Good Life Project - Loving Yourself (the truth) | Kamal Ravikant

Episode Date: January 23, 2020

Kamal Ravikant has meditated with monks in the Himalayas, served as a US Army Infantry soldier, cofounded several tech-companies and a Venture Capital firm in Silicon Valley and written numerous books. But one of the hardest and most transformative thing he's ever done is learn to love himself. And, it hasn't come easily. The path there brought him to his knees before he could rise back into his heart. Kamal details this journey in his book, Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends on It.You can find Kamal Ravikant at: Instagram | Website | Twitter-------------Have you discovered your Sparketype yet? Take the Sparketype Assessment™ now. IT’S FREE (https://sparketype.com/) and takes about 7-minutes to complete. At a minimum, it’ll open your eyes in a big way. It also just might change your life.If you enjoyed the show, please share it with a friend. Thank you to our super cool brand partners. If you like the show, please support them - they help make the podcast possible. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest today, Kamal Ravikant, has trekked to one of the highest base camps in the Himalayas, served as a U.S. Army infantry soldier, walked 550 miles across Spain, co-founded, built, and sold several technology companies in Silicon Valley, and watched others he founded come tumbling down, which we talk about, by the way. Co-founded a venture capital firm, invested in some of the biggest endeavors in the world. But the most difficult and transformative thing he has ever done is to learn to love himself. And that did not come easily. It only happened, as so often it does, after he'd been pretty much brought to the

edge of personal and financial collapse, and more or less dropped to his knees in every way. This led to a complete and profound shift in focus from external accomplishment to kind of a softer metric he never saw coming and would never have validated before that, the act of finding and then loving himself. Not an easy thing for a guy who'd lived life on very different terms till that moment. And Kamal detailed his journey along with a pretty simple set of practices in a short book that he wrote initially years back as a way to reconnect with his stifled love of writing and also to memorialize what he'd figured out, the things that he was doing to step back into

this place of self-love so he could share it with friends and stop sort of like repeating the conversations over and over. Hitting publish, he was kind of terrified of what people in his world might think, but also believe that nobody would ever see it. He just kind of self-published it and sent it out into the world himself and said, you know, figured, oh, I'll just refer people to it when they ask me questions about why I'm so different these days. And then it went massively viral, selling over half a million copies. That original book, Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On It, has now been expanded into a much more personal and actionable set of stories and ideas and practices, and republished now by HarperOne. And today, we dive into so many of the big moments of awakening,

touch points, and some of the things that really brought him back to this place of living a truly abundant life and falling back in love with himself. So excited to share this conversation with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist,

whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required. Charge time and actual results will vary.

Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun. January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're gonna die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk.

The first thing I learned about you upon our introduction is that literally weeks ago, you almost died. Yeah. Actually, October 2nd. So it's been almost three months, like two and a half months. Share a bit more. Man. Because you're kind of like in an interesting moment.

Yeah, it's a really strange moment, man. And not just died, but died in like in a really, almost died in a very horrific trauma way, and which is a complete freak of accident nature. I went in for elective surgery for an old athletic injury, and they had to move some arteries around and rejigger them to get the blood flow going again. And 12 hours later, as I was getting ready to be discharged,

one of the arteries burst that they had worked on, and because they had worked on it. And I basically bled to death. And the only thing that saved me was the fact that I hadn't been discharged from the hospital yet. And then the blood built up so fast. And so, you know, an artery is a one-way street if it bursts, you know, like, I mean, it's a circulatory system. It's just a system of pipes. And if a big pipe bursts, that's it, you know, lose pressure and just drop and go. And it built

up so hard and so fast that ballooned up, all this blood ballooned up in my lower abdomen, like a soccer ball and then burst out, not stitches. It was like tunnel out like an oil well, that much pressure and burst out. And the only thing that saved me was I was spraying blood everywhere on everyone. And that gets people's attention in a hospital. And immediately they were able to get me an OR and go in and fix it and save me. And then I spent all this time in the hospital recovering in immense amount of pain and healing, and I'm still healing. I'm still in pain every day, but much, much less. You know, I went off the narcotic. I was in severe narcotics. Like, the surgeon said, if anyone qualifies, you do. And I was on them. And then I went off those very quickly. And we can talk about later why.

And now I'm just healing. I'm literally like in a place where I'm healing and rebuilding my body. I'm eating just really healthy foods. And also just like, you know, just it's a heck of an experience to go through something like this. Because your brain's not designed to have blood spurting out really hard, really fast. It goes into horror. It's not like a gentle, I'm going, goodbye, I love you all. It's just horror.

And then by the time they got me in the OR, it was like something in my mind was like, this is it, because I'd lost so much blood. And you're just feeling it. You're feeling like, literally like your life disappearing. And all I had was just flashes of images and emotions. And it was either love or fear. Images, love, fear, love, fear, love, fear.

And in it at the very end with the OR, now I'm in the OR and the anesthesiologist there and they're getting ready to like, you know, put an IV in me to knock me out. I remember before that, looking around at the mayhem, because they had to, basically, this OR had just been opened up for a different patient that threw that patient out, put me in. This was pure emergency.

And looking at all this mayhem, almost in slow motion, thinking, what a shitty, messy way to go. And realizing this is, it's not like could be like, this is my last images. I'm realizing this is not what I would have preferred, but this is it. And then, and something in me had to surrender to that.

And I remember that feeling of surrendering is almost like falling into a blackness and backwards into a blackness. And not knowing if there's anything beyond the blackness. I didn't know if I was going to come out of surgery because you're not thinking. It's very, very primal. And fortunately, I came out of it. I woke up, you know, like,

then they put me on the anesthesia. I think the shock had really just taken over. And they were able to fix what broke. And now I'm healing and recovering. It's a really strange place to be these days right now. Yeah. I mean, even beyond the recovery, beyond the trauma, like that moment, it's like when you're walking down the street in the city, right? And something falls from a building and it lands like six inches to one side of you and you're totally fine. But like your mind is like one step faster,

one step slower that that would have been the difference between me just going on with my life and me not being here anymore. And it's like for you, that moment where you had had surgery, it was done. It was a success. You were literally about to be discharged. And had, had they been a bit more efficient or whatever it was, had you been in a cab home? Had you been like, you were literally about to be discharged. And had they been a bit more efficient or whatever it was, had you been in a cab home, had you been like somewhere else? I mean, this was a matter of like an hour or two.

Yeah, and in fact- It literally made the difference between you sitting here with me today and not. Yeah, I talked to several of the surgeons, you know, like they became friends. They would all come hang out in my room because I like having interesting conversations and it helps to get, keep your mind off the pain. And they all like separately told me like, that would have been it, like on their own. I'm not sure they're

supposed to tell you that, but they, you know, so, cause I was curious, right. And they were like, that would have, it was too fast. It was too extreme, like either home or whatever it would have been that would have been it yeah and have you reflected on that over this window or i haven't it's behind you i haven't it's interesting man it's like in the beginning you you almost wonder like what are the emotions you feel you feel um you walk on feeling i was walking for a while feeling this feeling of being blessed. Like I almost feel like, huh, this is interesting. I'm here. I could have very easily not been here.

I'm still feeling that where I was like, huh, I'm here and I couldn't be here. And it's kind of strange. It feels strange because I got to experience the having to let go of being here. You know, in a very visceral way. And I'll say like, look, you know, I'm from the Silicon Valley world and they're like, everyone's done every psychedelic and ayahuasca and all that. I was doing those a long time ago and I've experienced all that. Right. And, you know, people talk about ego death and letting go. And I've experienced all that and those, and let me tell you, the real thing's very different. It's like, holy cow,

it is totally different. Because even when you're doing those substances, something in you knows, this isn't it. But when you know this is it, it's something in you that goes in a different place. You feel emotions in a way I've never felt. I felt fear in a way I never felt before in my life. It was like the horror of watching your lifeblood, your life force drain out of you so fast. And so I'm still coming to terms with that. I don't know what to make of it, except I'm here. That means I have things to do.

And the first step is heal, heal, come out of this, come out of this better than you were. Use this to make yourself better, right? Because that's fundamentally all we can do with any experience. Use it to make myself better and heal. And then, and then what's next? That's kind of what I'm working on. Yeah.

