Why I Was Classified Mentally Unfit By Israeli Army

Welcome back to the list building lifestyle. I’m your host, Igor Kheifets and I’d like to share with you the real story of how I got classified mentally unfit by the Israeli army. I’ll tell you exactly what happened in my early childhood and then in my late teens, exactly why my parents wanted me to become an army officer soldier, but high ranking one, and exactly what I’ve done and why I’ve done it to get out of that system. So enjoy it.

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I am Igor Kheifets and this is the list building lifestyle. The podcast for anyone who wants to build a wildly profitable email list working from home. If you’d like to make six figures travel the world and help people improve their lives in the process. This podcast is for you. I also invite you to claim a free copy of my bestselling book, the list building lifestyle Confessions of an email millionaire at www.igorsbook.com. Get the free book plus $3,000 bonus package that includes my best capture page templates, email, swipe files, and traffic blueprints, visit www.igorsbook.com for details. And now it’s time to claim your list building lifestyle.

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So my dad was in the military, he graduated from the Saguaro of college for four young adults or something. I don’t recall exactly what it was called. Basically if you wanted to be a proper army man, in the Soviet Army in the Red Army before the wall came down, that was the place to go, there’s only one school in the whole of Russia. You know, it was called a swarm of academies or something. And he graduated with flying colors. And, you know, as soon as you graduate from some war of Academy, you, you know, you enlist as an officer, you don’t enlist as a private, you kind of go through basic training and everything. But you enlist as a proper commanding officer. And he eventually gets sent to Ukraine, because he’s originally Russian, to a town called the Billet Senoko, where he was stationed and that’s where my brother and I were born.

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Now, then, fast forward a couple of years, when, when I was 12, my family decided to emigrate to Israel. And the first couple years, I went to a religious school for immigrants. It was actually a special school, where they taught you mostly in Russian. They still taught you all this stuff, you know, all the good stuff, like math and physics and stuff. But they also had half a day program for religious, Jewish religious

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shenanigans. You know, basically, I’ve done everything, you know, I put on the T lien I prayed before I would eat and first thing in the morning and

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I, you know, obeyed all the rules and laws of the religion, the only thing I didn’t do was the Shabbat service, because there’s no school on Shabbat. They couldn’t make me. But everything else, you know, spring, I was doing it pretty much. So I was good, I was a good student, there wasn’t a student. And I never rebelled against my teachers and anything like that,

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until later in life, but then that school could only last for two years. And when I graduated that school, which was sort of like an in between school, I’d say, between the fifth and the seventh grade.

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My parents basically told me, Look, we can either send you to this boarding school in Haifa, which is about three and a half hours away from where I lived, where I would go there, and I would study there, and I would live there. And it was also a religious school, by the way, so I would have to do the Shabbat service and everything, which I wasn’t really looking forward to, although I did go to that school to check it out. And I passed the entrance exams, the entry exams with flying colors, but then they said, Okay, well, in that case, you should go to the Air Force Academy, which was in a different town, but I would basically take the bus about 90 minutes each way. But I wouldn’t have to stay in school and see the boarding school. You know, I couldn’t go home every day. But I would still wear proper, you know, military uniform and everything. And I would be treated like a soldier, as far as discipline is concerned as far as my duties as a soldier.

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So I went there and there was like a three day entry exam process where they did all kinds of testing on you. They made you go through all kinds of

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little tests and exams and psychometric assessments and psychological assessments and there was like, you had to really qualify, like I remember they were about

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150 of us applied here, and I think only 90 made it into the school. So they, I mean, they really, yeah, they really made sure they only got the best. Although of course, as soon as you get in, you realize that the bar was kind of low, you know, with all the people that will go into school with me. Because by the end of the first year, another 20% would eventually be cut. But I passed all the cuts, and I was never nervous about passing the cuts, I think I always knew I was a smart kid. I was told by my parents, I think that one thing that my parents did well was they always reminded me that I was smart. And I think that really stuck. And then I spent the next six years in that Academy, wearing the uniform and being a good soldier. And I graduated 12th grade in two more years. So kind of like a college level, further down the same path. And then I was destined for a career in the military. Because anyone who graduates from that Academy would ensure that we have a great future in the military. But the problem is that last year in that Academy, I stumbled into the Rich Dad Poor Dad book by Robert Kiyosaki. And I really, I realized I didn’t want to do

