The Secret of Movement

It’s do or die

From an early age, I didn’t like clutter. Everything had to be in its proper place. I loved cleanliness and punctuality so much that I developed an automatic sense of being on time so as not to be late. I wanted to be everywhere at once, not to miss something significant and that would help change my life dramatically. I didn’t choose which direction I wanted to go to be successful. To be successful in everything or what is it all for? That’s what I determined for myself at a young age. My sports lifestyle definitely helped me in that. I had a love for sports since early childhood. Sports is a character building first of all, it is discipline. Perseverance, decency, discipline, trimness, diligence, punctuality, optimism, and a little humor. These are the basic elements that I recommend you start with. In any situation, even if it seems unfavorable to you at first glance, learn to see the upside. This will allow you to focus on success. How? What is in it for me, and what can I get out of it? Questions you should be asking yourself continuously. During friendship, parties, dating, studying, and any pastime you should regularly ask yourself the question what can I get out of that? Walking around with boys and friends who think, I’ll still have time to work out when I am a certain age, it is not my option, and I don’t recommend it to you. Unless you’re a genius who plans to create a bicycle or become a scientist in a certain science, you need an endless stream of new and new acquaintances. Wherever you are, be upon the look for new acquaintances and new knowledge. While getting acquainted with useful people brings you closer to success. It's like in boxing or any sport. It is very presumptuous to try to knock out your opponent with one punch or, having received the ball, to hit the goal at once. There is very little chance of success. It is impossible to have one helpful friend, your soulmate, and think you are self sufficient and will become successful. “A single thread from everyone – and there’s a shirt for a naked one”. Project onto your life and assemble the puzzle of success. With such thinking you properly build your social circle. Communicating with a friend or comrade who plays computer games all day long and does not get out of the house, will not be of much use to you. Unless his father or mother is not a businessperson. What do you get out of the fact that his parents are business people? They’re not your parents. Why should they help you in anything if they have someone to help? Help your friend or mate become a better person in the eyes of his parents, so they can see who helped him do it. The first step has been taken and you have gained the trust of your friend’s parents.

Realizing that you are thinking right and positively influencing their son or even daughter, the parents will hold you up as an example for this friend. It’s a small victory. The aggregate of small victories will bring you a big victory. By socializing with a loser, you put yourself in the line of failure and vice versa. Make your mate or friend more successful, and by being side by side with them, you will transfer yourself to the lifeline of victories and good luck.

Success is not a white streak of luck – it is a way of life. As a child, on the streets where I grew up, I was practically the poorest kid. My father was a drug addict and all the neighbors knew it, my mother often drank a lot because of it. The family that many neighbors didn’t allow their children to be friends with. We always want the best for our children. And ever since I was a kid, I tried to gain favor with my elders by hook or by crook. I spent all my childhood with my friend on the sports ground, where there were tourniquets and bars. My neighbor, “Uncle Seryozha”, was a very sturdy man and sneezed at me for obvious reasons. The son of a drug addict. He had one daughter and no wife. My friend Spacker and I were the strongest guys of our age in the neighborhood. We used to tease a lot of the weaker kids. And while walking around the neighborhood, we saw a scrawny guy we didn’t know with pug-like eyes looking in different directions. We used to poke fun at him, too. Puggy, how did you get up here? And jokes like that. And at one moment, I realized that he was the son of the woman who had become the wife of “Uncle Seryozha”. I liked Uncle Seryozha, even though he disliked me. He had his own business, a grocery store, and he was the security head of the biggest market in Europe. I wanted him to be my friend. Why, what’s in it for me? It’s unclear yet, but as my friend says now, “It’s definitely a plus, not a minus.” I stopped messing with the pug and called him to the sports ground with us. The chap turned out to be not a bad guy at all. Uncle Seryozha saw that and was glad that his stepson began to get accustomed to the local social medium. And accordingly, the probability that his new woman, who was not yet his wife at that time, would not go back to the village with her son, as he could not get accustomed to the new place. The pug’s name was Sasha. Sasha and I went to the gym, and he began to engage in sports activities. You understand that Uncle Seryozha really appreciated it after all. Uncle Seryozha is a serious sportsman, and I thought he disliked Sasha himself, as he was a sport-antagonist. But he loved his mother, and there was no help for it. Going with Sasha to his parents’ store once again, his mother thanked me for the fact that her son had finally taken up sports, and Uncle Seryozha asked me to step up the pressure on Sasha and give him no quarter in the gym.

