Manage your dream. Your opportunities are endless

And what do you think, my dear readers, what was necessary to have for this? Quite right – money! We needed money. Not just a certain amount, but an unlimited amount of financial resources. Our new life began with this! We started looking for an opportunity to make money.

A new beginning: entrepreneurship

I guess it’s pretty easy today to say, “Maybe I should do some business?” There are enough opportunities for this, and even such niches exist in the service sector. But if you do not have that entrepreneurial streak, that energy, self-discipline, a certainty of purpose and a great desire to become such, it does not matter! The economic situation in Russia by 2018, despite the constantly updated sanctions from the United States, provides more and more opportunities for growth in large companies, both Russian and in companies with foreign capital! It all depends only on yourself.

So, let’s go back thirty-two years ago, in 1989: the country is on the verge of bankruptcy, the courts and militia do not work properly, mired in corruption and bribery. The country’s economy is completely ruined, capital was exported to the USA and to European countries! The most important set of simple products is sold with coupons, the privatization of what has not yet been plundered begins. People are waiting for salaries for six months, factories are closed. The country is in chaos. This is how we saw the USSR at that time, on the threshold of new changes. We ourselves did not know and did not understand what kind of changes. But one thing we understood for sure – right now we need to act. As one very well-known proverb says, “water does not flow under a lying stone” – we repeated these words almost every day and looked for opportunities to cling to at least something: we discussed together our ideas and evaluated how successful it could be, what risks it can bring and what benefits we can get for investing in the future in larger projects.

It all started, from the point of view of today, quite simple and straightforward, but we began to act two months after our return to civilian life.

My friend and colleague Sergei Stepnoy and I are starting to buy scarce goods in Yekaterinburg and resell them. We delivered goods to the region, we sold them in the Chelyabinsk region and the Khanty-Mansiysk district. We sold everything from nails and sweatshirts to candy, oranges and women’s imported tights. We did not trade at retail, but only in wholesale. We bought wholesale lots and in two or three days we were already reselling with a profitability of at least 100%. It was a success.

We successfully studied at the university, combining studies with our entrepreneurial activities, and, of course, did not forget about health. Health is one of the most important conditions for success in life and business! Our difficult past and military service helped us a lot in this. Starting from the second year, all the students once a week, on Wednesdays, attended the military department, and we – those who served our two years – quite logically received an exemption from military training classes. And we went to the bathhouse every full additional day off. We bought out for six months in advance an individual complex with a swimming pool and a steam room, accommodating six people, according to the price list. We met in the bathhouse at the same time, from nine in the morning to one in the afternoon. Our suites had a tea room, a relaxation room, a spacious pool and, most importantly, a very hot steam room. At the same time, we have never consumed alcohol over the years: we always had a supply of herbs for tea, jam and muffins with us. We gradually determined our method of visiting the bathhouse, so as not to harm, but to improve our health and constantly increase immunity. We had a strict rule: no alcohol! We used Friday and Saturday, or one of these days, for delicious and fun dining. Most often, we visited then the restaurant “Petrovsky Hall”, where we were regular guests. As they say, we are always remembered there!

Weekly and regular trips to the bathhouse were not our only occupation in order to improve health, and we pursued not only this goal. We also tempered, trained and tested our state of awareness in this world: thus, every time I felt myself one step closer to nature, closer to that closed “I”, which in the process of daily routine of tasks and the influence of the surrounding reality takes us into side of our inner and real “I”. For me personally, it was also a constant process of withdrawing myself and my body from a comfortable state into a state of stress and discomfort! Why do you need to do this regularly? You will get the answer to this question by reading the book to the end!

So, there were four of us comrades, all of them were students of our university, and we got carried away with dousing with cold water according to the Porfiry Ivanov’s system known only in Russia. This experience was for me the first discovery of the limitless possibilities of man. I will gladly share this experience with you.

