“Addressing the most common yet profound questions we can ask ourselves about what it is we really want in life, Peep Vain unlocks the clues to maximizing our thoughts and desires into an unrelenting drive to create the life of our deepest, truest, and most fulfilling intentions.”
Tony Robbins
America’s Peak Performance Coach
“In life, we can follow our own dreams or enact the dreams of others. We feel only truly alive when we follow our own. All too many of us fail to realize that dreams are not just a matter of chance; they are a matter of choice. Peep Vain possesses the uncanny ability to make us think about the questions in life that really matter. I highly recommend this very readable, thoughtful book to people prepared to make their own choices.”
Manfred Kets de Vries
Raoul de Vitry d’Avaucourt Chaired Clinical Professor of Leadership Development at INSEAD
“Peep Vain has written the most complete road map to success I’ve ever read. This is not a book to be read, it is a book to be studied and returned to many times.”
Charley “Tremendous” Jones
Author of Life is Tremendous
“This fast-moving book gives you ideas and insights into yourself that you can use immediately to achieve higher levels of success and happiness in every area of your life.”
Brian Tracy
Author/Speaker - The Way to Wea Ith
“The Most Important Question is a great help to people truly interested in making their dreams happen. It serves as a guide and offers encouragement if you want to make significant changes in your life but tend to hesitate too much. I warmly recommend it.”
Kristina Šmigun
Olympic gold medalist, cross country skiing
A big reason why people do not get what they want is that they often do not know what they want. There are infinite possibilities. There are conflicting desires. Other expect much from us. Our wishes are modified from outside by media and marketing. It is easy to lose yourself and to sacrifice your most important wants to a variety of “urgent” demands. Life gets out of balance and dissatisfaction deepens.
The Most Important Question is about how to best understand what it is you really want in want, how to get what you really want, and how to honestly enjoy it.
In his first book, Peep Vain introduces a simple and linear method for finding out what you really want and making it happen. He will guide you to:
See a wider array of possibilities, discover your dreams and create a vision for your life.
Embark on a quest of self-knowledge and self-awareness to make choices ideal for you.
Choose and formulate your goals and make firm decisions about pursuing them.
Create a rational plan, a sequence of steps that gets results.
Take the first step, making serious, systematic efforts until you succeed.
Celebrate victories, allowing time for joy and feeling satisfaction from your success.
To Maria and Robert
Editor: Scott Diel
Cover design: Marko Russiver
Layout: Villu Koskaru
© Peep Vain, 2013.
ISBN 978-9949-33-112-3 (epub)
ISBN 978-9949-33-113-0 (kindle)
Foreword
Peep Vain, whom I have had the privilege of knowing for more than two decades, has done more than written a book. He has given us insight into the workings of a mind unlike any other I have encountered: the mind of a person who understands the keys to ultimate achievement and fulfillment in life, but who is motivated more than anything else to share those keys with others.
When Peep was a student in university, fresh from his service in the Soviet army, he did not have the command of English he has today, he was not as outgoing and comfortable with people from all walks of life as he is now, and he certainly didn’t talk like a person who would improve the lives of countless people through his example and his teaching. But what was completely clear to me was the awareness that this young man was not going to ever be bound by the conventions of what others told him was possible. Instead, he was going to help others re-define what is possible, and make it real in their lives.
The Most Important Question is a book to be read thoughtfully, yet it will be read easily. Reading it felt to me like having a relaxed conversation with an old country doctor, one who humbly acknowledges he is still on a journey himself, but who understands people and their problems very well, who can ask questions that make you want to talk, and then explain things in a way that are easy to accept, leading to an improvement in the patient’s condition.
You will enjoy this conversation with Peep. It will focus on a question, on THE question, and by participating fully in this conversation with your mind and spirit, you will find . . . your answer.
Dan Moore
President
The Southwestern Company
Nashville, TN
Introduction
Who am I?
My name is Peep Vain (pronounced Pape Vine). The press often refers to me as a “business or motivational trainer,” though that’s only one thing I do. But at least they’re calling me something and they spell my name right. If I had to pick one thing, I would call myself a teacher.
When I was a younger man, after I had served in the Soviet Army, I went to the United States to seek my fortune. I became a door-to-door book salesman, which you probably know is not the most glamorous work around, nor is it the type of job of which society approves. I probably would have chosen something other than selling books, but this was the opportunity I was offered. And since in that December of 1989 I knew little about America and had no clue as to what selling (or doorto-door selling for that matter) was, I happily took the opportunity. As with most things in my life, I tried to make the best of it. It turned out that I happened to be pretty good at selling those books. I became one of the top salesmen in the company.
After my second summer of selling, I accomplished something that I had really longed for: I started my academic studies in the US. That may not sound like a big deal today, but back in 1991 when I started my studies, the Soviet empire was still intact. Even getting a student visa was a minor feat. The annual expense for tuition, room and board of $22,000 at Bentley University in Waltham, near Boston, Massachusetts, amounted to a staggering ten years worth of combined annual salaries of my parents.
In May of 1993, I graduated from Bentley – eleventh in my class of 868 students. My parents flew over to see me graduate, and it was one of the happiest and proudest days in my life. Not long before then I had been just a kid from the Soviet bloc who stepped off an Aeroflot jet with 37 borrowed dollars in his pocket. And there I was now – a summa cum laude graduate with a marketing degree. I was possibly the first from my country to ever get a US college education in business.
I returned to my country and began work as a sales manager at a food wholesale company. I turned a sales department of four into a team of sixty. It turned