From Moldova to California: An Immigrant's Pursuit of Fulfillment Beyond Happiness

Welcome back, masterful listener. Today I'm going to share the story of my immigration and how in just one day my entire life changed. And isn't that fascinating how one moment, one decision can absolutely change the course of our lives.

I always say that if I was president, I would have all children learn listening skills and breathing skills. Because when we learn how to listen to ourselves and to the world around us and breathe through times of uncertainty, through times of fear, and even through times of joy, everything in life, I think, becomes not just easier, but we develop a certain presence and gratitude for the moment, right? For this moment. And that's not always easy to do, especially since most of us haven't been taught how to do it. So today I'm going to share the story of how, as a six-year-old girl, I was a refugee,

an immigrant to the United States. This was a choice that was out of my control, but specifically, not just this choice, but when this choice was made. And even the day that I moved, that I flew from the Republic of Moldova to New York City. I mean, that changed the course of my life. Because had my family waited one more day, we would have gotten stuck. On August 18th, 1991, I uh got on an airplane with my mom and my dad and with my grandmother to immigrate to the US. This was something that my family had been planning for years because the Soviet Union was collapsing.

The situation in Moldova was very unsafe, actually, for families like mine because we were Jewish, we still are, we were never really religious. But as Jewish people back in Moldova at the time, it was really dangerous. My mom once told me about a moment where we were walking down the street and some random man asked me, when I'm just a little girl, hey, who are you? And for some reason, I said, I'm a Jew. And she said that her heart almost stopped because at that point he could have shot me in the middle of the street, and most likely no one would have done anything about

it. And there's my alarm going off. We all have distractions, right? Distractions in life. Sometimes we're doing something, and an alarm goes off, which is actually a perfect uh segue for me to introduce how I'd love for you to listen today. As always, masterful listening is a meditation, it's an exercise in being in this moment and truly paying attention to everything that's happening. So as you listen to this episode, I invite you to do so, first of all, from a place of genuine curiosity. I find that it's way easier to be a masterful listener when you actually really want to listen to whatever it is that's

being said. So check in on is this a good time? Are you in a place where you don't have many distractions? And if one comes up, an alarm goes off, your kid screams, your dog barks, just come back, come back. Often we get distracted not even by the outside world, but our inside world, right? You might be listening to something, and suddenly a thought appears, and then another thought, and suddenly you're in a whole other universe. Come back. It's uh a great practice in presence and learning how to listen at that masterful level will enhance not only your relationships, your work, uh, but just your life.

You'll be more in it, you'll be paying attention. And I've been paying attention very, very deeply my entire life. I've been paying attention to my inner world, which often didn't make sense, and also my outer world, which definitely didn't make sense. This story that I'm sharing is really not just about immigration and what it's like to start over in a brand new place, but it's about happiness. It's about this search that I've been on for happiness for as long as I can remember. And how my search for happiness led me into the darkest depression of my life, and how through that I discovered there is so

much more than just happiness. There's so much more beyond happiness. I think, especially in the United States, we're all obsessed with being happy, living this amazing, great life. And that's great. But we have one of the highest rates of depression, suicide, and mental health issues. And what's interesting is that the rates of these things are even higher for people who have a higher income and more money, which doesn't make any sense, or it didn't to me, because I thought that money and wealth was supposed to make you happy. And so I'm gonna share about what happened when my family, who was quite well off in Moldova,

moved here with literally $300, my mom says in her pocket, and had to be on welfare and how I grew up in Brooklyn in a sort of immigrant ghetto where we didn't have really anything. And yet I remember goodness, I remember being happy. I remember, I guess I just didn't know and didn't understand. I didn't even know that people could live differently. And uh as my family worked to get that American dream, I moved from there into a very wealthy, upscale, middle class neighborhood. I went to a private school where I saw a lot of people who had more wealth than I could ever even imagine

could exist. And yet I didn't see them necessarily happier. And then I ended up in California on my journey, and I now live in a place where I couldn't even have imagined was possible. You know how you you only know what you know. So I once thought, man, it'd be nice to have a nicer apartment. And when I see the home I live in now and the view that I had or have, it's incredible what got me here. But I gotta say, I'm not necessarily happier now than I've been before, but that's no longer what I'm searching for. My pursuit of happiness truly led me into

