How I Started a New Life

The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds. Think big anyway.

– Kent M. Keith, The Silent Revolution: Dynamic Leadership in the Student Council

Th true meaning of life has been a burning issue of mankind from beginning of time. Will I leave a legacy and make impact or I am just a biography and resume?

It is human to be afraid asking a question of the meaning of life for fear of the answer or lack thereof. It is not my nature to be afraid to ask questions. One day, I realized that a satisfying answer to this question if you can make a thoughtful statement that would reveal your character and a driving force behind you to give you confidence continuing on your life path.

You can let your life navigate you wherever it takes you or attempting to maintain a leading role to control your destination. If you choose to be a navigator of your life you will find out what really you are, what you are capable or incapable of, and you will learn that a failure is not about falling down rather remaining where you have fallen down.

Bruce Lee said that would not be afraid a competitor who can make 10,000 kicks. He would be fearful much more about of a contender who could repeat 10,000 times the same movement.

Making a consistent effort to be a captain of life I found out how to give 200% including the 100% I never thought I had and I have learned that I have a mental and physical capacity to make 10,000 repetitions for same movement if I have to.

To think average, act average and live average was never my cup of tea. I was always interested to create, build or make something amazing and almost impossible or impossible that has not been done and what an average person would not even think of taking on.

As a teenager and being a poor swimmer, I almost drowned crossing a river. I changed countries. I was fired twice. I made big money, lost it all and was on a verge of bankruptcy. When I was younger and less mature 99% probability of failure would not stop me and I thought with 1% chance of success I will succeed. I was not intimidated to learn hard lessons the hard way.

I never take anything and anybody for granted. For all my “strange” ideas the answer most of the times was ‘no’ and I have never had a mentor in my life for that reason.

I have no fear to play anybody, anywhere and anytime and I spent years building the ‘second Microsoft’ to find out why it didn’t work. I was never afraid to fail taking on anything beyond my abilities, experience and education and thought of a defeat as a temporary condition.

With rare exceptions, I don’t give up on anything or anybody without an attempt to make it right. Occasionally, if a person causes a harmful effect on my life and I do step back putting aside revenge and I side with the belief that person would get the karma and to be punished by somebody else and I avoid funneling my energy into revenge.

I could never reconcile with the idea that adversity is bigger than me. By the traditional standards, I always aspired a way too high and this mindset made my life in conventional world a “rollercoaster”.

One day I realized that I follow intuitively in my life the concept if it is not really good it does not count. I was often asked explicitly and implicitly when are you finally going to get it? I always thought if I get it, I will convince myself in my own limitations.

I kept going against the flow again, again and again which transformed my life after 50 physically, intellectually, professionally, socially, psychologically and emotionally. I don’t wish to be just nice or just tough. I want the best of the two worlds – to be nicely tough.

As I kept realizing the magnitude and impact of my discoveries and findings related to human functional movement could bring to the conventional world, I felt at times this “monster” might crush me and it is too much for one person but I was able to get back on my feet again time after time.

I made all-out effort to keep spousal coping out of my marriage and it became really challenging to keep it intact when my positive personal transformations backfired. My wife, Raisa, had to readjust the frame of her conventional knowledge to stay married with a “new” Lyonya (Russian for Lenny) and accept the idea of attempting to live with and getting back “old” Lyonya is not realistic.

I always lived in the discomfort zone (“ne prosto tuk” – Russian for “not simple as that”) which turned into a way of living to stay reasonably uncomfortable at later stages of my life. I am characterized sometime as “not normal” and it is fine with me because normal people avieve normal successes.

I believe my unconventional mindset matured now to have the courage to change the things, the serenity to accept the things cannot be changed and wisdom to understand a difference. I did it my way. And that is why I am stronger and happier man today and content to carry on with my life journey going forward.