Being Your Best Self with Kamal Ravikant

Coming to you from the center for Social Confidence in Portland, Oregon, welcome to Shrink for the Shy Guy Helping men everywhere go from social anxiety to social domination with your host, Dr. Aziz.

Hey, welcome to today's episode of the show. Today we're gonna be talking more about how to get on your own side, how to love yourself. We're going to be continuing with an interview that I did with author Kamal Ravikant, author of the best selling book Love Yourself like youe Life Depends On It. And if you haven't listened to that first half of the interview, I would encourage you to pause this and go back and do that because you're going to want to catch up and get the foundation of what we're talking about. And also at the end of last week's episode, the action step was to decide to commit to being on your own side, to loving yourself. And I encourage you to try it out. So I'm curious, how did it go? Was it easy? Was it hard? Did you forget about it a day later? And if so, that's information too, right? Because we just forget about it because we then go back to being critical or hard on ourselves and it's really just a form of staying in an old negative pattern. What did you find out? Because I want you to really notice what it's actually like to take these ideas and things we're talking about and turn them into your reality, turn them into your experience. Because if you do that, then your life transforms and that's what I want for you. So we're going to continue on with that interview and then we're going to conclude with an action step as well for this episode. So let's dive right back in.

Expert interview.

I'm curious. So back when you were really struggling, your personal commitment was to love yourself. What is your one of your main or primary personal commitments? Now.

One I've played with that actually really serves me is to be my best self. Where it's really the simple as, like, if I'm in a situation and I just remind myself, what would my best self do? And then I can choose to do that or not.

But it creates that moment of reflection to ask and to.

See and to know, to know what I'm capable, it's not like I'm being my best self. It's like, what would my best self do? And then I, you know, sometimes I do it. It's great. Far more than I would otherwise.

Yeah, I love that. Wow, that's really good.

Thanks.

Yeah. So let's talk a little bit More.

About, by the way, that works for any situation, right. If you think about it, like from a situation where, let's say I'm being shy. What would my best self do? My best self would go through it and just face it, right? And so then I can choose and it's great. Or it could be about anything, man. It could be about writing, could be about work. It could be a working out. It could be sitting at a meal and like, you know, someone puts. And I'm eating healthy and someone puts in front of me something very unhealthy but very tasty. What would my best self do? You know? Yeah, immediately everyone, Everyone ultimately knows what their best self would do. Right. And then we can make that choice. And you know what? Eventually we start making that choice is we do become our best self. Ta da.

Yeah, I love it. As you were talking, I was thinking about this morning. I was with my two boys. They're 1 and 3. And my wife was at a workout class. And I was like, trying to make the breakfast and trying to get a smoothie ready and trying to do all this stuff. And my older son was, in order to get more playtime and attention with me, was pushing his younger brother down. And I was like, sometimes intervening and, you know, sometimes just letting, like, the call of the wild unfold. Like, okay, is he really hurting him or not? Okay, I'm just gonna keep making this. And then I realized as you were saying that, like, my best self, what I would do there is at multiple instances there, I would have literally stopped what I was doing and actually played with them more and let things, whatever, I don't know, get messier or have my wife have to do more and make a smoothie or something when we got, you know, whatever, figure it out. But there's this. So I just love that question. Like, as soon as I. You said it, I thought it. Multiple images came into my mind of what my best self would do. So that's. That's very. It's like there's the I love myself or loving yourself practice. And then what my bell self do, at least for me, is like, almost like, how do I express or transmit more love to others?

Yeah. Or just. It doesn't have to look. Yeah, whatever. In the moment, you know? And often it can be love to yourself. Because, look, you know, my best self, like, look, I'm sitting right now. I'm going to the gym today, right. And I have a lot of meetings and stuff, but I have like a break here and there for a half hour. And if I. And I don't really feel like going to the gym, what would my best self do? He would go to the gym in that half hour break, wouldn't he? And so I'm going to go. It's a great. I mean, that question could change your life, man. That simple one.

Yeah. I love it. So let's explore more in. You mentioned a little bit earlier that Rebirth tells a story to share some of these ideas. And one of the themes of Rebirth is to face our fear. I'm curious to hear more about that and other themes. Maybe even if self love is a theme in Rebirth. Anything you'd like to share about your literally what's in the book or your experience of writing the book or how you wanted to share more about that?