the greatest despair, and it showed me that truly, it's not about really experiencing any one emotion, it's about having the capacity to hold the entirety and the expansiveness and the multi-dimensionality of the human experience, because truly, it's when we can do that and appreciate all of the states of our being that every one of those states is even stronger. So for someone like me, yeah, I have a massive capacity to feel happiness, joy, but I also have a massive capacity to feel pain and despair and grief. And that's because I've allowed myself to, and it's been really hard at times. And so again, we're gonna explore

a little bit of what really are we looking for? Are you really looking for happiness or have you just been told that that's what we're supposed to be? But what is it that you really want? What kind of life would be fulfilling for you? And are you searching for the thing that you really desire? Or are you looking for things that you've been told to look for? Right? All right, so I'm gonna get into the story and I'm just gonna free-flow it and uh let's see how it goes. And again, I just invite you to be here fully, notice uh what I'm saying, but how I'm

saying it. If you're watching the video, notice my expression and use this as a practice so that you do this more in your life, whether in a work meeting or whether you're in a conversation with a friend or a partner, with your kids, even with your dog. So I don't remember a lot, honestly. I barely have any memories of my childhood, which I've learned through a lot of therapy is actually a trauma response. I blocked out a lot. And it's interesting because uh, like on one hand, I'm like, well, what could have happened that was so traumatic that I would have to block it out? Now,

as I've gotten to be an adult and I've learned a lot about the psychology of how we develop and evolve as human beings, basically by the age of six, we are who we are. And it was at that age that I was basically yanked out of my home, everything I knew, and brought to a completely different country, a completely different environment. And I don't know if I fully understood what was happening, but something that I recall, and I don't know if this is because I've just heard the story so much, or because I actually do have some memory. But I didn't want to go as a

little girl. I wanted to stay. I had my life, I had my friends, you know. And from what I have been told, our life was good. My parents had enough. They both had master's degrees, good jobs. And even though it was hard to like get things in Moldova, even like toilet paper, my mom has always been someone very resourceful. She kind of knew someone who could get her this and that. So I always had what I needed. Uh often people, you know, bring up like cartoons and stuff from when we were little and they say, Oh, did you watch this? And I joke, no, I was

back in the USSR. I was like jumping into puddles. Like that's how we played. Uh, but again, it was enough. It was good. Um, but I had to move. I didn't have a choice. And apparently, when I was sharing with my mom, like, I don't want to go, she tried to kind of help me get excited or not as afraid. And I've always had a very, very good appetite, like for food. And apparently, again, because in Moldova there were a lot of things you couldn't get, there was one time that I tried eating a banana and I loved it. But you couldn't get bananas often. So,

what my mom promised me was that when we get to this new special place, America, you know, where in her mind back then she thought, it's, you know, millions of opportunity and it's beautiful and everything is abundant. She had a rude awakening when she arrived in Brooklyn. But she said to me, Svieta, you're gonna have all the bananas you want. And I'm like, Really? So I was excited for those bananas. And I remember this. I remember I was sitting in the window seat on this airplane. And in my little six-year-old mind, when I thought of bananas, I thought of monkeys and of a jungle. So I

was looking out the window when we started landing, imagining this jungle, and I would see monkeys and bananas. And instead, as we started landing, there was just concrete. It was so misaligned with this vision that I had. And I got very sad and scared. And my mom said, No, you know, like we're gonna, we're gonna buy the bananas. So once we get to Brooklyn and we settle, um, my parents again, in order to leave as a refugee, which was like the only way they could get out, they had to give away their passports. They had to, it cost a ton of money. And the only way

we could even do it was my mom had a sister who had immigrated a few years prior. She was a doctor. She was able to get out somehow. And she sort of sponsored us, right? But again, they had to give everything up, and her sister as well. So everyone was poor, everyone was on welfare. Um, this um organization that brought us over was like a Jewish organization that helped sponsor people to get out of places where they were basically persecuted and unsafe. And my mother arrived with $300 in her pocket and married to my father, who I again I don't remember because he hasn't really been

in my life, but he wasn't exactly the kindest, best father or husband. But back in the Soviet Union, she couldn't get divorced and leave him. And she did right away when uh just when we arrived, which in itself I can't even imagine how hard that was to immigrate at 36, to not have any idea of the world, the society, no money, no language. And then you have two children, me and my sister, and we're scared and we're starting out. So I always think, man, my mom is really such a hero. She's so strong. I don't know if she sees herself that way, but often she's pointed

