s interests does not de- serve further attention.
When the now extinct natives of the Caribbean islands were put to work in the plantations of the conquering Spaniards, their lives became so painful and meaningless that they lost interest in survival, and eventually ceased reproducing. It is probable that many cultures disappeared in a similar fashion because they were no longer able to provide the experience of enjoyment.
Just as some people are born with better muscular coordination, it is possible that there are individuals with a genetic advantage in controlling consciousness. Such people might be less prone to suffer from attentional disorders, and they may experience flow more easily.
The traits that mark an autotelic personality are most clearly revealed by people who seem to enjoy situations that ordinary persons would find unbearable.
Richard Logan, who has studied the accounts of many people in difficult situations, concludes that they survived by finding ways to turn the bleak objective conditions into subjectively controllable experiences. They followed the blueprint of flow activities. First, they paid close attention to the most minute details of their environment, discovering in it hidden opportunities for action that matched what little they were capable of doing, given the circumstances. Then they set goals appropriate to their precarious situation and closely monitored progress through the feedback they received. Whenever they reached their goal, they upped the ante, setting increasingly complex challenges for themselves.
When adversity threatens to paralyze us, we need to reassert control by finding a new direction in which to invest psychic energy, a direction that lies outside the reach of external forces.
When every aspiration is frustrated, a person still must seek a meaningful goal around which to organize the self. Then, even though that person is objectively a slave, subjectively he is free.
When we are unhappy, depressed, or bored we have an easy remedy at hand: to use the body for all it is worth. Most people nowadays are aware of the importance of health and physical fitness. But the almost unlimited potential for enjoyment that the body offers often remains unexploited. Few learn to move with the grace of an acrobat, see with the fresh eye of an artist, feel the joy of an athlete who breaks his own record, taste with the subtlety of a connoisseur, or love with a skill that lifts sex into a form of art. Because these opportunities are easily within reach, the easiest step toward improving the quality of life consists in simply learning to control the body and its senses.
“A man possesses nothing certainly save a brief loan of his own body,” wrote J. B. Cabell, “yet the body of man is capable of much curious pleasure.”
The purest form of athletics, and sports in general, is to break through the limitations of what the body can accomplish.
Not so long ago, it was acceptable to be an amateur poet or essayist. Nowadays if one does not make some money (however pitifully little) out of writing, it’s considered to be a waste of time. It is taken as downright shameful for a man past twenty to indulge in versification unless he receives a check to show for it. And unless one has great talent, it is indeed useless to write hoping to achieve great profit or fame. But it is never a waste to write for intrinsic reasons. First of all, writing gives the mind a disciplined means of expression. It allows one to record events and experiences so that they can be easily recalled and relived in the future. It is a way to analyze and understand experiences, a self-communication that brings order to them. Observing, recording, and preserving the memory of both the large and small events of life is one of the oldest and most satisfying ways to bring order to consciousness.
Thomas Carlyle was not far wrong when he wrote:
“Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness.”
As expected, the more time a person spent in flow during the week, the better was the overall quality of his or her reported experience. People who were more often in flow were especially likely to feel “strong,” “active,” “creative,” “concentrated,” and “motivated.” What was unexpected, however, is how frequently people reported flow situations at work, and how rarely in leisure.
Thus we have the paradoxical situation: On the job, people feel skillful and challenged, and therefore feel more happy, strong, creative, and satisfied. In their free time, people feel that there is generally not much to do and their skills are not being used, and therefore they tend to feel more sad, weak, dull, and dissatisfied. Yet they would like to work less and spend more time in leisure.
As these findings suggest, the apathy of many of the people around us is not due to their being physically or mentally exhausted. The problem seems to lie more in the modern worker’s relation to his job, with the way he perceives his goals in relation to it.
When we feel that we are investing attention in a task against our will, it is as if our psychic energy is being wasted. Instead of helping us reach our own goals, it is called upon to make someone else’s come true. The time channelled into such a task is perceived as time subtracted from the total available for our life. Many people consider their jobs as something they have to do, a burden imposed from the outside, an effort that takes life away from the ledger of their existence. So even though the momentary on-the-job experience may be positive, they tend to discount it, because it does not contribute to their own long-range goals.
The flow experience that results from the use of skills leads to growth; passive entertainment leads nowhere. Collectively we are wasting each year the equivalent of millions of years of human consciousness. The energy that could be used to focus on complex goals, to provide for enjoyable growth, is squandered on patterns of stimulation that only mimic reality. Mass leisure, mass culture, and even high culture when only attended to passively and for extrinsic reasons—such as the wish to flaunt one’s status—are parasites of the mind. They absorb psychic energy without providing substantive strength in return. They leave us more exhausted, more disheartened than we were before.
Most jobs and many leisure activities—especially those involving the passive consumption of mass media—are not designed to make us happy and strong. Their purpose is to make money for someone else. If we allow them to, they can suck out the marrow of our lives, leaving only feeble husks.
The quality of life depends on two factors: how we experience work, and our relations with other people.
There is no question that we are social animals; only in the company of other people do we feel complete.
A solitary individual under such conditions became an IDIOT, which in Greek originally meant a “private person”—someone who is unable to learn from others.
Therefore a person who learns to get along with others is going to make a tremendous change for the better in the quality of life as a whole.
The most depressing condition is not that of working or watching TV alone; the worst moods are reported when one is alone and there is nothing that needs to be done.
How one copes with solitude makes all the difference. If being alone is seen as a chance to accomplish goals that cannot be reached in the company of others, then instead of feeling lonely, a person will enjoy solitude and might be able to learn new skills in the process. On the other hand, if solitude is seen as a condition to be avoided at all costs instead of as a challenge, the person will panic and resort to distractions that cannot lead to higher levels of complexity.
If a person is unwilling to adjust personal goals when starting a relationship, then a lot of what subsequently happens in that relationship will produce disorder in the person’s consciousness, because novel patterns of interaction will conflict with old patterns of expectation.
Subjective experience is not just one of the dimensions of life, it is life itself. Material conditions are secondary: they only affect us indirectly, by way of experience.
It would be naively idealistic to claim that no matter what happens to him, a person in control of consciousness will be happy. There are certainly limits to how much pain, or hunger, or deprivation a body can endure.
Everyone has his own fate, and we should be like the lion in the proverb.
The lion, when he runs after a pack of gazelles, can only catch them one at a time. I try to be like that, and not like Westerners who go crazy working even though they cannot eat more than their daily bread…. If I am to live twenty more years, I will try to live enjoying each moment, instead of killing myself to get more…. If I am to live like a free man who does not depend on anyone, I can afford to go slowly; if I don’t earn anything today, it does not matter. It means that this happens to be my fate. The next day I may earn 100 million—or get a terminal illness. Like Jesus Christ said, What does it benefit to a man if he gains the entire world, but loses himself? I have tried first to conquer myself; I don’t care if I lose the world.
I set out on this journey like a baby bird hatching from its egg; ever since I have been walking in freedom. Every man should get to know himself and experience life in all its forms. I could have gone on sleeping soundly in my bed and found work in my town because a job was ready for me, but I decided to sleep with the poor because one must suffer to become a man.
One does not get to be a man by getting married, by having sex: to be a man means to be responsible, to know when it is time to speak, to know what has to be said, to know when one must stay silent.
The ability to take misfortune and make something good come of it is a very rare gift. Those who possess it are called “survivors,” and are said to have “resilience,” or “courage.”
Of all the virtues we can learn no trait is more useful, more essential for survival, and more likely to improve the quality of life than the ability to transform adversity into an enjoyable challenge.
If the trauma is severe enough, a person may lose the capacity to concentrate on necessary goals. If that happens, the self is no longer in control. If the impairment is very severe, consciousness becomes random, and the person “loses his mind”—the various symptoms of mental disease take over. In less severe cases the threatened self survives, but stops growing; cowering under attack, it retreats behind massive defences and vegetates in a state of continuous suspicion.
… when a person no longer sees himself in opposition to the environment, as an individual who insists that his goals, his intentions take precedence over everything else. Instead, he feels a part of whatever goes on around him and tries to do his best within the system in which he must operate.
… this sense of humility—the recognition that one’s goals may have to be subordinated to a greater entity, and that to succeed one may have to play by a different set of rules from what one would prefer—is a hallmark of strong people.
People who know how to transform stress into an enjoyable challenge spend very little time thinking about themselves. They are not expending all their energy trying to satisfy what they believe to be their needs or worrying about socially conditioned desires. Instead, their attention is alert, constantly processing information from their surroundings.
We all start with preconceived notions of what we want from life. These include the basic needs programmed by our genes to ensure survival—the need for food, comfort, sex, dominance over other beings. They also include the desires that our specific culture has inculcated in us—to be slim, rich, educated, and well-liked. If we embrace these goals and are lucky, we may replicate the ideal physical and social image for our historical time and place. But is this the best use of our psychic energy? And what if we cannot realize these ends? We will never become aware of other possibilities unless, like the painter who watches with care what is happening on the canvas, we pay attention to what is happening around us, and evaluate events on the basis of their direct impact on how we feel, rather than evaluating them exclusively in terms of preconceived notions.
A person who is healthy, rich, strong, and powerful has no greater odds of being in control of his consciousness than one who is sickly, poor, weak, and oppressed. The difference between someone who enjoys life and someone who is overwhelmed by it is a product of a combination of such external factors and the way a person has come to interpret them—that is, whether he sees challenges as threats or as opportunities for action.
The “autotelic self” is one that easily translates potential threats into enjoyable challenges, and therefore maintains its inner harmony. A person who is never bored, seldom anxious, involved with what goes on, and in flow most of the time may be said to have an autotelic self. The term literally means “a self that has self-contained goals,” and it reflects the idea that such an individual has relatively few goals that do not originate from within the self. For most people, goals are shaped directly by biological needs and social conventions, and therefore their origin is outside the self. For an autotelic person, the primary goals emerge from experience evaluated in consciousness, and therefore from the self proper. The autotelic self transforms the potentially entropic experience into flow.