Uncle Seryozha liked me. He saw that I didn’t smoke, I didn’t drink, I did sports. I was the very opposite of my father. I was no longer the son of a drug addict. I was his son’s friend. Uncle Seryozha’s family was one of the wealthiest families in the neighborhood. And his friends were neighbors from similar families. When they saw that Uncle Seryozha’s son was on friendly terms with me, and I often went out of their house, they became not that much against my friendship with their children but started almost asking me to be friends with their children. Do you remember “A single thread from everyone – and there’s a shirt for a naked one”? I developed a reputation and a lot of adult acquaintances. Trying to be the best at everything means gathering people like you around yourself. People who play games discuss games, businessmen discuss business, pessimists discuss who is to blame for their failure, and successful people discuss their victories. By focusing on even the smallest of victories, and not thinking about the negativity or the fact that you might not get something right, you put yourself in the line of success. Absolutely everything is inside your head. Invest time in your self development. The constant flow of new information keeps your brain constantly working. In my case, this is reading business literature, psychology, and spiritual books. At the end of the book, see the list of recommended books.

Learning about body language is a very, very interesting thing. Having read about body language, I began to observe others and see much more than I had seen before. For example: crossed arms on the chest – an attempt to create a protective barrier in front of you, closing you off from excessive attention. Hands behind your back are mostly used by self-confident people or people of authoritative professions. These are just two examples out of a million possible examples of body language. Armed with this knowledge, reading the involuntary automatic body movements of your interlocutor, you will easily realize that he, for example, is not very well or, conversely, perceives the information received from you. You will notice in proper time that you have chosen the right or wrong tactics without bringing the conversation to the point of irreversibility. The best investment is in your own self-development. It is not only necessary to do this I believe, it is insanely fascinating and interesting. By understanding how the average person’s mind works, you will understand how you can influence and control a person without having power over them. People, for the most part, move automatically and unconsciously from early morning till late at night. That’s the way the world wags. Look at a living example that you often meet on the road. You see ahead of you a stop-and-go traffic and switch on a turn signal on the car in front of you, what do you do? You switch on the turn signal and follow that car, thinking that there is no passing in front because of an accident, for example. The driver behind you is doing the same thing you’re doing. And behind him, everything will be the same.

How many times have you seen a parked car that stands at the curbside before a turn without hazard warning lights on and without a driver inside, and behind it there are several cars standing in line waiting for the first car to turn? But they don’t see that there is no driver in the first car, and the driver standing behind it is inattentive and hasn’t noticed it. All other drivers standing in the traffic jam move instinctively using the “people’s proof”. These are generally accepted rules by the people. If there are 1000 people and 990 of them say that the color white is not white, but green, then the remaining 10 people will name that color green too. These 10 people will rely on the knowledge of the majority. A similar situation is on the road where a traffic jam has formed. The driver of the car sees that everybody changes to the right lane, so, he thinks, they know something, but he does not see and does not know, that is why he moves behind the others. This is the herd instinctive behavior guided by folk evidence. Knowing these and other little things, you will realize that the most important thing you can do for your success is to invest in your self development. You need to keep an eye on your appearance. It should be impeccable at all times. Appearance is your business card. When you come to a meeting in a business suit, you indicate that you are here on business, not just a quick chat from the beach. Visiting a meeting in shorts, slippers, and a Panama hat, you are most likely not to make a good impression on the person you are talking to. You should always realize that wherever you are, your appearance will speak for you before you start talking. And in case you look a perfect fright and unkempt, you may not get the opportunity to speak. Work on your reputation, and your reputation will work for you. Like in the case of Uncle Seryozha. I obtained his support and favor, and when people saw that, they instinctively wanted to trust me and communicate with me. Everyone in the world knows the president through four handshakes. Your reputation is the foundation of your success. Don’t allow yourself to have a reputation that is not crystal clear.

You’re right there where you need to be

For a very long time, I thought I was a round peg in a square hole. Until the age of 25, probably, I was haunted by that feeling. When I was 6 years old and I sold sunflower seeds in a drug den, when I was 11 and I worked as a “beach boy”, when I was 12 and I worked as a loader at the “Vodograi” plant for the production of water, when I was 14 and I worked as a construction worker in an underground walkway where students walked without stopping, and even when I was 18, I worked at a car service station as a painter, I also recognized that was definitely not my place.

2007 р.

2007 р.

«This isn’t the place where I should be. It’s just a hopelessness. This is the place where the life has forced me to be.»

More or less the phrase like that went through my head from time to time. In fact, until I was 18, being a painter at the car service station was my best and favorite job. I crazily loved the process itself and that moment of comparison when a damaged car arrives, and a few days or weeks later, depending on the damage on it, a perfectly smooth, shiny candy appears, which makes the owner drool again. I felt like I was creating something new.

