In this solo video, executive coach and agile consultant Andrey V. Karpov explains his practical framework for understanding and overcoming anxiety and depression. He defines anxiety as worry about the future and depression as worry about the past, then argues that depression must be addressed first by treating past‑oriented thoughts as "waste" to be eliminated, borrowing concepts from lean and agile methodologies. Once the past is cleared, he tackles anxiety as a resistance to taking personal accountability and action, likening the process of re‑programming the mind to training large language models and using neurolinguistic programming (NLP). Karpov illustrates his ideas with personal stories—losing 65 lb through daily running, becoming a top Uber driver during COVID, and climbing to C‑level roles before founding Hire The Best LLC. He stresses that true change comes from self‑agency: only the individual can program their mind for success, not external therapists or coaches. The video concludes with a call to action, encouraging viewers to eliminate past‑related waste, confront future‑oriented anxiety, and repeatedly take decisive steps toward their desired future.
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How's it going, guys? This is Andrey V. Karpov from Hire The Best LLC, your partner in consulting and coaching for everyday transformation and overall improvement of your business, your mindset, and the quality of your life. Today I want to talk about anxiety and depression. Oftentimes these two principles are confused and people really don't understand. I know a lot of people, including myself in the past, that we thought that Anxiety basically leads to depression. Well, it's slightly incorrect, and the reason it's incorrect is because you can go into a lot of psychological analysis, scientific explanations, research and studies, but the fact of the matter is, if you experience anxiety, depression, both, or whatever, panic attacks for that matter, um, will it really help you understand everything from a scientific perspective? My answer to that, having actually spent the time to understand it on a neuroscientific level pretty deeply and not wanting to indulge you in all of that material, um, I would look at it very simply. I hope you're ready right now because this is going to be very important. Anxiety is our worry about the future. Okay. And then depression is our worry about the past. That's all there is to it. But is there? That's not it. The most important component is now what do you do with this information? Well, if you think about it, in my at least experience from a logical context, which I strongly believe in, depression comes before anxiety. I know again, it's going to sound a little bit weird. But here's why. You first want to eliminate all of the waste. Per true agile mindset, per lean, per all other great agile principles, you want to eliminate waste. So from a standpoint of that, past is a waste. Now you can say, oh, come on, those are memories I cherish. Okay, what memories do you cherish? Do you cherish the memories of your ex-wife, ex-husband? Remember I said I'm giving you just as an example. Or are you grateful for that? So if you're grateful, then there's no longer negative context to that. So if you are not grateful about it, if you're constantly remembering it, if you're thinking about your past employer, if you are depressed about things that did not work out with your friend and you had to part ways, Anything for that matter, that is waste. And Perlin, we have to eliminate waste. Why do we have to eliminate waste? Because it clutters, because it takes up our time, our capacity, our resources, our energy, most importantly. So you are depressed because you cannot eliminate this waste. So a true agile mindset simply tells you, let's eliminate all of this waste so we can move forward. Okay, so now once we have that done, and it takes some time, I mean, I'm just telling you overall high-level strategy. What do you do next? Next is tackle anxiety. Why do we have anxiety? Now, this is going to be very revelating and shocking for some of you. For others of you that are more experienced with neuroscience and help themselves daily, like myself, using natural methods, uh, which I've spoken about in my past videos, um, what do you do about anxiety? Anxiety is simply, in the way to look at it, as I feel and suggest, is simply our inability to get ourselves together and take accountability or responsibility for our life. This is very important because we're stressed now, and we're stressed both from about the past, stressed about the future, stressed about the present, whatever. We're stressed about what's gonna happen without us really knowing what's gonna happen. And the only reason we don't know what's gonna happen, even though realistically we may not fully fully know what's gonna happen is because we're afraid to make an action, do a statement, make an affirmation, uh, catalyze change in order to see what the result will be. Whether it's positive or negative, it's going to be change, it's going to be outcome, output. Therefore, you are stressed about the future, you're anxious about