Yeah. So Rebirth is a very, very special book. It's written as a fable, but with some very, very important life lessons woven in. Because I really do believe that fundamentally we as human beings learn through stories. Look at kids. How do you teach your kids? You tell them stories at night. How was knowledge passed around before the printing press? You know, before writing, it was all oral storytelling in every culture. And there's something that our brains are wired to learn from stories. So I'm a big believer in not reading for the sake of entertainment. I mean, but if you can mix entertainment with life lessons woven in that grow throughout the book so the reader, by the time they're done, they've actually absorbed and they've seen the effect those life lessons have had on the character characters in the book. So one of the key things, it's called Rebirth and the subtitle is a fable of love, forgiveness and following your heart. I also wanted to put it facing your fears, but it got too long. But ultimately it's really about facing your fears, which if you face your fears, all this comes naturally. Loving forgiveness, you know, all of that, like lack of forgiveness comes from fear. Lack of love comes from fear. Not following a heart, that comes from fear. So that's a very important thread woven into the book about facing our fears. And one of the key things is recognizing it. This is fear. Oh, hello, fear. And then realizing that what fear is not and how to actually, there's no overcoming, there's a recognition. The recognition alone of fear dissipates a lot of the power it has. It's really funny how that works. A lot of times we think of fear as us, but if you start making fear, realizing fear is just a mental pattern that's running, that's trying to be Protective of the ego that's trying to protect you from something that doesn't exist. You know, once you start to realize that really internal, just do that again and internalize it. That alone changes your whole relationship with it.

Yeah. And when you say something that doesn't exist, as in what we're afraid of is not going to happen or it's not really threatening, what do you mean?

I mean, I'd say both. Most fear. What was that? I think it was a famous Mark Twain quote and I'm going to, like, mangle it. Something like, I've had many fears in my life and I think a few of them came true. You know, like something like that. It's like most fears don't come true, first of all. Second of all, if they do, they don't destroy us. And we learn that, oh, okay. It wasn't, you know, I think we attach a lot more emphasis to the result of an action than really needs to be. For example, like, I was at some party the other day and I saw this woman walk by me. She was pretty, so I smiled at her. She just was very rude. She walked back, she walked past and she just sat down. And I thought, huh, Is that about me or is it about her? It's about her. Whereas one point in my life I would have thought it was about me.

Yes.

There's nothing about a nice, friendly guy, you know, like, who's just smiled, you know, it's about. It's her. It's her thing. And whereas at one point in my life it would have been like, well, what's wrong with me? Why isn't she smiling at me? Smiling back at me. It's just funny, man. Fear. It's all perspective.

Yes. We're going to pause right here for one moment, take a quick break, and return to our interview with Kamal Ravikant.

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Yes, it reminds me, I was reading a book just this morning. Actually, I'm trying to remember the name of it, but it was written by this sociologist who did a study about rejection and how anytime we feel like someone cares less about the relationship than we do, there's the potential to feel rejected. But it's not necessarily that they actually don't care. It's just our perception of that. And one of the examples he's using is in this, even if you don't have a relationship, like you don't have a relationship with this woman, but there's this little micro potential. And if she doesn't respond well, you know, she doesn't value the relationship as much as I do or the potential of one. And our interpretation determines whether we feel rejected. And in the past, there would have been this like, oh, it's me, it's me.

And you know what's interesting is like that thing with keeping personal commitments to yourself. Your confidence improves and you naturally start realize your. Your own value. I mean, you realize your own value. Those kind of things don't bother. You realize, if you know your own value, why are you gonna put yourself down for someone else's behavior towards you? Yeah, yeah, that's huge, man. It's like something I look back at my life and I'd say the times when I made the biggest mistakes is when I forgot my own value. And it's something I struggle with. You know, it comes up. I mean, look, I'm not some, some guru sitting up in the mountains who's conquered loving himself. And I'm just sitting there in constant bliss. I'm just a guy who's like, trying to do his best, right? And who's lucky enough that I figured out how to love himself and does it more often than not. And it's changed his life. But I still struggle. I still do deal with this stuff. But, you know, I remember once I was going through something and I was talking to a dear friend of mine. She said, kamal, you know what your problem is? I'm like, what? She's like, you just, you forgot to love yourself. Go do your own damn work. I was like, oh, shit. She was so right. I went back into it and it changed everything again, you know, and it's like it's been. We remember on value, and I don't think we can force learning like force, okay, now I recognize my value. I'm more than enough, blah, blah, blah. I think it's by being a certain way when that becomes internalized, you know, if you become a person who keeps their word to themselves, if you become a person who actually, you know, faces their fears, if you become a person who keeps his word to others, person who's just constantly growing, my God. How can you not be aware of your own value?