1. Setting goals.
To be able to experience flow, one must have clear goals to strive for. A person with an autotelic self learns to make choices—ranging from lifelong commitments, such as getting married and settling on a vocation, to trivial decisions like what to do on the weekend or how to spend the time waiting in the dentist’s office—without much fuss and the minimum of panic. One of the basic differences between a person with an autotelic self and one without it is that the former knows that it is she who has chosen whatever goal she is pursuing. What she does is not random, nor is it the result of outside determining forces. This fact results in two seemingly opposite outcomes. On the one hand, having a feeling of ownership of her decisions, the person is more strongly dedicated to her goals. Her actions are reliable and internally controlled. On the other hand, knowing them to be her own, she can more easily modify her goals whenever the reasons for preserving them no longer make sense. In that respect, an autotelic person’s behaviour is both more consistent and more flexible.
2. Becoming immersed in the activity
After choosing a system of action, a person with an autotelic personality grows deeply involved with whatever he is doing. Whether flying a plane nonstop around the world or washing dishes after dinner, he invests attention in the task at hand. To do so successfully one must learn to balance the opportunities for action with the skills one possesses. Some people begin with unrealistic expectations, such as trying to save the world or to become millionaires before the age of twenty. When their hopes are dashed, most become despondent, and their selves wither from the loss of psychic energy expended in fruitless attempts. At the other extreme, many people stagnate because they do not trust their own potential. They choose the safety of trivial goals and arrest the growth of complexity at the lowest level available. To achieve involvement with an action system, one must find a relatively close mesh between the demands of the environment and one’s capacity to act. Involvement is greatly facilitated by the ability to concentrate. People who suffer from attentional disorders, who cannot keep their minds from wandering, always feel left out of the flow of life. They are at the mercy of whatever stray stimulus happens to flash by. To be distracted against one’s will is the surest sign that one is not in control. Yet it is amazing how little effort most people make to improve control of their attention. If reading a book seems too difficult, instead of sharpening concentration we tend to set it aside and instead turn on the television, which not only requires minimal attention, but in fact tends to diffuse what little it commands with choppy editing, commercial interruptions, and generally inane content.
3. Paying attention to what is happening
Concentration leads to involvement, which can only be maintained by constant inputs of attention. Having an autotelic self implies the ability to sustain involvement. Self- consciousness, which is the most common source of distraction, is not a problem for such a person. Instead of worrying about how he is doing, how he looks from the outside, he is wholeheartedly committed to his goals. In some cases it is the depth of involvement that pushes self-consciousness out of awareness, while sometimes it is the other way around: it is the very lack of self-consciousness that makes deep involvement possible.
4. Learning to enjoy the immediate experience
The outcome of having an autotelic self—of learning to set goals, to develop skills, to be sensitive to feedback, to know how to concentrate and get involved—is that one can enjoy life even when objective circumstances are brutish and nasty. Being in control of the mind means that literally, anything that happens can be a source of joy. Feeling a breeze on a hot day, seeing a cloud reflected on the glass facade of a high-rise, working on a business deal, watching a child play with a puppy, drinking a glass of water can all be felt as deeply satisfying experiences that enrich one’s life. To achieve this control, however, requires determination and discipline. Optimal experience is not the result of a hedonistic, lotus-eating approach to life. A relaxed, laissez-faire attitude is not a sufficient defence against chaos. As we have seen from the very beginning of this book, to be able to transform random events into the flow, one must develop skills that stretch capacities, that make one become more than what one is. Flow drives individuals to creativity and outstanding achievement. The necessity to develop increasingly refined skills to sustain enjoyment is what lies behind the evolution of culture. It motivates both individuals and cultures to change into more complex entities. The rewards of creating order in experience provide the energy that propels evolution—they pave the way for those dimly imagined descendants of ours, more complex and wise than we are, who will soon take our place. But to change all existence into a flow experience, it is not sufficient to learn merely how to control moment-by-moment states of consciousness. It is also necessary to have an overall context of goals for the events of everyday life to make sense. If a person moves from one flow activity to another without a connecting order, it will be difficult at the end of one’s life to look back on the years past and find meaning in what has happened. To create harmony in whatever one does is the last task that the flow theory presents to those who wish to attain optimal experience; it is a task that involves transforming the entirety of life into a single flow activity, with unified goals that provide a constant purpose.
If we enjoyed work and friendships and faced every challenge as an opportunity to develop new skills, we would be getting rewards out of living that is outside the realm of ordinary life.
Even the most successful career, the most rewarding family relationship eventually runs dry. Sooner or later involvement in work must be reduced. Spouses die, children grow up and move away. To approach optimal experience as closely as is humanly possible, the last step in the control of consciousness is necessary.
What this involves is turning all life into a unified flow experience. If a person sets out to achieve a difficult enough goal, from which all other goals logically follow, and if he or she invests all energy in developing skills to reach that goal, then actions and feelings will be in harmony, and the separate parts of life will fit together—and each activity will “make sense” in the present, as well as in view of the past and of the future. In such a way, it is possible to give meaning to one’s entire life.
From the point of view of an individual, it does not matter what the ultimate goal is—provided it is compelling enough to order a lifetime’s worth of psychic energy. The challenge might involve the desire to have the best beer bottle collection in the neighbourhood, the resolution to find a cure for cancer, or simply the biological imperative to have children who will survive and prosper.
As long as it provides clear objectives, clear rules for action, and a way to concentrate and become involved, any goal can serve to give meaning to a person’s life.
I have come to be quite well acquainted with several Muslim professionals—electronics engineers, pilots, businessmen, and teachers, mostly from Saudi Arabia and from the other Gulf states. In talking to them, I was struck by how relaxed most of them seemed to be even under strong pressure. “There is nothing to it,” those I asked about it told me, in different words, but with the same message: “We don’t get upset because we believe that our life is in God’s hands, and whatever He decides will be fine with us.” Such implicit faith used to be widespread in our culture as well, but it is not easy to find it now. Many of us have to discover a goal that will give meaning to life on our own, without the help of traditional faith.
Creating meaning involves bringing order to the contents of the mind by integrating one’s actions into a unified flow experience. The three senses of the word meaning noted above make it clearer how this is accomplished. People who find their lives meaningful usually have a goal that is challenging enough to take up all their energies, a goal that can give significance to their lives. We may refer to this process as achieving a purpose. To experience flow one must set goals for one’s actions: to win a game, to make friends with a person, to accomplish something in a certain way. The goal in itself is usually not important; what matters is that it focuses a person’s attention and involves it in an achievable, enjoyable activity.
What counts is not so much whether a person actually achieves what she has set out to do; rather, it matters whether the effort has been expended to reach the goal, instead of being diffused or wasted.
Someone who is in harmony no matter what he does, no matter what is happening to him, knows that his psychic energy is not being wasted on doubt, regret, guilt, and fear, but is always usefully employed. Inner congruence ultimately leads to that inner strength and serenity we admire in people who seem to have come to terms with themselves. Whoever achieves this statewill never really lack anything else. A person whose consciousness is so ordered need not fear unexpected events or even death. Every living moment will make sense, and most of it will be enjoyable.
There is a consensus among psychologists who study such subjects that people develop their concept of who they are, and of what they want to achieve in life, according to a sequence of steps.
Each man or woman starts with a need to preserve the self, to keep the body and its basic goals from disintegrating. At this point the meaning of life is simple; it is tantamount to survival, comfort, and pleasure.
When the safety of the physical self is no longer in doubt, the person may expand the horizon of his or her meaning system to embrace the values of a community—the family, the neighbourhood, a religious or ethnic group. This step leads to the greater complexity of the self, even though it usually implies conformity to conventional norms and standards.
The next step in development involves reflective individualism. The person again turns inward, finding new grounds for authority and value within the self. He or she is no longer blindly conforming but develops an autonomous conscience. At this point, the main goal in life becomes the desire for growth, improvement, the actualization of potential.
The fourth step, which builds on all the previous ones, is a final turning away from the self, back toward integration with other people and with universal values. In this final stage the extremely individualized person—like Siddhartha letting the river take control of his boat—willingly merges his interests with those of a larger whole.
First, psychic energy is invested in the needs of the organism, and psychic order is equivalent to pleasure. When this level is temporarily achieved, and the person can begin to invest attention in the goals of a community, what is meaningful corresponds to group values—religion, patriotism, and the acceptance and respect of other people provide the parameters of inner order. The next movement of the dialectic brings attention back to the self: having achieved a sense of belonging to a larger human system, the person now feels the challenge of discerning the limits of personal potential. This leads to attempts at self-actualization, to experimentation with different skills, different ideas and disciplines. At this stage enjoyment, rather than pleasure, becomes the main source of rewards. But because this phase involves becoming a seeker, the person may also encounter a midlife crisis, a career change, and an increasingly desperate straining against the limitations of individual capability. From this point on the person is ready for the last shift in the redirection of energy: having discovered what one can and, more importantly, cannot do alone, the ultimate goal merges with a system larger than the person—a cause, an idea, a transcendental entity. Not everyone moves through the stages of this spiral of ascending complexity. A few never have the opportunity to go beyond the first step. When survival demands are so insistent that a person cannot devote much attention to anything else, he or she will not have enough psychic energy left to invest in the goals of the family or of the wider community. Self-interest alone will give meaning to life. The majority of people are probably ensconced comfortably in the second stage of development, where the welfare of the family, or the company, the community, or the nation are the sources of meaning. Many fewer reach the third level of reflective individualism, and only a precious few emerge once again to forge unity with universal values. So these stages do not necessarily reflect what does happen, or what will happen; they characterize what can happen if a person is lucky and succeeds in controlling consciousness.
Goals can lead to all sorts of trouble, at which point one gets tempted to give them up and find some less demanding script by which to order one’s actions. The price one pays for changing goals whenever opposition threatens is that while one may achieve a more pleasant and comfortable life, it is likely that it will end up empty and void of meaning.
No goal can have much effect unless taken seriously. Each goal prescribes a set of consequences, and if one isn’t prepared to reckon with them, the goal becomes meaningless. The mountaineer who decides to scale a difficult peak knows that he will be exhausted and endangered for most of the climb. But if he gives up too easily, his quest will be revealed as having little value.
If goals are well-chosen, and if we have the courage to abide by them despite opposition, we shall be so focused on the actions and events around us that we won’t have the time to be unhappy. And then we shall directly feel a sense of order in the warp and the woof of life that fits every thought and emotion into a harmonious whole.
When there are too many demands, options, challenges we become anxious; when too few, we get bored.
The sport requires consistency. The job requires consistency. Mastery in any field requires consistency. It is super hard to train consistently while travelling. All the training has to be done at home, wherever it is.