I know you shared a story about a friend of yours who, when she's in her early twentiess, had a heart attack. And died for eight minutes, clinically dead. Right. And it's sort of like, this isn't what happened to you, but there's this parallel sort of questioning that I think she shared with you that I was wondering if it was- Oh, yeah. It was mind-blowing. Is that a lens that you've had? Yeah. It was mind-blowing. This was in San Francisco. We were sitting in a very impressive woman. She was,

she was the FBI, I think at the time. Like she was teaching, she was training kind of like, I think Iraqi police officers or something like that. And if you look at her, you'd be like,

oh my God, really tall, striking, blonde, impressive. She's going to be a CEO in Silicon Valley. And we were having dinner

at this Chinese restaurant near the W Hotel in San Francisco. And we were having dinner at this Chinese restaurant near the W Hotel in San Francisco. And we're talking and she goes, you know, she was telling me she died for eight minutes, literally clinically dead, proven. And so I was like, okay, you gotta tell me, did you, what happened? Did you see anything?

And she said, no. But then she kind of looked around, almost like a little sheepish about it, put her fork down and she just steps forward and goes, like, and we're facing each other over Chinese food. And she goes, what if this is heaven? She's like, I died and I'm here. How do I know this is not the other side? And I remember saying that. I was like, oh my God, you're right.

And it was like this pure moments of silence. Like if someone said something to you that's so profound and so real, and there's no way to not prove it. Then she sat back and she said, that's kind of how I live my life now. Like this is heaven. And that's her belief system. So it's a heck of a game changer belief system.

I've thrown around that idea. Though I'm not there. I'll be honest. I'm not there. But I have, I do feel strange that there's this opportunity that really couldn't have been. So what do I do? So what I'm doing is just what I committed to doing, what is something very, very important to me.

But outside of that, just I don't know where to go from here. I'm still working that out. So you're basically back in the fray with all of us now. Yeah. But sort of like differently informed. In a very different, strange way. Like I kind of walk around looking at things differently.

Like I look at like people in New York differently. I'm like, huh, this is so interesting. Like these lives going about worrying their worries. You know, it's just so interesting. You, you're here from, from New York. Well, originally in India. I was born in India. Then came here pretty young. Yeah. We moved here when I was a kid and then grew up in the u.s and you know i've been here all

my life right did you grow up actually in the city or somewhere else i grew up outside of the city and jamaica queens yeah where run dmc the rappers came from were you out there like in the sort of like late 70s 80s when uh 80s those guys so it was a little bit after, sort of like when the hip hop scene was really blown up in Hollis. Yeah, yeah. It wasn't a great place to grow up though, I'll tell you that. No, no, no.

Like hip hop doesn't come from joy. Hip hop came from, you know, like rap came from pain, came from, you know, poverty, came from, you know, overcoming things, you know, came from a rough life. And so you can just imagine those areas. And fortunately, you know, basically where I look, it escaped. You know, overcoming things, you know, came from a rough life. And so you can just imagine those areas. And fortunately, you know, basically the way I look at it, we escaped, you know, I graduated high school, immediately went to college, then I went to the army. My brother

graduated, he went off to college. And we, you know, once we both graduated, after the army, I went back to college, we moved our mom out to California. So like, it's basically you escaped from there. It's a place you don't really want to stick around. Yeah. Do you, I mean, so when you came there, you were, um, it was you, your mom and your brother, other, other siblings, or just like a three person unit, right? Three of us. Yeah. Um, it's interesting that, that, um, from there you go to college or, or was the army and then college or college? I went to college. And then after about a year, I stopped college and I went to join the army and became an infantry soldier in the US army. All right. So just like you said to that woman about the story about dying on the table,

what's the story behind you saying this isn't right for me and the army is right for me? That's very interesting. So I was 18. I'm in college. I have a free ride, you know, at scholarships. And I was going to my classes, getting basically A's or B pluses, not really working hard. You know, a lot of partying, classic freshman. I thought, this is, there's got to be more than this. I'm just, this is not it. And there's something I also felt as an immigrant child. I felt like I owed it to my country, my adopted country,

that I wanted to serve, serve it some way. And I just was walking by a recruiter's office and I thought, that's it. And so I walked in and I went to all the different recruiters and the one that gave me the most for when I came back for college,

once I was done, you know, the GI Bill, went with them. And then they offered me even more if I did infantry and even more if I did mountain infantry. I was done, the GI Bill, went with them. And then they offered me even more if I did infantry and even more if I did mountain infantry. I was like, done. So I was in the 10th Mountain Division in the U.S. Army.

When you make the phone call to your mom, who's left India with you and your brother to sort of like, in part, create a better life, I'm assuming, or a different life. And saying, I've chosen to opt out of college and into the services. Curious what that conversation was like. That's an interesting question.

Well, look, our life wasn't that great. Like, you know, she was making minimum wage, you know, just, my brother and i were latchkey kids you know she was just gone from morning till night working you know just to literally put food on the table i remember in high school friends of mine would go to mcdonald's and would just buy cheeseburgers and fries and i used to look at them with such envy you know to be able to buy just fries whenever they wanted to a cheeseburger i remember used to have to save up the feeling to save up to buy a cheeseburger you know it was just like 99 cents or even, I don't even remember what

it was, right? So that's where we came from. So it wasn't like much of a better life. So when I told her that, you know, she's always used to me being a little like out there just going off. And I've always been the curious one. I was trying, disappearing, trying things. And I called her up and I said, you know, mom, I'm thinking about joining the army. Long pause on the other end. She's like, okay, be careful. I still remember that. And then a week later I called her and said, mom, I joined the army. And then she didn't know what, basically with me, I don't think she's ever had much of a choice.

I just, I've always been that kid who went off and just did things. And she knew that. And in some ways I think she kind of was proud of me for doing it, you know, for joining the military and serving my country. Was it a draw for you that you felt like that was a path to more meaning or was it something else at that age? Man, you ask good questions. It was passed to several things.

One was, so the meaning would be like serving my country. But second was, I wanted to also improve myself. I wanted to be tougher. You know, given the childhood I came from, and there was a lot of rough things there, somewhere along the way, I decided I was going to be tough. So that, I remember thinking as a kid, like no one's going to mess with me, you know, and I made a decision, I think, and thought, you know, the Army was like a natural, okay, I'm going to join the infantry. You know, the infantry is tough. You know, I'm going to become tougher. And it did.

You know, it makes you, it challenges you. And it taught me a lot about myself. And I think that was part of that. So there was a purpose of like, okay, I'm going to serve my country. And then also I'm going to get tougher. Coming from a family. I mean, we've been very fortunate to have a number of people who've served in different ways on the podcast. And it's not infrequent that they come from a family with sort of a military tradition in them.

So there's some sense of what I'm saying yes to. And then you also sort of like the time that you end up signing up, you have some sense of, are we in a time of relative peace, a time of conflict? But for you, it sounds like you're really going in cold without sort of the ability to sit there and talk to an uncle or dad or a mom or an aunt

who can somehow share their experience with you. I'm curious when you show up, because you start out in boot camp and then you serve your time. What was your experience of what you expected versus the reality of what you were experiencing? Honestly, I didn't know what to expect. Yeah. Look, I grew up in the city. I had never spent time in the woods. I didn't, I'd never been, spent time in the woods. I never carried any kind of firearm.

You know, all of a sudden I was thrust in, I was in Fort Benning, Georgia with a shaved head and with guys, you know, who were like, some guys who just grew up hunting for food. Then guys who were like literally gangbangers in LA and some guys who were, I think, part of like some really white supremacist stuff, you know, like all of us are just thrown together

into a platoon and having to like get along and be on mission. And I had no idea what to expect, which is probably good. It was a complete frame change, complete, you know, and you get there and you have no rights. You know, I think you have more rights in prison than you do in boot camp, right? You've just been screamed and yelled at

and harassed and made to do PT until you're vomiting every, you know, and just being pushed and pushed until you're like, every day is like a different kind of misery. And they do it on purpose. It's military tradition. You know, they do that to actually, one of the things I learned from that, that I carry with me was that I can basically, I can overcome anything. Bootcamp gave me that. Because, you know, as an 18 year old,

I was really, it really challenged me, right? And it's a, the infantry bootcamp's known for being, you know, tougher than average army bootcamp. And it challenged me. And I remember when I got my infantry blue cord and my drill sergeant pinned it on my chest, how proud I felt that I had earned it. I earned it. And it's the first time I think in my life

I felt like I'd earned something. That was mine. That was purely because I had stepped up. And I remember what a beautiful feeling it was. You're going to die. Don't shoot him. We need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist,

whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. When you go through that and then you show up and you describe sort of this group of people, many of whom have

profoundly different world views and experiences and histories and backgrounds for you i mean it's interesting because i'm one of my curiosity is always when you go through an experience like that and then and then end up serving and and not by choice but because of the structures around you in the environment like this becomes your core group of people to whom which you belong, whether you want to or not. You know, how that sense of, even at a young age, like whether you had an awareness of, huh, like we showed up really different and we've just been through this thing together. And was there a sense of being able to see and experience more of what makes you the same than difference after that? I don't know if you're thinking of those terms in it, but you see each other's humanity.

