15. Kamal Ravikant: Author of Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On It

Hello, Book Thinkers family, and welcome to episode number 15. Time flies of our brand new podcast, Book Thinkers: Life-Changing Books. During each episode, I interview some of the world's top authors, and as a listener, you can expect to discover new books, new mentors, and new resources that you can use to achieve more and to live better. In this episode, I have the pleasure to interview the author Kamal Ravikant. Kamal has meditated with the monks in the Himalayas, served as a US Army infantry soldier, walked 550 miles across Spain, and co-founded several companies and a venture capital firm in Silicon Valley. He is a man of many talents. Our conversation touches on his new revised version of a book that I've come to really love. It's titled Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends on It. This book helps you to commit to loving yourself and how to make that love last for a very, very long time. By the end of this conversation, I hope that you've come to respect Kamal as much as I do. This is a little bit of an uncomfortable conversation for some people. Loving yourself, it is the ultimate show of vulnerability, but it's very important. So without further ado, please enjoy my conversation with Kamal Ravikant. Kamal, thank you so much for joining the Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books Podcast today. How are you?

I'm great. Good, man. It's, uh, thank you for having me on a podcast with such a title, man. Really appreciate it.

Yeah, I'm excited. And so for any members of the Book Thinkers family that don't know who you are, can you tell everybody a little bit about yourself?

Who am I? Well, I'm an author. So I've written so far, I've published 3 books, uh, Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends on It, Live Your Truth, and Rebirth. Rebirth's a novel. The first 2 are nonfiction. And I'm also a VC where I run a venture capital firm and I invest in startups in Silicon Valley. Uh, my career was building startups in Silicon Valley. 2 very, very unrelated things. I don't write about startups or investing or anything like that. I write about human truths that have improved my life.

Well, human truth is a perfect subject matter for this podcast. And I remember, so I read the original version of the book years ago, and I just listened to this updated version now, just to give everybody a little bit of context that's listening. And so you actually start this new version, maybe you did in the old one, but you start this new version by saying that you almost didn't publish the book and that you were terrified. So can you tell that story to everybody?

Yeah, it's in the new version. And the new version came out is basically 7 years later since the original version. It's like about 4.5 times the size of the original version, which was pretty condensed. And it's not filler. It's like the real thing, all that I held back and all that I've learned in 7 years from connecting with readers. But, you know, I was a Silicon Valley guy who was on the side. I was teaching myself to write fiction, literary fiction. And that's what I would do in all my free time was just deconstruct the greats and the great writers and learn from them. And, but this little book, the original version I put out, Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends on It, was something I never intended to write. It was something that I just was sharing some brief things that have really transformed my life, some internal work I'd done to friends. And one of them convinced me to write it down. And I said, okay, I'll write it down as a book because I had already been taking notes. And it's James Altucher, who I think very highly of, who's a dear friend. And he said, you must publish it. And I committed to him that I would. So I did. But man, I was terrified. I thought I was going to be the biggest laughingstock in Silicon Valley because I'd just gone through a massive— you know, what, like a company I'd built had failed and I lost everything. And I was not— you know, to say I was not feeling good about myself would be an understatement. I was pretty much at a bottom. And So I wrote about what saved me, about what working on my inside, you know, what it did. And, but no one did that in Silicon Valley at the time. So I really thought I would just be ridden out of Silicon Valley backwards on a donkey. You know, like, what are you doing? Like putting this kind of stuff out. Instead, book took off. It became, uh, for a while it was the number one self-help book on Amazon, just self-published, no marketing, nothing, just people tweeting about it, Facebooking it. It really connected, you know, cause it was from the heart. It was true. There was no fluff. There was no, So I'm not a self-help author. You know, even when I sold the updated version to HarperOne, which is HarperCollins' self-help arm, you know, I told them, look, I'm not a self-help guy. I'm a guy that lives life and writes from experience. I'm also trained to write literary fiction. So I'm a writer first, who just happens to be writing in self-help. But I think which is why this does well, because it's coming from that perspective. It's It's pretty real. Yeah.