out that, like, wow, I take all these risks all the time. I'm like, think of the risk you took. Where do you think I get that courage? Right? It's somewhere in my bones. And yet at the time, all I wanted was bananas. I wanted this thing that she promised. So apparently, when we moved to Brooklyn, anytime we would go shopping, I would get bananas. And so I was eating bananas all the time. Bananas, bananas, bananas. And at some point, I think she said a few months in, I had eaten so many bananas that they made me sick. I could not look at another banana. And this

was my first lesson in uh moderation and not overdoing it. You know, I wanted more, more, more. And I got so much of what I wanted that it well, I couldn't even look at a banana. I think the first time I ate a banana, finally, was in high school when I was writing my college application essay, which I actually wrote about that banana story because I wanted to share one of the first most important lessons that I've learned about moderation and not overdoing even the good thing. And that's really tied funny enough to this lesson that I've been learning really my whole life about searching for

the good, the happiness, the fun, the excitement, because it was that search that truly led me into a darkness I wouldn't have also imagined because overall I was a pretty happy kid growing up. I don't remember anything super tough other than knowing that my family was struggling financially. We didn't have enough, my parents worried a lot, but really I had everything I needed. And I graduated high school. And by the time I was in high school, I got a essentially a scholarship to a really fancy private school. I spent the first five years of my life in Brooklyn. And after five years of my parents, my

mom and then my stepdad, working so hard to try to make more money, get stability, and really allow me and my sister to have this American dream. They hadn't gotten anywhere. My mom couldn't get a job. My dad was working as like a handyman at a hospital. She was trying to do some nursing, even though when she sees blood, she passes out like me. She tells me she used to take the bus two hours every each way at five o'clock in the morning. And there was a moment where on a bus, she said she, you know, they used to have those little advertisements on the bus,

and she saw a sign that said, It's never too late to be what you could have been. And she said that at that moment, her thought was, I wonder if I'll ever even understand English enough to understand what that even means. Think about that. Like me as a life coach that works with people to help them achieve their dreams, right? And my mother was sitting there trying to even understand the words of that very motivating quote. And I agree, it is never too late to be what you could have been. I mean, she's an example of that, just picking up again and trying to start a

new life. And I always wanted something new. I always was searching. I think it's just in my bones, I've always been really curious, and I saw how much my parents were working and struggling that I realized my dream from as really young as I can remember was I wanted to do something that would bring me joy. I wanted to enjoy my work. So we left Brooklyn because my parents just decided to take a massive risk. They weren't getting anywhere. The whole community was immigrants. A lot of people didn't even speak English. A lot of people were working kind of under the table, making cash. And my

mom jokes that she wanted to pay taxes. She wanted to like really integrate into American society. And my stepfather had a friend who lived in Maryland, who apparently was he was also an immigrant, and he somehow got into tech. Remember, this was like the mid-90s, like this big internet boom, tech boom, and a lot of Eastern European people were getting into like computer software coding. And my dad's friend said, you know, you should move here. I can try to help you get a job. And so they did. They picked up, and me, my mom, my dad moved to Maryland. We got a little apartment somewhere, and

my dad and my mom both went back to do some like computer courses to try to start this career in tech. When we moved to Maryland, uh somehow somebody that we knew back in Brooklyn connected us with a synagogue in a little town called Only Maryland. And again, my parents were never religious. So Judaism wasn't like a big part of our life, but they wanted some sense of community. And so they got connected to this synagogue. They started going. This was the first time in my life that I knew anything about really Judaism or God. And they never pushed that on me because frankly, it wasn't

a big part of their life, but it was the community that they wanted. And when I got into this community, someone there offered. To help get me into a really nice private school. And they did. My mom said that she had to go and visit someone and basically kind of beg and ask for money to give me a sort of grant or scholarship. And how uncomfortable that was for her. But she did it because she wanted me to go to the best school possible. And someone did sponsor my education. And at that point, that school I ended up going to was something like $20,000 a year.

That was like how much my parents made. So there's no way they could afford it. But some kind person paid for most of my education. My parents always supplemented it how much they could. And I'm still really grateful. I honestly don't know who that was. But one day I hope to give a scholarship to someone the same way when I can do that. But what was really fascinating about me moving to Maryland and going to this school was that most people at this school had first of all been together since they were like little kids. It was one of those schools where you could go from

first grade all the way through graduating high school. So first of all, I was an outsider because I didn't know anyone, and often most people knew each other. Second, most of the people at that school were quite well off, middle class to even like I'd say 1% level. There was someone at my school whose family had built the entire school, even owned the nationals baseball team. These people had been in the States for generations. Their parents and grandparents were very hardworking, had made a lot of money and acquired quite a bit of wealth. And I have to say, often they gave a lot back. And it

was very inspiring in some way to see that. It was also very confusing. I remember one of the first times I visited a friend's house, I thought that we had pulled up to a synagogue. It was so large, I didn't understand how one family could live in a house the size of the entire apartment building where 30 families I knew grew up in Brooklyn. Right. And I couldn't help but feel like I didn't belong and I didn't have as much. And I was embarrassed of where we lived, even though my parents had somehow within a few years found a way to buy their first home. Wow.

