Superior Relating is the answer to a better life

This is the message I received in the middle of a teacher plant ceremony. Clear as daylight! This is the answer I’d been seeking for decades. Yes, decades.

After a few years of sitting with Ayahuasca, much resistance later, this was my first Iboga ceremony. It was the most beautiful night of my life, sifting through reels of thoughts and memories and even experiencing infinity. It was breathtaking.

You may be wondering - how did I get here and what does this have to do with the Relating Academy?

In case you’re new, I’m Anna, the founder of the Relating Academy. This is my story.

At age 6 my family emigrated from Kyiv to Cape Town.

This is where I went to school not knowing any English. Later when I studied human behavior I learned that our voids drive our values (what we perceive is missing becomes what’s most important to us). Makes sense why I studied 8 languages. No, unfortunately, I don’t speak them fluently. But I did chase languages because of the pain I experienced as a kid not being understood and not understanding. I never wanted to experience that again.

In these formative years, I witnessed my parents work tirelessly to survive. Fraudsters stole their money time and time again, and legal papers were denied over and over again. Also new to the language, living in basements that got flooded, and being taken in by strangers who became friends, my parents had a really hard life.

By the time I was 10 years old, I had moved nearly 30 times, switched schools a bunch of times, and was fighting with my sister every day.

Our relationship was influenced by the one my parents had. Tumultuous - to put it mildly. All kids mirror their parents. We were no different.

This is how my second void and value was born - healthy relationships. This is why I feel so passionate about helping people relate better. I didn’t have the tools growing up and I made sure I got them. I studied human behavior for over 8 years in parallel with my traditional studies and work experience.

At age 18 I went to my first personal development seminar. I prided myself on being the youngest in these rooms. Attendees would tell me ‘If only I knew all this at your age’. One seminar and I was hooked - a seminar junkie.

Up until then, my coping mechanisms were academia (being the best and brightest so that my parents would sit in rewards ceremonies year after year, validating my achievements), and eventually alcohol (I started drinking at age 15 and took to it like a fish to water, pretty much blacking out every time). The dopamine reward I had been receiving for acing tests got replaced by the dopamine hits in the sips of wine. The addiction didn’t seem to slow me down until later in life. At first, I was firing on all cylinders.

At age 22, after graduating cum laude with an Honors degree in Property Studies, watching my co-graduates don their best suits and head to job interviews, I decided I wanted something different. Off to the South of France, I went, starting my 2-year career in yachting.

Luckily for me, or so I thought, drinking and yachting were synonymous. I even got fired for drinking on the job. It was after countless months of being on anchor and being really sick and tired of it. It was my form of rebellion - a dishonorable discharge. Nevertheless, 3 short months later, I became the chief stewardess of a 50-meter superyacht (within 18 months of starting yachting). This was unheard of, it usually takes years to get to this level.

Got fired a second time, this time for incompetence. I had no leadership skills at the time and bit off way more than I could chew. I took this as I sign the industry was not for me. I was grateful for what I learned - from people skills to organization to spying on what the yacht owners and guests were reading and talking about. I wanted to know how their mindset worked differently from the 99%. It was also where my love of luxury was born. Flying from Miami to Cape Town, I realized I didn’t want to work for the yacht, I wanted to own it.

At age 24 my entrepreneurial journey began. I started a commercial real estate business. It didn’t really take off. Then an export business where my business partner and I exported wine and other goods to African countries. We had zero knowledge about this industry, learned on the fly, sold palettes to Ghana and Zimbabwe, and ran out of money. Little did I know just how expensive (time and money) international trade is.

Then I started the security guarding company. I didn’t even know who bought security. I started by signing the building I was living in and then signed a contract per month for 2 years with almost 100% retention. I would often think to myself ‘If I can run a security business, I can do anything.’

Over 1000 guards later, at age 28, I was on the brink of burnout and sold the business. This is when I started consulting and landed on mindset coaching for entrepreneurs. Up until this point I had been doing all the personal development and human behavior things in the closet. I used the principles to aid my success, but I thought that my value was tied to closing deals. Finally, I could marry my passions - building business, quantum physics, and all things human potential.

For 7 years I helped entrepreneurs with their relationship with their business, with their purpose, and with money.

However, there was a voice that was growing ever louder inside my mind. It was saying that I had a bigger message. My thing was bigger than mindset coaching.

The mystery of this little voice is what led me to plant medicine ceremonies and how I eventually got the message, ‘You need to be teaching relationships.’

For this, I had to face my relationship with myself and alcohol and finally understand the part of me that was numbing my pain away. After losing many of my closest friends in my twenties I now have the most supportive tribe I could imagine. My relationships with my parents and my sister are better than ever. In fact, I’m inspired by how my parents made it through their years of conflict and are still together, and really enjoy their companionship.

I studied at the Gottman Institute to learn about better relating and to have the ability to share these skills with others. I love their scientific approach to relationships.

I founded the Relating Academy because I truly believe that when we learn to relate better we’ll have not only a safer society but a lot more fulfillment and integrity in every area of life - especially health and wealth. It’s all related.

I created this Superior Relating for Entrepreneurs Guide: 5 Proven-yet-Uncommon Steps to Improve ANY Relationship - Business or Personal. I guarantee it works for any relationship you can think of, especially when you implement the steps. There are easy-to-follow practical applications for each step.