the future, you feel horrible on regular basis because you don't want to take the action. Because you're afraid of failure, because you're afraid of negative consequences, because you're afraid that you're not good enough, because you're afraid of judgment, because you're afraid of so many stupid little things that are around you externally that you realistically can't control and should not control. What you can control is this. And this right here is the same way like, um, AI system— me being in the AI space and training different language. Models, you know, large models that have to be with sentient components. What I can tell you is you have to look at it from the standpoint of training. So neurolinguistic programming, NLP, is essentially the same way. You train your mind in a certain way, you train the LLM in a certain way so that it can output better results, it can reason better, and in my case, so that it can have wisdom, it can have empathy, compassion. Uh, ultimately love. It can emulate and understand those things. So you can do the same thing with your mind. You can overcome the barriers of depression, you can overcome the barriers of anxiety, you can form your own future. And if the future does not correspond to your initial vision, positive vision, that's okay because that's called experience. And now you're in the present Instead of stressing about, oh my God, you know, this didn't work out as I had hoped, now I'm anxious again. You're anxious because you are afraid to repeat. You're afraid to improve. And what you need to do is get yourself together and try it again and again and again and again. My personal story, if you watch some of my videos, has been that I was obese. Realistically, I was 65 pounds overweight. I was a mess. I was smoking. I was drinking socially. But the bottom line is I was hurting myself. I wasn't feeling great. I didn't have a lot of energy. I wasn't an entrepreneur like I am now. I got constantly fired or let go and things just weren't working out because I was choosing the wrong employers, wrong friends, wrong family partners, and just in general surroundings. I had to let all of that go, completely reshuffle things. Completely believe in the power of the universe. And the way I lost weight, if we just make it short and straight to the point about that one, is I started running. I used the Forrest Gump approach to running. And it was very hard because when you're obese, or when you're overweight, when you run, for your joints, for your whole body, you're sweating, you know, there's like pressure. It's just like very uncomfortable effects. That I'm not going to indulge you in, and you just feel like crap. But I did it every single day. I woke up, I had that ability. Universe gave that to me. My separation with my ex-wife during COVID times when things weren't the best, when people were isolated, when I was temporarily unemployed at the time, or job transition better to say, that's when I started doing Uber. And guess what? That was probably second or third time in my life when when everything goes to cahoots, I race to the top. And when I say this, I really mean it because I was basically competing with no one out there in the streets. Nobody wanted to do Uber. I tried Lyft as well, but that didn't go too well. So I became essentially for some time the king of Uber. Then the competition came back and it became more challenging, but I learned as well. I learned the algorithmics of Uber. I had a good mentor at the time. And all of that, all of those challenges, they forced me to tackle my anxiety about the future. And then slowly but surely I got into C-level roles. Then I opened my own business. I tested one proof of concept business, True Agility RVA, as I told you before. And then I opened Hire the Best LLC, a brand that I had for a long time, just didn't know what to do with it. So, so many things happen and so many more great things will happen with you, with your ideas, with your transformation, if you don't allow yourself to sink into the swamp of depression, which is the past that you need to eliminate that waste, and if you allow yourself to look into the future and believe that you can, nobody but only you, not your therapist, not your tarologist, not your coach, not your friend, not your family partner, and I say this with deep respect to all of these, people, but only you, only you can program your mind to succeed. It's extremely important that you realize that if it's not you, it's nobody else. You will still be at the same place. So take action. Don't be afraid of change. Don't be afraid of failure. Failure simply means it's temporary. It simply means you can do things better and you can succeed. I hope you found this video helpful, guys. Let me know down in the comments what other topics you'd like to hear from me about. I'm an executive coach. Agile consultant, and hopefully just an inspiring person for all of you out there that's living the life every day just like you and trying to figure out different complexities and problems and trying to be a better human to others. Much love, may the Agile force be with you, and please continue your transformation.