I mean, and it was a small little townhouse, but they had their first home. So I had a home, but I somehow was like, but our home is so small, and it's a townhouse. And it's not that I even complained. I just always felt like, wow, I have so little, I'm kind of poor. I don't belong in this school with all these people. I remember we would go to Ross and Marshall's, you know, to buy clothing. But like now I love it. I go there all the time. It's my happy place. But at the time I felt like, wow, I could only go to Ross and

get a $10 shirt. And my friends are going to anthropology and buying a $100 shirt. And I remember there was a moment where I kind of dragged my mom into anthropology and I brought over some, you know, $100 shirt. And she kind of looked at me like I was crazy. Like, this is insanity. There's no way that I am ever going to buy this for you. And so I started really leaning into this, like, oh gosh, we don't have enough, and kind of judging myself and just feeling like an outsider, right? Uh when people used to ask me, because I always had cool style. You know,

that's something I got from my mom. My parents never had a lot, but they were so resourceful. My dad could build anything. He put the hardwood floors in our home. He painted the walls. He even sewed the curtains. My mom had an amazing sense of style. So even though we didn't have money, we always had like beautiful things. So when I'd go to school in an outfit that I'd found at Ross, but like put together really well, people would often ask me, where'd you get that? And I would say, Oh, I got it in New York. Because it was true. When I visited my sister and

my family back in New York, I'd go to cheaper stores, find really cool stuff. So I wasn't really lying, but I was embarrassed to share that I had my outfit that was $20, right? I didn't understand at the time that it wasn't how much things cost that made them valuable. Because again, my parents still had this immigrant mentality of we want to achieve the American dream. We want more. We want more money. We want better jobs. And again, that's not a bad thing. But my mom told me in the last couple of years that ironically enough, the happiest time that her and my dad had was

back in Brooklyn. When I think part of that is they were younger and they were kind of starting out. But the stress and the health issues that came with working so hard to keep achieving had created so much stress that they weren't as happy later on when we had a nicer house, when they had jobs paying them four times what they had, you know, started out with, which I thought was really interesting. Like, wow, you were happier when you were on welfare and struggling. Yeah. And also I want to say this like, I'm not saying money doesn't matter. Oh, it does. That is something that uh

became super clear to me in the last five, probably 10 years since I've been working for myself. It sucks to not have enough money and to worry about like basic things. And yet, that is truly not what actually makes us happy. It's just what takes away a lot of stress and fear. But those are two different things, right? So, regardless, I went through high school, I made my friends, I did feel accepted, actually. It was never other people keeping me on the outside. It was me feeling like I didn't belong. And as I've learned, it's all about our own story. It's not about anyone else, really.

And when I graduated high school, I ended up going to the University of Maryland, which is a state school. I remember I got into NYU and I really wanted to go there, but it was like $50,000 a year. And my parents were like, no, that is such a dumb decision. You are not taking out loans to pay that much money for college. It doesn't make sense. Maryland is a good school, it's closer. I think they also wanted me to stay closer. So I kind of agreed to go to Maryland. And I enjoyed it. I liked college. I pretty much liked school my whole life. And right

at the cusp of when I was graduating, yeah, I think I was about 20, uh, or I might have just graduated. This is a little unclear, but I remember I was in DC on a train, and I had found a book called The Geography of Bliss by Eric Wiener. Shout out to you. You changed my life with this book. And it was about his journey all over the world searching for the happiest and unhappiest countries, and what country was number one on the list of unhappiest countries? Moldova, where I had come from. I literally remember that moment seeing that and being like, what? But I'm pretty

happy. I'm from the unhappiest country in the world. How is that possible? Kind of this question of nature, nurture, but if I'm from a really unhappy place, how can I be happy? Am I happy? What makes it so unhappy? So that got me thinking about this, and that again inspired me to dive even deeper into like, I want to be happy. I'm gonna show that I can be happy even though I'm from this really unhappy place. And uh so I was 20 then. By the time I was 28 and a half, which was when I had my first super hardcore depression, I had quit over 20