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the army anymore. Like I realized that message was pushed on me. It wasn’t really my dream. It was my parents dream. And it wasn’t really a dream, either. It was more like we are, you know, my mom and my dad looking back on their past and asking themselves, when was life the best? You know, when did they feel most secure? And was throughout the years when my dad was in the Army because at the at the downfall of the Soviet Union just before the downfall. You know, one of the few people who did well, were people who served in the Army because they had access to resources, like, and today, I guess it’s okay to mention this. But back in the day, my dad actually stole a lot of food from the army. Not because we were starving, but because that was like, that was the advantage he had. And what’s interesting is that you can’t really steal unless you cut in everyone. So almost every single superior he had got automatically got a cut of everything you took. So if he took even a bunch of, you know, a bunch of products, like, I don’t know, like buckwheat, you know, it was a big deal still in Russia, where you know, people really appreciate it. Buckwheat is a big deal. You know, it’s like, you know, if I remember reading this article about COVID where in Australia, people stocked up on toilet paper, right? When, when the big news hit in Russia, everyone stocked up on buckwheat, like, number one, just disappear the first day it disappeared, you couldn’t get any. So anyway, whenever my dad was, I would get anything. So you have to imagine the guy trying to sneak out with say 10 kilos of buckwheat and a big sack, you know, he would actually get three or four sacks of buckwheat. And then he would just go to his superior’s office, his commanding officer, and put a sack into his car. And then he would do the same for the superior. And he would basically ensure that everyone up the chain would be taken care of, you know, anytime he would get anything. And that’s how he got away with it. You know, he could always get away with pretty much anything because he cut everyone else in so if anything happened, they would always cover for him. And that was like the state of things that was the norm for that society. Yes. So my parents kind of looked at that time. And compared to our first 10 years in Israel, that was a good time. Because the first 10 years in Israel, we struggled. I mean, we really, really struggled, we literally had to live on handouts, and our bank balance was always negative. And I know because at that age, I was the only one in the family who spoke Hebrew. And my parents refused to learn Hebrew because they were either lazy or just emotionally too much with all the immigration. And I was the one who would take my parents by the hand and go to the bank and go to social services. So I knew I knew exactly what was going on.

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Behind the scenes, I knew exactly what our bank balance was and how negative it was. I knew exactly what the credit card debt was. I knew exactly how many loans we took to cover that credit card debt and paid in all the penalties and, and then surcharges. I knew exactly whether my dad qualifies for disability or unemployment. I knew all of it because I was the one filling out the paperwork. And it sucked it I mean, I feel I grew up really fast because of it and kind of missed out on quite a few stages of my childhood but

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Um, you know, they looked at their life and they said, Well, we know that if you’re part of the government structure, if you’re in the military, you’re going to be well taken care of. That was the philosophy anyway. So they push that message on me, they push that message on my brother. And by the time I read Robert Kiyosaki, Rich Dad, Poor Dad,

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realized I wasn’t mine, like I didn’t want to do it. And so at that point, already, having gone into the real army service, I rebelled against it. And this is the moment when I, for the very first time in my life, I rebelled against the system. And I really wanted to get out of the system. Like before that I would feel comfortable in the system, I would feel comfortable in a frame of some sort, like I didn’t appreciate or enjoy the idea of being free. But I quickly discovered that as an entrepreneur,

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I thrive in freedom. In fact, one of the few primary goals in my life is the feeling of freedom and expansion and progress. And that’s something you can get, if you’re if you’re stuck in a bureaucratic, giant bureaucratic machine, you know, which the army actually is, it’s not it’s not a fighting mechanism. It’s a giant bureaucratic monster. And getting out of it is really, really difficult. Now, so as far as far as the lessons learned, throughout my service,

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well, if I guess, I guess a couple lessons come to mind. First off,

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people who were in that system will actually fight to protect it, in a way, kind of like The Matrix movie, where the matrix has the agents that are, you know, built to keep everyone in the matrix, and anyone who tries to get out of the matrix, they want to kill them. In a way, if you’re making any attempts whatsoever, to get out of the structure out of the system.

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That is the fate that awaits you, they they’re literally trying to stop you any way possible, they will lie to you, they will try to convince you that you make it a mistake, they’ll try to punish you by throwing you into military jail, which where I spent some time as well, because, you know, they really couldn’t find a different way to stop me. But eventually,

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Well, that was a lesson in and of itself. Another lesson I learned is that the system is built to support itself. And the moment you start breaking it, it can’t, it kind of spits you out in a way where if you don’t fit into that system, and they can’t make you fit into the system,

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you know, as long as you are leveraging the system’s rules against it, you will get out. In fact, I think something I was telling people,

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shortly after getting out was that in order to get out of the Israeli army, I had to get in first because there was a brief spell of about six months, or maybe a year, where, which is when I met my wife to be, by the way, I was trying, I was basically Mia right, so they were looking for me military, police was looking for me, but I was trying to stay low. And just take it under the radar. And I was just working, you know, some odd jobs. You know, that’s why when I met my wife, so when I got back into the army,

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I spent the first six months just trying to break the system. And to basically say, I will not conform to your rules. And that didn’t work. What eventually worked was to recognize that a system kind of like an algorithm works under the if then conditions. And the people in the system will always have to honor those conditions and those protocols. And eventually I got out through a psychological assessment psychiatric assessment, actually, it took me a few months after realizing that that’s the way I want to do it. But I basically gradually went from being a fully fit soldier to being almost like a like an unfit soldier, which reduced my

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my profile within the system and therefore made me a less attractive candidate to advance further in the career within the structure of the military. But then, what really was the final blow was when I decided that now the next step that I made myself physically unfit, and I wouldn’t I would do some crazy things like I would actually, you know, go and tell my superiors that I wet my bed

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I would threaten, you know, people, you know, obviously, we had to carry a rifle, right. So I threatened my superior, I threatened my, my fellow,

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my fellow soldiers, but just the ones that didn’t like much, you know, not the ones that were.