And so you, you were terrified because in Silicon Valley and especially the modern business world, it's not very common to talk about what's happening on the inside, especially because this modern-day entrepreneur is stoic and they defeat all odds.

Always killing it. Yeah.

Always killing it.

Yeah. Especially this is a— this came out in 2012, I think. So more than 7 years ago, no one was talking about this. You know, no one was talking about like just working on your inner game. And this was about the inner game and it was using love as the inner game, you know, something I came up with for myself. But yeah, I really thought that I couldn't, I would never be able to raise money in the Valley again. Yeah. I basically like decided, you know, basically I'm going to turn the fact that I was just starting my career by putting out this book.

Interesting.

But it was real and it was true. And I had made my— given my word to a friend. So I did and changed my life, changed, especially changed my life as a writer, you know?

Yeah. James is a member of the Book Thinkers family. He's followed us for a little while and I've chatted back and forth with him a little bit. I'd love to have him on the show soon. But so you just mentioned the word love. It's a word that you chose for yourself. And in the book, you Talk a little bit about why you chose the word love. So my question to you today is, why did you choose the word love instead of something that was maybe a little bit more palatable for that online audience?

Like, like gratitude or whatever, or improve, all that. Because it came from a very pure place. It came from a place where I was like, I'm done with this. I mean, like, I was in a miserable place and I'm just gonna get out of it or die trying. And I sat down and I wrote a vow to myself and I was in a very, very, very like desperate place. And what's interesting in those moments, what's pure inside comes out. I didn't plan it. I wasn't thinking, you know, I'm going to love myself. I was thinking more like how I'm going to change everything around. And what came out was a vow to love myself. And I do believe in the power of commitment. So I'd made a commitment to myself. I made a vow to myself. So I had to set about, I had to like basically keep it. And no one taught me how to do that. So I had to figure out myself. So the love, love, and late, I mean, look afterwards in writing the books, you know, I have the gift of hindsight where I can write about these things. And I also have a degree in biology where I can look at the neuroscience of what I was doing in my head, but it's all the gift of hindsight. But in the moment it was pure. It was, it came from deep within. It wasn't like the ego, the Kamal that runs, that thinks he runs the show. It was something deeper that really runs the show. That's where it came from. Yeah.

Well, it's amazing that you were able to tap into that and then you were able with, you know, with a moment of courage and with James's help, you're able to get it out there. And then, so the response has been fantastic from the general population, but what have you seen in the startup realm, in the VC realm?

Like, dude, I'm a huge fan. It's interesting. There's huge fans of this book in the startup world. Like I've had, I won't name the name, but my brother called me a few years ago. He's like, oh, there's a— he named the guy who's known as pretty much the most successful angel investor in Silicon Valley. You name it, every big— Facebook, Google, all those, he was early in those. Very, very respected, very well loved. And he called my brother, he's like, do you think my brother— he said, you know, I gave your brother's book to my 16-year-old daughter. And he was like, do you think Kamal would mind talking to me? And my brother calls me laughing. He's like, look, people would kill to get in this guy's calendar. And he's calling me asking if you would mind talking to him. It's very, very interesting. Right. And he and I become good, good friends. And what's amazing is when you share human truths, when you share like personal human truths without— I didn't try, you know, you can see in the book, I don't try to make myself look good. You can see when Kamal's wise, when Kamal's a shit show, you know, and I am very, very open about it. And when you do that, you connect with people beyond the boundaries of job titles or net worth and so forth. So actually, the response in Silicon Valley has really surprised me. It's been really good. I've met many people who've come to me and said, like, look, I read your book and it really helped me. That's been interesting. I never expected that.

While you're investing, do you Look for a certain quality or a certain level of connection with an entrepreneur or a group of entrepreneurs in this same vein, like loving themselves, comfortable?

