In Petrozavodsk searched for meaning in an honest conversation

Residents of Petrozavodsk began to gather to talk. The project “Honest conversation”, as a platform for dialogue, was created by journalist Yevgeny Velev, business coach Irina Mushkatina and financier Alla Khachemizova. The format is simple and at the same time unusual - a conversation about what really excites. No reports, speeches or presentations. "It's like an Alcoholics Anonymous club," the participants smile.

The reason for the conversation is a topic familiar to everyone. This time we talked about strategies – how we achieve our goals and how we want to achieve them. Our personal strategy is reflected in a mirror in our personal life, career, business. There are people who want to save and can not do it, and there are those who have money for money. The reason is strategy.

“Money is perhaps the most honest litmus test: it shows not what a man thinks of himself, but how he actually acts. Someone can’t afford to earn more than a certain amount, although there are opportunities. Some people make money when they start spending. Each of these scenarios has its own strategy, says Alla Khachemizova.

And then the most interesting thing begins. Strategies are conscious and unconscious. The deepest ones are the ones we have absorbed into the family. Dad loved noisy parties until morning, and Mom's got a break at 22:00. What strategy will the child choose? Thus, an internal conflict is born, which then manifests itself in adulthood – in relationships with money, in the choice of partners, in relation to their own desires, says Irina Mushkatina.

Many strategies that today seem well-known have become popular thanks to PR popularization, adds Evgenia Velev. The biographies of entrepreneurs, telling how they started without everything, have become a separate genre. It’s easy to lose context behind these stories: luck, connections, the time they’re in, the starting conditions. The reader, the viewer, tries to transfer these actions to his life, and they do not work. Behind the fashionable formulations it is easy to lose yourself.

“My strategy is that a samurai has no goal, only a path, but wants world peace – what is it about?” one participant asks. Western culture is about results, Eastern culture is about process. Where in this row is a particular person who just wants to live meaningfully? Where to find a target worthy of a samurai? asks Irina Mushkatina.

“I just want to be a good person,” says another participant.

"Good for who?" he replies.

In our tradition, conversations for life usually take place in the kitchen. No embellishment or desire to like. So the people of Petrozavodsk began to gather to talk about their goals, their doubts and how each of us is looking for our own path.