A nomadic lifestyle requires a lot of logistics and planning. It takes up your mental energy. You can’t expect yourself to work at your best, while constantly moving around.
2. The One Thing
SOS – shiny object syndrome. There is an epidemic of ADHD in the World. People grab what’s shiny and run with it. Until they drop it… Then they move to the next and next and next. They leave a trail of unfinished work behind them. I don’t want to be that. I am tired of chasing my tail. I am tired of searching.
I want to find that ONE THING that I can be exceptionally good at. I want to specialize in one thing and be known for it. I want to find out what is it that I can do better than anyone else. Period. I want my work to be in the top 10 in the World. I want to find my jam. I want to create. I want to flow. Find my Zone and stay there until I drop dead. I put my ego aside and ask the Universe: What is it that I can be exceptionally good at? I don’t need what’s trendy. I don’t care if it’s sexy or not. I just want to know – Is there is something that I can do exceptionally well? Am I capable of creating something beautiful? I want to know. I surrender to God to show me. I promise to accept my gift for what it is. I promise not to judge the gift that I was given. I did not create myself, so who am I to judge? Whatever gave me life – WHY? With all my heart, I want you to give me the task. The task that only me and a couple of other men and women can do.
Maybe I just want to feel special. Yes, I do. It sounds like I go through an identity crisis. Show me the way. Give me a sign or a hint of something that will lead me to my calling. I will try from happiness when I find my door. I promise not to brag. I promise not to take for granted your gifts. I promise not to turn away from those in need. What do you want me to do?
3. Am I climbing the wrong mountain?
Whenever I set myself a goal – I go all out. I am a black or white person.
Training has become a full-time job for me. I stopped enjoying it. Wait. Pause. Reset. Why do you still do it if you don’t enjoy it? Is someone holding a gun to your head? Why did you decide on triathlon? What if there is something different that you should be doing? What if this is just a preparation for what’s coming?
I want to become world-class. But is it really what you want? Alex is more than a physical body. I am an intellectual person. I like to think. I like to work with my brain. Becoming World-class in triathlon will require a lot of sacrifices. I can not give my 100% self to mental work AND physical. Something will have to give. I’ve been gifted a sharp mind. Am I willing to put my mind to the side and focus all my energy on training? No. I know myself. If I don’t learn, if I don’t load my mind with challenging tasks – I destroy myself. No matter how good my training is, I will still have the need to let my mind work. What if my sport is mental and not physical? What if I’ve been climbing the wrong mountain? No-no, I will not drop the sport. Perhaps I need to reduce the intensity. Maybe I need to shift my focus a bit and be okay with not being a professional athlete. Still train. Still exercise, but know that your game is a mental game. Physical exercise and sport are not the end stop. Sport is here to support me, but not to consume me.
If I didn’t kill myself in training and racing, maybe I could stay fit for life. Maybe I won’t stand on the podium in my thirties, but I will enjoy every race and stay active in my seventies and eighties. I need to prioritize health over results. I need to do it for pure enjoyment and not the medal that means nothing. Save your body. Love your body. You are in a mental game, not the physical. Find ways to challenge your mind the way you challenge your body. Use the sport to support your mental game, not harm it.
They say: “Son, come back. You traveled enough. You’ve seen the world. It’s time to think about creating a family. We are waiting for you… come back home.” They said: “You cannot make all the money in the world. Come back home. With your brains, you will be well set here.” They think I am here because of money and the quality of life. They said: “You are lonely there. You need family and friends. Come home, Alex. Your home is here.” I tried not to cry. I was afraid to hear the question: “Are you happy there?”. I won’t lie, and I wouldn’t know what to say. To be true to myself – I don’t know if I am…
I’ve been more than seven years away from home. I missed so many birthdays. I missed all my family holidays. I missed the point at which my parent’s hair started turning white. I missed the point when my cousins grew up taller than me. I was absent from their lives for too long. They know me only from pictures. We are strangers. I sacrificed my family and friends. What for? Why do I continue paying this price if I can’t even say that I am happy? What am I doing with my life?
It’s not about money.
With all my heart, I want to find out why I was born. I want to find a purpose for this body. I did not create myself. Neither did my parents. Something put me in this World. It gave me a healthy body. It gave me eyes to see and senses to feel. It gave me the gift of language to communicate and express myself. My parents called me Oleksandr. Why Oleksandr? This is nothing but a label, just like Dodge or Chevrolet. I am a different person for many people. I am known as Oleksandr, Olek, Alex or Sasha. I am neither. Who am I? I’ve had this question for as long as I can remember myself. I am sick of it.
I was lucky enough to get a great education. Because of pure luck and enormous effort, I was able to get out of my home. I don’t know why. I refuse to believe that things just happen, with no reason. I can’t. Nothing in the world happens without a reason. So, why was I gifted health, brains and all the opportunities up to my disposal?
I learned today that 250 Native American kids were killed in a local school just fifty something years ago. They were killed just because they were different. I cannot even comprehend the scope of this tragedy. It happened only a few decades ago… I could’ve been one of them. Why not me? Why am I here? Well fed, nicely dressed, with access to all the pleasures of this world. It’s a burden to be a white male in the country of opportunities. I cannot blame anyone or anything for not finding an application for myself. They said: “Sasha, the time is flying. Come home. Buy a house in Kiev. Find a job. Create a family.” What if they are right? What if I am just a dreamer? What am I doing with my life…? Why did I even decide that I am in control of my life? Maybe things do happen for no reason… Maybe life is not what I made myself believe in. I am fooling myself. Playing my own mind games. Why do I need to find the purpose for myself? I might spend my whole life searching and end up alone and useless. Maybe they are right.
These thoughts never stop. They can turn any sunny day into a nightmare. They exhaust me. Why do I have them? What’s the purpose? Maybe I am just a negative person. Chemical imbalance in my brain? What if I take antidepressants, will it make things better? Better… What is better? Seeing unicorns every day? No, I don’t want that.
Why am I here? What am I doing with my life? Is it even my life? I don’t hope to get the answer, just to make it through this low point. Tomorrow, I will wake up and everything will be back to “normal”. I will be cheerful and optimistic. The sun will shine and I will smile.
Consumers, about 55 percent are likely to continue buying more groceries online after the peak of the crisis. Nike’s first-quarter digital sales in China increased 30 percent one year after the company launched home workouts via its mobile app, while property platform Beike said agent-facilitated property viewings on its virtual reality showroom in February increased by almost 35 times compared with the previous month.
In healthcare, digital interactions accelerated—the rapid growth of online consultations, partly thanks to a regulatory shift in reimbursement policy, as well as broader virtual interactions between pharmaceutical sales agents and physicians. These changes occurred ahead of the wide deployment of 5G technology, which will likely catalyze the use of digital tools.
COVID-19 has intensified the debate, with several governments calling for companies in critical sectors to relocate their operations back to their home countries and announcing financial support packages to facilitate this.
Investing in a supply chain and innovation footprint to serve China will continue to remain important.
Weaker companies, particularly SMEs that are not sufficiently agile or digital-savvy, are vulnerable to cash flow issues, unemployment, and business failure.
Attitudes to spending among consumers in their 20s and 30s, traditionally the engine of China’s consumption growth, have changed markedly in the wake of COVID-19. One survey showed 42 percent of young consumers intend to save more as a result of the virus. Consumer lending has also declined, while four out of five Chinese consumers intend to purchase more insurance products post-crisis. Savings have also rocketed—the country’s household deposit balance increased by 8 percent over the first quarter to reach 87.8 trillion RMB. Meanwhile, 41 percent of consumers said they planned to increase sources of income through wealth management, investments, and mutual funds.
More than 70 percent of respondents in our COVID-19 consumer survey will continue to spend more time and money purchasing safe and eco-friendly products, while three-quarters want to eat more healthily after the crisis.
COVID-19 might be accelerating long-awaited structural reforms to land, labor, and capital markets.
About 55 percent of consumers are likely to continue buying more groceries online after the peak of the crisis.
74 percent of Chinese citizens increased their online grocery visit frequency during the epidemic. Purchasing trade-offs amid a flight to quality: Chinese consumers have become more cautious as a result of the epidemic, tending to spend less but buying better quality products. According to a post-epidemic survey, close to half of Chinese respondents intend to live more frugally and seek value-for-money when selecting products, while 36 percent are more willing to spend more for better quality mproducts.55 Consumers are potentially seeking quality in their necessities, while focusing on value-for-money in other categories. A survey reveals that post-COVID-19, consumers increased their net purchase intention by the largest degree toward essential, health-oriented products, such as sanitary and health products, fresh food, and life insurance, while expressing negative net purchase intention towards non-necessities such as hair and beauty products, and large home appliances.56 Consumer complaints relating to quality have also increased. In Guangdong for example, consumer complaints rose 40 percent on year in the first quarter to 98,000, suggesting tolerance for low- quality products and poor service is on the decline.
A majority of consumers told us they intend to keep watching e-sports and online fitness programs. Remote learning for adults looks like another trend that might be here to stay.
Trust is vital as consumers navigate an uncertain information environment, with 89 percent telling us they are turning to brands that they trust
Demand for dairy, vegetables, and eggs was 25-50 percent higher during the initial recovery phase than it was before the crisis. Supermarket and convenience store data shows that, aside from fresh food, popular items during and after the peak of the crisis included grains, ready-to- cook meals, packaged food, and snacks.
There was a reduction in demand for personal care products and cosmetics in January and February, and these categories are only recovering slowly.
In-store pickup, QR code and self-check-out are the most widely adopted digital retail initiatives.
About a third of consumers say they prefer organic but only 1 percent actually purchase.
We believe there is a potential 400 billion RMB opportunity for offline grocery retailers that can adjust their formats in line with shifting consumer behavior.
Offline formats such as wet markets, which account for 30 percent of the market, will lose share to modern offline and online channels.
Several convenience stores could achieve rapid growth by perfecting their use of automation and artificial intelligence to optimize operational efficiency, allowing them to compete in economic terms with mature players.
Offline retailers can take advantage of low-cost consumer traffic and mature last-mile delivery operations from delivery platform partners to unlock online business opportunities.
The majority of growth in the next few years will likely come from leading modern players who re-invent themselves in the digital era, ecommerce players, and new retail challengers.