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Most investors don't. I mean, most entrepreneurs, the best entrepreneurs are very dark-driven people. If you want to make money in the game, you invest in them, you know? Like, no, most of them are like, are just overcoming their own personal demons and building companies. And that's the drive. That's where the drive comes from, man. No, see, I write these books about my own personal journey, what I've learned, sharing my human truths in a very practical way. And it's up to anybody who reads it to apply them. I write them in a way that it makes it very easy to apply to yourself. But I don't look for that in others. Everyone's got their journey. This is my journey. For investing, I've been basically— but I do bet on founders. I was actually writing a letter my next fund. And the one key thing I've learned is that my best investments have always been when I bet on a person. You know, you don't bet on a person in a crappy market, in a small market, but if you bet, you meet some special individuals, you're like, oh my God, they're born to build this. They're doing this. This is their life mission. Those are good to bet on. You know, those are because things— building a company is hard. There's never like all just perfect days. And you need someone who's like, really cares about what they're building to continue on. And if you look at all the major successes, it tends to be that way in any field. You know, they don't do it for the easy success. They do it because this is their thing. Yeah, absolutely. That's more what I look for. Okay. And those have actually also turned out to be my best investments.

Yeah, I hear about, I hear about decision-making through that lens pretty often in the startup space and It's great to hear that. Now bringing it back to the vow itself, I love myself. For people in the audience that are struggling and might not know if that is going to be a good fix for them or a good step in the right direction, what is the purpose of the vow and how can they apply it to their life?

Well, look, the vow came from a, from a deep place within me and I, and I, and the new version, I walk people through the process that I did to get to write their own vow. Right? Including a way to first forgive themselves for what they're carrying. Because you got to let go of what— you got to let go of what you're carrying before you can move forward. Right? So I walk people through this exercise that I do to forgive myself for what I'm carrying, and it works beautifully. And then you can write the vow. And why write a vow? Because to do anything great in life, you got to commit to it. You can't— you half-ass through life, you get half-ass results. You know, you only do it when you're inspired, you get half-ass results. But if you stick at it, if you commit to it and you do it every day, some days better than others or not, writing a book, building a company, raising a child, a great relationship, whatever, you commit to it. You put day in, day out. Same thing in the inner work. You know, we spend so much time, like, you know, you're a fit guy, like working on our bodies or eating healthy, whatever. But how much of our time do we spend working on our mind, on our heart, which literally drives the show? It drives the whole show and it's the one, and half, most of the time it's a shit show, right? And, and yet we spend the least amount of time on it. So this vow is basically a commitment one's making to themselves to actually work on that. And then, then, you know, I show you how to do it, how I've done it and how all these readers, you know, by now at least half a million readers have done, done it as well. And But you got to commit because if you don't commit and remember that commitment, life's going to get in the way. You're going to get lazy. It's the way with— I'll tell you, like, for example, with, you know, I'm usually pretty— I'm quite into fitness and health. I'll tell you, the last 2 months I've been like eating a lot of ice cream. I don't know why. I just discovered ice cream. I've just been loving ice cream and I've been eating like sourdough bread, which is one of my weaknesses, and it's showing in my body. Whereas I was like, okay, I got to go back to my standards for myself and my body, right? And how to do that? I just make— I've got— now I don't need to write these down, but I just kind of like internally commit and then it's done. Then I know it's done. Then I know I just won't eat it. You know, it's like the power of commitment. It literally changes your life. So that's what the vow is. The vow is one. And also there's something really special, something sacred about making a vow to yourself when you write it down on paper. There is something sacred about that act. There's, I don't know what it is, but every time I've done it, I've felt that. And I've known others who say the same thing because it's between you and whatever you believe life is between you and yourself. It is a pure, pure thing. And then you got to live it. It's a beautiful thing to do and to do consistently. It's probably the most transformative thing I've ever done. It's just making these kinds of commitments to myself.

It's also one of the most transformative things that I've ever done. And I've told this story a couple times, but just to give you a high-level look at it, I came from a place in all of my teens and very early 20s where I operated from a place of ego and insecurity. And so when ego and insecurity were running the show, I was making a lot of bad decisions and I wasn't fulfilled. I was not a happy person. I was sort of coasting through life and I was below average in just about every area that you could possibly come up with as a category. And then I discovered, so for me it was discovering personal development books as a genre and as a mechanism for transformation, but it was also discovering very early on because of those books, meditation and meditation/mindfulness took on a variety of different meanings for me. But just like what you're saying, I took a vow. I took a series of vows over the last couple of years and I wrote daily affirmations. I actually have a tattoo on my wrist that says 1, 2, and 3. And so every day I wake up—

Uh-huh.