And even in a platoon like that, let's say you have, say, 40 people. You'll have your cliques, you'll have your groups form in there and all that. It's just human nature. And once you get a certain size group, you'll have your groups form in there and all that, you know, it's just like, it's, it's just human nature, you know, and once you get a certain size group, you'll have smaller groups within it. But yeah, you get to basically get over your, your, you know, to lack of a better word, your differences and just because you're all in it together, you know, and you'll have your spats and not getting along, but you're still in it together. And so then you start watching out for each other, you know?

And I think, and then once you're in a unit, it's even better. Once you're in a unit, then you're on mission. You're now soldiers. You're almost like you owe it to each other to be better. I think bootcamp is more of a rougher where you're like, you know, you're transitioning from the concept of I'm different, you're different too. Like we're all, you know, the army transitioning from the concept of I'm different, you're different too. Like we're all, you know, the army basically beats the individuality out of you.

Which is a very interesting experience. Well, especially for somebody who, if you look at, you know, the way you describe your life up until then, and then from the outside looking in, if you look at a lot of the way you've lived your life, your adult life, there's a really fierce nonconformist streak in there.

Yeah. Yeah, there really is. All this goes, looking back, all this goes, you know, I follow my own way. And, you know, I remember someone once asking me, like, how do I get to where you are? I was like, just don't know what you're doing. Just go for whatever like intrigues you. Literally follow that and eventually end up here. Yeah. Were you deployed after that?

No, I was in a unit and no, we were never, I was in the 10th mountain. And that time we weren't deployed anywhere. So your next move after that then was that, then college back to school. But now I went to a small private university. I wanted to go to a, I wanted to go be challenged again. So I went to a much smaller, much harder school and, uh, uh, university of Rochester and upstate New York. Yeah. Great school. Yeah. Um, from there straight out to Silicon Valley. No, I, um, I thought I was

going to be, I wanted to be a doctor. Oh, wow. That was near the end of college. I decided I had a degree in economics and the last thing I decided I wanted a degree in biology. So I went off and got a degree in biology and worked in emergency departments

and thought I was going to be a doctor. What was the why? Why a doctor? Very simple. I walked into this room full of lawyers once recruiting and I thought I was going to go to corporate law. very simple I walked into this room full of lawyers once recruiting and

I thought I was going to go to corporate law don't ask me why it was just it seemed like a thing to do for someone who didn't know what they wanted to do talking to a long recovering lawyer oh okay

and I remember after an hour walking out saying I don't want to be one of these people like and so I was like what do I do now and I also

I found I saw that all my friends who were doing pre-med had meaning. They felt meaning. They were on something. They had some sort of meaning. So I looked more and more into it. I was like, I want this. So I went that route.

And I did my pre-meds and I took the MCATs and all that. And I also ended up just backpacking around the world for about a year. And I came back and I started writing and I fell in love with writing. It was like, and I was writing garbage, just complete garbage at the time. As we all do.

Yeah, we start writing. And I remember what saved me was I'd spent six months upstate New York in the winter writing a novel. And I was so proud of myself after six months finished it. I was done. And I was at a bookstore myself after six months finished it. I was done. And I was at a bookstore and I picked up, you know, when they have the tables there

and I just randomly picked up Hemingway's Farewell to Arms. And I hadn't really read Hemingway since high school, right? And high school, I didn't really care for Hemingway. And I now just finished writing a novel six months.

I was very proud of myself. Pick up Hemingway and I opened the first page and I started in the first page and I started in the first paragraph and I started crying. Literally in the bookstore, I'm crying because I realized what real writing was. And I just spent six months writing a pile of garbage. But it showed me where I could go, where I had to go. It gave me a marker like, look, there's masters of the craft out there and I have to study them. And I have to get there because if

you're going to tell a story, you got to know the craft. You can I have to study them. And I have to get there because if you're going to tell a story, you got to know the craft. You can only have talent. Talent will only get you so far. In the end, it's all this craft in anything. And so I started like just teaching myself to write. And then Silicon Valley was happening. And the dot-com boom was happening.

And my younger brother had moved out there and was being written up in the New York Times. And he said like, what are you doing out in upstate New York freezing? He said, come out here. It's a new gold rush. We're creating the future. I thought about it. I was like, well, that's pretty hard to say no to.

This is like early mid nineties? Late nineties. Late nineties. Mid late nineties. Got it, got it. And- So it's like the first dot-com boom yeah the first dot-com boom right well literally people just making stuff up and going public on it and i remember i was at

the gym and i was trying to figure out if i should go and i was telling this guy and i was telling him he looked at me he goes kamal leap and the net will appear and i thought about it leap and the net will appear and so i went and it. Leap and the net will appear. And so I went and bought a one-way ticket, sold everything I owned and moved out there. And got into startups and started building startups. So how do you go from medicine in the name of meaning to writing to being able to tell stories to startups?

I mean, I know that you're like, okay, you got on a plane, you did this. But psychologically, how do you flip that switch? Because it's a profoundly different choice. Well, I thought with medicine, I was gonna still go to med school. I was just taking a, I wanted to explore these other things

before I went to med school. Okay, got it. So just on hold for now. It was on hold. And writing was, well, I'm gonna do it regardless. I discovered something that I really cared about, books were my refuge when I was a child. I've always loved books. And to be able to write, you know, and be able to write something was something, was the most, and still is the most amazing feeling in the world. When you write something and you know,

you've nailed it. Right. And also it was something that I just cared enough about that I knew I just would do it no matter what. There was no paid anything for it. It was just me doing it for myself, right? That was purely for myself. And startups was like this kind of got there and I fell into it because at that time, no one had done this before, right? So it was basically you make it up as you went along. And one thing I realized very quickly, for someone like myself, what I thought my weakness is, I thought I used to beat myself because I had too many interests. Medicine, want to write, go in the army, do this, do that. And all this, you know, whereas like, why am I not just focused on one thing?

And when I got into startups, it was like, I was the perfect person for building startups because I would just jump at anything. Whatever needed to get done, they started calling me the can-do kid. Just send Kamal at it, he'll figure it out. Because that's what it was. I'll figure it out because we were just doing stuff. How do you monetize the internet?

I don't know. Let's figure it out. How do you do this? How do you get more customers? I don't know. Let's figure it out. How do you do this? How do you get more customers? I don't know. Let's figure it out. So it was what I thought was my weakness all my life growing up actually turned out to be my greatest strength in that particular vertical, which was a huge lesson for me in life. It was like, what do you think your weaknesses are? Maybe weakness isn't a particular format in a particular field, but shift to a different field and you are the rock star.

Yeah. I mean, it sounds like also that you take your fierce need for individuality and nonconformity, you bundle that with the work ethic instilled in military training, and then the knowledge that you can do brutally hard things. And that's fundamentally the startup world. Yeah. Yeah. It's actually really interesting because back then, no one knew what they were doing.

They were just throwing things at the wall and going public with it. It was really, when you look back, it was really silly. It was completely silly. You know, it was a blip in time, but man, what training I got. And then once I was in startups, I was like, okay, this is it for me. I realized medicine was a one way long track

for only focus on one thing. And this was feeding me in a way that medicine wouldn't. And it was hard, because I had to like let go of a dream there. And I had to over years, you know, forgive myself for it because I really held it against myself because I thought, okay, maybe I went for the money instead of what was purpose. And, but looking back, it was the right choice. But for a time it was hard. I did struggle with it because I thought I was just going for,

you know, because startups, you know, you made good money. You made really good money. And I don't think people would do it for not, if it was just for never from, you know, you made good money. You made really good money. And I don't think people would do it for not, if it was just never for, you know, for free. And yeah, it took me years to let go of like the whole medicine thing and just let it go. Yeah. I want to dive deeper into this path, but there's something that you said

that I just want to touch back on also, which is that about your writing, that when you write something really, really good, like when you write the truth, you know it. Oh God, yeah, you feel it. And that's my curiosity. I mean, literally, I literally start to shake. Like physically, I'll start to,

and that is, I have a physical tell for when I've written something and I know that's it. It's the best feeling. Do you have that sort of like- It's an internal thing. It's an internal thing. You just know it. Yeah. And best feeling. Do you have that sort of like- It's an internal thing. It's an internal thing. You just know it. Yeah.