Demand for domestic travel is approaching prepandemic levels. Hotel-occupancy rates and numbers of domestic flight passengers bounced back to around 90 percent of 2019 levels by the end of August, and railway travel also shows a strong recovery (Exhibit 1).
People of all ages are willing to travel again.
Most survey respondents would likely choose a self-guided tour or road trip.
Some types of travel, especially high-end travel, are booming. Borders remain closed for outbound travel, which means that domestic high-end leisure trips are booming. Occupancy rates at luxury and high-end hotels were back at 85 percent of 2019 figures by the end of August,2 representing a significantly faster recovery rate than that seen by midrange and economy hotels. In September, the average price for five-star hotels on leading online-travel- agency (OTA) platforms was up 10 to 15 percent year over year for trips over the National Day holiday in October. Furthermore, leisure travel to destinations in Western China and Hainan Province—which boast beautiful scenery, outdoor activities, and beach resorts—have seen significant growth.
Companies operating in markets with very low transmission rates may focus on rebuilding domestic demand, finding new channels, or exploring opportunities for travel bubbles.
Rebuilding demand and propelling volume (such as through discounts and presales) are key during the early stages of recovery.
For countries where—as in China—the outflow of high-end tourism-related spending is significant, it will again be important to focus on providing new or improved high-end domestic offerings.
The pandemic has accelerated the adoption of mobile and digital tools. Building digital touchpoints and experiences will therefore be essential. In China, social media and new media are now major sources of inspiration and information for travel decisions.
Asian shoppers buy luxury goods outside their home countries not only to benefit from lower prices in Europe, but also because shopping has become an integral part of the travel experience: buying a brand in its country of origin comes with a sense of authenticity and excitement.
Chinese consumers remain the biggest growth opportunity for the luxury sector. Brands, clearly, will need a new approach to attracting luxury shoppers.
From ownership to experience, and back again. “Experiential luxury”—think high-end hotels, resorts, cruises, an
d restaurants—has been one of the most dynamic and fast-growing components of the luxury sector. Millennials (those born 1980–95) opted more for experiences and “Instagrammable moments” rather than luxury items. Baby boomers (born 1946–64), too, were moving in this direction, having already accumulated luxury products over the years. While we expect the positive momentum of experiential luxury to persist, it will slow down in the short term as consumers temporarily revert to buying goods over experiences.
More than 40 percent of global luxury goods production happens in Italy—and all the Italian facto- ries, including small, family-based façonniers, have temporarily shut down.
Many consumers also craved comfort food during a time of anxiety. And they wanted value for money as they feared for their financial future.
Young people were feeling financial pressure as a result of the crisis–about half our customers said they needed to save more money, which helped us focus our response on value and non-discretionary purchases of things like breakfasts and working lunches.
Now, delivery is the mega trend and is already about 30 percent of total sales.
The rise of mobile pick-ups propels us to rethink restaurant design. How much do we reserve for seating versus bigger catering and kitchen capacity that would allow us to produce food faster? In tier one cities like Beijing, restaurant formats can be smaller because people are looking for fast service; white-collar workers in the central business district have more incidence of ‘grab and go’. If you’re in a lower-tier city, family occasions remain prominent, so we’re still committed to a full-blown dine-in restaurant experience.
The restaurant safety measures we put in place will probably be permanent. We still take crew members’ daily temperatures. If you buy McDonald’s takeaway, the paper bag still carries a record of who prepared it and their body temperature. At the office level, we are cutting back on travel. We found less travel is more efficient. Digitization is helping us reprioritize what needs to be face-to-face and what can be done remotely.
Amid all the uncertainty, clarity of purpose is important to inspire and to guide the whole company. Company values and culture seem to be invisible but are extremely important at times like these. If everyone shares the same values of being passionate in helping others and having pride in serving the community, we will be better people and build a better brand as well. From a business standpoint, it is a good time to reset and to reimagine.
On the consumer side, everything shifted to online. The out-of-home, on-the- go channel completely shut down, and we cut down our stock-keeping units (SKUs) to focus on a core of three or four. That’s all consumers wanted–stuff they knew they could trust: Coke and instant noodles.
The acceleration of the online channel has been breath-taking and is here to stay. Except for market visits, I’ve only been into a supermarket three times since March; I even ordered a dozen eggs on my phone and they arrived in 30 minutes! The hard part is figuring out who pays, the seller or the delivery partner?
All our customers are rethinking what they should do in terms of physical retail. Obviously, in some areas you have to have presence, but to what extent will this be true in the future?
Some of the out-of-home, on-the-go business is bouncing back–maybe to 80 percent of the pre-COVID-19 level–but some will never come back, so what fills that void?
On a daily basis, 855 million Chinese consumers were spending an average of six hours on their phones–twice as much as digital consumers in the US–and buying $2 trillion worth of goods and services annually. Now, since China’s outbreak and subsequent lockdown, consumers have become even more digital, buying additional products on their phones, such as grocery items, that they previously would have purchased in stores.
When COVID-19 closed stores and cancelled public events, digital marketing costs went up further as virtually every brand doubled their efforts to reach Chinese consumers digitally, with some shifting their entire marketing budgets into digital.
Major apps have splintered into hundreds of mini-apps and sub-channels, the popularity of new platforms like Douyin (TikTok) and Bilibili has exploded, and live- streaming has become widely adopted, all leading to what we call the ‘dustification’ of consumer attention, meaning that outlets for reaching consumers are hyper- fragmented.
The basics of marketing haven’t changed–find your target consumers and give them the right product and the right message, at the right place and the right time. The difference in the digital era is that marketing technology, or ‘martech’, allows brands to accelerate and maximize this basic endeavor at minimal cost.
An Internet Celebrity approach uses public social apps and China’s thriving “fan economy” of celebrities, key opinion leaders (KOLs), and key opinion consumers (KOCs) to drive brand image and awareness. It’s a focus most effective for newer brands.
A leading international beauty brand, for instance, taking a Performance. First approach, wanted to identify the best marketing content for different consumer segments on its flagship store at Tmall. The company worked with an AI provider to instantly create thousands of layouts with different models, product photos, and colors. Each was dynamically A/B tested with customers to identify those with the highest purchase rate. The result was an ROI boost of 20 percent and a 50 percent reduction in annual design costs
Social commerce, where social media is the driving force behind sales, is one of the hottest trends in China and a major disrupting force.
The average consumer in China now spends more than seven hours a day on the mobile internet, a figure that increased by a fifth in the aftermath of the COVID-19 crisis. About two-thirds of those seven hours is spent using social or content apps, as users increasingly seek out information from social media, social influencers, and friends in order to make decisions about purchases.
Time spent using social or content apps is now driving 50 percent of shopping interest, and 25 percent of purchases, a marked change from the 2017 figures of 37 percent and 7 percent, respectively (Exhibit 1). And the size of the overall social commerce market is expected to more than double from 2019 levels to reach gross sales of 2.9 trillion renminbi by 2021.
Social-first commerce. Food and lifestyle blogger Li Ziqi is an example of a KOL that has effectively deployed social-first commerce. She has become one of China’s biggest
social media stars by posting artistic videos of traditional life and cooking in Sichuan province’s rural areas. Having built an enormous fan base (26 million on Weibo, 39 million on Douyin, and 11 million on YouTube), she now operates an eponymous brand of traditional Chinese packaged food, promotes third-party brand foods, and operates a store on Tmall to sell directly to her followers.
Li Ziqi sold 100 million renminbi of products in 2019, more than three times the year before, with her success demonstrating the power of converting social engagement into commercial results.
Convenience stores are the fastest-growing store type, while small supermarkets are also large in number. These stores have deeper local coverage and more loyal consumer relationships since they are deeply rooted in their local communities and located closer to customers.
Gen Z represent the next engine of domestic consumption growth. Officially defined globally as the cohort of people who were born between 1996 and 2010, Gen Z make up about 15 percent of China’s population and represent the next engine of domestic consumption growth.
Gen Z spent their childhoods during the fastest sustained expansion of a major economy in history, and are consequently used
to rapid improvements in their standard of living.
Gen Z: 10-23 Millennials: 24-38 Gen X: 39-54
This behavior is driven in part by robust confidence in future earnings: 78 percent of Chinese Gen Z respondents said they believe they will earn more, or much more, in the future. This combination of impulsiveness and optimism also leads 36 percent of our survey sample to overspend their budget. In fact, China’s Gen Z refer to themselves as “the moonlight clan” in reference to their propensity to spend their entire monthly salary over the course of a single lunar cycle, effectively living paycheck to paycheck.
Gen Z consumers in the US are similarly inclined to spend big on consumer products, while their outlay on luxury apparel and accessories even surpasses that of Millennial shoppers with higher incomes.
More than half (51 percent) of China’s Gen Z consumers prefer brands that offer customized products, while 53 percent opt for brands that provide tailored services.
Once engaged, China’s Gen Z are also more brand loyal : 47 percent agreed that they stick with brands they like, while 43 percent said they will always choose a brand they know over a new one.
Fifty-one percent of Gen Z consumers say that official social media accounts of consumer brands are one of their top three sources of influence, while 44 percent count bloggers and online influencers among their top three sources of influence. Gen Z value these sources of information more than Millennials and Gen X. Key opinion leaders (KOLs) who resonate with Gen Z are driving this trend, such as Li Jiaqi, whose forthright opinions can make or break a beauty brand or product, and online sales superstar Weiya, whose interactive livestreams on Taobao have helped sell billions of RMB of products.
In the US, social media is most influential for 39 percent of Gen Z consumers when deciding to recommend a product or brand, while online reviews and blogs is top choice for 26 percent. Friends and family offline still have most sway for 15 percent, and just 10 percent are primarily guided by influencers.
References:
China consumer report 2021, Special edition, Understanding Chinese Consumers: Growth Engine of the World (November 2020): https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/featured%20insights/china/china%20still%20the%20worlds%20growth%20engine%20after%20covid%2019/mckinsey%20china%20consumer%20report%202021.pdf
Whenever you feel depressed, it is very important to remind yourself that if you don’t like something, you can change it. Listen, you are not a victim of life! … unless you decide to be.
YOU HAVE TIME
YOU HAVE OPTIONS
You are young and healthy. You HAVE TIME! This is your most valuable resource and you have plenty of it. As humans, our main task in life is to learn. If you are not failing and making mistakes – you are not learning. Listen, you are in the stage of life, where you need to fail as many times as you can – TO LEARN. If you learn – you grow. The only rule is that you can make the same mistake only once. If you repeat the same mistake over and over – you are not learning.