Porfiry Ivanov’s system – dousing with cold water:

it works 100%

Our group “hike in the bath”, as we called it, included a regular and the most ardent bather Misha Sharkov – a very extraordinary personality. Sometimes he was completely unpredictable; it’s good that such moments did not come so often. This happened when Misha was drinking some alcohol. Misha regained consciousness only the next day. Sometimes he did not remember where he drank and with whom. In addition, he really loved to compete with someone strength at such moments. For this reason, Misha did not appear the next day in class after such adventures. But, nevertheless, it was he who infected me with the water dousing system. And I began to gradually prepare myself for this. Here I would like to note one fact: after we began to regularly engage in pouring cold water, my friend Misha stopped drinking alcohol altogether.

The principle of recovery from Porfiry Korneevich Ivanov was based on unity with nature, in which it gives strength and nourishes with its energy. Porfiry tried to control emotions and consciousness, to control all internal processes, avoiding excitement and fear. He walked freely in winter, in any frost, practically without clothes, only in shorts, and twice a day he doused himself with cold water outside. Porfiry Korneevich was born on February 20, 1898 and lived, despite all the difficulties and hardships of his life, eighty-five years. He passed away on April 10, 1983.

How it all started: when Porfiry Korneevich developed cancer on his arm, he was about thirty years old. The stage of the disease was quite advanced, and the doctors could not cure him. Porfiry decided to catch a cold and to lie to bed in order not to suffer. To do this, he daily went out naked into the street in the freezing cold, wiped himself with snow and doused himself with cold water. Over time, he began to notice that, on the contrary, the state of health, contrary to expectations, began to return to normal, vigor and physical lightness appeared. Ultimately, the disease receded, and Ivanov did not stop hardening on this and began to experiment further.

I will describe in great detail how I conducted my daily dousing with cold water.

Phase one: I doused myself with cold water in the bathroom every morning before breakfast and every evening before bed. It is enough to pour two buckets of cold water on yourself, but always with your head. Before that, you need to perform a fairly simple breathing exercise for 3—5 minutes.

Breathing exercise:

Stand up straight and lower your arms and head down. Exhale the air completely. Hold your breath for 3—4 seconds. After that, gradually inhale the air deeply, while raising your arms and head up. Raise your arms above your head, palms up. Do not squeeze your fingers at the same time, keep your palm open, and your fingers should be pointing inward, towards each other. Hold your breath for 4—5 seconds. You can close your eyes (if you are doing the exercise in the evening, with a starry sky, then I advise you to open your eyes and watch the stars). The head should be raised as high as possible, but without effort. Next, lower your arms down and exhale completely the air from your lungs, like a pump! When you exhale the air, lower your head down.

The arms should be lowered along the body, the head should be lowered. Turn your palms 90 degrees towards you in the direction of your head, bring your hands together so that your fingertips lightly touch each other. Begin to raise your arms along your torso up to chest level and inhale deeply and fully at the same time! Hold your breath for 2 seconds and exhale quickly while helping with your hands. Take your arms away from your chest in front of you and turn your palms away from you … When you exhale and hold your breath for 4—5 seconds, lower your arms.

Repeat this exercise 3—4 times.

Significance of this exercise: It is the easiest, fastest and most effective way to move energy through your body. When you breathe in and raise your hands and head up, you turn to the Universe and fill yourself with healthy and strong energy. When you breathe in and raise your arms from below to chest level, you accumulate your negative energy, your illnesses and pains. Further, with a sharp exhalation, you simultaneously help with your hands to push out all the negative energy from yourself, and together with it push out your illnesses, fears and experiences!

So I opened my first health secret to you – breathing exercise.

I have formed this exercise for myself on my own, conducting training for many months and years, while observing the results. In this case, it is necessary to think only positively and, in addition, to carry out training consciously and completely trust yourself.

Faith is one of the following basic prerequisites for success!

Phase two.