And you're just amazed that this came out of you. Yeah. And you also know when you're not there. You know when you held back. Well, but is that true until you have felt like it feels like when you've hit it. Because I don't think I truly knew until I finally, I wrote a sentence or a phrase or a paragraph or a page. And I was like that, like if I could repeat that more

and like over and over and over and turn this into something longer and then do that, this would be stunning. But, because I often wonder about this. I don't, but before I hit that, I think there were a lot of times where I thought I was doing what I was here to do as well. And I didn't realize until I understood

what it really felt like. Yeah, that makes sense. It's an evolution we go through. And in any art, you know, in the beginning, you're just, might as well have a paintbrush in your mouth any art, you know, in the beginning, you're just, might as well have a paintbrush in your mouth and paint, you know, like that's what you're doing. But as you go deeper and deeper into it, there's something in us shifts and gets to understand this medium and really what it is. And also, I think if you really care about a particular thing, you're going to study it.

You're going to study the greats and you're going to see what they did and how they did it. And so like when you hit something like that once in a while and you recognize it, like, you know, it's the best feeling, but you're absolutely right. It doesn't come in the beginning. In the beginning, it's just all just throwing stuff at a wall, you know, just throwing paint randomly and hoping it sticks. Yeah. And then I think you get to that point that Ira Glass describes where you have an evolved enough sense of taste. So you know what you want it to see. You know what you want to see.

You know what you want it to sound like. It's like, you know, like you play music also. Like, you know, the riff you want to come out of your fingers on a guitar or a saxophone. Like in your head, you can hear it, but your craft and your skill, isn't that a point where you're capable of expressing it yet? Which I think for so many people who have an artistic creative inclination is the point where it's so frustrating and such a brutal window that a lot of people bail because they lose faith that they'll ever be able to close that gap. Yeah, it's actually a very important lesson is that it's a process. And mastery is never attained.

Even the masters, if you look at any art or any craft, you know, real art, they were always evolving, always working, and always, like, none of them ever said, you know, like, at least the ones I respect never said, I have mastered this, this is it, I've arrived. From now on, everything I do is perfect. You know, like the real ones were always getting better and better and better and evolving and shifting. It's like martial arts. Let's say you're learning Kung Fu. The beginning, you're doing all these,

I forget what they're called. Maybe Katas or that's Taekwondo. But you're doing these, it's so foreign and different. And you're learning these patterns and movements. But like the master years later, he just moves an inch. But you got to go through all that to be the guy who just has to move an inch. You know, you don't get that from the beginning. You have to, something in you has to shift. And I really look at working on anything that truly matters to you as personal alchemy.

Every time I work on a book, I am better for it. Something in me grows better. You know, like, cause you're evolving, your craft is evolving, but something's beautiful is coming out of you. You're going to be transformed in the process and you're going to become better and your art and craft will become better. Yeah. It is a process. I completely agree. And I think it's the way that the process of creation transforms the creator is a longtime fascination of mine too. And you see that in traditional arts like writing and painting and all that. But you also see that in the frame of entrepreneurship. Oh, yeah, totally. It's the same. And I've always been so fascinated, not just by the process of how you take an idea and make it manifest in the world, but what is the process of making an idea manifest due to the manifest or to the person? Because a lot of times that world that you have lived in for a lot of years now is not only incredible and ecstatic and, you know, it's so filled with so many great things, but it is a fierce, fierce cauldron that destroys so many people. And the culture that's built around that so often is sort of like, you will die for your creation. And like what you, you either make it or you don't, but like, you're going to go down trying and sometimes it works,

but sometimes it takes people out. Yeah, I totally understand. I've been there and it's actually not necessarily the best. The best companies don't come out of that either. It comes from vision. It comes from execution. It comes from persistence, but it doesn't come from committing hari-kari for it. But entrepreneurship, to go from nothing,

from a crazy idea you had in the bathroom, to building a company where now like people's families, people are getting paid and their families depend on paychecks because of your crazy idea that's now a thing in the world, is every step of the way is a challenge.

And you're challenged in ways you've never been challenged in your life. You know, like building something, dealing with people, dealing with products, customers, you know, the whole concept of money brings up insecurities that people didn't even know they had. You know, it's your challenge every day. Like there's no company I've ever seen that's been a straight part to magic.

You know, it's always when you talk to the entrepreneurs, the founders, there's always like the stuff they had to go through. But as you go through it, you start to handle it. You know, that's one of the reasons why, for example, I advise companies sometimes and, you know, I'm very good at it because I can see the path that they're going to go down on and I can walk them off. Half my job is walking the CEOs off cliffs because I've been there. I've been staring at the cliff thinking, this is it. This is the end. This is the end. Every day, this is the end. Nah, man, it's not the end. It's not a cliff. It's just another step. It's another step. It's another

step. And you get better and you get better. I've met people, I know people who started billion dollar companies. None of them went to school that taught them how to build a billion dollar company from zero. You grow. You grow as someone who started a company from zero to say a million. And from a million to 10 million needs you to grow significantly different and more than zero to a million. Then 10 million to 100 million is a whole different ballgame, right? Requires you to be someone else.

100 million to a billion, once again, you have to be someone else. So you grow in the process. The person who's leading that billion dollar company is not the person who is leading that $1 million company. Talk about a great personal evolution. Yeah, if you take it,

I mean, what happens a lot in that world also is you go from zero to one and then one to 10. A lot of times the person that then takes it from 10 to 100 is a different human being. And then from 100 to a billion, like the unicorn status, again, like people opt out of that level of growth because they're like, I'm in it for this window. I made it for this or like psychological and,

and practical and physical experience. And like, let's bring in the next person who sort of is the operator and the visionary at, you know, to get us from here to here, because that's their, that's where their mojo lies.

And that's also psychologically, that's the game they like to play. I think it's incredibly rare, and I'm so curious what you think about this, to have the person who starts with the idea be the same person who eventually is willing to say yes over and over and over to a process of fierce evolution and often brutal because it's like deconstructing who you are and rebuilding something new along the way to that level of an extraordinary and large company. It seems like much more often than that, that person, the idea person gets to a point and then they step away and maybe they start something else and they start something else. But it's sort of like

the person who goes through that evolution all the way up to the level that you're talking about is really rare, at least from what I've seen. Yeah. And actually it's good to know what, you know, what makes you, makes you zing. Yeah. Because I know entrepreneurs are very good at starting things. They're the best. They start amazing things, but they get to a certain point, they get bored.

And you don't want that person running that company anymore. You want to bring someone in and you want to back them to go start something else. You want to get in early and then bring someone in, right? And the smart ones

are the ones who recognize their strengths and their weaknesses, right? But I remember Mike Maples. He's arguably one of the best investors in Silicon Valley and also one of the nicest, most gentleman investors and human beings you'll ever meet. You know, he's a Texan. Really good guy. And he told me once in his experience, and he's invested in all the big hits. In his experience, the biggest, the best companies are always with the original founders at the helm.

You know, if you look at Google, you know, if you look at Facebook, if you look at Amazon, if you look at Microsoft, if you look at Apple with Jobs, like the big transformative ones. And his experience and his investing experience is the founders stayed at the helm because they just keep on driving and driving and driving in a way that someone who's now, rather than someone a middle manager, basically, if you bring someone in to run a company, you got to run on a glorified middle manager. They think differently than a founder who's always taking risks, always going to the next level. Google was working on flying cars. Normally, if you, you know what I mean? Like, it takes that, like, you know, like Amazon, you know, like Jeff Bezos is like working in space stuff, the Washington Post and all these different things. It takes that kind of person. But if you're just brought in someone who was corporate, they wouldn't be, they wouldn't be doing that.