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and I kind of made it clear to them that I was mentally unstable. And then I continuously kept on requesting to see a shrink. But, you know, the way the system works is they obviously know that people try to get out that way. So they prevent you from seeing the shrink by saying, Hey, you will see the shrink. Yeah, we’ll let you know when, and they never actually let you see one. And the way you get to one is by basically taking it to the extreme, you know, you become such a big, such a giant misfit, that they can’t help anymore, but to take you to the shrink almost by grabbing you by the hand and taking you to the shrink. So eventually, that’s how I got out, I finally got several psychiatric assessments, and a total of three assessments that I had to go through. And I had to keep to my story. I had to really develop a killer character for a depressed and unstable individual. I started telling them things like, I got drunk, and I violently, you know, hit my wife or something, you know, I started making up a lot of that stuff. And there really got into the character, I really, I just realized that I am to take this to the extreme as far as I can take it. Otherwise, they’re not going to take me seriously. Because I mean, this, the way, the way they build the system,

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is, if you’re sort of complaining, no one’s going to listen, if you’re sort of asking for something, you’re never going to get it. But if you’re going through extreme, you know, like actions, and you really just go out of your own way. And then they have to like it just something they can’t ignore, because you start to ruin it for everyone else. Because you start inspiring other rebels, you know, so yeah, there were many times that I told my superior to go fuck himself. There were many times when I just left, you know, like, it’s a closed military facility. But I just left in a tin. I took my gun with me to my rifle. Although I had no permission to do it. They put me in jail, I got out of jail. They put me there, they sent me to trial to military trial, you know, and they said, you know, basically, you know, stop doing it. And that was the message, stop doing it. Or we’re gonna throw you into, you know, you’re gonna go to jail for a long time, which the maximum term is six months. But you know, I was so desperate to get out that I was like, you know, what, if I have to pay six months to get out of an army service that would otherwise keep me there for three to five years, I’m willing to pay that. I’m willing to pay that, although again, I didn’t really want to go to jail. But at the time, it was pretty much willing to do anything. Because I knew that I was in a bad place. There wasn’t for me, I was missing out on life. I already knew what internet marketing wasn’t, I wanted to build my business. And I just had different plans. And for the very first time in my life, I actually felt encouraged that I could go and pursue them, that my needs were above the needs of the state, that my needs were above the opinion of my mother, that my needs mattered more than whatever anyone else told me that I shouldn’t be thinking. And I think that served me well. One obvious positive for me was discipline. One thing that that this sort of structure,

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instills in you a sense of discipline, and a sense of completing the assignments and the tasks you are given. But I was always like that. So the army kind of highlighted that for me. But it was always like that even when I was a kid, like you never had to remind me that I needed to do my homework. He never had to ask me twice to go take out the trash. Like I was, I was super sensitive to my responsibilities as a member of a unit, be it my family, be it the inner circle that I belong to in my social relationships, or be in the army in my platoon. Like I was never the one to keep others waiting. I was never the one to two otherwise betray

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the trust of my army buddy who relied on me like if me and a buddy of mine went on to say do rounds, right. And he wanted to sleep a bit like I would actually take responsibility and say, okay, you’ll sleep. I wake up in 20 minutes and we switch up like there was never a scenario where someone couldn’t rely on me. And I think that is one of the reasons why it was so difficult for me to embrace the absolute

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opposite behavior that would be required for me to get out. Because it required me to take a big, stinking steaming dump on pretty much everyone around me.

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You know, I had to ignore everyone else’s needs, I had to ignore my superiors and I had to ignore my friends. I mean, it even got to a point where I lost friends. They just didn’t get me, like one of my best buddies back then in the academy. Also, his name is also Igor.

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He’s also from Ukraine. Like he just stopped talking to me, he stopped picking up the phone, he thought I was crazy. And he didn’t want to, you know, he didn’t want to continue that friendship. And even though he recognized that I was doing this with a purpose, he basically couldn’t accept it. So

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thank you for listening to the list building lifestyle, getting access to the previous episodes, the transcript of today’s show, as well as other exclusive content at listbuildinglifestyleshow.com. Also, remember to claim your free copy of my bestselling book at www.igorsbook.com. It explains how I made millions with list building starting from scratch. Plus, I’ll give you $3,000 worth of free bonuses, including my best landing page templates, email, swipe files, and traffic blueprints. Go to www.igorsbook.com. Now to claim your free package.