jobs. I graduated business school, I had a job offer right outside of college, which back in 2007 was a time you really wanted to have a job because the economy was sort of on the brink of collapse. I turned down the job, which was very upsetting to my family. I remember a moment where my dean in the business school came up to me on graduation and said, Congratulations about your job. Like, what are you excited about? What are you doing after graduation? Like, how is it all gonna go? And I said, Oh no, I'm not taking that job. I'm gonna travel. And they kind of looked

at me with kind of this confused face, like, why would you make that decision? And I said, Because I want to inspire people. I really wanted to search for this happiness and inspiration. So I spent months traveling through Europe. I got back to DC, Maryland area. I was really down. I wanted to just keep traveling the world, but I needed to be an adult, start my life. I took a job at a translation company because they had offices all over the world. And six months in, I was super unhappy. And uh a year and a half in, I quit, even though I received a promotion to

move to Europe, which is what I was dreaming of. That was very confusing. But I looked at my life, I looked at how I was feeling, how I hated going to work, how no matter how well I did or how much money I was making, I was really miserable and I did not want that. So I quit and I traveled again. And this kind of became a pattern of me searching for jobs, then quitting jobs. The longest I'd ever stayed anywhere were was about that year and a half throughout my 20s. I couldn't find what I was looking for, and I didn't know exactly what it

was, but I knew what it wasn't. And as I quit, I realized maybe I'm just in the wrong place as well. I'm not gonna go into the story of how I got to California, but essentially when I studied in college, I studied abroad in Rome and I made a friend. He was from California. And at about 24, 25, when I was just saying how unhappy and uninspired I felt back in Maryland, he said, Svet, pack your bags, come to California, come to San Francisco. Trust me, you belong here. And I did. I packed my bags, I didn't have a job, I didn't have a place to

live. I got on a plane two weeks later, and there I was. And I started again. I didn't even, I didn't have an apartment. Me and my friend slept in the storage closet at our friend's place uh for the first week. And then I said, I'm gonna get a job in the next two weeks, and I did. I remember climbing out like the window of the house because we didn't have a key. I don't even know why that was what we did, but those times were so funny. And I was in a suit and I was committed, and I got jobs and more jobs and more

jobs and kept quitting and quitting and quitting. God, I remember there was one year where I quit a job on my birthday and I was standing out near um Chinatown and just bawling. Like, what was wrong with me? Why couldn't I just be happy at work? My parents were worried and disappointed. Like, how could you keep leaving money? You want to be happy? That's not what life is about. And you know, if you're familiar with the Maslow's hierarchy of needs, it makes sense that my parents thought that because you got to first focus on your basic safety before you go to like the higher order needs

of inspiration. But I already had safety, right? I had them. I already wasn't worried about like, do I have food? I was thinking, no, no, I want to enjoy what I do, which is a privilege. It is. I get that now. I get that now, especially because I love what I do. It also took a lot, and it was not always an easy journey. In fact, it was a very hard journey, but that's the path that I was on. And I'm really grateful that I was standing on the shoulders of people who took care of those basic needs. And so I could focus more on actually

fulfillment and enjoyment, which is not what my parents even thought about. They had to feed me, right? Uh, and I made it to the dream place I always wanted to be. Back in business school, my final project was about Google. And I'd heard about Google. I mean, back then it was like Google was like, oh my God, the place everyone wanted to work. I mean, it still is a place a lot of people want to work. Um, and I got a job at Google. And not only did I get a job at Google, it was like the coolest job ever. I was working at Google X,

launching Google Glass. We were brand ambassadors, we were doing marketing, we were throwing parties, we were taking speed boats out on the bay. It was wild that I was getting paid for that. And at first it was amazing. It was a dream. I met a beautiful man at Google. I fell in love. I was working out for free with the trainer. I was getting free food. And at that point, I'd been traveling so much in my life and exploring this idea of happiness at work, in life. I started publishing articles at Great Place to Work Institute and various other places. I was sort of becoming known

as like a happiness and inspiration researcher. I'd even had the chance to work with Tony Shay's team that started delivering happiness after his success at Zappos about building culture. I quit that job too. I remember sleeping with my BlackBerry in my hand, thinking, this is not normal and okay. But when I got to Google, I thought, well, this is it. This is where I've been going my whole life. And that's when everything fell apart. I got very sick. My relationship did not go the way I thought. The job didn't either. While it was a super cool job, we had a massive team of very smart people,