A week is enough to practice dousing with cold water in the bathroom or shower room, as well as get used to the breathing exercise.

In autumn, winter and spring, you can douse yourself with cold water outside. During the warmer months, you can douse yourself with cold water in the apartment.

In winter, we always doused ourselves, regardless of freezing temperatures. Our record is minus thirty-five degrees. We pour out two buckets of cold water on ourselves in turn, with a short interval of two minutes. After pouring out the first bucket, be sure to do the breathing exercise twice! Do not rush to pour both buckets on yourself and quickly run away to a warm room. I assure you that you will not catch a cold. Yes, hair freezes in seconds, that’s right. Your skin dries out very quickly and your body turns pink. This is a rush of blood, your circulation is increased. You feel at such a moment easy and at ease.

When you have done two breathing exercises, pour out the second bucket of water, but pour water over the whole body, including the head! Compliance with this rule is very important, otherwise there is a risk of a difference in the blood pressure of the head and body, which can lead to headaches and discomfort.

When you have poured the second bucket on yourself, do 2—3 breathing exercises! When you are finished, you can go into the room. As Porfiry wrote, if suddenly you feel unwell, pour cold water on yourself again during the day. Good luck and you will forget what diseases are!

The magic of water. Water is the most important and valuable element of life on our planet, as is, in principle, sunlight. But besides this, water is a conductor of information and a carrier of energy! Think about it when you pour cold water on yourself or when you just stand in the shower in the morning or evening.

Save water, use it for its intended purpose and do not pour it unnecessarily, when, for example, you did not close the water tap in time.

Phase three: for professionals.

Dear readers, I do not recommend this exercise for beginners!

If you have been pouring cold water on yourself for several months, if you have tested yourself in the winter season and can assess your capabilities, only in this case you can try this third phase.

So, the temperature outside is from minus five to minus sixteen degrees. Easy jog for 20 minutes. You need to run in swimming trunks and light shoes. After that, you need to pour cold water on yourself, as in the second phase. Next, you need to put on shoes, since dousing with cold water occurs without shoes, and then you need to continue a quiet run for 20 minutes.

Step into a warm room after your run. In any case, your body will receive a slight degree of hypothermia: lips are slightly blue, body is reddish in places. You will feel cold, but that will soon pass. Throw a blanket over yourself and just sit quietly.

Attention: under no circumstances take a warm or hot shower immediately!

Caution: Light jogging because your muscles and tendons are not as elastic as usual in subzero temperatures or when your body is cooling. In order not to damage them, do not overdo it and run easily and calmly, without stress. At the same time, breathe calmly and evenly and do not deep, but short breaths so as not to damage your lungs with cold air.

After 20—30 minutes, you will feel pleasant relief and lightness in your body and a surge of energy. You will feel hungry. I advise you to eat light food, preferably a vegetable salad with vegetable oil. Otherwise, it will be difficult for your stomach to cope with the stress.

Good luck and good health!

What have I learned from the dousing with cold water?

Five very important elements that are the foundation for creating the foundation of our health:

1. Breathing is a tool, or, more precisely, our magic key, which allows you to open a secret door and get into the relationship of the energy of the body with the energy of space around us (the energy of the quantum field).

2. Thoughts: it is necessary to strictly control your thoughts and distinguish conscious thoughts from the thoughts of your subconscious, or, in other words, from the signals given by your body – “the voice of the body”.

3. Your attention: concentrate your attention on everything that you feel and sense inside you, concentrate your attention on your internal organs and the whole body. Then turn your attention to the space around you, feel yourself in this infinite space….

4. Magic of Water: water is a source of energy and information from the outside, provided that you can concentrate your attention on it.

5. Faith is the most essential condition for any success. You need to believe in yourself, in your capabilities and in the limitless capabilities of the quantum field in space. In other words, faith is a self-hypnosis that concerns not only your capabilities, but also the capabilities of other people who can positively influence you.