Move to a new city
Move to a new country. How cool would it be to spend the next winter in Marbella, Spain or in Mexico, or on Carribean? All need to do is to figure out how to make $5k /month while working remotely online.
Take on some very hard physical challenge:
Train and runn 100 km
Swim across the local lake
If things don’t go as planned – it’s all right. There is nothing horribly wrong about it and you are not a failure. Keep pushing, you are doing great. As long as you learn – you fulfill your mission in life. If you want to learn faster – make more mistakes. Try more new things! Dude, your life is so short.
You fell asleep and don’t see your power. You are the God! You have the power to materialize everything you want and create the life full of experiences. Listen to me: You really can! It’s up to you to take my words to the heart or disregard them, as some woo-woo stuff. It might be woo-woo, but I prefer to call it magic. I am a shaman and I do magic. Haha and I laugh when things start appearing and my life aligns in the most unprecedented way. I am laughing and dancing.
Get out of your head. Imagine you are at the hospital – near death. Imagine you died – as vivid as you can. Now open your eyes and realize that today’s day is a gift. Look at yourself as already dead and accept every day on this Earth as a truly invaluable gift. Tomorrow is not guaranteed.
Life is a dangerous game and no one will get out alive. It is so easy to fall into depression and burn down. Our health is so fragile, but we don’t appreciate it. I certainly don’t, until something hurts.
Everyone is going through some sh*t. The World didn’t come crashing down at you. Eyes on the prize. What do you want? And envision it as vividly as you can! Lit up the fire inside. You are on your own my friend.
Ever since I left my corporate job at UBER, I’ve been navigating the entrepreneurial life on my own. It will be a year in three weeks.
What is it like in one word? Exhausting.
Everyone’s journey is different. Below is what my entrepreneurial journey was like.
Most of the waking life I spend thinking and planning what’s next. Every day I wake up and spend time figuring out what to do next. It makes the life so much easier, when you wake up in the morning and know exactly what to do and what is expected from you. Having a boss makes the life easier. You just ask your manager what to do → put the head down, plug your headphones in and execute.
Not having someone telling you what to do is hard. You become your own boss. Sounds sweet to most, isn’t it? Not to me. I am very critical of myself. I am my worst boss.
The boss in my head never takes a break. I work with him, I sleep with him. He is always in my head, no matter where I go or what I do. At the party, in my bed, on a run… My boss never sleep and the second I open my eyes in the morning – he’s telling me what to do. I can’t ignore. I can’t quiet him down.
If I were to visualize my day in the pie chart, it will split as this: 50% planning, thinking what to do; 20% researching, convincing yourself that this is the right way to go; 30% actually doing it. I don’t like such spread. I don’t feel productive. It seems as all I do is daydream. If only I can figure out what makes me feel this way. If only I can put the handle on it…
Feeling ineffective. It burns me on the inside. I am just wasting my time and money… WTF are you doing man? Then you look at others: this business accelerates; that entrepreneur gets the government grant; everyone is doing something while you sit with your idea. Discouraging. We are moving so slow – is always on a back on my mind. They you find our the your competitor already raised $1.6M in pre-seed money. Then you learn that your competitor has the team of eleven… This kills any motivation to continue.
So you want to be an entrepreneur… This is a lonely journey. Unless you get blessed with a cofounder or a few, who are as passionate about your venture as you, prepare to push this hippo on your own. When things go well – you are in the middle of attention. However, the hipe winds down and you are on your own… again.
So you want to be an entrepreneur… You envision bright orange Lamborghini, a big house on a lake and careless job. Maybe, but not in my case. I am considered as unemployed and I have been for the entire year. I haven’t made a single bucks. I am dead broke, living on the edge of poverty. You might become millionaire overnight. I didn’t. Having no income creates stress. Aside of my venture, I need to figure out how to keep myself afloat. Not only to keep myself afloat, but also in a way that allows me to have time for my business.
How many times I dropped everything and did not want to continue anything… How many times I hated myself for moving so slow and not seeing any results… How many tough conversations have I had with myself, doubting and blaming myself… How many times I did not want to wake up the next morning, feeling absolutely exhausted… How many times I thought of dropping everything and begin looking for a job… How many times I burned down…
I am worried about myself. I know for a fact, that if I give up and find a job… I will hate myself. I will absolutely hate myself for not being able to figure it out. I will be eating myself on the inside every single day at that job, no matter how awesome it is. I can already feel what it will be like – to give up. I don’t see another way out of this venture, but success. What is success to me? A profitable business that I CAN BE PROUD OF. God help me.
It’s been about two years since I’ve heard about ayahuasca for the first time. I made a friend in Vancouver. His name is Valtteri. He owns and runs the sauna business. We met in late cold October, at the beach. He invited me over to his sauna. Instantly we found a common language. Deep conversation with him and two other friends of his. Very interesting and spiritual people – my tribe.
Valtteri shared that he had some challenges running his business, so I offered help. I consulted him over the course of several weeks. I gave him my perspective, offered solutions and just helped to clear his mind. I connected him with my digital marketing person.
During that conversation in the sauna, he mentioned his psychedelic experience with ayahuasca. That caught my attention and I asked if he could put me in touch with the people who run those ceremonies. This is not something that you could easily find on Google. Ideally is to be referred by someone you trust. Typically such circles are closed to the general public and very private. The only way for new people to join is only by referrals. I’ve got mine.
If you are not familiar with Ayahuasca, there is a great documentary called “The Jungle Prescription” with Mr. Gabo Matte. I suggest you start there.
I was getting exponentially nervous the closer it was getting to the ceremony. The night before, I had a bad dream with my mom in it. I couldn’t hide my anxiousness so that people could tell. My friend Cailan said that I looked tense.
The “D-day” has come. On my drive to the place, I wasn’t listening to the podcast or audiobooks as I always do. I couldn’t focus. I was scrolling through my playlist, hitting the next button over and over. I was trying to relax, searching for the right tune to play.
I was nervous but my body was relaxed. I didn’t want to go anywhere or do anything. My muscles were relaxed and the shoulders soft. I was tired of resisting the tension. I did not want to be in control anymore. I didn’t want to fight my feelings.
Halfway I made a stop in Vernon. To catch some air and regroup, I went for a walk. I could not resist the smell of fresh pastry coming from the bakery. Trying to comfort myself, I got a bunch of junk. Sugar for my brain. Of course… back to my addiction… This is how I cope with stress… I felt guilty afterwards.
To cut a long story short – the ceremony took palce at the farm, in the middle of nowhere.
20 people: 6 women. and 14 men.
Ignite
I parked my truck and went upstairs to the porch. Two guys and a girl were having a conversation while smoking cigarettes. “Is this it?”, I asked. “Yes, you are at the right place”, one of them answered.
Shawn – the shaman, ran the show. He had two helpers, who helped during the ceremony and even cooked for him.
People inside seemed nervous.
The ceremony took place in the large room, on the back of the two-story building. The room was covered in mats that people set up on the floor in the circle. Very close to one another – half a meter or so.
We all gathered together. The ceremony had started and one of Shawn’s helpers came up to me. She said that I should come to the center and talk to the shaman. “Is this your first time? Do you have any addictions or problems that you come with?” Face to face. Eyes to eyes. I was ashamed to admit that I didn’t have anything in particular. No drug addictions or anything like that. That made me feel out of place, like a tourist. He shook my hand and said that he was happy to have me there. I went back and sat on my mat.
I was the only person who’s never done it before. I was also the youngest one in the room. Other folks were about 35 years old and up. All kinds of people – very diverse public. Different by age and looks. My neighbor on the right – Jessica gave me her flashlight. She put the red duck tape over the beam, so it’s not so bright in the dark. She said that I’ll need it. My neighbor on the left – the old man named Ed, said that this is the best thing that I’ve ever done for myself. He said that this is a life-changing experience. Certainly, it was.
The air in the room was very heavy. Candles were burning… and people were smoking cigarettes. I was very nervous. My throat got dry and my stomach was boiling. “I hope I won’t shit myself”, I thought to myself.
The lights went off. Shawn sat in the center of the room with a little candle. He had two white bottles and a little transparent shot glass beside him. He opened the bottles and whispered something into each. Clockwise, people would come up to him and he would pour the black sticky liquid into the glass.
My turn had come, so I came up and sat in front of the candle. Shawn filled the shot and looked at me with a slight, barely noticeable wink. I lift the shot in front of the candle to see the colour. Pitch black. I swallowed my dose and went back.
The “medicine” was inside of me.
3 AM – Six Hours Later
Exhausted, but I can’t sleep. I need to write this down.
I have to document at least something because I am afraid to forget.
So I had a shot of that black sticky liquid. With no facial expression, I swallowed it quietly. Very specific taste… I remember the look on Shane’s face – curious, with a barely noticeable sneaky smile. The aftertaste was as of a wine leaf. I sat back on my mat and observed other people.
One by one, clockwise – a human shadow whould walk up to the candle and tilt the head with the shot of “medicine”. The “12-hour mark-person” took the poison and disappeared into the darkness. Shawn blew on the candle sharply – the light went off… The room got endlessly dark and silent. It was so quiet that I could almost hear my elevated heartbeat. Silence.
We sat motionless for about 10-20 minutes. I transitioned from a cross-legged position to a laying. I felt tired… “You paid so much money and now you are going to sleep?”, I thought to myself. Whatever! I was too tired… “Ayahuasca will wake me up if it really works”, was my rational. I laid on my side and slowly fell asleep, but only a half-way.
Hearing someone puke pricked my ears. Then, another person… “It must be starting”, I thought to myself.
Shawn sparked the lighter to lit up his tube. Inhaled several times. The red light disappeared… More people started puking, then silence. He then lit up the lighter and inhaled several times more. The light dissapeared into the darkness. Silence…
I was completely sober, observing from the sidelines.
“I wonder when will it hit me if ever. I don’t even feel like puking yet. Maybe I had too little?” Watching other people drink, it seemed like Shawn poured a bit less for others. I was sitting right at the angle, where I could see the shot glass, about five meters away. Why did he give me almost a full shot? Other people had half – at most. A few drank even less – only a quarter.
