Goncharenko centre 2026-2-13:

Friday 13 February there will be another meeting of the tea club, 13:00-15:00. Topic:
---
This time something different:
- Questions and answers, about any topic, anyone can ask any question to me or anyone else, and vice versa, but there should be a point of questions, coupled to the general topic: What do you want in life? What do you think other people want in life? It can be about jobs, which city to live, even to move abroad, etc.
---
Then if there is time continue with the topic from meeting 2, see this page from a while back if you want to prepare for that: https://swhs.home.xs4all.nl/list_of_life/goncharenko-2026-1-29--30.html
We didn't get round for example to talk about the book "Atomic habits". You can read 30 pages or so of that book to give you an impression what it is about. It was suggested to me in the Goncharenko centre in Lviv. Will it be useful?

Further, we can go over a long list of expressions in English, that I collected from reading, watching videos etc., that stood out to me, which you need to know to properly understand conversations, videos on youtube etc.

For the questions, think about this: What are you willing to do to get what you want in your life?

I will take something different again for with the tea. Surprisingly simple but tasty...

Related to "What are you willing to do in your life (to reach your goals)", you could watch this documentary about Ricky Bruch: https://youtu.be/i8WDEeeI3LM
The statement at about 41:35 is particularly apt...

3nd meeting of 2026, Friday 13 Feb., ca. 13:15-15:00, in the 'Poltava Buratino' club...

One attendee still in school wanted for example to travel, another wanted to travel and to do the things he didn't get round to do to earlier in life, certain hobbies/interests. Then we got to something I analysed recently, connected to this: A guy called Sadhguru, who gives lectures and talks about spirituality, meditation, enlightenment etc. He said in a video hat I recently analysed that people search for pleasantness. I did not agree but did not tell the attendees my view. I said in the meeting that he claimed that people aim for pleasantness in their lives. I asked whether anyone was looking for pleasantness in his or her life. The men all said: No. They seek something of interest. This is exactly what I want in life and which does not fit with Sadhguru's claim.

[ My view that he is not enlightened, he does not know things that he should know. He does not have the required wisdom of life and people for me to consider him to be 'enlightened', but I will get to that in an analysis on my website later. ]

The women were more interested in pleasantness but for most of them this was not the only thing. A combination of pleasantness and interesting things is what they wanted, where the percentage of pleasantness varied.

[ you can deduce from principles that this is the case for women, see further on and I will get to that in more detail in my analysis later on my website. ]

Why doesn't this guy Sadhguru know this? Men have always done things in life that are not about pleasantness but about interests: Examples: scientists, mathematicians, explorers, even conquerors, did what they did for other reasons than 'pleasantness' which is what I wrote in my analysis a while back and after everyone told their view, told in the meeting, along with that a clear example is going exploring on a medieval ship from Europe, England, Netherlands, Spain, to places all over the globe. This was not a pleasant experience, but consisted of illnesses, vitamin C deficiency and other hardships [ for the sailors but also for the captains it was not like a relaxing holiday! ] Yet they still did it.

[ Artists too did and do things out passion, e.g. Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, that was a drive, not a search for pleasantness. ]

How could he know what other people want: in case of men he could use himself as a template. For women it is more difficult. [ but he could have asked women what they want! There is a difference between reality and what people say but with the right questions you can get there. Example: In the meeting I offered rice waffles with margarine and cane sugar. These are a simple but very tasty snack. One girl said she had eaten and then I asked: If it was a cookie, would you try it? She said "Yes" and I said "And so I get to the truth!" (that she was not "full"). And then she agreed to try it :) ]

[ Women are more complex than men but certain principles he should know from which you can deduce this: women want family, social interactions are more important, women prefer to compromise for example, which all means 'pleasantness in interactions', so for women it is clear a priori that pleasantness is more important. ]

We talked about problems with people, such as dealing with customers. I experienced it and a woman working in retail said "yes!". I mentioned this in connection with that everything you do in life gives you experiences to understand people, your whole life is walking in a laboratory for psychology, so how can psychologists not understand people!? I find that very strange...