They probably wouldn't have done AWS or the other things that have made Amazon so successful. They always, they're the risk takers, the thing out the box. They're the ones who have this vision that they will not compromise and that usually only comes from the founders the ones with the crazy idea in the bathroom we started it all yeah so as you're going out you're you're living in this world kind of like living breathing it building stuff getting involved in advising a lot of other people in the the background, you're still fascinated by the craft of writing, and that's just kind of like going along with you. Dot-com world doesn't always just say, yay, everything's awesome. What you start is always going to succeed.

So big wins, but also big crashes along the way. And at some point also, you take a big hit, not just in terms of like the business, but personally. Yeah. You know, it's interesting what, you know, the startup world has become so sexy to everyone, but most people don't realize is most startups fail. Like I say something like statistically, it's something like 92% or more fail.

Just go to zero, bam, zero, like zero, done. Right? Not like you walk away with a severance, it's like, it's done. The whole thing's crashed, your dream's gone, done. So the odds of failing are like nine out of 10, nine point something out of 10, actually. But your ego doesn't want to admit that. Your ego thinks, I mean, you kind of have to be a little crazy to start something and build it. And you got to kind of be a rationally believe in your possibility of success. If you don't, you're not going to, you just have to, you're not going to build something great by if you always think you're

going to fail. And so I, you know, I got to be participating in some really nice successes in the Valley and I was done building companies. And then I built this one company where I self-funded for years and it became my thing, my ego, my this, and it was doing well. And I was recruiting this amazing team. And your sense of self gets wrapped around what you're building. And I was finally running out of money

because self-funding a tech company for years is not cheap. So I had self-funded because I was gonna make a ton of money. I'll be honest.-funded because I was going to make a ton of money. I'll be honest. It was like I was going to make a ton of money. I was going to own most of it. Screw it. And I was running out of money.

And to build it to the next level, I had to go raise money. And I did. And from some pretty brand-name people. And I think about six months later or something like that, the whole thing blew up. Just blew up. Lost everything. And look, as one of the VCs who read theemption told me, he was like, look, man, this is part of the game. But I took so much of it to heart that it wasn't the company blew up, I blew up.

I had failed. I had lost everything. I became really depressed, really sick, just in a hole. My whole sense of worth collapsed along with the company, which was looking back is really dumb because all you can do is you can give your all to something. What happens afterwards is, especially in building companies, is so dependent on,

people forget how much luck is involved in building a company. It's amazing how much luck is involved. Just the right timing of something and the wrong timing of some bigger company just deciding they want to launch a product just like yours as well. And boom, your customers are gone.

You know, it just, you never know, but you don't, it's very hard to be rational about it. You know, you take it so, at least I took it so personally that I fell apart. And it was a very dark, dark place. And what's interesting is what came out of it. Because in the Valley at the time, this was in 2011, you didn't really talk about this. Everyone I knew was always killing it.

Everyone was killing it. You went to any events, everyone was killing it. And you're there thinking, I'm the one failure here. You know, like just feeling terrible. And man, I'm feeling it right now just talking about it. And which later on you realize is not the truth. People were just putting on a game face. Pretty much everyone's scared, right?

Everyone's trying to keep their thing up low. There's very few that are actually doing really well. And at the time I was in a very, very dark place. And what's interesting is that in that dark place was I found something that actually like just changed my life. And which was that one night or it was early morning, I don't remember, I was miserable and I was like, I'm done. I can't take this anymore. I mean, again, I get out of this or die trying. I just cannot be here.

And so I walked over to my journal on my desk and I wrote down a vow to myself. And I really do believe in the power of personal commitment. You know, like if you commit to yourself, if you make a commitment, first of all, I'm a big believer in keeping your word. If you commit to yourself, if you make a commitment, first of all, I'm a big believer in keeping your word. But second, if you make a commitment to yourself,

especially a vow, it's a sacred act. Now it's between you and whatever you believe the greater nature of life is. Had you ever done anything like that before? Not that powerfully. Not that powerfully. I don't know what led me to it. I think it was a place of just like, I got to get out of this.

It was a deep pain. And I never done a vow to myself. And what led me to it. I think it was a place of just like, I got to get out of this. It was a deep pain. And I wrote down a vow to myself. And what surprised me was the vow, because it was in the moment. The vow that came out was not what I thought of it, right? It was for something I never even knew I needed or believed in or thought about. It was a vow to love myself.

Hair was miserable after my company fell apart, but I wasn't thinking I need to love myself. Like it's, I didn't, I'm not that guy. I didn't think that way. And, but yet this vow came out, this deep and really sincere and passionate vow. I think I was like carved it into the desk of the paper to love myself. And I remember sitting back thinking, what have I just done? Like, I'm looking at this vow and like ink in my, in my handwriting. It was

like maybe four or five sentences long, but that was the gist of it. Like in every way I could, I was going to love myself. I was like, okay, I've made this vow. I got to live it. Next step, how? I didn't know, man. Like I didn't go out and read books on it. I didn't watch, I didn't take courses. I didn't watch YouTube programs on it because I just had to figure it out. I was like in a very dark place and I knew something in me was trying to save me with that vow. So I just set out to like try to do it. And I don't know how to do, but one thing I've also believed in is that fundamentally our lives, you know, begin on the inside. Who we are on the inside is what expresses on the outside. I've really come to believe that.

And especially once I kept this wow, I really got to see it. And so I knew that my inside was miserable and I had to work on my inside. I said, now I have to love myself from the inside. And I didn't know how to. I never studied in college. They didn't teach me that in the inside. And I didn't know how to. I, you know, I never studied in college. They didn't teach me that in the army. You know, like, can you imagine a bootcamp and today we're going to teach you how

to love yourselves, recruits. Actually, that would be fun. But that wasn't the case. I had no training and I had no idea what that even meant. But what I knew was, okay, let me start working on my inside. And I started just trying things in my head to make myself feel love for myself. And I tried. I remember trying every stupid, crazy thing I could think of. I tried coming up with visualizations. I tried coming up with things to say to myself or things to make myself feel. And through the process, because I was trying to keep my vow, I had to keep my vow,

I started to notice certain things that I did that started to shift my mind. And I thought, huh, if it shifts it from this place of misery, there's something there. Let me go deeper. So I would go deeper. And if it didn't work anymore, I threw it away. I really didn't care. And you know, like we were talking about this earlier, when you don't care is when you do the greatest things, right? I was just literally like, I had to find this, how to do it. I was not attached to anything but results. Really, if you told me standing on my head, five minutes a day would do it, I would have done it. You know, like I had to find this, how to do it. I was not attached to anything but results. Really, if you told me standing on my head five minutes a day would do it, I would have done it. I didn't care. I just wanted the results. And within a week, I remember my mindset had shifted. Something inside me I noticed was gentler and calmer and nicer to myself. And I was just doing these things. And so I took what I had done and then refined it,

refined until I basically came up with a system that I was doing every day. And I would say within a few weeks, my internal self had really, really changed. And I really shifted from a place of pure misery to basically, for lack of a better word, feeling love for myself, walking around feeling it. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting that you keep using

the word misery also, which is sort of, it feels like a much broader basket. It's like, because if the vow that comes to you without you having any sense that this is what has to be committed to in the moment is love myself, like you wonder is, well, what's the opposite of that state? It's almost like self-loathing. So my curiosity is the misery that you keep reflecting back on. Do you feel like that was driven in part by some embodied sense of self-loathing?

That's a great question. I'm trying to remember. I remember there weren't very good thoughts about myself in my head at the time. I think it was also like just a place of darkness. You know, like just a place of darkness. It wasn't like good, kind, gentle thoughts. It was just a place of darkness.

There were just no good thoughts. And also just reveling in the failure, almost like staying there rather than trying to come out of it. It could be misery, it could be suffering. And it's like suffering is anything, like most of our suffering, at least I'll speak for mine, is self-created. Pain or sadness or whatever emotion you want to call it that way, it's mainly self-created. You know, things can happen, but it's our story around it that creates the emotions. And so I noticed by doing this, my story of myself was naturally shifting.

And if your story of yourself shifts, something in you is no longer the same. You know, it's funny, the same facts, different narrative. But this, what happened for me was that because i was working my mind to make myself feel this way and it was working my internal narrative was shifting just on its own and when that happened what was a really bizarre thing was my external life started to shift nothing and this is something that i remember saying i remember used to use the word magic to describe just people start coming into my life things started resolving themselves

things that I had no control over things that I thought but because I was feeling this way about myself I just noticed that it's almost like outside life just started to just mold itself to that and that can be as woo-woo as someone wants but that's my reality you know that's what I really learned.