Camera here. I don't know. But anyway, every day I'm saying 3 things that I'm grateful for. And that process started in an Evernote document. I would journal about 3 things and I said, I want a subconscious reminder. from a neurolinguistic standpoint. I want to be able to see this subconsciously a million times per day. And gratefulness, you know, that commitment, that vow to be grateful daily for me was really important. And so just for everybody in the audience as well as for you, you know, that, that kind of stuff has changed my life in a major way.

Yeah. It's, you know, it's so simple, right? It's so Occam's razor, right? It's a simple, it's a simple solution, but it's transformative. There's power in it. There's, there's, you know, we, we spent, we spent all this time like searching around for complicated solutions where like, it's fundamentally to change human, to change yourself. It's the basic simple stuff that's been around since the beginning of mankind. I'm not the first one to talk about love, right? Your mom must've told you that. Your grandmother must've told you that, you know, but it's like, it's just my version of sharing it. That's a simple, simple truth, man.

Yeah, it is. And do you see like this inner working, you know, this intentional inner work, this step in the right direction as something that's common among successful people or happy people?

Um, successful people, no, because a lot of, a lot of drive comes from insecurity. You know, most successful people I know are really, really screwed up in other ways. You know, they may be successful in one way, but it's very rare to find someone who's like holistically successful, right? What I find often is sometimes after one becomes successful, then they've met Maslow's hierarchy of needs, they're like, now what? And then they start exploring. Or some people have explored before and then go on to success. But I don't think success— Success doesn't mean that you're any better internally. Success is a metric from from capitalism. It's very easy to be capitalistic and do well, but does it make you a better human being? Does it make you better inside? I've met some very successful people, they're like really screwed up inside. They're like, oh my God, that's got to be dark in there. So I don't think those are correlated. Those are actually— Different things.

I can completely understand that, and I see it just like you do, especially in some of the books that I'm reading.

Yeah, it's funny because they said there is that cult these days of almost like worshiping entrepreneurs, you know, which I find almost interesting. Don't worship entrepreneurs. It's just don't worship hustling, you know, just go create what you want to create. But there's no need to worship the hustle. There's no need to The hustle doesn't make you any better, you know, just day in, day out, consistent step, one foot in front of the other, doing what you're meant to do. That makes you better. Um, because you end up worshiping the wrong metrics, because that means that you're only worshiping the ones who have that massive success. So if you don't have it, you really don't feel good about yourself.

Mm-hmm.

You know, um, you have no idea what's inside someone else, what they're living with, you know, what the price is, the price they've paid. No matter how good the Instagram looks, you know, really, the more show-offy— I would say the more show-offy the Instagram, the more of a shit show they are inside. Yeah, you know, I just correlated, you know, the people I know who are really, really well, they don't need— they don't feel the need to.

No, the fancy houses, the fancy cars, all that.

I mean, you can have all that and enjoy it, but they don't need to be showing it. The ones I know who who are good with it are just busy enjoying it.

For people who would like to explore themselves, they understand a little bit about the importance of a vow. Now, can you tell everybody about sort of staring in the mirror and saying, I love yourself, into your own eyes and what that experience did for you and how often you would do that?