Yeah, so that's really interesting. So it's almost like the someone might think of self esteem. It's like, well, you like yourself, you love yourself. If you have high self esteem, you imagine that other people are going to respond reasonably well to you and not automatically reject you. And loving saying I love myself, it almost sounds like that's the, you know, the core work. But it all that leads to these other things that you just mentioned that then create more of a deep knowing of your value. More, more often than not.

Yes, yes. Yeah. I mean it all comes from fundamental basic things, man. Like since we were babies we've known love, you know, like something we always crave, right. And now imagine starting to give it to yourself first. I mean it doesn't mean the craving for love another goes away. I mean we're human beings, we just, you know, like it's, you know, romantic love is an absolute beautiful thing and to strive for which fills a different part of us. But loving ourselves, no one else can feel, no one else can fill that. Only we can. And when we come from that place, it's. We have far more to give than too. You know, we draw better, we're better, we just are a better version of ourselves.

So let me ask you this because I know that there's someone listening right now who's like, yeah, I want to, but I just, I just can't love myself. You know, there's like. And I don't know if they're just not quite ready yet or they haven't experienced enough pain yet. And maybe it's just that has to unfold because to me Your story resonates 100% in the sense that I didn't get fully determined to make a decision to get on my own side until the self hatred was pushing me to kill myself. And then it was like, okay, here we go, we gotta figure something out. This is obviously not gonna end well. So I don't know if it's just, well, you gotta wait it out until there's more pain. Is there anything though that can help people get to that place of really making that decision and that commitment?

That's a great question actually. And I've thought a lot about it, right? So I get, you know, I put my email addresses, address in all my books. I get emails, I've like thousands and thousands of emails from readers. I've seen what the work does and I've had emails from people who were at the same place. I've had emails from people who were just doing just fine and applied this. It works. You Know, wherever you are in life, it works. But you have to want it that you can't. I can't force anyone. Right. You have to. It's like you can't make someone grow or be better. They have to want it. Right? Yeah, that's. That's a choice. Now, fundamentally, comes down to choice, right? That personal commitment. You know, one thing I little mental hack I use is sometimes if I get frustrated, if I get frustrated, I'm actually part of me internally gets happy because I know I'm happy about something and eventually I'm going to just get so dissatisfied, I'm going to do something to change it. So you can actually. One can sit down, think about all the things in their life that are not working or they're unhappy about because they're not loving yourself and get frustrated and then make that commitment. I think that's one hack. Or just become a person, start with commitments and make commitment to this, but really make yourself want it. No one can force that. I don't think any online seminars or courses can do that. You just have fundamentally, all these things have to come within you. But I don't think one needs to be desperate. Honestly, one can be in any place. Like, look, I've made this commitment again and again many times. Sometimes when things are going great and it just launches me higher. So it doesn't have to be like, I have to hit bottom to do it.

Yes. And there's obviously, for the full kind of unfolding description, people, I highly recommend reading Love Yourself like your life depends on it. And let's cover the core teaching now before we conclude, which is one of them is to just in as many situations as much as possible, take time to tell yourself, I love myself. Is that right?

