A Year on Bali, and Arrows

On January 2, 2013, I was drowning.

Natasha and I had just landed on Bali. A big group had gathered, about thirteen of us, and we went to Green Bowl Beach.

It was three-thirty, low tide. Seven of us went in to swim. Everyone could swim, and swim well.

I went into the water after everyone else. I looked over and saw the others already far from shore. I thought: look at them, swimming out that far.

I had no idea they were drowning.

They'd been pulled into a rip current. It's like a river inside the ocean: it runs from the shore out to open water, and it moves fast — about three meters a second. You can't swim against it.

Soon the current caught me too. And carried me out even farther than the others. The shore was somewhere half a kilometer away now.

I remember my strength running out. I remember realizing: this is it. And that's when I prayed to God. I remember these exact words:

"God, has my mission on this earth already come to an end?"

Then, completely drained, I started asking for forgiveness. From everyone I could think of. One after another.

And right then, a small bamboo log turned up next to me. Maybe a piece of a boat or a raft — who knows at this point. I grabbed onto it.

Then Shamil, one of our group, swam up to me. He was at his limit. He wrote later that in his mind he'd already said goodbye to life and figured he had about three minutes left. The two of us clung to that log together.

For the first time since we'd gone in, we managed to catch our breath. And once we had, we started thinking.

Fishermen in boats could see us, but they couldn't come closer — the waves would have smashed the boat. We had to get ourselves out.

We swam not toward the shore but sideways, toward the breakers, where the big waves were crashing. And the waves carried us onto the reef.

We made it to shore about an hour and a half, two hours after we'd gone into the water. The others washed up one by one over the next twenty minutes or so.

All seven of us made it out.

Shamil took the log home with him afterward. He also wrote a detailed account of that day. That's how I checked my own memory of what happened — all I'd seen at the time was water.

I didn't drown. I was born a second time. And ever since, I've celebrated January 2 as my second birthday.

If you're ever caught in a current like that, remember one thing: don't swim against it toward shore. It's stronger than you. Swim parallel to the shore, sideways, until you're out of it.

That was the worst moment of my entire life. Nothing else comes close.

When people ask me about my worst moments, I try to think of something else: crises, losses, failures. And I realize all of that was hard, but not like this. But none of it brought me to the edge like that.

But there's one thing I only understood very recently, thirteen years later.

I was reading something about how my life is a mission I haven't finished yet. And it broke me open. I sobbed, tears streaming down behind my glasses. And through the tears, I kept saying thank you. To everyone, one after another: people close to me, people far away, my parents, my friends, my partners.

Then, while I was washing my face, I suddenly noticed the difference. Back then, in the ocean, I'd been asking for forgiveness. Now I was giving thanks. Back then it was the fear of death. Now it was love, waking up.

I did get an answer to that question from the ocean, by the way. The mission isn't over. If you're holding this book in your hands, it's still going.

But let me go back to 2013. We lived on Bali for a whole year.

I had passive income, and I did whatever I wanted. And what I wanted was to help Natasha.

In one of the rooms at our villa, I set up a video studio. Rigged the lights, the camera, the microphones myself. Shot videos, took photos. Helped Natasha with content, worked with her on putting together her personal-growth course.

From the outside, it looked like paradise. Warmth, the ocean, freedom, work I loved, no scrambling after money.

Except our relationship wasn't exactly smooth.

Every now and then, something old would rise up in me. Some long-held grudges, some dark side of myself. Psychologists call it patterns. At the time, I didn't even understand where it came from.

And here's the funny part. I was living with a coach. A professional who grew people using the system of levels. I'd seen with my own eyes how her clients changed. I'd helped her package up that knowledge myself.

But her coaching didn't work on me.

I just didn't let it in. Honestly, I probably should have found a different coach, someone outside our relationship.

Turns out the best cutter in the world can live under the same roof as you, and the cutting still won't happen.

Remember, in Chapter 6, I said there's a jewelry box of diamonds lying inside every one of us? Real diamonds have inclusions — dark spots deep inside the stone. The cut on the outside can already look beautiful, while that dark spot inside hasn't gone anywhere.

That's exactly the kind of dark spot that was sitting inside me.

And one day it broke through.

I let my arrows fly at Natasha. That's how I put it now, as a metaphor. I vented some frustration, some anger, something else. I don't remember exactly what anymore. I don't even remember what started it.

And I don't exactly remember what Natasha said or did in response, either.

But the feeling of it, I still remember.

My arrows flew at her and sank. Sank in love. And dissolved.

Natasha didn't answer in kind. She didn't fire the same anger back at me. She was a master of the tea ceremony. She'd often drink tea alone, in silence, filling herself up with love. And my arrows simply broke against that love.

They never hurt her.

Telling you this right now, I get goosebumps all over again.

Something happened to me in that moment.

For the first time, I felt what real love actually is. Not understood it in my head — felt it with my whole heart. Love can dissolve anger. It can dissolve resentment, irritation, even hatred. Arrows of ill will simply disappear inside it.

And something woke up inside me too. Like old grudges, that same dark side I hadn't even noticed in myself, started to heal. Like I'd just had surgery on my soul.

After that, I started treating Natasha differently. I got softer. I got more attentive.

Look at how that whole year played out.

On January 2, I was drowning in the ocean, and I washed up on a reef.

Then my arrows drowned too. Drowned in love.

And the second rescue turned out to be no smaller than the first. The first time, I stayed alive. The second time, I learned what love actually is.

Here's what I understood then: you can't beat anger with anger. You can answer an arrow with an arrow, and then it's war. Or you can answer with love, and the arrow dissolves.

You might ask: what does this have to do with network marketing?

Everything. Arrows fly through our business every single day.

You call someone you know, and they fire back: "There you go again with your pyramid scheme." A partner blows off a meeting and gets rude in the chat. Someone from your team quits and goes around telling everyone what a terrible sponsor you were. And your hand reaches for the quiver on its own.

Now, honestly. How many arrows do you fire yourself? At partners who "never do anything." At newcomers who "still don't get it." At a sponsor who "never taught you anything."

I was a strict leader myself once, and people were afraid of me. I couldn't begin to count the arrows I fired back then.

A team doesn't grow around someone who's firing arrows. It grows around someone who dissolves them.

There's one thing I still think about.

Natasha never ran a session with me about this. Never gave me an assignment. Never explained how it should be done. Her coaching didn't work on me — I'd admitted that myself.

She just didn't fire back.

What to do with that, though, was entirely up to me. I could have fired another arrow. I could have gotten offended and gone quiet. Or I could open up and actually feel it.

I didn't understand that back then. But years later, this story fell into place.

That year on Bali turned out to be the last easy year.

Then came 2014. And over the course of a few months, I lost almost my entire business.