Well, it's a small, small part of the practice. So what I ended up doing was, uh, after I made the vow, I sat there and I'm like, look, now I got to figure this out. I got to actually figure out how to love myself. Right. And how do I do that? I don't know. So I just started working on things in my head and I started trying things. And if it worked, I went deeper. And when it stopped working, I threw it out. You know, I was in a place where I only care about results. You know, that's where the startup world has really been good for me. Because you only care about results. You don't care about, you don't care about, you know, like, we're not big fans of PR and all that because that just doesn't move the dial. Doesn't move sales, doesn't move app downloads. In the same way, I was like, does it change my inside? Does it make me feel better? Does it make my life better? And I'm a sample size of one, but I know my life, I know my inside. And so in that process came, I came up with a series of practices that I did daily that just started shifting everything. And they all built upon each other. They're not separate. That's one thing I'm very clear about in the expanded version. Like, And they don't take much time. And we're talking like minutes during the day. We're not talking— yet it changes your insights. So what is that worth? So the mirror thing was just built upon, it's just one of the practices built upon the fundamental practices, which is I would actually, at one point, I would just like look at myself in the mirror in my left eye. And I would just for like 5 minutes, I would just tell myself that I love myself. And it's very interesting. A lot of people have a hard time doing it because it brings up a lot of like baggage we carry about our physical selves. about ourselves. But it's a beautiful way to actually eventually— it starts to make you fall in love with yourself when you start falling in love with your own eyes. And it happens. It's a very, very interesting shift. So the way I've developed the practice, there's different shifts happening to you. One on your physical self, one on your internal self, your spiritual self, whatever. And they just kind of like compound. And next thing you know, you're walking around just feeling really good about this. And where you were feeling not so good, maybe less than a week ago. or a few days ago. So the mirror practice is that, you know, but it's not a standalone, you know? Yeah.

It makes total sense to me. And you're, you're strengthening neural pathways. You talked a minute ago about your background in biology. And so that's one of the most fascinating things that I've found about personal development is that repetition helps strengthen the pathway. And it's not about forgetting past trauma. It's about strengthening your relationship to Things within, within your brain. And can you explain a little bit about what that might mean to somebody?

Actually, I go into that in the, in the new book as well, is about like using this to actually overcome past trauma. And I talked about some, you know, like I didn't have like a rosy childhood and I talked about how I've used this to go on, go and actually clear that up for myself, right? Using the same exact practices, just focused towards the childhood self. And, but you know, it's, there's a classic thing in neuroscience, neurons that fire together wire together. Like most of our, most of our thoughts, we walk around thinking are just habitual patterns. We think we're thinking, we're really not. We're just running old loops and patterns from childhood, from memories where you're fighting against someone in your head, or you're feeling good about something. You're thinking about a TV show. These are just patterns running in your head. So my whole thing that I discovered for myself was just find one key pattern that changes everything. And for some reason, the deeper part of me had chosen love. So all I did was just start reinforcing and creating and reinforcing this pattern of love for myself with thought, with feeling, with emotion, with these practices. And after a while, these patterns start to run themselves. And what I've also learned is though, like, you know, just like going back to fitness, you know, I'm eating ice cream for a couple of months, right? Um, your body starts to show that. Right? Versus same thing with the mind. You know, if you work on your mind for a while and then you stop, and now you, you know, you're just doing the version of the ice cream for the mind where you're just not feeling good, it's going to start to show after a while. So this requires consistency. That's why I made this into a practice. That's just a simple thing done daily. It's like, if you want to be fit all your life, you're going to have to work out. You're going to have to eat healthy. Same thing with your mind, which is the most important thing.

In the book, you talk about when you start to coast, you're putting yourself at risk. And by implementing these methods and consistently doing them, just like going to the gym, you're helping to prevent yourself from failing.

Not failing. You're improving.

Improving.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because every day you go to the gym, you're improving. Even if you give up the gym for 10 years, if you go for another year, you'll improve, right? It's not not failing. It's very, very different. But if you don't go to the gym for a year after you've gone for 10 years, you'll show. And then you're going to start up again and it's, and it's kludgy in the beginning. The weights that you thought you could do, you know, they get, they get all of a sudden gravity got— gravity increased and they got heavier. Right. Um, it's same with the mind. So what I call coasting, and I've been very guilty of it, and I show that in the book, the results of that and then having to do it all over again is that your mind goes that way. Your mind falls to old patterns or your mind goes to the negativity of what's happening. currently and you focus on that versus what is the truth. What really, you know, you, what the truth is feeling a certain way by yourself, feeling love, you know, whether you believe in God or you don't or whatever, you know, I tell people believe in God, then believe that God loves you. Walk around feeling that, you know, who are you to not love yourself if God loves you? You know, it's just like a fundamental primal thing that we all wired for that we just sort of forgotten as adults. And we look around searching for it, but we got to give it to ourselves first.

