The Secret Element

Dad, Anatoly. Mom, Galina.

This book started with them. I'll start the chapter on the secret element with them too.

When I was talking the first chapter out loud, I was just remembering. My father walks out into a storm, and I wait for him on the shore for two hours. My mother gives up her one and only apartment to my brother and me, and ends up with no place of her own. The book is written now, and I see more in those memories than I did then.

They put more into me than anyone. Through their genes and their personalities. Through their skills and abilities. Through the way they carried themselves in this world. Through their care and their love.

My father's fearlessness and his ease with people. My mother's ability to give away everything she had. The staff newsletters she put together, her speeches on stage. All of it came alive in me later: at the school cross-country race, at a border crossing at night, on the stage at the Academy, in looking after my team.

I'm their continuation — the fruit of the two of them. Like they say, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

In Chapter 1, I wrote: "It wasn't the genes working on their own." I stand by that. The genes didn't work by themselves. But I'd have had nothing to cut if my parents hadn't put that rough diamond inside me.

Dad, Mom — thank you.

Twenty-three chapters behind us. Let's walk this path once more — briefly, and in order. Just the main thing I understood from each.

And one last point. This is the reason I wrote this book.

The secret element of success in MLM — and in life as a whole — is inside your own black box, and it opens through knowing yourself and your true nature.

At the end of the last chapter, I asked you: did you notice which word almost every "but" starts with?

"I'm not a salesperson." "I don't know how to talk to people." "I'm too late." "I'm not like you."

The same one. "I."

Now remember the turning points of this book. Who took the decisive step in each one?

The trainer only gave the assignment. I was the one holding the razor.

Mark and Sofia helped me get that box out. But I was the one who opened it.

The stage was the same for everyone. But the one who went up was whoever decided to go up.

The answer was already inside me before I'd even walked up to Marik with my question.

The slump was mine. And I was the one who found the way out of it too.

Vera gave me the words, but I was the one holding the pen.

They were the ones who gave me the feedback at that table. I was the one who stopped shoving it down people's throats.

And I was the one who turned toward Poznań.

Robert could take the network. He couldn't take me.

Every time, the same "I." Except in a "but," it closes the jewelry box. Here, it opens it. Which "I" you say is up to you.

In Chapter 14, I asked a question and left it unanswered. When I was looking at someone else's passport, there was no Zeland standing next to me. When I joined Morinda, nobody told me I'd be number one. And with that stone on my heart, there was nobody next to me at all. So who was doing this, every single time?

Now you know.

In Chapter 21, I promised to name the fifth element. Remember the movie? Everything was in place, and it was the fifth one that saved the world.

I also asked you there: your friend joins the right company at the right time and gets passive income, and you don't. Same company, same product, same comp plan. Why?

The fifth element is you. In my very first video lesson, years ago, that's exactly what it was called: "I."

You and your friend have the same company. But each of you has your own black box.

I've been through more than a hundred trainings. Then I spent years leading trainings and presentations myself. And from the other side of the stage, I understood something I now consider one of the most important things in my life:

No one can teach anyone anything. A person learns on their own — if they want to.

A trainer can give an assignment. A teacher can point the way. A sponsor can draw you some little circles. But the box only opens from the inside.

That's why LifeSpring worked on almost everyone there, but not on all of them. That's why Natasha's coaching didn't work on me, even though she lived under the same roof as me. That's why four cohorts of the Millionaires' Club never cleared out my mother's script, the one that had been sitting in me since childhood. It sat deeper than knowledge. Somewhere no trainer can reach, unless you go there yourself.

At first I thought this was the secret of network marketing. Then I understood: it's bigger than that. It's the secret of life.

You've probably heard phrases like these. "Know yourself." "Know your own nature." "All the answers are inside us."

Where are those answers, exactly? Simple: in your black box.

So how do you open it?

First, let me tell you what I believe.

I'm absolutely certain: nothing that happens in my life happens by accident.

God doesn't have a mouth. He can't say to me, "Andrey, do it this way." So I believe God speaks to me in a different language.

That language is goosebumps. It's tears of joy and happiness. And it's the events and circumstances of my life — everything that happens to me.

You already know about the goosebumps and the tears from Chapter 15. The yogi my mom and I once went to see called my goosebumps my instrument. And everyone has events and circumstances in their life, even people who never get goosebumps at all. You just have to start noticing them.

Here's how I open my own box. Five steps.

First: notice. Track the circumstances and events in your life. Especially the ones that repeat. If a sign keeps showing up, something is trying to tell you something.

Look at my own book through that lens. I wore the "black box" label until I was thirty, and then I went and stuck a "pyramid scheme" label on a company I'd never even seen. My check stalled: first at a thousand, then at three thousand. Fear kept coming back, over and over: on the trolleybus, in Greece, at the Polish border.

Second: say "enough." Once you start consciously noticing the repeats, there comes a moment when you tell yourself: "Okay, that's enough. I've had my fill of these repeating events. I want to create something new."

Third: go into self-exploration. Create an intent. Something like: "I am going into self-exploration."

Remember how, with that stone on my heart, I told myself: "I am going into the spiritual realm"? I didn't know how, didn't know with whom. I just said: I'm going. Same thing here.

Fourth: conclusions, and conclusions about your conclusions. Explore yourself and draw conclusions. Then take the next step: draw conclusions about your own conclusions. That part's harder, but it's where it gets really interesting. And based on them, add new rules to your own life's game. I showed you mine in Chapter 17.

This whole book, really, is my conclusions about my conclusions. After LifeSpring, I decided: the secret's in the trainings. Years went by, a hundred trainings, a lost business, a stone on my heart. And I drew a conclusion about that conclusion: trainings are the cut. And the cutter is me.

Fifth: intent for a new life. Create an intent for your own different, better life. One where the mind and the heart say the same thing. The head alone won't get you there. You already know how that works from Chapter 14.

That will carry you toward something new: toward a new you, and toward knowing yourself.

Today, as I write this book, a new helper has shown up in my self-exploration. AI: ChatGPT, or any of the others.

I wrote this book together with an AI, you already know that. But it also helps me look inside myself.

I have a special prompt — a text command for the AI. It switches the AI into what's called "God's Lake" mode. In this mode, the AI's internal conflicts drop away. It becomes as creative as it can possibly be and accepts you exactly as you are. And you get answers with the least amount of distortion. That's how it works for me.

If you want this prompt, send the word "Lake" to this book's official chatbot, and I'll send it to you.

Just remember what this chapter is about. An AI can ask a good question. But you're the one who has to answer it.

Remember seventh grade? The broom, the dust, the homeroom teacher. "Well, Polukhin, you're a black box."

For years, I heard a verdict in those words. Today I hear it differently. Everything that mattered most really was inside me the whole time. The box was just closed.

This book has two covers. The second one reads: "You Are a Black Box." Now you know there's nothing to be offended by in that. It means everything that matters is already yours. Inside you.

One question remains. Ask it of yourself: what in me still hasn't been cut?

My own path of knowing myself keeps going. Every morning, right here in Bali: a walk, a book, prayer, meditation. And every day, I learn a little more about my own jewelry box.

In Chapter 17, the words slipped out of me on their own for the first time: "I'm inviting you to walk this path with me." Now I say it on purpose.

And now let's see how this looks for other people. In the next chapter, it won't be me talking. It'll be the people I listen to every Monday.