Dear readers, these five principles, or five basic elements, are the main part of what is most important, which is what my book is about.

All these elements are nothing more than a tool for working with the subconscious: our weaknesses, laziness, fears, insecurity, anger, envy, and so on. In the subconscious, there is a constant interaction of our brain with our body, which opposes our conscious thoughts, with this mysterious force that works against us!

“How to make our subconscious mind work for us?” – you will gradually get an answer to this question as you read the book. And at this stage, for a quick perception and understanding of what our subconscious is, I will give several examples that, most likely, any of us experienced.

Examples of the influence of our subconscious

on ourselves

One fine day, or perhaps for many days or months, your mind will tell you that it’s time to take on your health, and that you do not need to eat too much, especially in the late evening, and that in this way you can lose excess weight and improve your figure. And now several hours pass. You feel uneasy as that very evening is coming soon! And now, attention, your inner voice tells you: “Why are you so nervous that you are so tense! We always felt so good. You ate and watched TV. Let’s try today for the last time to eat, and tomorrow we will probably be able to think of something about how to proceed”. And you start to eat, but with even greater pleasure and in more quantity, as if this is the last time! When the meal is over, you think again: “Well, I ate like a pig again”, or something like that. The next day comes, and the situation either repeats itself, or you continue to eat without a twinge of conscience. So, the very voice that calmed you and told you that you need to relax and continue living as usual, this is our subconscious, or, in other words, the voice of the body!

So, what results have I achieved for myself by dousing with cold water?

1. I have never had colds or any other diseases.

2. I was always in a good mood, I was very active and full of energy, necessary for study and, additionally, for entrepreneurship.

In the winter season, I wore an autumn leather jacket and autumn boots with thick soles. When my body began to cool down and feel that it was going to freeze now, it began to quickly generate energy and warm up, and on its own, without the participation of my brain!

The 90s have come

Two years have passed since our return to our former, but still a different life. We attended, when necessary, lectures and practical classes at the university and devoted a lot of time to our young business. I worked more and more together with Sergei Stepnoy: we built our own schemes of work both with other entrepreneurs, retail bases, chain stores in the regions, and with mafia structures – in order to protect, first of all, ourselves, and only then our business. We have defined for ourselves one very important rule for our business: “We cannot earn all the money” – which means that we do not get involved under any circumstances in everything that is connected with drugs, weapons, extortion and other dubious deals! After about eight to ten years, we were convinced by the example of some entrepreneurs and representatives of mafia structures known to us that this decision was absolutely correct.

We no longer stood in lines at shops and trade centers with bags, and did not take our goods away by taxi, as it was two years ago. My ability to establish contacts in any field and with any people, as well as the necessary acquaintances, brought us to another level. We bought oranges for cash, loading the truck at night at the “Yekaterinburg Sorting” station directly from the arrived train with the goods from Greece. Candies and other sweets were shipped to us at the “Sweetly” factory according to our list, and at that time we were drinking coffee with a supplier in his office. Imported goods from the base were brought to the specified place and at the agreed time on prepayment, which we transferred the day before delivery in a cozy restaurant near the railway station. Our success was already on the way to new success, and we really appreciated it. We hardly talked to anyone on this topic. The golden rule of success: keep your mouth shut!

And at that time we used to say: “You know little, you sleep better” – and smiled at each other.