Shawn stood up and went clockwise around the room.He came up to the each person and exhaled the smoke down on every “patient”. Once he complete the circle, he went back to his spot and began singing… “What language is it? Sounded like chanting. Very melodic and pleasant to the ear. I laid flat on my back and enjoyed listening to his voice.
My airways opened wide and I began breathing deeper. Tears had bursted from my eyes. I didn’t notice them until they rolled down to my cheeks, all the way to the ears. I thought that was very odd because I didn’t feel high and my mind was clear. However I felt that something in my body was changing.
“Beautiful! Beautiful! Beautiful!”, I whisper…
“What a beautiful singing!” I could listen to him all night long – “Please don’t stop”.
Abstract shapes and figures started popping up in front of my eyes. Eyes? They were closed. In front of my mind? Can I look around? I didn’t want to move, because I was afraid to scare away this … I didn’t want to ruin the moment. I didn’t want to mess up the beautiful visuals. Things got more intense and my eyes began pumping out the tears. This was it. No doubts, ayahuasca was working on me.
I would open then close my eyes several times, just to see if that would change anything. Amazing! The visuals didn’t change at all. I didn’t see it with my eyes – but with my mind. I flipped onto my stomach. My body felt so strong! I forgot the fatigue I’ve had a moment ago – “I have to move! I can’t…” In the beginning, they said: no talking, no walking and no touching anyone. So I laid face down on my stomach while flexing my leg muscles, just to get some energy out. I could hear my joints pop – that strong my muscles were. “Holy shit this is intense!”. I got slightly concerned about losing control.
“Beautiful! Beautiful! Beautiful!”, I heard myself whisper. I felt so happy. “Is it all for me? For free? How did I deserve it? Yes, you deserve and this show, this genius performance is all for you.” I pulled the blanket over my head and started giggling like a maniac. I felt like a little child who found a large bag of chocolate candies. “This is my treasure and this is all mine.” The feelings were so beautiful and profound that I cried with happiness. Tears were streaming down my cheeks. “I am so grateful! I am blessed. Pure happiness!”. The feelings were so powerful that it’s hard to describe. “Enjoy! Catch the moment because it won’t last forever. It is too good to last too long. This is an illegal amount of happiness and it’s all mine. I don’t have to share. I don’t have to explain anything to anyone. Nobody sees me – I am safe under my blanket.
Beautiful! This is UNBELIEVABLE!”
Side note:
3:45 am – I am so tired… falling asleep. I need to keep writing, otherwise, I’ll forget everything.
Beautiful! This is UNBELIEVABLE!”
THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN DO TO ME THATIOWASKA HAVEN’T DONE
The little kid in me was playing. What if I hold my breath? Holly shit – all the visuals freeze. Inhale and everything gets back to motion. What if I slightly change my body’s position? What if I move?
That works too! I now see different things. I am an engineer of my experiences. I am the scientist. I need to document this! Where is my notebook? No, it’s too dark.
What is I record my voice on my phone? I wish, but I can’t talk. The only thing that I can do right now is try to remember as much as I could. This is unbelievable… I don’t know how else to describe this. I don’t know how to comprehend what I experience.
I have never felt this way before. Not to this extent. Unbelievable. So grateful.
Bright flashlight!
Wait, was it on me? Someone is watching me? I must be too high and attract the attention. Freeze, don’t move. Try to seem normal. I pause for a moment and I don’t even breathe.
I open my eyes to see if the light is still on. It’s not. Huuuuh… False alarm. For a moment I felt like a criminal who was almost caught.
Shawn’s voice is amazing. What a great singer he is! Several other humming voices come and go into the song, also beautiful and clear. What a labour this is! Must be hard to sign all night long. I don’t know how he does it, but please don’t stop.
Things change. Everything seems to speed up. The new sound pops up in the room. It sounds like someone’s having sex. I’ve heard before that people are being taken advantage of during such ceremonies. Is someone being raped? Am I being a part of it? What if something horrible is happening right now?
I don’t feel my body.
I don’t control myself. Am I having sex?
I am not sure…
The feeling of bliss changed with horror. I am not in control of myself. I am vulnerable. People can take advantage of me right now. I need to obtain back the control. This is not funny anymore. What do I do? I don’t feel my body. I don’t feel the floor.
Panic!
!I need something to fixate on. I need an anchor to reality. I try to listen to the singing, but it only puts me deeper into whatever I am in. I lose the sense of time and space. How do I stop this?
Water!
Water! I need to drink some water. There is my water bottle somewhere. It’s hard to move, but I extend my right arm over my head and poke behind the pillow in search for metal flask. Found it, not what? You should flip over on your back and sit down – seemed as something impossible to do. I continued laying face down, hoping that things will get better. They didn’t. I got scared. The intensity of the experience was so strong that it seemed that I will lose my mind. I could not process it all – it was too fucking much. Too much! I want to scream for help, but I can’t. There is seem to be no end to this and I am on my own. I can not do this. I can’t! I want everything to stop!
This is it…
I am going crazy. I will never be the same again. This is irreversible. I begin praying. God, please, please, please…. If I make it through this… If I don’t lose my mind… I promise to go home right after this. Let me go! Make it stop. I was desperate. Well…. this might be it. I kept asking: What’s the message? What do you try to teach me? Stop!
I didn’t stop looking for a way. Is there is something constant in this experience? Is there is something that does not change? Yes – the breath. Watch your breath.
I sat up straight, crossed my legs and put my arms on my knees. In a typical meditation pose I tried to focus on the movement of my chest. Up and down. Inhale, exhale. Ok, this helps a bit. I felt proud of myself for finding strength in myself to endure whatever was happening around. I am the warrior. I can make it through!
Watch the breath
Craziness did not stop, but now I had something to rely on – my breath.
I felt proud of myself. I found a strength inside of me. I did not ask for help, but figured things on my own. I am standing (sitting) here – facing the experience and enduring the overwhelm. I lose my shit now and then, but I always come back to my breath.
I am the warrior!
I am strong!
I am strong on my own.
I can do this. This night will end. Endure!
Keep breathing.
A sense of pride filled my heart.
6:46 AM – I am still awake
Hey, did you hear that? Someone scratched into the window. Am I imagining these? No – again. What’s that? Some wild animal from the outside? We’re in the middle of nowhere, so that’s possible. I turn on the flashlight and see two flashing eyes looking at me.
Exhausted…
My heart is drumming the beat as I come up closer – that’s a dog… He definitely wants to get in. Should I open the door? No, ignore. I need to sleep…
DAY 2 – I open my eyes
It’s bright and quiet. I look at my watch – 10 AM. Only ten in the morning?! I’ve slept for three hours. Excruciating headache. I get up and hold my head – it’s about the explode. No one is in the room, except for me. I hear people talk in the kitchen – they are having breakfast.
I should resume writing, while the memory lasts. Where have I left off? On the hard part… Yeah – it was hard.
So many times I promised myself that if I make it out without losing my mind – I will pack my bags and leave. Enough! “The second its over – I am out!”, I promised myself last night. Why am I still here? Why am I hesitant to leave? I don’t care about the money… Curiosity keeps me hostage.
Yawning
I remember that last night I’ve been yawning a lot. Apparently, that’s a common thing for people to do under “medicine”. Shaman Shawn told me that this is how the body releases fatigue. I also remember shaking a lot, like a dog. On the outside, it probably looked like epileptic seizures. I was shaking my head like a wet dog after the bath. This is what Blake does all the time. I read somewhere that by doing so dogs “shake off the stress”.
The second day was a very long day. Bright and sunny. I spent a few hours laying on the couch, on the porch. Beautiful scenery from that porch. We spoke with one another for hours… These were the only people who could ever comprehend what I went through. We spent the entire day talking. Very open and genuine conversations. I didn’t shy away from sharing some very personal things. No one seemed to judge. What is a unique group of people! They each came from all over the country. One guy flew in from Peru.
The sun was going down and felt the anxiety creeping on me… Everyone looked nervous. I was nervous too. It still wasn’t too late to leave. “Abort the mission – I am not ready”. I slept for three hours in the past 14 hours and I was too exhausted beyond the limit… Curiosity made me stay. “Ok, I’ll do it again. I am afraid, but I will do it. This is why I am here. Isn’t it?” This guy kept staring at me. He was one of the shaman “helpers”. They all seem a bit suspicious. Relax, that’s all in your head. You can not go into the second ceremony not trusting the people you are with. If you do – it will eat you alive.
Wait, don’t leave
I STAYED the SECOND NIGHT
As the sun was setting down, anxiety crept in. I spent the entire day deciding on whether stay or leave. Do I need this? I was convinced that I can cause damage to my brain. I can hurt myself.
It was already dark outside when I made a decision to stay. I made a commitment to do it again. This was the last time, after which I gave myself the permission to leave without guilt.
I can do it! I am not weak.
Once again, at twenty-one o’clock, we gathered in the same room.
Everyone in the circle seemed nervous – waiting for the start. Shaman welcomed everyone and gave a speech. He whispered into the two white bottles, then folded a white napkin and put it on the floor. The shot glass landed right on top of it. The lights went off. Only the candlelight. The first person came up and flipped the black shot. Three more people until my turn. Not gonna lie – I was afraid. I could feel the fear in my legs and arms.
“Your gut is trying to tell you not to do it, but you don’t listen. You are getting yourself in big trouble. There is no way out. You made the decision to stay. Stop this monologue!”
I stood up, came in the middle of the room and went down on my knees. Someone told me that day that the more you drink ayahuasca, the worse it tastes. I flipped the glass. Disgusting!
After the last person had the shot, Shaman put down the candlelight. Just as the night before – the opening of the ceremony was a very special – magical moment. The room got pitch dark and quiet. Silence. Everyone waited. It takes somewhere about twenty to thirty minutes for ayahuasca to kick in. After this time, people start to feel the effects.
I hear the sound of liquid hitting the bottom of the plastic bucket.
It began…
For more than an hour, I laid there staring into the darkness. One after another people started puking, however, I did not feel anything. I felt relieved and I thought: “Maybe it won’t get me this time. I didn’t puke the first time, so maybe my body developed immunity to it.”
Shaman Shawn began singing and the entire room lit up. HOLLY SHIT! It hit me like a brick wall. The entire ceiling of the room got covered in bright blue LED web of lights. It was incredibly beautiful. I was hoping that it will stay that way for the rest of the night. I was hoping that this night, it will be more enjoyable. Quick and fun. How wrong I was…
Ed – the owner of the farm, was laying on his back to the left of me. Not sure, but I would say that he was around 65-70 years old. He has been doing psychedelics most of his life. He was the Gandalf from “Lord of the Rings” in the world of psychedelics.