and interestingly enough, not enough work. So there was a lot of competition around who gets the project. And also we were contractors. So everyone was like, How am I gonna get the full-time role? Right. And that sense of competition and almost fear and a lack of fulfillment uh broke my heart. I couldn't believe that at the greatest place to work, I was still so unhappy. And I feel like that disappointment really broke something inside of me. And I fell into a massive depression and burnout. I quit Google, and for the next nine months, I swam through the kind of darkness that I honestly didn't know could

exist because I'd never been depressed before. I'd gone through, you know, times where I was sad and lost, but nothing like this, nothing debilitating where I couldn't function. And I was at the top of the mountain. Like never could I have imagined that when I was at the greatest place to work, making great money, feeling great in my body, in love, that my life would fall apart then. I felt like everything I'd been searching for my whole life was bullshit. Was there no happiness at all anywhere? Well, there is happiness in life. I think it's just not where we think it will be, which is at

that place where we're heading. Well, when I'm there, I'll be happy is a trap. Because let me tell you, Google was the first time where I realized that I got to where I was going and was even more miserable. And that's not even Google's fault. That's just me realizing that we change, we shift, and we're looking for things outside of ourselves, but it's all about what's in you. I'm pretty convinced at this point there is no greatest place to work. If you internally are in a good spot with yourself, with your values, you could probably work anywhere and be quite happy. But if that's not there,

you could be at the greatest place, getting all the perks and still quite miserable. As I think a lot of people are, unfortunately. When I survived those nine months of depression, I realized that's it. I'm I'm doing what I love. I'm coaching, I'm going, I'm diving headfirst into truly not working for anyone else. Because if I couldn't be happy at Google, I thought I can't be happy anywhere, corporate. Uh, you know, there's different types of people. Some of us love uh more structure, and you know, we want to climb the corporate ladder, and that's great. I knew that wasn't gonna be my path, but how was

I gonna build my own business, really make money as a coach, which I'd realized through my 20s is really what I wanted to do because no matter how successful I was as a salesperson, and even when I veered into marketing, really what brought me the most joy was empowering other people, supporting other people, coaching other people. And I went to coaching school. I started to pursue that. I still had different gigs and jobs here and there. My last corporate role that I actually took one more full-time job after Google was the head of storytelling for a really interesting crowdfunding platform. And I took that role because

they literally created it for me. I was an artist, and aside from doing my business work, I was a photographer and a videographer and a writer. So when a company came to me because they'd found my more creative work and my kind of more business-focused work, they were like, hey, we want to have this role just for you where you get to combine all of your skills, which I was like, well, maybe this is it. That wasn't it. And I thought that was another disappointment, you know. But something really interesting happened between Google and that job. When I was 30, which was about six months after

I came out of that first depression after Google, I decided I want to myself go on a journey of discovering the happiest and unhappiest countries. I want to go to Moldova. And I also want to go to Costa Rica because Costa Rica was on the list of happiest places. So I thought, you know what, instead of reading books about it, I want to go there. I want to live there. So I sublet my place, got myself a little cabin on the beach in Costa Rica and moved there for a few months. And I gotta say, I was on a little beach in the middle of nowhere

in a cabin that was so basic that I had a shower outside with cold water. There were crabs running all around. Like it was like a little shack. But when I walked down the street, everybody smiled. Pura vida. This vibe was so full of joy and like simplicity that I understood why Costa Rica was one of the happiest countries in the world. They had free health care, they had one of the best education systems in the world. You know, they don't even have a military. And I was really happy that I went there to actually feel for myself what happiness could look like. And again, it

wasn't wealth. I didn't meet a lot of really rich people in Costa Rica, but they all seemed to have a greater sense of community and just sort of joy of the moment of this pura vida, this pure life. And I needed to see the other side though. So I convinced my parents for the first time after 20 years to go back to Moldova. And they did not want to. I'd asked them to go back before, and they always said. No, it was very hard for them. First of all, no one was there anymore. Everyone had left. And you know, the memories that they had were quite

dark. But I said for my 30th birthday, please, please, this would mean so much to me. So we did it. After a few months in Costa Rica, I flew home and we went to Moldova. And I was really excited and nervous. And first of all, what was so fascinating was that when I walked down the streets of Moldova, first of all, I didn't remember anything, right? I thought maybe it would spark some memories. It didn't. The one time I had one memory come back was we went back to visit where we lived. This building where I spent most of my life. And I walked up to