And that's what I've consistently learned since then because I fall in and out of it. And every time I go back into it, it happens again. It's to the point, it's like, dude, just get over yourself and just do it all the time, man. This is how life works. Just accept it and do it and enjoy it then. It was so simple.

And I kind of become why I became like a born again. And I was like, I had to share with people like, oh my God, this is insane. But you have to be careful about how you share with people because you don't want to come like a nut job either. Hey, you go through what? No problem. Just love yourself. And here's how you do it. Here's, you know, people share with a few friends and who were only when they were going through stuff. And it really helped them. And I noticed it started to work for them. You know, the things that happened in their life, the details were different, but their internal shifts happened,

then external shifts happened. It's very interesting. The internal happens first, then the external. I think it's a fundamental truth of our reality. You know, someone very, and you know, this came from, maybe a year before this happened, someone very wise had you know, this came from maybe a year before this happened, someone very wise that told me, life is from the inside out. And I remember that,

I think I remember that when I made that vow, inside out, I had to work in the inside. When I worked in the inside, something in me just was willing to bet on it. If I worked in the inside, the outside would work itself. But first, I had to work in the inside, you know, it really did shift. And it was a game changer. I look at my life as like before that and after that. Yeah. And as you're sharing that with other people, it's interesting too, because especially then, and I guess to a certain extent, even now, it's not like you come from a world where everyone's talking about loving yourself. Oh God, no way. This is almost like you're a pariah.

If you're, oh, you're that guy who's like, you know, like in this world where the culture is heads down, like business first, build, like, and be in human and feelings don't really have a place here. You know, the softer quote part of the human condition and exploring, you know, that's not really what this is about. And yet, once you realize that, it is so interesting to me. I'm a fairly grounded practical. I'm always trying to look at the science and identify the linear aspects of things and causation. And yet I too have had these similar sort of realizations that there are just, there are practices that you do. There are things that you, that happen in your life where you see it happen so many times and it starts with an end of one, like you working from the inside out. And then like, you see it unfolding similarly in other

people's lives and you're like, okay, so I don't have a rational explanation for this. I just know that for some reason it's leading to an outcome that's been replicated. So I'm just going to own the fact that something's happening. Yeah. I mean, I don't think we have the answers of the why, but it's just the way things are. And it's a matter of then, like I say, betting on it and then doing it. Yeah. Then you make the interesting move of saying, okay, I'm still living in this world, right?

Like, yes, I crashed and burned. But the ethos in that world is kind of like you described at some point, we're all going to crash and burn. And then you pick your next thing and you figure it out. And so you're still functioning and living in that world, but you're doing this deeper work inside and then you're sharing it in a more individualized way. But then you decide, no, I actually, I need to bring this to other people in a bigger way. Well, I was going to drag to a kicking and screaming, honestly. Look, at this point, I was, you know, I spent all my money on my company.

I'd run out, right? I was making payroll at one point of credit cards, you know, my personal credit cards, you know, taking care of my team. And so I was out of money. I was living on credit cards now, you know, and, and for someone who's done well, you know, worked hard, done well. And then you're at this point, it's not a, you know, it's not a, it's not a fulfilling place to be. And so I thought, okay, you know, okay, I'll rest and I'll go raise money for another company, you know, I'll do something else or I'll go, you know, join some company as VP of something somewhere, you know, like if I don't want to start a company.

And as I was sharing what was going on with people, you know, a few of them convinced me to write it down because, and also I got tired of just repeating and having to explain to it. And so a mutual friend, James Altucher, you know, he'd said, you know, let's make a blog post about it on his blog. I was like, no, no, no, I don't want to do that. I was like, look, let me write it down as a small, short thing. And we talked about it. I was like, and if you like it, I'll self-publish it.

I'll just put it on Amazon and then you can buy it for whoever you want to share it with. I'll buy it for whoever I want to share it with. I don't have to explain again and again. And so I sat down and I wrote it. Now, what I put out was maybe about 7,000 words, book, little book. Now, what most people didn't realize is, you know, people are like, oh, you wrote in a week. I'm like, no, it took a month.

You know, because I cut out about 90% of what I wrote. And I obsessively wrote and whittled down to only the things that mattered. Only the very visceral truth, whatever someone had given me when I was down. And I was terrified to put it out because I thought I was going to destroy my career in Silicon Valley if someone did any research on me. I didn't think anyone was going to find the book, right?

But yet I'd committed to James. I'd said I would do it. And then he called me on it. He's like, how are you doing? And I sent it to him. He's like, yeah said I would do it. And then he called me on. He's like, how are you doing? And I sent it to him. He's like, yeah, this is really good. You got to put it out. I don't know where this came from, but I have this value.

Keep my word, right? If I give my word, I keep it. You know, that's the man I choose to be in this world. And so I'd given him my word. And yeah, I'm so grateful to him that, and to myself for giving him my word and then him calling me on it. And so I put it out. I remember I literally thought I was going to sell 10 copies, eight of them were bought by me just to

like give to friends so then I could share with them. I don't have to explain the same thing. The annoying part is having to explain all over and over again, the same damn questions, right? And I was just like, just read the book, just apply it, done. And the book took off. I literally, it literally went viral. It went insane. It was insane. I thought, first I was terrified. It was like, oh my God,

now people in the Valley are going to know about this. One. Two, I'll never be able to raise money for a company ever again. Because basically like, hey, look, I failed. But look, I love myself. So life's all hunky-dory. And so I was like, all right, I'll have to find another career all

right come all the time to recreate yourself and here's the interesting thing within like a month i'd be at some event somewhere and a ceo or a vc that i respect would come up to say i read your book it really helped me and people started coming up to me and opening up to me about their struggles that they felt that they they couldn't share with, but I had. And also I'd shared a solution, a very simple, basic, internal human solution that anyone can do. And it was working for them. And that changed my life.

I mean, this book took off, you know, this little self-published book, you know, it started paying my rent, you know? So here I was living off credit card, all of a sudden this book was paying my rent. I lived in San Francisco which was not a cheap place to live

and it allowed me to step back and say okay what do I want to do now in my life and I decided rather than start a company I actually want to be

the guy investing and helping entrepreneurs the way I wish some investors would help me and the way I wish other investors would help me

and so I went and built a venture capital firm because my bills were paid I could go do because my bills were paid. I could go do this. My bills were paid by this little book that I really didn't, had expected to destroy my career. And I ended up becoming, the guy was terrified he would never get funded again is now the guy who funds companies. And look at that. That's amazing. And at the same time, the guy who loved books as a kid wanted to write, you know, and then realize, okay, I need to be doing this just kind of like in the background for years and years and years because I actually care about the craft.

Now, like, was there a moment where there was a shift in identity where you're like, I am a writer? I'd always, ever since I was working on Writer, I knew I was a writer. I just wasn't good enough to be where I needed to be. So I remember I wrote and rewrote entire novels and would send them in and collect rejection letters, right? And I was teaching myself the craft of literary fiction. I was reading all, you know, like it started with Hemingway,

but then I went, you know, you found a lot of different writers. And it was always about those kind of stories. But it never got me anywhere. The rejection letters got better and better until they became in-person phone calls. So my craft was improving. The stories were improving, right? So I was getting better.

But they were never exactly there where you could say like, oh yeah, we must have this. And here's the irony. Because I now had the craft, all those years of training, right? I could write something so simply, so true about just my own personal experience. And that's what put me on the map as a writer. But I never set out to write a self-help book. I swear to you, like I'm not that guy. You know, and here I am, I wrote a book that's become very successful in self-help. Did you think for, was there a hot minute where you're like, you know what?

I'm getting half decent at literary fiction. I dig that. I want these ideas out into the world. I'm really, I'm a little freaked out about people thinking that it's actually me.

What if I make this a parable instead of like actually, no, this is me. This is my story. This is- You mean the love yourself story? Yeah. No, that one I knew

had to be honest. No. It was only going to work with honesty. And I think that's why it works. And it actually really showed me, that's I think when I took that big leap that transformed my writing, was there was no hiding.