I mentioned also pigeonholing, which the woman 'M' from Kharkov, whom I mentioned before a few times in relation to experiences that are useful to understand people, and are useful as examples how to analyse (how to tell that she is emotion poor but not autistic for example), told me. She said something about people pigeonholing other people, i.e. putting people into categories. Examples of such categorisation are:
- you are a certain age so you should be married,
- you should not walk around in summer clothes in winter (which happened to me in 2018 in Kharkov in winter. I was wearing summer clothes, except for a coat that is more suited to autumn, but, I wasn't cold. Even after 30 minutes walking in the snow at -12C to go to a few places she wanted to show me, such as a guy who rented and sold bicycles but also has storage that people can rent to store their bicycles. We talked with that guy for an hour and so not even walking and no warming up from that. My former friend 'M' then asked me "aren't you cold?", and I said "no!".),
- companies wanting people below a certain age (what does it matter? Especially for work at a distance), Not pigeonholing but related: There is nonsense in companies who have vacancies and are looking for someone who just graduated but who have 10 years of work experience, which is impossible. This happens in NL and in UA.

The interesting thing about 'M' is that she mentioned pigeonholing, but she did it herself too...

One attendee mentioned he declined to work for a company for the reason of why people should be 'conservative', only for the reason that it didn't make sense to require this. He said he watched a video about why this was a requirement but that didn't make it clear. I agreed, what a person is like of believes should not matter, though I added that I would not want to work with autists. I have dealt enough with such people, they have always given me problems. They are NOT logical thinkers and in interactions I always got annoyed from them making stupid or anti-social comments. At least, anti-social in appearance, it is not their intention, but to me that doesn't matter, in that it annoys me or I need to do a lot of effort to 'interpret' any communication with them. I don't want to to that so if someone annoys me in some way in an interview, I would not want to work with that person.

Related to wanting to do effort, seeking something interesting, instead of 'pleasantness': To travelling: one of the attendees wants to travel, for example to Germany where he has a friend: I asked about living in Kiev that he mentioned a while ago he would prefer to living in Kremenchuk: Well, he would then need to find a well paying job to pay for that, but it is hard to find work already when you are 40, never mind older. Another attendee mentioned an offer by a company who wanted people below 40 and conservative, see above. Why these requirements? Why does it matter? especially for remote work... I mentioned that with me, people often ask my age when making bike trips. Why? What does it matter?

Now to Derren Brown: Manipulation. I discussed some psychological tricks he showed in a TV series, I will show and discuss more next meeting. [ well, didn't get around to it next few meetings ]

Travelling: We come to Weed/marihuana after asking where attendees were or wanted to go. One woman had been to Amsterdam and she didn't like the smell of marihuana in Amsterdam. I mentioned one woman to whom I gave my self made cookies was hesitant to try them at first, she thought they may be cookies with weed! Why do people think I tried any drugs? Just because I am from NL? One of the attendees didn't like the smell in Amsterdam, and yes, that is where I first realised what marihuana smelled like. I was walking in a street near the centre, and thought "What is that disgusting smell?", looked around me and saw shops selling marihuana. Aha!

I never tried any drugs, there are 2 reasons; I don't want to lose control of myself and I am not interested in a pleasant feeling (which is fake happiness). In Zaporizhya some years ago I stayed in a hostel, where there were some students (men and women) and a few other (older, not student) guys. One of these other guys wanted me to try wodka. I think because I said that I don't drink alcohol, he was trying to get me drunk. That didn't work... I went along because I wanted to see myself what would happen, how alcohol affected me. Well, the bottle he had was empty, I drank most of it, and: Alcohol doesn't really influence me [ just like cafeine has no influence on me and a lot of pain killers also do not work on me ] except I noticed that walking I felt my balance was off. So physically I was affected and I knew at that moment that cycling or riding a car would not be good at all! [ in contrast to many people who are drunk and believe about themselves that "it will be fine", I knew that cycling or driving would "not be fine"! ] But in behaviour it had no influence at all, and that makes sense because they way I am, is the real me. I don't hide anything. [ Most people hide themselves behind a mask, showing themselves as they want to be seen, not as they really are. This mask is visual (facial expression), as well as in behaviour (hiding unfriendliness in particular is very common), and this mask falls off in certain circumstances, such as when they are drunk or when they find themselves in a situation that they don't like (if a person gets angry and starts swearing at another person (rather a a general swear word to only indicate not liking what is going on), then you know that that is the real personality and friendliness you may have seen before, is fake, a mask). ]...

For this meeting I took some rice waffles and put margarine on it, then some cane sugar that I took with me last time from the Netherlands, which is a tasty snack... Then to drinks. I took 2 soft drinks, Poltava Buratino (Buratino = soviet Pinokkio) and Poltava Mohito. No tea as there was no electricity since 17:00 Thursday at my house and no electricity at the centre.

Goncharenko centre 2026-2-13: What do you want in life, and what effort do you want to do to achieve that?

Hello and welcome to the 3rd meeting of 2026: The Poltava Buratino club!