You have that simple inhale exhale with the words in the book that I wrote down. And so for me, um, mine is I love myself on the inhale and it's thank you God on the exhale. But like you talk about in the book, choose your word. It could be thank you life. It could be thank you in general. It could be—

Thank you. It could be nothing. It could just letting out the gunk. Right. And you notice it becomes a pattern and it's beautiful. You feel good. You know, you're basically— what you're doing is you're layering these patterns in your head. It's a very practical— it's very practical to do this. You notice after a while, and when I say a while, within days, that your mood shifts. You start to shift. Like, I've learned this hard time and time again because I've actually been the lazy guy. I'll do it, get really well, and I'll stop. And I let, you know, whatever's happening in life get to me. And it's a lesson that I like implore people not to learn the hard way like I have, you know, just if you find, if this works for you, just continue doing it, add to it on your own things. Like if I've taught you how to lift weights and then you discover Pilates, great, add to it, you know, you add to it, add to it, but may have a foundation for yourself on your inner game that you're always working on.

Do you have any mechanism of external accountability with regard to loving yourself or is it more just of a, is it feeling-based? It's, it's mindfulness-based.

It's not mindfulness-based. Mindfulness is a big word that's been used a lot. That means a lot of things and a lot of nothing. Ultimately mindfulness is nothing. If you're nothing, you're mindful. Mindfulness, if you think about it.

Um, the absence of thought.

There is no, I don't do external accountability. I do accountability to myself. Um, cause it's a vow to myself, but look, you know, what I tell people is take it and make it yours. If you want external accountability of someone like, hey, did you do the practice? Did you do this? Great. Do it. You know, I'm just someone who's always worked on himself enough that I can make commitments to myself and keep them.

Right.

But I find sometimes that it's fun to actually make it to another— like today I texted a friend of mine, I'm going to do a 3-day fast. That, hey, I'm gonna do a 3-day fast this weekend, because he might join me. And then we just kind of like, you know, text each other over the weekend, see how it's going, you know. So it's basically, there's nothing in here that's, that's like dogmatic, right? It's just like, take it, absorb it, make it your own, apply it, and then make it your own. Add your thing to it. Make it better. Email me and let me know how you made it better.

And you love hearing from fans, right? From readers of the books.

I mean, I get emails every day, man. They're heartbreaking, just heart-affirming, heartwarming, just like people all over the world, just how this book has affected them. It's— it'll blow your mind. Like, look, the last one I got, the one that really touched me, was like a couple of days ago, was this woman. She said like, um, she was molested till 9th grade and then she was sold to a drug lord and then was a prostitute. Yeah. Like real shit. Right. And then she said, and then she became a prostitute and she said, you know, she's not prostituting anymore. She's like living life. And she said, she's actually like, I'm very smart. I'm getting my G— she's actually getting her JD MBA. Right. You could tell by the way she wrote it, she's smart.

Yeah.

And she said, you know, but like one thing I always do is I will, I love cutting myself. I love the feeling of— she described the blood oozing out, kind of describing her pain. She said, after reading your book, it did for me what 11 years of therapy can do. Like, I stopped, I stopped cutting myself. I stopped. I don't, haven't done it in a week and a half, which is unheard of.

Wow.

And what she did was she applied one thing I talked about in there where I talked about a question I asked myself often, you know, which is, if I love myself, what would I do? Because the if means it takes out of the, takes out of the equation, well, come on, you don't love yourself. You don't have the if. And then, you know, the answer. So these are, you know, it's part of the practice. It was amazing. It just blows my mind. Um, the people that reach out to me and tell me the effects of my words on them, you know, people are really, it just, I have, I have huge, huge faith in the human condition and especially because of my readers.

And you said 500,000 copies now, 500,000 readers?

Over, over that.

It's amazing. And so what does that feel like knowing that your journey, it took that step and the encouragement from James and everything to get out there. And now you're receiving this input that your work has changed the lives of people like that. I mean, it must feel amazing.