Ed began puking… Harder and harder. Almost crying, he squeezed out: “I need help”. I got worried about him. It was clear that he was struggling. One of the helpers came up and tried to comfort him by saying that everything is all right. This helped for a bit. A few minutes later he yelled: “Oh my God…. Oh my God…. Oh my God….”, then the vomit came out gazing through his mouth. Ayahuasca hit him so hard that he couldn’t move and I heard him choking on his own vomit. “Thank you… thank you… thank you… oh my God”, he kept repeating and vomiting on his own face.
I was still doing all right, but hearing what Ed was going through, made me scared. I imagined the worst-case scenario: We all end up with a dead body and I am a part of it. I saw cop cars surrounding the farm… Blue-red, blue-red, blue-red. A hard knock on the entrance door. We’re all in trouble. “I need help” – Ed whispered again. I tried to turn towards him, but I realized that I can’t move my body. Holly shit, I am in trouble.
Visual. The most complex abstract shapes and patterns were moving in the front of my… mind. It didn’t matter if I kept my eyes open or closed – things were crazy. I could not close my eyes and stop seeing as if the visual signal was going straight to my brain, bypassing the eyes. It felt as drinking through the fire hose. To say it was too much is a very strong understatement.
“Please, be gentle with me this time”
Someone told me that I can talk to Ayahuasca, so I did.
“If shit hits the fan – I will try talking to it. I will retreat to my breath. Focusing on my breath grounded me last night. Yes, the breath is what gave me the strength to endure the beating of the plant. Perhaps I could also use it in my day-to-day life.“
If it helped me endure the Ayahuasca experience – it can help me go through so many trivial things. Whenever things get tough – follow the breath. Deep inhale through the nose into the back of the lugs – pause – slowly exhale. Watch your chest expand. Your bodily sensations is your anchor to reality. Whatever happens – watch your breath. This is the only thing you have. If you get lost – it will bring you back to this world. At least I hoped so…
The first ceremony has taught me that creation is good. I mean – creating something, building. It doesn’t matter how it looks. Last night I was creating something and the process of it gave me an enormous amount of joy. I am usually very critical of myself, however, I realized that night that the act of creating is beautiful on its own. It doesn’t matter how ugly you think your drawing is – it is beautiful by default because you created something out of nothing. Talking is the act of creation. Tell someone that she is beautiful and you’ve created a wave of positive emotions inside of that person. As easily as positive, you can also create negative feelings. By writing this – I create. It doesn’t matter how many orthographical mistakes I made – it’s beautiful just because it never existed before and I gave it birth. Good or bad – is just someone else’s opinions. That’s it -just opinions. Even your own judgement of your work is only the opinion. Every creation is beautiful by default.
The logical question to ask is: If everything’s great by default, why improve? Great question.
Improvement is beautiful – Perfection is art
All my body’s senses were extremely sharp last night. I could hear and smell so much better. I remember that clicking sound that was coming out from the right side of the room. What was that? The noise was consistent and I haven’t heard it before the medicine kicked in. It was bothering me.
Later I discovered that it was sparkling water. About 5 meters away from me was a bottle of sparkling water. The clicking noise was the sound of the water bubbles popping on the surface.
I could hear every little squick in that large house.
Everyone’s breaths…
I remember only the fraction of the second night. Things went too crazy too fast.
The emotional knob switch was flipped to the max, then ripped off entirely. Tears splashed out my eyes. It was too much to take. My head was about to burst like an air balloon. The more Shaman sang the more intense my experience got.
“Please stop singing”, I would’ve said if I could talk. “I need help. Something’s wrong. This is too much. I can’t take it.”, went through my mind. “I need to ask for help. This is too much. I can’t handle it….”. I would’ve had asked for help if I could, but my entire body was paralyzed.
I felt really cold. My body temperature had dropped. “Just keep breathing”, I thought to myself. “Wait, am I still breathing? I am not sure.” I could not feel my body. I could not feel my chest expand. “I am really cold…” My heart rate must be really low. I am dying. “This is it… and I can’t even ask for help.” An animal fear went through my body like electroshock. “You are dying! For real!” Hearing other people scream and puke made things worse.
“We all got poisoned. Something went wrong. I got overdosed. Well, that’s what you deserve for not listening to your guts. You are going to die on the floor of some farm in the middle of nowhere.”
“Keep breathing. Just keep breathing!” I caught my breath for a second.
“There is no way that you get out of this without some sort of permanent damage to your brain and body. This is too strong.” I needed help, but it was unreachable. I couldn’t feel my body and I didn’t even know if I was laying, sitting or freaking flying. I didn’t know if I was on my back or laying with my face down. I was 100% sure that I was going to shit myself and lay there helpless. I was legitimately scared. I was not going to die from ayahuasca that night, I was certainly dying from shame the next morning. Shame for shitting myself.
There are paralyzed people who could not even move their eyeballs?. That was me and I was confident that it was permanent. I was certain that I did some serious damage to my body and that will become my life from then on. “I need to drink water”. I remembered that during my college years I got seriously stunned and drinking water helped, so I thought this would stop things. I could not move. This was one of the scariest experiences of my life. I began praying to God… It didn’t help, but it won me a few minutes of time. It distracted me from my thoughts about death for a bit.
It was hell. A never-ending nightmare.
You have probably seen those ancient drawings of hell, where everyone’s burning and crying. This was something similar. People all around were crying on loud… Sounds of excruciating pain were coming out of every corner of the room. Someone was giggling like a crazy maniac. I think it was Ed. Others were vomiting like crazy. Those were not human voices. Those were animal sounds. Shaman kept singing and things were moving.
Absolute insanity and there was no end to this!
I could not close my eyes and stop seeing crazy things. I could not close my ears and stop hearing. I tried. I lost any concept of time and that night had no end. I was ready to do anything to stop this. “Keep breathing… just don’t stop breathing…” That night I was fighting for my life. It might sound crazy, but I really was.
Several times that night I was convinced that my heart stopped beating. I died again and again. It was horrible. It was absolutely the worst experience I have ever had in my life. It was absolutely the hardest thing that I’ve ever done in my life.
I could not believe that I even paid money for it. What an idiot! I totally lost it… There are no English, Russian or Ukrainian words to describe things that I’ve seen and experienced that night.
There are no words to describe my experience. This was beyond any comprehension. It was an overload on every level: visual, emotional and physical.
Somehow, I managed to sit up and had a few gulps of water. “Don’t drink too much”, I thought to myself.
Sharp pain raised in my chest. “Small gulps. Don’t drink too much too fast.” I then went on my fourth and stood up. My head was about to crack in halves from pain. I navigated through the darkroom into the washroom. The colour of my urine shocked me. It was black. Because the lights were dim, I wasn’t sure if I was peeing blood. No matter, dark yellow, black or red – I realized that I was severely dehydrated. The only person who was able to help me – was myself. “You need to eat something and hydrate.” I went to the kitchen and started searching for salt. I found the apple – the most delicious fruit I’ve ever eaten. I poured the salt on it and kept biting. A gulp of water… Then stomach cramps. I went pacing in circles around the kitchen. It was five or six in the morning – nine hours since I’ve drunk the poison. “When is it going to end?” This nightmare had no end. “It shouldn’t last this long. Something must be terribly wrong.” No matter what I did – things were not getting better.
I went to lay on the couch in the living room. I could still hear horrible noises coming out from the large bedroom, but at least, it was quieter here. I put my head down and tried to deepen my breath. Neither – asking Ayahuasca to be gentle, breathing deeply or praying helped. Later in the day, Shaman told me that in past, people were using ayahuasca to “prepare themselves for death”. This was how I would’ve felt if I were dying.
I wish I remembered at least a quarter of the things I experienced on that trip.
Pictures of my father started popping into my mind. I got worried about him… In my mind, his wife sent me a message that… he was dead. This was too much. “C’mon Sasha. This is too much. You are getting paranoid.” I tried to get myself out of this thinking loop, but the horrible thoughts kept coming back. I started thinking – what if?…
Ayahuasca kept me in its claws for about nineteen hours, until three in the afternoon of the next day. Nineteen hours of hell. It took me that long to return my body’s basic functions like walking and talking. Even then, I was nowhere near to my 100% self, but at least it was manageable. It was too much and too hard. It was the hardest thing that I’ve ever done in my life and I would never suggest ayahuasca to anyone. The literature says that it is the strongest psychoactive compound on Earth for a reason. Holly shit, I could not believe that I made it alive… Forever grateful.
DAY 3
I caught Shawn in the kitchen and I said that I wanted to talk.
– I am not sure if I want to drink it tonight. I don’t think that my nervous system can handle it.
– Not even a little? he asked.
– I don’t think so…
– That’s all right. You know, for the first several ceremonies I drank only once. It was enough for me. I was stoned for hours.
– Yeah, I think I’ll pass tonight.
– If you ever change your mind – you can always have just a little bit. Shaman said…
People were encouraging me to stay and have the last shot. They said that typically the third night is the best night. It’s like a culmination. A happy end where everyone gets enlightened and happy.
“F*ck that! I don’t believe you guys. I almost died last night and I am still not feeling 100% alive. I promised to myself and to every God up there that if I make it out alive – I will run away from this farm as fast as I can the second I can drive. There is no way I do it again. Enough is enough.”
I decided I’ll stick around for a few hours until I feel better, so I can drive. I was walking around like a zombie, thinking about what happened last night. I wasn’t very talkative, just listening. I laid on the couch the entire day, listening and observing other people. I didn’t move at all. Oh man… that headache was excruciating.
Later in the evening, when the sun went down, I went to sit in my truck. “I need to go out for a spin to clear my head.” I started the engine and went driving to Vernon – about thirty minutes drive. Driving on the farm road was okay, however, the second I made the right turn on the highway, I realized that I was nowhere near the safe condition to operate that three-ton monster. I kept driving (idiot).
I was probably going below the speed limit because I saw a bunch of headlights line up behind my truck. “What if one of them is a cop car? What if they pull me over? I am clearly stoned – that’s a DUI.” I got paranoid, however, still, I word not turn around. (double idiot).