it and it was, it looked so old. Like all the paint had come off. Like it really looked poor. And we went upstairs, and my mom said, I want to knock on the door of our old apartment. Maybe they'll let us in and we'll let them know we used to live here. And when we knocked on the door, a woman opened the door. She looked at my mom and said, Oh my God, I've been waiting for you to return for 20 years. It was the same woman who took over the apartment when my parents left. And I have chills when I say that because I mean

she remembered my mother and she wanted her to come back one day. And when we went into the apartment, I walked into the kitchen and I saw the wallpaper. And it was like this crazy deja vu where I knew I'd seen that wallpaper before. It was amazing. It's fascinating what our brains hold on to. Moldova was a hard trip, but it was a beautiful trip. You know, my parents went back and visited the grave sites of their parents that they've never been back to. I enjoyed eating a lot of delicious food. Everything was super cheap. If anyone ever wants to go on a nice trip, Moldova

is a very cheap place to uh visit. One of the reasons it's such an unhappy country is people really struggle like financially. Uh most people have to choose between do I pay my electricity or do I get food? Like truly, the system there is very corrupt and broken. But the people, the people were so full of joy and and I can't I don't even know how to describe it, but I'll describe it this way is that in Costa Rica, when I walked down the street, everybody was smiling at you. In Moldova, when I walked down the street, I didn't see anyone smiling. But when I smiled

at them, they smiled back. So that joy and life was inside. It just wasn't the thing that people were leading with because frankly, they'd been beat down their entire lives, right? Um, yeah, Moldova is one of the poorest countries, I think the poorest country in Europe. And another reason why the country has struggled so much is it used to be part of Romania, then it became part of the USSR, and then in '91, it became its own country for the first time. And what else always gives me chills is that the day that my family got on that plane to immigrate, August 18th, 1991, was the

day that there was a big coup and the Soviet Union was collapsing. After that day, they shut the borders. So our plane was literally one of the last planes that got out before no one could get out for years. What if we had a flight the next day? I would not be in Sausalito, California, as a life coach. I don't know where I'd be, but I would have gotten stuck in Moldova. Uh everyone tried to get out of there, and a lot of people did. Most of the young people got out and wanted to start life somewhere where they would have more opportunity, which is another

reason why, as a society, it became harder for them to evolve. A lot of knowledge left, a lot of that energy left. But regardless, I had a beautiful time. I met some lovely people. I discovered that Moldova has the largest underground wine cellar in the world. They're famous for this sweet red wine, which also is so um telling of the soul of the people. You know, my parents used to have these big parties growing up where they had so many of their friends come over. There was always a massive spread of food and vodka everywhere. They were always dancing and it was so loud. They were

just constantly celebrating. And I'm like, what were they celebrating? None of them had anything, but they had that. They had this coming together to just enjoy life and listen to music and drink vodka and eat food. The simple stuff of just gathering with people, no matter how much they had, sharing, supporting one another, that sense of community. My mom says, growing up in Moldova, everyone's doors were open. People would just come on in. People were there more together. She misses that. I miss that, even though I don't even remember it. I yearn for that, even though I don't even remember having it, really. And it was

after visiting Moldova also that I saw, yeah, you could be happy even there, right? Because it's really not about chasing more. The more I chased, the more unhappy I became.

Really. I remember sitting once in Puerto Rico on a beach where I kind of ran away in a hard time too, and I was so anxious and paranoid, and I couldn't believe that I was on a beautiful beach feeling that crappy.

It's about transformation, it's about growth and evolution and discovering who you really are, who you want to be. And what's a part of that is resilience. I think Eastern European people, from what I've seen, are so resilient. You build resilience when you go through hardship. So I got really fascinated with this idea of resilience. How do I be more resilient as an entrepreneur, as someone who doesn't have a lot of money, but who still wants to achieve things in life? How do I have mental health? Because that is our wealth. That is why I say I'm a mental wealth advocate, because you can have all the

money in the world, but if your mental health is

poor, and if you don't have that, you don't have anything. And I've seen that personally, and I've seen that in a lot of other people. And what helps with mental health, yes, resilience. But what resilience brought me to was compassion. I spent a year last year studying compassion at Stanford Medical School through an incredible program. And I thought, wow, happiness led to depression, led to transformation, led to resilience, led to compassion. Because through it all, what made my life the most challenging was a lack of compassion for myself and for others. I was judging myself for not being happy, even though I was so focused on

