Olga T. (SEE) - Status, Prosperity

I was curious, like a spinning top, climbing around and exploring other yards and gardens. I couldn’t fall asleep, I would hop around the apartment. To put a child like that to bed, you need to make them see visual images. If I couldn’t fall asleep, they would just beat me. And to fall asleep, I would lie there imagining: ‘I will have such a beautiful pink dress. This is how I will look in it. And I will have a white teddy bear.’

I imagined these images in my mind. It made me happy. I even imagined certain events. And even as an adult, when I was twenty and had little money, I imagined that I would one day have a two-room apartment… Now I have exactly the apartment I used to imagine.

With a girl like me, you’d need to lie down next to her, stroke her hair, and say: “Let’s fantasize together. There will be a ball, imagine it! You’ll have a dress, a carriage…” I would tell her a fairy tale about herself.

<...> In school I started noticing who wore what, who had what. If I saw someone in a nicer dress than mine, my mood would get worse.

I really wanted many things, but a child like this is patient and very resilient. If you tell them there’s no money right now to buy what they want, they will understand and accept it.

You need to say that there’s no opportunity right now. You can say: “I can’t buy it now, but we’ll buy you a new jacket by autumn.” Forward-thinking is very developed in such a child. This person doesn’t live in the present — they live in the future. “Be patient — we won’t buy anything now, but later I’ll buy you a better dress. Understand: not now, but I’m trying.”

<...> SEEs are quite envious children; they envy others’ wealth, what someone else got. They want things. I envied beautiful things.

You need to tell the child that it’s achievable. If the child says: “I will have a BMW,” you need to answer: “You will. But if you sweep backyards for a living — probably not. But if you have a good job — then yes!”

<...> An SEE remembers people’s images, remembers those whom others gravitate toward. In our sports school there was a very beautiful coach — statuesque, tall, dark-haired.

I remember how the male coaches and the head of the school all paid attention to her: “Lena, Lena, Lena…” Tamara, on the other hand, was an ordinary coach whom no one paid attention to.

We’d go to sports camp — and someone would pick up Lena’s bag for her, invite her to the beach, hand her a towel. And this image of Lena, and the fact that I also wanted to be just as regal and beautiful, so that everything revolved around me — that image stayed with me. I didn’t want to be a Tamara in stretched-out leggings.

You can motivate a child with this. Show them who they can be and what they can have if they work well. If you don’t earn it — you won’t have it. If you don’t want to study history today, you won’t have a BMW or a Mercedes.

<...> Everything comes from others’ opinions. I often feel like I do things not for myself, but so that others think well of me, think I’m cool and successful. I can’t sit in a dirty car; I need people to see that everything is good with me.

<...> Socially, I’ve achieved more than everyone in the environment I grew up in. I live in a big city, I have my own apartment worth many millions, a car worth two million, I have four hundred people reporting to me, seven bank branch directors in different cities of Komi and Chuvashia report to me. It’s hard to compete with me. I’ve achieved more than many men.