I will tell you about the fate of my childhood friend named Dmitry. I will not give his last name, out of respect for his father, who is rather well-known not only in Yekaterinburg, but also in scientific circles of Russia. Dmitry’s family moved to Yekaterinburg a little earlier than me. Due to his father’s status, he belonged to the so-called “golden youth”. They lived in the city center, not far from the 1905 square, in an elite area already at that time. I often visited them, often staying overnight. Dmitry was an excellent biathlete, but after moving to Yekaterinburg and meeting young people like him, he changed his interests and, like his new friends, began to look for opportunities to make big money quickly. And they began to do it. They drove Mercedes cars, went to restaurants every day, drank a lot, and walked exclusively in leather jackets and Adidas tracksuits. This was the “central” mafia group. What Dmitry specifically earned, he did not tell me. I only know that they successfully played one game that became very popular among the people in those years – “thimbles”. It was a superbly worked out and win-win scheme. People were losing everything they had, and even expensive clothes, trying to win back what they had already lost. But in this game, only the one who has the same three thimbles wins. Many times I closely watched what was happening from the outside, as I often traveled on business and visited the area of train stations and airports. The meaning of the game is deception, and what the players see is an illusion. Those who cheat them and drag them into this illusion of acting are great actors. The total number of organizers of this show could reach fifteen or twenty people.

These young guys had their own world, their own strong friendship, and they called themselves “the brigade”. The most famous TV series that came out on television in the late nineties – “Brigade” – I watched it for the first time in 2002, while living in Germany. Memories flooded me about the meetings with those guys, about Dmitry’s wedding with Yulia, where the guys from the “brigade” sang on stage, embracing, a song from the old and very popular film “The Diamond Arm” with the words “but we don’t care, but we don’t care, we are not afraid of the wolf and the owl…” I recalled how we celebrated the birthday of Dmitry’s two twin sons, how we went fishing, and much more. This film made a very strong impression on me then, returning me eight years ago, to that “gangster” Yekaterinburg.

I still met Dmitry in February 2013, when I first visited Russia and flew to Yekaterinburg nine years after leaving for Germany. We met with him at his parents’ country house. To my great surprise, I hardly recognized Dmitry. Alcohol consumption and, in the past, addiction to drugs have taken their toll. Dima looked fifteen or twenty older than his years. His voice was very hoarse and quiet, his head and shoulders were lowered, his back was hunched over. It was very difficult for me to watch this without tears. But that was not the worst thing.

His wife Yulia crashed in a car accident in 1996 when she was driving a Zhiguli car after their children. Dima took her BMW that day, as he had crashed his Mercedes the day before, returning from another party from the restaurant well drunk. For this, he strongly blamed himself, because if Yulia had gone to the BMW, the accident would not have happened. Even if an accident happened, she would, sitting in the BMW, get off only with fright, crashing into the same bus due to icy conditions. During the collision, the Zhiguli formed like an accordion, and Julia died instantly.

But this was not the last sad news. I started asking Dmitry: “How are your friends? How are Sanya, Yurka, Pasha, Seryoga? How are they?” Dmitry was silent for a while, poured a full glass of red wine, which I brought with me, and, before drinking, said with tears in his eyes: “You know, bro, and there is no one else alive. I was the only one left. Let’s drink to them!”

After I wrote these lines about the fate of my friend, I paused. I walked out onto the balcony of our apartment and looked out over the beautifully lit garden and decorative pools with fountains. It was already dark, and the gone heat of the day gave way to the pleasant warmth of the late evening. I felt a light, fresh scent of a green garden and, at the same time, the specific humidity of the Goa air. Voices came from the restaurant …

We stayed for two weeks at this hotel. Today our sixth day of stay ended here, and my family was very happy with both the hotel itself and the very warm, about thirty degrees, water in the ocean. We walked a lot in the evenings along the endless sandy beach, which at low tide turns into a huge coastal area with very dense coverage due to the minute sand. The hotel had direct access to the sea. The sandy beach and its bar and fish restaurant were separated from the main small three-story buildings by a golf course partially planted with coconut trees. More than a dozen white Indian herons roamed the field every day. Today is the seventh of November. For the fourth day I am writing my book, which, perhaps, will remain an essay about my life for my children. Maybe … This is only the seventeenth page for today, which I wrote, but at the time when you read this book, the page number will change to a higher number due to subsequent updates and changes in the text. I recall and describe those events in my life that are important to me, and which in my future played an important role in decision-making. So let’s go back to 1993.