I believe in inner strength.
I believe we don’t get what we want. We get what our mind believes we can get.
I’m not saying this lightly. I have 35 years of proof based on a long journey. The experience I’m about to share with you is not easy one to share. Most of my life I wanted to shove it into my subconscious along with the fear, shame and loneliness. Even most of my friends don’t know it. You see, on 26th of April, 1986, I lived 2 km away from the worst nuclear accident, of the time. The Chernobyl reactor #4 melted and exploded. Tons of radioactive waste poured into the air contaminating the environment and hurting people across Ukraine, Russia and up to Finland and Italy. 230,000 people in the area were effected and most were forcefully evacuated.
When KGB evacuated the city, people were told that they are going on a mini holiday trip. They were allowed to take passports, some savings and clothes for a few days. They had to leave everything else behind, including their pets, because everything was covered in radioactive dust. At the moment of the evacuation only a small group of people realized what was actually happening. The government kept everything a secret in order to avoid mass panic. People were left with literally nothing overnight. Moreover, later on people would learn that unseen radiation took their health too, and they would need years to restore it and the rest of their lives to keep it in shape.
My family was not an exception. Because of proximity to the 4th nuclear reactor, we were exposed to a high dose of radiation. We spent some time in hospitals and Kiev center of radiology. There was a group of Japanese doctors that came to help treat us in Kiev who had vast experience with Hiroshima and Nagasaki victims, after the nuclear bombing. According to their expertise we were given from 5 to 10 years to live. As a kid, I overheard my parents’ conversation about this prognosis and my mother’s crying over the life that we might not have.
At that time the government did not understand how to tell the truth to people without creating panic. The silence and lack of instructions how to deal with radiation and people who suffered from it, led to fear. Even doctors and nurses who treated us were afraid to “get it” from us. The general population was ignorant and fearful as well, avoiding people from Chernobyl and creating a lot of jokes about Chernobyl victims as a protection mechanism. The worst part was that people who believed they were going to die, did die.
Here is why I’m saying all of this. What I’m observing right now, in the world that struggles with Covid-19, reminds me a lot of the Chernobyl situation. The information we get is fragmented, limited and incomplete. By silencing some information, providing contradictory information and implementing sever regulations, the media and governments create havoc in people’s lives and minds. Fear is almost palpable. Some people lost their business, others suffer from long-term consequences. The world sank into a whirlpool of uncertainty, fear and anxiety. Who will die? How to protect oneself? How are we going to live from now on? People have too many questions their minds have no concrete answers to.
Let me share what I’ve learnt from the Chernobyl madness:
No experience can leave you powerless with the right mindset. Your mindset is the key to the power… My question to you is - who owns your power?
o Often our mind believes people in charge, but those people might underestimate human potential. Your potential.
o Health is not a visit to the doctor and a fast fix. Health is the right mindset that drives right actions on a daily basis. No matter what.
From childhood people are taught to rely on their external world: on parents, teachers, religious leaders… things, concepts, ideologies. Later on, we start to rely on our spouses, communities, governments. For some people, this external world becomes their whole world. When their external world is shaken, people get stressed, become anxious and frustrated because usual life templates don’t work anymore.
When there are no right answers outside, I invite you to go within. Viktor Frankl, a renown psychologist and holocaust survivor, in his memoires of life in concentration camps came to a conclusion that what allows a human to stay a human, in any situation, is having a meaning to live for. If you live to have a nice house, your meaning is lost when the house is gone. If you live to have a nice family, your meaning is gone when your loved ones are gone. When your meaning to live is not within you, but outside – you put your whole life in the hands of a chance that’s beyond your control.
With the Covid-19 pandemic we are all being tested for a meaning to live for. We are all tested for the mindset of fear or the mindset of unlimited potential. When a person experiences stress for a long period of time, stress hormones like cortisol can disrupt almost all body processes causing anxiety and depression. Some of us lose loved ones. Others lose businesses. Some lose their souls by monetizing on the lost. The whole world is put at test for who we are from within. As a result of this test, we see increasing number of people who silently slip into comfort food, anxiety, stress, sleeping disorders and other issues. Our minds are not fit and strong enough to handle the collapse of “a normal life”. Why? Because we have NOT been taught how to build our inner strength, how to follow our inner compass and connect with our inner truth. We are left to build those strengths as we go through this pandemic, but where do we start?
For 20 years after the Chernobyl tragedy, I thought that this experience was a curse. I have had chronic diseases to deal with, I had anxiety over the future and thoughts if there would be the future at all. In 2006, on the 20th anniversary of the disaster, I came back to the Chernobyl zone with UK journalists and, there, I promised myself that I won’t be a victim anymore. I promised myself to build a life around what I always hold inside: my mission, my core values and love for life. I did not know how at that time. It took me over 16 years of pain, healing and growing to build my inner life template. I attended over 50 trainings, courses, retreats. All that time I did not know why or what for I’m doing it except for being happier, having a healthier life and enjoying every minute of it. I built and sold a game development company. I truly had lots of learnings and fun with it, and 4 years ago, I embarked on a crazy journey of building a HealthTech company. I got a dream to help people manage their health easier via a mobile technology. What I learnt was that it’s not a technology that stands on the way of a healthier life, but a person’s mindset. The mindset that looks up at the outside world as the only source of wisdom. While the inner strength is what holds us together.
Where do we start? Mindset is our starting point. Unless we control it, it controls us with the means of the outside world: media, marketing and dopamine mining. In order to feel in control in any situation, all we need is to control the only thing we can control – our own mind. When our minds are controlled by outside world, we see obstacles anywhere we go. By controlling the mind on our own, we discover opportunities. You might say it’s a great idea, but how to make it happen? Here is one of the hacks. The limbic part of the brain responsible for emotions has no language capacity, so by pronouncing the emotion, experiencing and visualizing it - you are giving it a voice and connection to your logic. This visualization helps to transcend the feeling by accepting it. Let’s try it now. What’s one feeling, that’s effecting your mindset right now? It can be in any area of your life: be it business, personal or family. This is your power, and you can either control it or have it control you. Name it. Feel the totality of it. Where is this feeling in your body? How does it look like? What color and shape it might be? After localizing the feeling, tell it: I see you. I know you. I accept you. Then send love, light (as if you put it under sunrays) and oxygen to this feeling until it vanishes. If the feeling is too strong and persists, let me know and I’ll send you one more technique. It might seem trivial, but small mental hacks lead to profound results.
In the end, we have a conscious choice to determine who we are now and who we want to become. It’s a journey towards our unique genius, which is deep within each of us. This is what my journey has taught me: Love and Light win our world when we control our minds. That’s how we activate our unlimited potential.
If you want to explore your potential, check our services.
I wish you a genius mindset!