Irina Khakamada: “I am a woman, I can do anything!”

What is self-realization for you? How to find your purpose and your “I”?

Self-realization is a remnant of generational romanticism, which is almost gone among young people today. It means doing what you want to change the world for the better. Even if you’re just a cleaner. You understand that if you try your best, something will really change. And it will affect the world, even if only a little.

The goal of self-realization should be environmentally friendly: you need to try not only for yourself, but also for others. This is how Steve Jobs worked. He didn’t just want to make money, he wanted to change the world. If a person in the process of self-realization tries at the same time to change the world for the better, he has an energy that charges everyone around.

It is difficult to find self-realization before the age of 30. Therefore, you need to work, work and work, and not be afraid that you could not find anything. And do not run – “I did this for six months and understood everything, now I’ll do something else.” After 30, when you have gained professionalism, you need to take a break and think. And if you don’t find yourself yet, you don’t need to drop everything and go to Bali, expand your consciousness and go into space – you can never return.

You just need to keep this thought – that you want to find yourself – in your head all the time. Open your ears, eyes and start “reading” the world around. The world is up to something. The main thing is to set a goal and stay open to opportunities.

You were both a businessman, and a politician, and a teacher. What did you find the biggest realization in your life?

The biggest one is politics. I flourished there. I liked everything, although I was drowned, killed, destroyed. But I flew towards difficulties, because I was interested. I was able to become a professional, and get married for the fourth time, and give birth to a child, and all this brought me pleasure. Teaching was also an exciting process, because I burst into it with incredible efforts. Every time I just burst in – it was a wild desire, and I was sure that I would achieve my goal anyway.

From your biography, it is obvious that you can become a master in several directions. How did you do it?

I didn’t succeed – you can’t become a master in different directions at the same time. You can’t be a great surgeon and a great singer, you can’t be a great writer and a deputy at the same time, you can’t be a minister and at the same time a professional artist. You have to choose something. So every time I chose what I liked the most.

To change a profession and start life from scratch, it is not necessary to be a professional in a new business. Even Japanese managers talk about it. Matsushita, for example, believes that the main thing is enthusiasm. Amateurism will gradually go away, you will learn very quickly. And if you are an amateur, you do not have the appropriate education and experience, you can be even more successful because you are not afraid. You don’t know what the problems will be, and you are not inhibited by fear.

If it is impossible to combine two directions at the same time in mastery, is it possible to combine motherhood and profession?

Oh sure. In all my life, I have never been at home for more than 2 months. My son was born, and after 2 months I went to graduate school and wrote a dissertation. My daughter was born, after 2 months I went to the White House and became a minister. You can combine only when there is a mood – it is absolutely material. You literally create a mood in yourself, say to yourself: “I am a woman, I can do anything! The left hemisphere works for me, the right hemisphere works for me, I am very hardy, unlike men. I can even bear childbirth. Therefore, I can do everything. I’m selfish. I want to realize all my Wishlist.

Then you start looking for a job that you like. The principle here is not to save, but to earn. You have earned, so you can hire assistants. So that the child is not offended that you are almost not at home, at each meeting you must give him 100 times more, 100 times more concentrated your love and energy.

How to combine everything? The method is very simple. The main principle is to schedule every day and include everything: work, fitness, theater, cinema, friends, husband, dinner, kiss, child. If you schedule everything, taking into account traffic jams and time, you will have time for everything.

Many women have such a conflict: if a woman develops at a certain speed, and her partner does not develop with her, what to do? Carry on or leave?

Family is the chemistry of communication, when you are interesting to each other as individuals, and even after several years of living together, you have something to talk about. Family is when you came tired from work, and he came, you caught on with your tongues and did not notice that it was already 6 o’clock in the morning. Here is the family. If this is maintained, but the husband receives less money, it does not matter.

Now, if it doesn’t develop so much that this chemistry of communication has already disappeared, you have nothing to talk about … Women often say: “It’s impossible”, “You should read books”, “You should look for a new job”. Everything. From this moment begins the destruction of the family. Therefore, you need to set yourself a goal: for the husband to develop, but did not even notice how this began to happen. To do it voluntarily.