There's more to it than that, honestly. Because I think I've read some of the reviews and the people who pan the book get fixated on it. It's not just that. It's more like there's a practice, there's a meditation, there's a cushion, there's a technique, the mirror technique I use that they all compound. Right. But the fundamental is like when I'm walking around, for example, or I will actually make myself feel light coming from above and make myself. And I will tell myself I feel, feel, and make myself feel it, that I love myself. I mean, I can fake it. Anyone can. Emotions are manufactured, man. It's like, really, we think like, we're not actually slaves to our emotions. We create them. We can actually create and uncreate our emotions. So it's an emotion I work on creating until it becomes actually like more of a normal. Like my normal state. You know, it's just another mental loop. It's just more neurons wiring together and firing together. But someone can start with that simple. I've had a lot of readers do this and it really shifted. Then they can go. But I realized that not everyone has to do the full practice. They can start with just the very basic. With the very basic they can do. And I think back, what is the very basic I started with, which is really, I just started repeating in my head, I love myself. I love myself. Rather than all the other crap that was going in my head about being miserable, feeling like a failure, this, that I just. Every time one of those thoughts would come, I would shift to I love myself. Eventually you start to at least get rid of, like your negative thoughts aren't ruling you anymore. This is one thought. And that alone starts to shift things.

We're going to pause for one more moment here, take a quick break, and then return in just a moment.

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And what I'm hearing too is that you want to be experimenting with different things so that it's not just some by rote thing that use. I love myself. I love myself. I didn't work. You know, screw that. It's.

Well, no, you. I mean, if you're gonna do it, do it all out.

Yeah.

All right. Don't do it half ass. You do half ass, you get half ass results. You know, if you're gonna do something like that, if it's something that important, you know, give it all.

Yeah.

And you know, it's like, yes, I've been hitting myself for like 35 years. And now I tried loving myself for a day. Didn't work to screw it. You know, I mean, think about it that way, right? You're going up against the river, up, you know, up the waterfall. It's going to take work, but it works. Yeah, but you have to give it, you know, what you got.

Yeah. I find that so true in many different situations where I'll have so many tools and ways that I help people, and then I'll be struggling with something, and I'll be like, well, did I actually sit down? Did I actually sit down and meditate or did I do this journaling thing? Like, am I actually doing any of these things? And I'm like, oh, no. Okay. Well, these tools don't apply and don't work unless you apply them. And something that you said earlier, which is like, we don't reach a point where we win at life, and then it's just kickback. It's done. You know, it's like, you got to keep applying, keep working, keep doing the work.

Yeah, Yeah. I just. I'm gonna have to, like, write a chapter somewhere about that. Life is not an Instagram selfie. You know, like, something like that. Just. Life is far more complicated, and it's messy and it's beautiful. And, look, we're gonna go through things in our life that are kind of make us sad and miserable, and that's part of being a human. You know, when you love yourself doesn't mean you stop feeling unhappy. You know, when people. Look, my grandmother died a year and a half ago. I was very close to her. I was very, very sad. I used to wake up crying. And that's good, you know, I should feel that. You know, I don't want to be a narcissistic psychotic who doesn't feel when, you know, those things in life happen. But that meant that, you know, like, look, it was a loss of something beautiful in my life.

Yeah.

But that's also. Loving myself is letting myself feel those emotions. You know, let yourself feel the fear, but recognize fear for what it is. And fear is. Oh, hello, fear. Here you are again. Come sit. I'm still gonna do this.

Yeah. I love that. Welcoming to the table. So, obviously, for a deeper study of this, I'd highly recommend the book Love Yourself like youe Life Depends on it. And where would people find that as well as your new book? Is there a particular place that would be best? Just Amazon, Audible. What would you suggest?

Yeah, just Amazon. I mean, Rebirth is available. I sold it to one of the biggest publishers in the world. So it's available in bookstores everywhere and on Amazon as well. I mean you can learn more about it just go to rebirthfable.com and yeah, I worked very hard on these books and they're special books and I've seen look the first I can tell I did something special by the emails I get. The first email I got from a reader for Rebirth just blew me away and I knew I'd done something right and it was from a woman and she said I want to let you know that I just got out of prison about eight months ago and I've had a very hard, difficult time forgiving myself and getting and accepting my humanity. And your book helped me do that. Yeah, I'm very grateful to my readers when they reach out and they help me go on as a writer and continue on with this journey.

Yes. And that actually leads to one other question that I want to ask before we conclude for today. As a writer and I've written several books and I'm working on my next one. I'm always curious to hear from other writers. How do you deal with. You mentioned people panning the book, the critics, the haters. Not just like the oh it wasn't quite what I was looking for but one star.

The.