Well, actually take it back. I still hid back, hid in the original version of the book, but I didn't hide enough. I was honest enough that it connected. That it's like one human, when you read it, it's one human writing to another human, his experience of how he made himself better

and how you can just do that too. So simple, right? And I got rid of all the literary devices and all that and just made it clean and simple and pure. But no, I couldn't fake it. That one, it had to be real. I knew if I put it out, and really, I didn't expect anyone,

like people to be going and buy it. I just thought I would be buying it and giving it to friends or telling them they would buy it to make their lives better. And I literally put it out because I'd given my word. I did not expect what happened. It's something, you know, you and I, we know enough entrepreneurs.

We've been through our own journeys. It's often like the biggest things we've done in our lives. We didn't expect them to be that way. Almost a hundred percent. Right, right. But it's all this stuff in the in-between that prepared you. Yeah, so there is no straight path.

Yeah. You know, that's the irony. There is no straight path. Yeah. You know, that's the irony. There is no straight path. It's just a convoluted, squiggly line. Yeah. Like you have, I mean, you have to, you have to go all these different directions. You have to have all these supposed failures. You have to, because that's how you learn.

That's what forges you. That's how, and also, like you said earlier, like anyone who's honest about the process of entrepreneurship or even creation in almost any domain will acknowledge that there is luck and often it plays a pretty substantial role. So sometimes it's a matter of like you failed three times before and just out of luck that has dropped you into a moment of time where the thing that you want to make or create or say or write or stand up and do just happens to be aligned with like the timing of the zeitgeist so that it works now? Or had you done that three years ago? You know, I personally know people like, and these are real stories, like company, they were about to shut it down. They'd run out of money. And then maybe a couple of days before they get an offer from Yahoo and get bought for 400 million. I mean, I know these people

and you think, are they a better entrepreneur? Do they get bought because they're a better entrepreneur? No, it was literally days away. Like, how do you explain that? It just, there's so much of that that happens in entrepreneurship that people don't take into account. I mean, look, my book went viral.

I got noticed by the right people who shared it and then it started to go. Talk about serendipity and luck and virality. Yeah. You know? It's like, yeah, you can't, everyone wants to manufacture a phenomenon. And you have a certain amount of control

over certain pieces. You develop the craft. You commit to that so that you have that when it's, but there are certain pieces that are just, you can't control for. Yeah, I think the best you can do, the one commitment I had to myself was, you know, like make it the best I can make it

at this point in my life. And so you don't have regrets about it. That's one thing I've learned, you know, regrets come if you didn't give your best. And if you gave your best and external circumstances made it go a different way than you wanted to, at least you won't regret not giving your best.

That's ultimately the control we have, you know. But, you know, here's the irony. When you give your best, the chances of luck favoring you go up. They just do. So do it selfishly, you know. So you end up, you have this kind of like magical moment and a surprise and it sets you in a different direction. And it also, it sounds like gives

you the the the green light to say okay so i'm now going to actually um pursue more publicly the path of writing and creating more books you write another book and then was it five years now or so since the first no it's been this came out 2012 so now it's 2019. Right, so almost 2020 when this will be out. So as we're sitting in the studio today, I mean, a new dramatically expanded version of this thing that first came out as a 7,000 word thing has recently dropped. And the name of this is Love Yourself.

Like your life depends on it. Seven years later, what's changed about you or about it or about the world that makes you say that there needs to be something more around this idea? Great question. And you know, it's something that, you know, once the original book took off, the original version, all of a sudden,

I was getting chased by agents and publishers who wanted to, obviously it was a, it was an easy thing, way for them to make money. Right. Ended up going with a very good agent. And he, for years, like, was like, you gotta like put this out with a regular publisher. And I refused. I was like, it's doing its thing. And because also with a regular publisher, you'd have to expand it. No publisher is going to put a book, 7,000 book in a book. So this is, it's got plenty of pretty pictures. Right. And this is not a picture book, 7,000 word book in a book. So this has got plenty of pretty pictures, right? And this is not a picture book. This is a heart book.

And so I fought it. So I refused. I was like, I'll just write more books. I'm a writer. I got to see, man, the email, I have like thousands and thousands, tens of thousands of emails from readers. And I respond to all of them. And who shared with me just the impact the book had.

And also, more importantly, who shared with me just the impact the book had. And also, more importantly, they shared with me questions. And I start to see over the years, because I respond to them all, sometimes late, but I have a life. And I respond to them because I tell you, the modern day gift of your readers being able to contact you as a writer is a true gift to connect with your readers in a way that the writers couldn't do before. I think it's the best gift in the world. And as I've seen the patterns and I answered their questions, and after a while, it's almost like it's starting to be the same answers. And then I saw the answers evolve because I was evolving. You know, I'm someone who's always working on myself. I didn't just take this one practice and just sit on it. You know, I'll be like evolving it and using it

other parts of my life and then getting lazy and stop doing it and watching my life go wonky and then do it again and do it slightly different. And because I just want to be better. I'm not satisfied being where I was a year ago. I have to. Those I think some of us just wired that way, especially those if you've been entrepreneurship, you just kind of like have to step up, have to step up. It's something and you need that. You know, this is this internal dissatisfaction. The Buddhist would probably say, is that a good thing? But here we are, right? And so I started

seeing this question and I realized, being honest with myself, and I've also worked since then more in the craft of writing, I've become a much better writer and realized, look, Kamal, you held back there because you didn't expect this to go anywhere. You just were sharing with friends. You can always just answer their questions. You held back a lot. There's a lot of truths in there that you need to share. And also I see some of the struggles my readers have as some of the things they've gone through in their lives.

It's amazing. You'll be amazed what they share with me. And I was like, look, I've been through this, but they feel like they're alone. And look, I'm using this to overcome this love yourself practice to overcome these things. I need to tell them that. I need to let them know they're not alone and how I do it. Sometimes the best thing we can do for someone is show them that they're not alone in whatever they've gone through, especially childhood stuff. So I sat down and started working on it. This was like at least a year in the making

with this next version. And my thing was this, like it was going to be like the first version, not a single word wasted. So I wasn't going to promise how many words. I was going to write it and then bring it to a publisher, not just sell it to a publisher and then promise them 80,000 words or 60,000 words and do it.

So I worked on it. I worked on it. I worked on it, multiple drafts. You know, the things that I knew were missing from the original version. And one of the things that was also missing was people would apply it in their own way versus I'd worked out a system to do it.

And I'd really just walk them through the system. Like, look, here's a soup to nut system, you know, of internal work to love yourself. And it's worked for me. And the people I share with has worked for them. We're all human beings with the same damn monkey mind. Just, this is all just training the mind in a beautiful way to serve you.

And something we're all wired for, which is love. And trust me, I'm not the guy who used to believe in this. I am not, I'm not a therapist. I am not like qualified in this. This is just a guy working himself with something that literally saved my life and has changed my life. And has changed my perspective on my childhood. and has changed my perspective of my childhood.

It's changed my story of my childhood. It changed my story of my present self. And every time I go into it, it actually creates magic in my life. And I also fail at it pretty well because I get lazy and I share that in the book because people get that way. Yeah, and I think that was also,

it was interesting to see you sort of say, okay, so if I'm going to, if I'm going to revisit this, you know, not only answer a lot of questions and sort of share like that, okay, so here's a fuller methodology that I've, you know, continued to optimize every final years, but also getting real on the level of, I mean, there's a, all of part three is like a big story of heartbreak and failure and redemption and recommitment. And which I think is really nice because it's a reminder to all of us that life ebbs and flows. And the reality is, you know, we become complacent and, and we were like, I'll do this tomorrow. And then we'll, I'll do it next week. Or like things are going really good now. Maybe I can just pull back for a bit.

And we all do that with all sorts of parts of our lives. And I think for you to sort of like walk through in a very granular way, this very personal experience and how it unfolded in the context of a relationship that was in the middle of it, I thought was an interesting choice. It was a choice that still scares me. And I actually, like, I wanted to cut it, but kudos to Harper Collins and the publisher there, they didn't cut it. Because that's the most honest part of the book. Because it really shows like, look, I wasn't taking care of my inner self and something happened and I fell apart.

And I had to use this practice again from scratch. And here, watch me how I do it. And more importantly, watch the nuances that happen. And it's brutally honest. And it's like, someone's like, oh, when I pick it up and open, I'm like, I don't need people that know this about me. But here it is, because it just shows one thing. If I'm going to write this, I'm going to put this book out to a traditional publisher now.