Imagine what would interest him? Start throwing ideas at him, throwing the right people in. Do you know that there are interesting people somewhere who could take it to another level? So, you go there for a visit and carefully “saw” it. He does not even notice how someone spoke to him, but the process has already begun.

If you do not begin to carry out such work, then leave, because nothing will work on the machine. But in any case, you need to remove the mentoring. As soon as a woman says to a man: “You are a goat, you need to develop, because I have outgrown you,” at that moment she seems to put an end to it. And the family is falling apart.

And if criticism and negativity about a man escaped?

We must play the “goat”: “Well, idiot, I’m sorry! What do you want, we women are all idiots. And that’s all. And there will be a balance. I advise business women to talk less at home about themselves and their successes. This is a disease of business ladies.

Are you worried that most politicians and managers of large companies are men? And they make all the decisions by which society lives, and women often go unheard?

This does not suit me, so I force men to listen to me, and in different ways. And they hear. It all depends on the desire of the woman. Women today are very strong, there are more and more of us in power structures. Women do not occupy high positions in politics, because they themselves do not want to. They are well aware that it is one thing to have a small business, and another to head Gazprom. This is definitely incompatible with the family. A woman is ambitious – she wants both.

You come across as a very relaxed person. At the same time, there were a lot of stresses in your life, especially considering your political career. What helped you not to “squeeze”?

It is the desire to be happy. And to be happy, you need strength. Therefore, I decided this: I must save my nerves, I must save my energy, I just won’t give it to anyone. I am ready to spend a huge amount of energy if I know for sure that I myself need it. But I don’t waste energy on trifles. It’s impossible to “get” me – I smile and walk past. Pure positive selfishness. I learned it gradually and it’s very relaxing.

Stress is the environment that surrounds us. But I believe that a person is primary, and the environment is secondary. Yes, it has a certain influence, but a person has a powerful enough potential to shape his own destiny. He cannot change the whole country, but at least he changes himself and the environment around him. And thanks to the “butterfly effect”, these waves will gradually go everywhere. It just takes time.

How do you balance masculine and feminine energies? Male energy is needed for a breakthrough, female energy is sexuality, the ability to listen to a husband, take care of a family. What is your secret?

The secret is that I am a player. I don’t allow myself not to play. As a real player, I have fun. I don’t know how this recipe works for others. As soon as a person appears next to you, you cannot relax, because you are the queen, and everything depends on the queen. And you play.

Play so that you have fun, play so that the children adore you, despite the fact that they don’t see you for months, play with the boss so that, despite his violent nature, he will never again fly at you unfairly. You are a player. Do you play chess. You are not a pawn. You are queen. Therefore, your small army must be in combat readiness. Once you stop playing, you stop being a queen. Once you stop being a queen, you lose to a pawn.

What should a woman do if she has low self-esteem?

Firstly, at the end of the working day, try to collect all the positive that was for that day and get all the negativity out of your head. Secondly, self-esteem grows if you start to act, and successfully. Start slowly and take very small steps. Then self-esteem will begin to grow, because a small step has a big guarantee of being successful.

You use the word “sexuality” in almost all interviews. Were you born this sexy?

I was stiff, timid, ugly, I couldn’t communicate with boys (and girls), I couldn’t do anything. Sexuality arose in self-realization. I was not like that in business, much less in teaching – that’s where I was a gray mouse. As soon as I won the election, there was confidence. I practiced a sexy smile in front of the mirror, I changed my gait, started walking from the hip instead of the knee, gradually changed the style of clothing. So I included content, energy through the form.

How would you like to be remembered by future generations? So that they say: “Irina Khakamada was …”

I don’t think I’ll go down in history. To do this, you need to radically change the world. What did I do? I formed a new image of a politician in a post-Soviet country. She showed that a politician can be modern, smart, funny, sexy, interesting, and that a politician can be a woman. This is the main achievement.

I passed several laws on small business – an imputed tax, simplified taxation, a law on non-profit organizations, according to which all NGOs work. But this is not such an achievement. If I wanted something to be said about me, it would probably be like this: “Irina Khakamada is one of the few women who managed to be free in an unfree country.”