I had worked at a service station for 3 years. It was my longest period in one job. Now I understand the reason why it happened. The car service station was within walking distance from my home, and the process itself attracted me, my boss, or rather my mentor, was gone after six months. He didn’t die. He just said that you could already work on your own, you didn’t need me anymore. Since the owner of the car service station was an acquaintance of mine, we went to the same school, I was allowed to come and leave whenever I wanted. If I had worked with the cars of customers of the car service station, it would not have been to advantage for the reputation of the car service station of course. A client could come anytime during the working hours of the shop and see, for example, that his car was not being taken care of. But that was not my case. One day a guy arrived at the car service station with bumpers molded from fiberglass. It was taken to work and painted, and when returning the car, they said not to bring more such cars with handmade tuning. The guy, who brought those cars, was named Andrei. He had his own tuning studio, where he made the tuning himself. Andrei was a young, stylish, and very cheerful guy who had a beautiful girl, obviously had money, a lot of rich friends, and an endless stream of cars for tuning work. I was the only one who agreed to work with him. The thing was that other painters did not want to bother themselves and waste time with tuning from Andrei. The tuning was, to put it mildly, not very well done. And after painting, if something comes out after a while on the parts that the painter painted, who is to blame? The painter, of course. Honestly, that bothered me the least. My tongue was well-oiled, so I definitely wasn’t afraid of those moments. I took on that job and worked exclusively with cars that Andrey brought me. I wanted to befriend him, and working on his cars gave me that opportunity). He was just as an ordinary guy as I was, but about 7 years older and with a huge number of wealthy friends, into whose sesh I dreamed of getting. It was a very fun period of my life, to be honest.

A few jokes about the quality of Andrei’s tuning and we became friends. He took me with him several times to a sesh where his friends were, and naturally, I became friends with almost everyone. Including Kira Leonidovna. At that time and not even guessing that in the foreseeable future, she could become my business partner. I have made a lot of acquaintances at the car service station during the three years I worked there. Although the men, painters, who worked next to me, worked for more than 10 years and told me that the work of painters as a rule, working more than a year, no one left. They were saying the same thing as I was saying that at any moment they would leave that dirty work. And during 16 years of working at a car service station, they had never been able to do it. Neither could you. Where else would you earn 2-3 thousand dollars a month? You didn’t have rich relatives to get you a good job in the office, so get over it. I laughed in their faces. They were like from the movie Bachelor Party in Vegas, “What Happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas.” I bought a sports bike and I got in an accident. More specifically, I was just hit by a car while I was riding my motorcycle peacefully. I came to consciousness in the ambulance with a swollen head. At the time I lived with a married young couple in a rented apartment. We had fun every night and we had someone visiting us all the time. While I was on sick leave, a guy dropped by for a visit, whom I had also met at the car service station. He owned a marriage agency. He drove a cool car, wore expensive clothes, shirts with cufflinks, in general, was a prominent guy. In the middle of the evening, he offered to open a branch in his agency and quit my dirty job as a painter. Kostya was sure that I would succeed well and quickly in that business. You were talkative, savvy, and agile. That was something that would be definitely useful in such a business as a marriage agency. Naturally, looking at Kostya and seeing how he looked and what he had, I agreed and left the car service station. Kostya was right, and in less than a year, I achieved a turnover of just over $10,000 a month in my branch. I loved what I was doing. And although the first time the agency did not bring in a penny and the money practically ran out; I looked as if I had just come out of a bandbox. Everyone who worked in the office, thought looking at me, that here it was, another rich daddy’s boy. Meanwhile, I walked from home to and from the office. The short way, through thickets and railway crossings, was only 4-5 km. Imagine this comical scene: a guy in trousers, a shirt, and shoes trudging through fields and passes. The money was running out, I had to move out of the apartment I shared with a friend and his wife. I returned to my mother’s home in the poorest neighborhood, “Sugar Village”, but I kept up appearances and maintained the image of a rich daddy’s boy.

Even though I’ve never once in my entire life said that my parents were rich. The growth dynamics in the agency was there, and I saw that I didn’t have to walk for long. I made the best branch at Kostya’s agency. Having come a long way, I finally found myself in a warm office, with a good income and a managerial position. This job was no longer of a physical nature. There, you had to think with your head. It also had its ups and downs. During my working time at the marriage agency, I discovered a new world for myself: a rented apartment in the city center, nightclubs, restaurants, beautiful girls, and other carefree life. After some time, I sold my branch, thinking that a successful business project had come up. It didn’t work out, and I was back at my mom’s in “Sugar Village”.

There was practically no money, starting an agency from scratch was not easy and not quick, and I didn’t understand what to do. Spending days and nights on social networks, I came across Kira Leonidovna’s profile. You already know how I started a conversation with her.