26. Where to Begin: First Steps
Two typical moments of “I’m ready to begin”
For many years I have watched how people come into the program, and I have come to recognize two characteristic moments when a person turns out to be ready to truly begin working on themselves.
The first is when a familiar way of living has stopped working, and this can no longer be ignored. A chronic business crisis that won’t resolve no matter how many “right” decisions you make. Depression after losing a loved one that doesn’t dissolve on its own. A relationship falling apart despite every effort. It is the situation in which a person honestly says: “the way I’m living now isn’t working; I’ve already tried the old tools; I need something different.”
The second is when, on the outside, everything is fine, but inside there is a feeling of emptiness, of estrangement, of being unable to be yourself. The person already has success, money, stability; there is no obvious crisis; and yet there is a vague but insistent sense that life is passing them by, that they have long been out of contact with themselves, that nothing they do is quite their own.
Both moments are good ones to begin from. In the first, there is the energy of pain, which supplies the motivation to change. In the second, there is an inner voice that is already audible. FSF works with both.
An illustration of the first. Lidia is an entrepreneur with several business projects; she has done personal therapy and holds a degree in psychology. She entered the program in the midst of a severe business crisis: a major project had failed, leaving financial losses and debts, depressive states, a feeling of powerlessness. Her request: “I want to stop the inner madness and not destroy myself. I want to be back in a state where I can act soundly.” The starting point — a chronic inner state one can no longer live with.
An illustration of the second. Evgenia is a woman in a long-term relationship, with children, emotionally invested in her partner, and interested in psychology. Her request: “I want to feel closeness in my relationship. I want to ‘exhale’ in my relationship. I want to get back the feeling of ‘I exist in this relationship.’” On the outside everything is in order; on the inside — “each of us in our own little box,” a sense of loneliness right beside the person closest to her.
The first step: take the questionnaire
The simplest way to begin is to take the questionnaire of 28 in-depth questions at money.shamenkov.com.
Here there is a distinction I often spell out with participants: the very act of taking the questionnaire is already valuable work. The questions are arranged so that your answers become a mirror, and many people find that they begin to see their own patterns while filling it out — long before anyone reads their responses. This is a free self-examination that you do for yourself, by yourself; many participants report that this step alone produces a first shift.
So when I say “take the questionnaire,” I do not mean “get a free diagnosis.” I mean sit down for half an hour and answer 28 questions honestly, for yourself — that act alone will already change your angle of view.
The second step: the analytical report
If, after the questionnaire, you want an external analysis of your answers, there is a paid analytical report of about 35,000 characters. This is no longer self-examination but a detailed piece of work built on the intersection of three things: the accumulated body of scientific research on self-worth and regulation; more than 220,000 reflections from my fifteen years of practice, from which seven recurring patterns have been derived (chapter 16A); and detailed, step-by-step recommendations for how to work with your leading limiting pattern over the coming weeks.
As a bonus with the report, you receive observer participation in a live group case discussion at the “Assemblage Point” — a short but substantial point of contact with the community and with my way of working. In someone else’s situation you often recognize your own (chapter 15), so even a single such observation can shift the picture more powerfully than the most detailed text.
The third step: a trial week at the “Assemblage Point”
If you want to live through a full arc of work in a shared, living space, rather than a single point of observation, there is the format of a trial week: seven days inside the environment of the Assemblage Point, with a group case discussion, daily practices, educational materials, and an integration meeting. In detail — in chapter 27.
Here the quality is fundamentally different from any of the previous steps. Reading a text, taking the questionnaire, observing someone else’s case discussion — all of this is work at a distance. The trial week is your own nervous system’s first experience in a shared, living space, and nothing else can substitute for it.
The fourth step: choosing a long-term track
After the trial week, two long-term formats with different focuses open up, and which to choose depends on which task is leading for you right now.
The first track — the year-long “Assemblage Point,” systematic practice and foundation. If your key task right now is to build a systematic daily practice and put the foundation in order, this is your track. It consists of a year of regular group sessions, weekly live case discussions, and Intensives within the supportive environment of the community. It is in this track that one steadily masters the fundamentals without which no further work yields a stable result: the daily Practice of Silence (chapter 8), the foundation of one’s way of life — sleep, nutrition, movement, cold exposure, information hygiene (chapter 17) — regular reflection, and holding the rhythm. In detail — in chapter 29.
The second track — the “Efficiency Accelerator” for entrepreneurs, an operating system for life and business. If you already have basic stability and your key task is to express yourself in business, this is your track. The Efficiency Accelerator is built as a two-month intensive immersion in which four lines of work merge into a single process: a baseline of physiological and psychological energy → managing attention and time in a sprint rhythm → marketing, sales, and team through the principles of FSF → AI orchestration, in which you set up a personal assistant and assemble your own orchestra of agents tailored to your work. The outcome is not “knowledge of how things could be” but a finished product, sales that have been built up, a team that runs smoothly, and a multi-agent system that works for your particular task. In more detail — at kpd.shamenkov.com.
Beyond the operational results themselves, the Efficiency Accelerator is built as the first, foundational step of the facilitator’s path in the FSF format. What matters most here: facilitation is not mastered apart from one’s own activity; it is mastered within it. Everyone who reaches this step is already an entrepreneur with their own project, and from day one facilitation is for them an applied tool for solving their own task: to set up a team, run a case discussion within their own product, open a dialogue with a client, orchestrate agents for their work. Only in this mode — learning in the course of real practical activity — can facilitation take hold. The further facilitator’s path — in chapter 30.
How to see that you can begin
If you doubt whether you are ready — try the diagnostic. It’s free. If something in it resonates, that is already a sufficient sign to take the next step. If nothing resonates — wonderful; that means now is not your time, and that, too, is useful information.
There is no such thing as a “right moment” to begin. There is the moment when, here and now, you decide to try. That is the right moment.