it and I was getting the jobs and I was getting that anthropology hundred dollar shirt that I always wanted. And when I saw that I still wasn't happy, I beat myself down. I beat myself down even more. Obviously, that didn't lead to happiness. That led to more pain. And when I was in pain, I was mad at myself for being in pain and trying to push myself out of it, which only caused more suffering. And it's truly now become this practice of mine to notice when I'm not well, when I'm sad, when I'm disappointed, and to have compassion for myself and for others, because I've realized

so many of us are on this search for happiness and joy. And again, I get it. It feels good to feel good, but it also feels real good to notice that you feel crappy and be kind to yourself through it. Because it makes sense that we feel sad sometimes. It makes sense that we feel scared or jealous or disappointed, right? We're human. I think we got to normalize feeling crappy because the more I've learned to do that, the more peace, joy, and happiness I do feel. And when I feel it, I worship it, I think it. I don't take it for granted. I think we need

to stop thinking we're entitled to feel good all the time because when we feel that, we're constantly disappointed. And I'm not saying go through life expecting to feel crappy, but go through life acknowledging that you're gonna feel it all. So, how do you create a container that allows you to hold all of it? Whether you have money or not, whether you have the job right now that you love or not, whether you have the body that you love or not, whether you have the love or not, you always have you. And you having you means you having awareness of your inner world and listening to yourself.

That's where the masterful listening comes in. Listening to, well, what does my heart want now? What do I seek now? And how do I go for that? But also enjoy the process there because I'm telling you, if you think that you'll be happy when when that is, when you get there, there's gonna be another when, and another when. It is a trap. You can't get out of prison unless you realize you're in prison. We are all in the prison of our mind, and our mind can shift and change, our brains can evolve, it's amazing. I've become kinder to me, more compassionate to me, more graceful when

I cry and struggle and feel horrible grief as I have been recently. I allow it. I realize that is as valid and as important as happiness is. So here I live in my dream. I love my work, I have the most beautiful view, and I'm not happy all the time. I have moments of it and I see it and I cherish it, but mostly it was me stopping trying to be happy that has allowed me to find something better, something beyond that. And that's the ability to just be here now,

and breathe and listen to the birds right now that are chirping, and even to the construction that's always happening, that's so annoying, but you know what? That's okay. Sometimes life is super loud and annoying, and sometimes it's just beautiful, like that awesome song that comes on at the right time. When we're okay, even when we're not okay, and something doesn't feel great, isn't that amazing? Isn't that true? Richness and wealth knowing this too shall pass. And if you're happy, most likely at some point you will not be. And if you're not, at some point you will be to remember that and to remember to stop seeking

it outside of ourselves. So as I start to wrap up, I want to invite you as your homework after this episode to start tuning in more to yourself by breathing deeper, by listening to your heart more. What does your heart yearn for? And if it yearns for happiness, notice that and ask yourself, all right, well, what's something today, a small thing that if I did would bring me joy in even a tiny way? For me, it's doing my nails. It's not expensive, but it brings me a sense of joy. Taking a walk, smelling the flowers, right? We're often searching for the big stuff, but it's not

the big stuff. It really is the small stuff because the small stuff builds over time. So if you're finding yourself really unhappy at work in your relationship at life, can you notice any place where you do feel kind of good? Can you grow that a little more? Or can you just invite yourself to stop trying to be happy and maybe go for something like aware, interested, curious, open, fill in your own word. But the pursuit of anything constantly keeps you in this state of next, next, next, next, future, future, future. None of us know what's gonna happen, but I know that if you keep searching outside

yourself for something else to bring you that which you can cultivate within yourself, you sure as hell won't find happiness. Or if you do, it won't sustain itself. I wish for everyone a more peaceful life of gratitude for what you do have. When you see what you have and build upon that and stop waiting to be happy, whether you live in Moldova or Costa Rica or the US or anywhere, location does matter, but honestly, just like I discovered whether I was at Google or somewhere else, wasn't the company, wasn't the guy I was with, it wasn't even the body I was in. It was my mind,

my mindset, my ability to listen to myself in every moment and to ground myself into what do I have now that I can appreciate? And yeah, where do I want to go? But don't wait, don't wait to be happy till you're there. Find any tiny moment because they're there. We just have to be masterfully listening a little more. And I know you can do it, because I know I can do it, so let's keep practicing together. May we all keep searching, but really dig in the search along the way, too. See you next time.