I also realize I have a responsibility to this book because I get emails from all over the world, people asking for translations and this, and it's had a huge effect. If I'm putting on the word in a bigger way, it's got to be the final version. It's got to be, I've said everything, I've showed everything, this is it.

Here's a soup to nuts that I could do. And also what I've learned in the seven years between I've published your original versus the final one. And I knew I had to tell the full truth in here, which is what I do, especially with that last part. And it's the part that scares me the most of putting out, which is why I know, honestly, it's special there. But I actually try to convince the publisher, like I sold it to them and to cut it. And they're like, no, this is a reason. Honestly, this is the main reason we bought the book because this level of honesty is so rare.

We ask our authors to do it, but no one ever really does. Yeah, well, because it's weird because it treads. Usually when a self-help book comes out, there's the traditional, this is my hero's journey story in the beginning. Here's what I learned. And now I'm going to share it with you. What you don't often see is substantial, almost real-time memoir of repeated failure and lack of compliance and going back in and rediscovering this. And there's a very, all the part three is, to me, that's the memoir part of

the book. And it's written much more the way that's the memoir part of the book. And it's written much more the way that you see memoirs written these days than the rest of the book. So I just thought as a writer, I was as fascinated by what you were sharing and the ideas and the practices as I was by the choices that you were making as a writer. Ah, that's great. Yeah, I thought it was really interesting. And I was wondering, I was like, I was wondering how you felt making as a writer. Ah, that's great. Yeah, I thought it was really interesting. And I was wondering, I was like, I was wondering how you felt about that part three.

And now I know. Dude, like I have a hard time reading it. You know, every time I've, and I've gone through so many drafts of this book and every time when I go through a draft, something in me just goes, oh God, this is gonna hurt going through it. You know, cause you gotta relive stuff. When you're writing the truth, you gotta be in it.

You know, you can't step back third person. You got to be the first person. But I have a commitment to this book. You know, this book has become bigger than me. And you know how we were talking earlier about this, almost dying horribly, right? And the trauma. And I mentioned I went off the painkillers really fast.

Why did I go off the painkillers? I was in severe narcotics, and narcotics, let me tell you, are great. When you're in men's pain, they are the best thing in the world. And just for turning the final draft of the book, the final, final, like all the drafts, gone through all year for the publisher before the surgery,

expecting to be fine, right? And then this whole thing happened. A month later, I'm still recovering pretty badly. And so the proofs start coming and the layouts and all that. And every time they do that and there's a copy editor that changed things or whatever, and I'm so obsessive,

like there's rhythm and cadence in my sentences. I do that for a reason because I'm layering in concepts in your mind. I've studied a lot over that, how to like just layer in. Part of my goal of writing this book is that no matter what you believe by the time you're done reading this book, the way I've layered the senses,

something in you will be actually doing it. And so I had to go through and make sure they didn't screw anything up. Like they didn't add, because they would add in their own things. And you can't do that when you're narcotics. Your mind's just not functioning that fully. So I went off cold turkey so I could work on this.

You know, it was a very interesting lesson. Like when you have something that you believe is more important than your pain, something that more important than you, you very quickly discard whatever it is and just work on that. You know, this book has given me something to move forward towards

because outside of that, everything else I do like venture capital, whatever, I can just put on pause. And sometimes, and venture capital is the healthiest thing to do is step away from deal flow. So you take a little break and look at, you know, get perspective, you know, but the book was coming out, the up, you know, and it's been an amazing thing. This craft that I said it all these years ago in some way has given me something that's pulling me forward out of this experience of something to put out to the world that I know that if I had done this in narcotics, I wouldn't have given it my best. So I went after narcotics and, and, you know, um, and I gave it everything I had. It's a beautiful, it's funny. Like we give so much to our work, but it gives us so much in ways that we can never even have planned for it.

You know? Yeah. If we're open to it changing us through the process of creating it. And I don't think everybody is. Why not? Because I think we're terrified of going to that place. Yeah. I mean, there are people that I know, I've actually spoken with a number of people who say, like, I will not say yes to a book, a body of work, a company, because I know how much it's

going to take. I know what it's going to take out of me, unless I believe going into it that the process of creation will change me in a meaningful way. And there are other people who owning that terrifies them and makes them step away from it. And it's Joseph Campbell's abyss. It's like there lies your treasure. And yet it is also rightfully terrifying and necessarily terrifying. And there's not really a way to avoid it if you're going to the space where you're not just replicating, but you're creating. Yeah. You know, it's very easy to do that, actually, as a creative, right?

It's safer. And so that was one of the reasons why I refused to actually put this book out to a regular publisher for years until I knew what I had to do with it. And yeah, yeah. You know, and that actually comes from my commitment to the craft. And I think when you start developing commitment to your craft, that makes it easier

because you know what makes it better. And if you're there, if you're good enough there to get it there. Nah. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th.

Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight Risk. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here.

It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in

glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. The book really kind of maps out three big things that we don't have to get into an excruciating detail. But the three big buckets are you start out by forgiving yourself. Whatever it is that got you to this point, however you feel about it.

And a specific process, specific exercise to do that. So it opens with kind of like a letting go. Yeah. Behind that is the vow. It's the thing that you did. Yeah. You're sitting down and saying like, this is my vow. And in this context, it's about loving yourself, which so many people will roll their eyes

and be like, hmm. Try it. How can that, right. Try it. That's the whole thing. Right. The invitation is, what's the downside? Look, you're not going to, you Look, I was thinking about this yesterday.

I was like, look, if someone gets this book, and I've seen the original version just transform people's lives. Literally, I've had people reach out to me and say it stopped them from killing themselves in the moment. I have a bunch of emails and people I met in person tell me that.

But let's say at the very worst, it makes you, using Dan Harris is 10% happier. It makes you love yourself 10% more. 10% compounded month by month is probably the best investment you'll ever make. It's not so bad. You know, because this stuff compounds. Right.

Your internal self, the longer you do it, it compounds. So you're not going to be any worse off. Right. I know it's kind of hard to figure out a reason not to at least say, hey, let me give it a shot. The third element is the idea of developing a practice, which we've talked about in so many different ways on the podcast. And there are so many different ways to go about it. And yours brings in elements of meditation and a number of other things. But I just, I think the idea of inviting people to almost create a closing of the books

on the past, create a commitment in the present, and then a commitment to continue to show up over an extended period of time is just a really powerful model, no matter what, whether it's trying to get happier or more meaningful or whatever it may be. I think that that macro frame, whatever the details you put into each one of those three things, it's just a really powerful lens on how to progress through life. Thank you.

It's a hard-learned, hard-earned lesson in doing this. And it's, and it works. And it's very human. It's very simple. There's nothing in here that's complicated, requires you standing on your head. You know, it's all in all the breath and life.

You can stand on your head if you want. Hey, if it works for you, go all in. Not required. But really, you know, it comes down to just to just giving it that commitment and going for it. Anything in life, anything great comes from commitment. Nothing great comes from half-assing ourselves. And especially something that's internal work that can really shift things inside and make us better. And we're better.

The people around us are better. Just life is better. It requires commitment and consistency. Commitment brings us consistency. Without commitment, we don't have consistency. It feels like a good place for us to come full circle in our conversation. So sitting here in this container of Good Life Project, if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up?

Know you do your best to know that you've given your best. And that's such a relative thing, moment by moment. But really, if you can know that, you have lived. You know, I read this quote the other day, someone, I think it was on Reddit of all places, live life like you mean it. I was like, that's really good. You know? So when you live life like you mean it,

you're giving it something. You're happening to life. You're not just going along, blown along by the storms. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening. And thanks also to our fantastic sponsors who help make this show possible.

You can check them out in the links we have included in today's show notes. And while you're at it, if you've ever asked yourself, what should I do with my life? We have created a really cool online assessment that will help you discover the source code for the work that you're here to do. You can find it at sparkotype.com. That's S-P-A-R-K-E-T-Y-P-E.com. Or just click the link in the show notes. And of course, if you haven't already done so, be sure to click on the subscribe button in your listening app so you never miss an episode. And then share, share the love. If there's something that you've heard in this episode that you would love to turn into a conversation, share it with people and have that conversation. Because when ideas become conversations that lead to action,

that's when real change takes hold. See you next time. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes.

The Apple Watch Series X, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun. On January 24th.

Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're gonna die. Don't shoot him, we need him! Y'all need a pilot? Flight Risk.