It does, but it's weird, man. The human mind, my mind, you know, like you, you get these emails, you reply back and then, you know, I'm still me. And I don't walk around thinking, you know, look how awesome I am. You know, I'm changing lives. I don't think of myself that way. I'm always like, how can I be better? I'm always like, I'm pretty critical of myself. Like, how can I be better? Um, and so I don't walk around thinking that. It's what I, what I am. I'm just really touched. You know, sometimes someone will just like thank you or someone will have a question or sometimes it'll be a really dumb question unrelated to my books. And sometimes I'll answer, I won't. If it's interesting, I'll answer it. If it's, really silly, I probably won't, you know, cause I have tons of emails to go through and I want to respond to the people who are being sincere. Um, but it's, uh, it's beautiful. It's beautiful. It's, it's like, um, you know, it's the power of putting your true self out there. Like I put my true self out there in these books. You know, I was actually the newer version. I was really terrified of putting out there the last third that we talked about. I, you know, I'm showing you that I'm, Being a shit show and how I'm fixing it by using this, you know, in my mind. It does not make me look good.

You kick off with some pretty intense stuff.

Yeah, I know. And I'm sharing stuff from my childhood that I don't need the world to know, right? Why do I share it? Because one, I get emails from readers who are like struggling with those same things and I want them, I want people to know they're not alone. 2, it's like, look, no matter what you've been through, it's still, you're still a human being. You know, we're still the human mind. This works for me, this will work for you. And it's one human to another. And it's, uh, and it's beautiful in the modern day that your readers can reach out and then just tell the impact of it. It's, um, it feels good. It feels really good. You know, sometimes it's almost like I don't have the words to respond to them, how beautifully they've reached out to me. You know, so all I can say to them is thank you.

Yeah, it's almost like no response is necessary sometimes. And that last third of the book, we were talking before I pressed record, but I found it fascinating because in the world of personal development, or however you'd like to phrase the book, like, I, I don't see a writing style like that very often. It almost read as if it was fiction because we're so deep inside of your brain and your actions, and the cadence was perfect and I just thought it was really interesting.

Yeah. Thank you. It was, it was the hardest one to write, man, because it was the most, um, and I came close to cutting that section many times, you know, but it's, it's important because it's basically showing the practical application inside my head. So now like someone understands exactly how this whole thing works. Thank you. I worked, you know, I've worked really hard on this book.

Yeah. Well, it shows, it shows. And I love to hear that it's impacting so many people. I've shared it with a few people. I haven't really, I haven't followed up yet, but yeah, no, no problem. I mean, a book like this can help somebody out of a dark place. And you actually talk a little bit about pain in the book. There's this line that you say, you might say it a couple times, you say, pain doesn't make us unique, it makes me human. And our pain doesn't make me unique, it makes me human. And I thought that was really interesting. Like, it's a shared experience, and that's why it's okay to put this out in the world, because You're not the only person that's felt some of this stuff. And yeah, like we were talking about our society, um, sometimes you don't feel appropriate putting this stuff out into the world. It's not clean. It's not perfect. It's not cropped and edited for Instagram. And so, you know, people can identify with that in a big way.

Yeah, it's very, it's very, very interesting. You know, um, look, there's a lot of craft that went into it, you know, cause I taught myself for years to be a fiction writer. Um, so there's craft, but it's real. And, um, let me tell you, it's not easy writing that. It's not easy putting out to the world, you know, but I'll talk to anyone who's considering doing it. You know, it doesn't have to be a book. It could be anything, but it's the expression of you. That's when you get the real response. That's when you get the ones that can actually change your life, you know? So, and in the end, we only got us, we only got our own unique selves. So put your unique self out to the world. Don't try to be another person. You know, no single person I know extremely successful followed someone else's path. You know, they— the ones who've been the game changers, you know, you can be successful in certain fields, right, and just follow that particular path. But the game changers, every game changer I met who are like almost revered after a while, you know, they all did the unconventional, their own unique path. You know, which kind of tells you something.