I got to Vernon and went to the pharmacy. A bottle of Diet Coke and electrolyte drink. Then went to Safeway and got some cherries. All the way back to the evil farm I drove with my windows down (-20 Celsius). The logic behind it was to get my body cold so I clear up my mind faster. I ate all my snacks by the time the farm lights appeared in front of me. All the way back I was singing my “restaurant song” (Alysa, you know it). Singing helped me stay focused on the road and keep the truck inside the line.
One hour before the final ceremony starts again… As the night before – anxiety. I decided to stay simply because I did not feel safe driving back home. “I will stay and observe. No more ayahuasca for me! Enough.” I didn’t even want to think about that damn poison.
The ceremony began and I ended up on the same spot – on the floor of that large room, on my mat. I turned to the left and quietly told Ed that he shouldn’t wait on me to drink. I said that I won’t drink. He nodded.
Everyone had their shots and the room went dark and silent. While laying there I realized that I did not feel that I was missing out on something. I didn’t feel like a loser: “Haha scared of ayahuasca”. None of that. Moreover, I wasn’t sure that it won’t get me. “What if Shaman starts singing and it comes back on me?” Sounds crazy, but it shows how scared I was of it. I wasn’t kidding what I said that I thought I was dying.
People started puking and Shaman singing. Noises got ugly and loud. They seemed to be so close to me, so I got worried that my neighbors would puke on me. I stood up and went on my couch in the other room. I pulled my blanked over my head and passed out. It was strange because I didn’t feel tired, but felt asleep immediately.
6:30 AM – It’s OVER
Something’s in my mouth… Systems check – that’s the pillow.
I lay facedown motionless. My eyeballs were the only things that I could move. I opened my eyes and just laid there. I didn’t look at anything – just stared into my pillow. Funny picture.
I had the craziest dreams that night. I could not remember exactly what I’ve seen, but I remember waking up and thinking to myself: “What the hell just happened?”.
Everyone else was still dead asleep, so I used the privilege to get into the shower. What a blessing!!!
I wanted to feel clean – inside out. I didn’t want to lie. Not that I did, but I wanted to live without illusions. Impossible… I thought that I wanted things to be simple.
“My mind is so complex. It is extraordinarily difficult and twisted in all kinds of ways. It can truly be a prison – the worst prison on Earth. A pitch dark mezzanine with no way out. It can cause so much suffering. But it can also be a Heaven…”
I felt such a RELIEF that morning. It all was over and I was okay. Unimaginable! Honest to God, I did not think I would make it through alive. But I did.
I had my coffee. Then another one. Then one more… while writing this.
My new buddy came out of the room. He owns the Chevrolet dealership in Vancouver and has his own plane. I don’t remember his name, but we had a very deep conversation the night before. He was the first after me to wake up.
He stood an inch away from my face, grabbed me by the shoulders and looked straight into my eyes. Bright blue eyes. They seemed like two flashlights in the dark. He stared for about a minute.
– You ok, brother?
– Yes. I am.
– I have to leave, but please do me a favour. Tell everyone: “Thank you. I love you and God bless…” Thank you. I love you. God bless. Remember?
– Yes, I will…
– …and stop thinking so much! Don’t overthink. I will see you… whenever that time comes.
– Drive safe
What a freaking experience! I wish I remember at least half of the things that happened to me over the course of three nights. I wish my vocabulary is wide enough to better express my thoughts and feelings. But why? No matter what I say, you won’t live it through. You won’t feel what I felt. This is my life and only my experience. I will still publish it because I believe that my experience can bring value to people. Maybe someone is wondering if it worth the money. Maybe someone simply wants to know other people’s opinions.
I will end this long story by saying that
I do NOT recommend ayahuasca to anyone
I already said it hundred times, but I’ll say again that this was the hardest thing that I ever did in my twenty-nine years of life.
I believe that it can be harmful to your mind and health. (only my opinion) If you ever get the opportunity and decide to take the shot – only under the supervision! Only under the supervision of a reputable Shaman! Don’t be an idiot – this thing is no joke. I warned you.
TAKEAWAYS
I am grateful for my body. I learned that I can rely on it. It has its own intelligence. It won’t die so easily. It wants to live. I have a lot of respect for it. What a great gift to have – a healthy body.
I saw the self-doubt. That ugly-looking sucker has a shape and even a face. He helped me a lot, but we can not co-live together.
This is the hardest thing I ever did in my life. How hard is it to die?
Holly smokes this truck is huge! When stoned, singing helps stay focused.
Things change. No matter how much it sucks today, it won’t suck forever. The worse it gets, the better it will be once it’s over. The universe will equalize everything. It’s against the law of nature to suck forever. You feel bad, but then everything is fine again. Things suck today, but tomorrow evening is ok. It can not suck forever.
I now look at death differently. I believe that I know what it feels like to die.
These are not all the insights. It will take a while to unpack everything and make sense of it, but I am not in a hurry.
Mercedes GT. What a beautiful car! Costs about CAD$120K. I often see it fly around town, and think to myself – it won’t make you happy…
I am an extremely adaptive creature. Like a cockroach – will survive even after the nuclear war. I went through some good and bad times, always arriving in one piece. There is a pattern. Whenever something happens, at first it is a shock. Good or bad – it’s a stress. If fact there are no good or bad things in life, it’s all just a perception. However, that’s a whole another story. So the shock… Something that we perceive as good can be even more shocking than that bad thing. Few days later, you open your eyes and you tell yourself: Actually, it is not that bad. After few more weeks, you might even look back at your initial reaction and laugh. What a big of deal you made out of it! Your circumstances didn’t change, but your perception did. What happened? You adapted.
This makes me feel invincible! If you are in a great distress. If you go through some really rough times. If you feel that you can not endure anymore… At some point, your mind will take over and it will start adapting. You underestimate your body. It’s main purpose in life is to keep you alive. It is your angel guardian. Your brain is so creative at keeping you functional that if it’s essential to survival, it could even create an alter ego. Your mind will make you believe in bizarre things, to smooth the emotional ups and downs. Everything in the World strives for equilibrium and your body is not an exception.
So why did I start with the car?
You can not be overly excited all the time as well as you can not experience the opposite feelings forever. Your body will strive to bring your emotional state back to balance. That Mercedes will make you excited only for so long… then it will become just another car. The large house on the lake will make you very very happy… only for so long. A new relationship will be exciting and lovely for a period of time… After a short period of time, things will go back to the basis. The Universe will equalize everything and everyone. Your mind will stabilize your emotional state and bring you to your basis. Don’t be naive and hope that once you acquire or achieve something – the life will get rosy. It might, but only for so long, until you get used to it.
What to strive for? I don’t know… Of course, having a better car or a boat, or a house … will make me happy. But for how long? That’s not permanent, so I don’t feed the illusions about that. Regardless of my circumstances – I will always come back to myself. I can pretend to be the biggest baboon on the tree, driving the best cars, dating the prettiest girls, but it’s a circle that will always bring me back to base – myself.
What if I sacrificed twenty or thirty years chasing something, just to get it and immediately realize that I am not much happier than I was before? That is an ultimate failure. What if I worked five years for that Mercedes, just to buy it and understand that I missed something. Another story if I got it for free, or with a minimum amount of work. Then, I would treat it the way it should be treated – just as another car and nothing more. Want to take it for a ride? Sure! Here is the key.
My role in my business is shifting. Or to be correct – “our business”. In five days it will be five months, since I’ve been working on Deep Work Studios. I developed something that was just an idea into a well communicated concept with architectural drawings, virtual model, renders and countless published articles. Also, I acquired something very valuable – the Deep Work Team. I used to be solo, not anymore. If there was a task to do, it was a no brainer – I was the one to do it. No one to count on.
No more am I alone. I have a team of people working on making the Deep Work Studios a reality. Very intelligent and experienced folks, who dedicate their time and energy to the project. I communicated with them my vision, showed what I’ve done and they got inspired. They believe in what I’ve started and wanted to become a part of it. I am not alone.
During the meetings, all eyes are on me: What’s next Oleksandr? What’s the plan? I need to have a plan. I need to show my people where we are right now, where we going and most importantly WHY. Not just a blah-blah, but a solid direction with milestones to accomplish. They need to believe in what they do. This is a new hat to wear… My people believe in me and the business. They see the potential and I feel obligated to make my vision a reality – to prove myself. I got the opportunity to prove myself in action.
Having a team allows me to leverage certain tasks. Now, on top of the plan and milestones, I need to figure out what needs to be done and who is going to do it. I am responsible for setting clear goals. I need to assign the job, based on skills and strengths. It’s not enough to say: You – do it! The person has to be capable of delivering the result. I have to find the right words to motivate and explain why it is important. I still do a lot of things myself, but I feel that it’s time to change my mindset. I am stuck in the “operator” mentality, where I do everything myself. Wrong. You can’t build anything great on your own.
We need to track the progress. I need to create the project management system for our team. This is new… Working on my own, I didn’t have to worry about that. Sticky notes and To-Do lists would do just fine. Not anymore.
Having three people is not enough. We need a construction partner. Safety and security specialists. Marketing people. Layers and consultants… I am now responsible for bringing people in. My job is to fill the skill gaps on our racing rowing boat with capable people. I have to assemble the team. I need to scout for the right folks and recruit them by communicating our vision – to inspire. A lot harder to do, when you don’t have a salary to pay. That’s new.
I need to open new doors for my people. Finding stakeholders. Strategic partnerships. Relationship formations… Our company needs alliances, otherwise we won’t move far. Alliances are a key part of what a leader does. Alliances provide a network of trusted sources. We can not work in vacuum. Who is responsible for that? That’s on me. I have to go up there and knock on doors. Once I open a new door, my people can go in.
My job is to keep everyone on the same page. Stay clear on the vision. Whenever someone feels discouraged – find the right words to bring the person back up. When a lady on my team confessed that she’s feeling overwhelmed, I truly felt for her. I thought that sauna gift card would help her relax. It helps me… I’ve been burned out many, many times. I’ve been depressed and mentally destroyed many, many times. My job as a leader is to care for my folks. They are my most valuable asset.
My job is to create the environment, where my people can shine. I genuinely want them to be recognized as people behind a great business – an internationally known venture. I want them to come to me at some point and say that meeting me and joining the company was the best thing that ever happened to them. I want to take my team on an amazing business adventure.