This was a total waste. This person's an idiot. Do you just ignore them? Do you treat it as a need for more of a self love practice and not taking things personally? Do you focus instead on the emails like this which are the power of the impact. What is your hack or way of dealing with those haters critics?

I mean honestly, I mean haters will they annoy me? But you know, cuz it's like I'm like you do you see, they don't understand. But then you know, it's like, like I'm not writing about politics, I'm not writing about anything. I'm writing about the fundamental human condition, how to be better. And you know, if they, and it's something that I think a friend of mine told me, I think comes from Taylor Swift and I was just brilliant. It's like haters gonna hate. That's what they do. You know what I've learned is actually when I read reviews I can tell a lot about the person by what they say in the review. And if they don't, if they, if they didn't like it, if it's a review about like what didn't work for them, what worked for them that tells me about this kind of person versus just people who are just panning stuff, you know, it's just haters gonna hate. It's like if you give to the world, like, no one's gonna. There's nothing you can do that 100% of people are gonna love you. Right. And in fact, I think if you create something where there's like a lot of people love it, but then some people hate it, you've done something. Right, because you have actually set off something inside people. So it's. It's annoying. But, you know, like remembering that haters gonna hate. It's like I have a Facebook page I set up, and if someone actually leaves something, a negative comment on it, and it's not about me, usually they leave about something else or whatever. But like full on negative, that has serves no purpose. I just ban them and delete it. Not allowed. I wouldn't allow that in my life. I would allow that anywhere online that I. That's mine, you know, don't want energy.

Yeah. So there's an act of taking care of yourself and the people that are in that group.

Yeah. Yeah. And like, look, when you read reviews, I'm fortunate that most of the reviews are really, really positive and the negative ones, I read them to see if there's anything to learn from there, but otherwise it's just haters gonna hate. And you just continue. But you just continue doing the best work you can, being your best self. That's all we got.

Well, I love it and I'm glad that you, you know, and it's about that, facing the fear of that. And that does happen. You survive. But I'm so glad that you. Doesn't stop you.

Right.

Because I benefited greatly from the first book. And I'm, as I mentioned before, the interview, just got rebirthed. And I'm very excited about learning and growing from that. And I texted my wife just earlier this morning. I was like, I'm gonna be interviewing Kamal. Is there anything you want me to ask him? Cause she read your book not too long ago, I think I read it a couple years back, but she just read it maybe, maybe a month ago, and she loves it. She responded a little bit while later. She says, well, I can't think of any questions. I just love him. So I wanted to pass that along.

I just want to say thank you. Thank you so much.

And thank you for doing what you do and putting your heart, a message from your heart out into the world. And I know it's an ongoing journey, and I'm just so glad you're doing what you're doing. And You're a bright light in the world and there's so much more coming through you. So thank you so much for that and for being here.

Thank you for doing this.

That brings us to the end of the interview and your action.

Time for action.

Your action step for today is to make a list. And the way I'd like you to make this list is quickly. So when you sit down to write it, do it. You can do it by hand with a pen and paper or on your computer or your phone, but the idea is that you just write quickly without stopping. So it's the idea is this kind of brings out your unconscious and doesn't give you too much time for your intellect to get in there and mess things up. So here's the list. You ready? The stem statement, which you're gonna start, every item on the list is gonna be a follow up to this statement, if I truly loved myself. And then you're just gonna write out again and again the conclusion to that statement. If I truly love myself, I would be on my own side. If I truly love myself, I would take care of my body. If I truly loved myself, I would give myself a break. If I truly loved myself, I would put my hand on my heart and remind myself about how amazing I am. If I truly love myself. And then just fill in. If stuff doesn't make sense to you, if it feels like it's totally random, doesn't matter. Just fill it in again and again and do it at least 20 times. Just notice what comes out. You might be surprised, you might be amazed, and it might give you some guidance on what you could do right now to start loving yourself more. Awesome. Thanks for being with us today and I look forward to speaking with you in the next episode. Until then, may you have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you're awesome.

Thanks for listening to Shrink Shrink for the shy guy with Dr. Azeez. If you know anyone who can benefit from what you've just heard, please let them know and send them a link to shrinkforthshyguy.com for free blogs, ebooks and training videos related to overcoming shyness and increasing confidence, go to social confidencecenter.com.

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