Yeah, it does. It sort of reminds me of that airplane kind of sort of cliché, you got to put your mask on before you can assist other people. And the self-love and focusing on your journey probably has an indirect upward or beneficial impact on the people around you in a way that maybe you wouldn't think about.

It does.

You try to serve others first, but if you serve yourself, you are better.

Yeah.

And I love that.

You're better. It's different from, and it's, you know, some people will say, well, that's selfish. There's a very different, there's a difference between selfish love and self-love. And I think, um, that's one place where people get confused, but you know, everyone's got their own. I think self-love is, is, um, more peaceful, is more centered. It's more solid. You know, it ended up being more giving just naturally. You give more than if you're not.

Yeah, and I love, you know, I've read a lot about the reciprocal relationship between giving and receiving. And, you know, sometimes people just want to take, take, take, take, take. And oftentimes if you can give more, you can actually open yourself up to receiving more. And that karma relationship does exist. What are your thoughts on that?

I don't know, honestly. I mean, it sounds good.

Yeah, it does sound good.

Um, I think, look, um, when we give ourselves freely is, is when we're also, we also, if we give ourselves freely, we're more likely to be coming from a more secure place, you know? I don't know. I mean, look, it sounds good and it is good, but I don't know if I have any, any like life-changing thoughts on it at the moment.

Okay. Yeah. Awesome. Well, what I'd love to do before we wrap up is ask you about any books that have had a good impact on your life, a positive impact on your life. Are there any that come to mind?

Sure. The one that had a huge impact on me, I read I think near the tail end of college was The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho.

Amazing.

Huge impact on me. Huge impact on me. Like, I've bought dozens of copies, I think, over the years and given them away. And if someone hasn't read it, highly recommend it. Um, you know, I like books like that. I like The Little, uh, The Little Prince, you know, To His Sonic Superior. I like Illusions by Richard Bach. I like these fables that have like all these like little mystical life like life lessons woven into them. And outside of that, for me, it's been also been as a writer, it was Hemingway, uh, reading Farewell to Arms, just discovering what true clean, clear prose was and just how hard that is to really pull off. So as a writer, it was Hemingway. As a human being, it was, it was The Alchemist. It was Coelho and Richard Bach and Antonio de San Exupéry.

Yeah. Out of those, uh, The Alchemist is my favorite. And I've read that, I don't know, 4 times now maybe. I, it's had a big impact on me. And that's one of those books that 2 people can read and have completely different takeaways.

And that's a, that tells us a beautiful book, right? It's, uh, um, and you know, something beautiful is, uh, the publisher of Love Yourself is the same, is also the publisher of The Alchemist.

Oh really?

Which may, which was just beautiful. Cause it's like that book, I love that book so much. And the fact that they published The Alchemist as well, just, it's, That's awesome.

Yeah, that is special. Well, thank you so much for joining the podcast today. For people that want to learn a little bit more about you, where should they go? What should they do?

Well, I mean, my email's in the book. If you get the book, you know, you feel free to email me. Otherwise, I'm on the usual Twitter, Instagram, the usual, just my name, you know, Kumar Ravikant. I wish you best of luck at spelling it. But I think Google will fix it for you if you misspell it. That's the beauty of the modern age. You don't have to know how to spell anymore, how to do grammar anymore, whatever. Google will fix it for you.

And that is a wrap. Thank you so much for listening to my conversation with Kamal. Now for a quick word about our brand new mobile application. So as with every single valuable book that I read, I organize my biggest takeaways with the Book Thinker's Smart Retention mobile application. Once my notes are organized in the system, I can revisit them whenever I want. And for my favorite books like Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends on It, I can turn on my systematic reminders. Then the system will remind me at certain time intervals that will help optimize my retention to go back and review my biggest takeaways. It's not enough to just read your favorite books and then move on. You should extend your experience with each book using that spaced repetition I just talked about to make sure that you're flexing those neural pathways more often and strengthening your relationship with your awesome notes. And so to learn more about the app and how it can help you retain and implement more information from the books you love, please check out www.bookthinkers.com or go subscribe on either Android or iOS. As always, remember that real learning requires education and behavior change. So with that, I'm signing off and I can't wait for you to listen to another episode of Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books.