Motivation Daily by Motiversity - How to Love Yourself Again - Best Motivational Speech 2021

Episode Date: March 2, 2023

Kamal Ravikant, author and venture capitalist, delivers one of the best motivational interviews on loving yourself like your life depends on it.Special thanks to Aubrey Marcus for providing this interview.SpeakerKamal RavikantKamal Ravikant is the author of the bestselling books, Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On It and Live Your Truth. He's been a US Army Infantry soldier, held the hands of dying patients, climbed in the Himalayas, spoken to audiences around the globe, walked 550 miles across Spain, meditated with Tibetan monks, and has worked with some of the best people in Silicon Valley. But more than anything, he is passionate about writing books that improve lives.Follow Kamalhttps://twitter.com/kamalravikantMusic:Epidemic SoundHazy Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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The link is in the description. It's funny, I never used to think about the fact about loving myself. I just wasn't that guy. The thing about loving myself actually came when I had rock bottom. And I really had bottom. And it was a desperate attempt to save myself. And in this desperate moment, I made this vow to myself. I vowed to love myself.

And I, you know, it was no longer vow. But it was about loving myself. Where that came from, I had no idea. I still don't. It was a pure primal vow. It came from like a deep place of literally I was trying to save myself. When I realized that, I don't know how to do that. And I got to figure out because I made a commitment to myself.

And a vow to yourself is a sacred act. You know, you do that, you keep it, and life will change. And I have to figure out how to do it. It's an internal thing. It's a mindset. It's a belief. It's a rock-sallelit belief where your thoughts and your feelings and your emotions rise from. If they rise from then, then your life rise.

is from there. There is no perfection. That's very important to realize. It's not like, oh, now, hit it. You're just doing the work. Every day, just doing the work, doing the work. And it compounds. And before you know it, it's running on its own. And there's no failure either. If you're doing the work, you're succeeding. We're human beings, right? And fundamentally, like, the mind, we're stuck with the human mind, this monkey brain that runs around on this untamed horse, right? The details differ, but I think the core is the same. And fundamentally, it's fear and love. You can't fight fear.

You know, like fear, you know, it's a concept that I've learned is that, you know, light and darkness. You can't fight darkness. Darkness is the absence of light. So what you do is you work on the light, you bring the light in, and that takes away the darkness. And so that's something I actually really learned on my own and trying to save myself was if I worked on the light, it would take care of the rest. And that's love. Love is ultimately light. When you feel love, you feel like there's a lightness inside, you know, for lack of a better word. It's a fundamental truth. And then from there, where do you go? You know, honestly, I felt like at that time, I remember I was like, I was in my apartment and

I felt like a crazy man, man. I was just trying everything in my head because I was like, okay, I can't do this from the outside. Because I feel miserable on the inside. So I, you know, I was like, okay, I feel miserable on the inside. What's the it's going to make that better. I'm just going to start telling myself this and see what happens there. So I just started repeating to myself, I love myself, I love myself. And I just started doing it. And almost because I had nothing else to do, nothing else while I was trying to figure it. And I noticed it started to shift my thoughts. First of all, what it did was it stopped the other thoughts. You know, your mind focuses on one thing at a time. It's a horse. You guide it to where you wanted to go. I noticed after a few days, something in me started to shift a bit. Like it was actually started to run on its own a little.

And then I tricked it. I added feeling to it. And look, we can make ourselves feel anything we want. And that was the game changer. I started out of feel. I just used to breathe in deep and feel it inside because why not? I had nothing to lose. I think a really valuable part of the book that you say is maybe when you first start telling yourself that,

you don't really believe it and it's really hard to feel it. Yeah, it's a step by step thing. And I realize that because if you do it too fast, your mind, it'll fight back. All these old patterns and the old demons will come up. So the best thing is do it just step by step. You deepen the group. You feel it.

Then you add feel that, oh, something's shifting. Then you add the next. And it's very gentle. And it's all you're doing is, you know, the mind's all over the place all during the day anyway. You're just like shifting it, training it to go a certain way. So I started doing that. And then I was doing it all sorts of things. I was doing it outside.

I was doing my head. doing all these, you know, trying other variations, you know, and just, I kept them coming back to this simple one, just making myself feel love for myself, adding in feeling of light coming in as I did that with the breath. And then when I breathe out, naturally I noticed gratitude. I would start feeling grateful. You know, that came out of nowhere. That became like the natural response from being in that state. And then, you know, I started meditating and I'm quite, honestly, quite lazy about meditating, so I kind of like hacked it a bit where I just would listen to one song, one particular song, which was a classical piece of music. And it was seven minutes long.

And I would just do the same thing while listening to the song and meditating. And I noticed that after maybe a week or so, the moment I put the song on, my mind would go into that state. I was just anchoring the state of mind to that music. So I made that a practice, added that in. Then another thing was I was doing from the mirror, and I realized if I looked at my left eye and I did it loud, it was powerful. You know, the mind is strong. You know, the training of the mind, the old self is strong and it'll kick in. And it's just doing the work, getting up and doing the work, doing the work.

And it compounds, man. It really compounds. That's the beauty of it. And when you started noticing and doing it on its own, we just walk around feeling it. That's a beautiful place to be. If you don't feel like you deserve to love yourself, it's going to have a hell of a time loving yourself. do it, but forgiving yourself is really important.

Yeah, it's actually not something I did in the beginning. It's something I came up with later, and I realized I needed to do that. And, you know, I'm a big believer in everything starts from within. If you want to love others, love yourself first. If you want to forgive others, forgive yourself first. You can't set others free without you freeing yourself first, you know. So it's a, and I'm someone who's always just working on his mind and trying to figure out how to be better, how to be better. And I just came up with this little practice of how to forgive.

of myself and it worked. And again, it was a very simple thing. A lot of it's actually just a metaphor. And I realized, look, if I'm going to create a practice out of it that I'm going to share with others as I do in the book, then here's how you do it. You know, before you start everything, first forgive yourself. Let go of the past. And now you can step in the future by making a vow and then doing the practice.

And the self-forgiveness was very simple. I was living in California and I drove out in my car to this Pescadero, which is a beautiful lighthouse there, Northern California, you know, ocean over there and hiked out to the water. And I just sat there and I pulled out my journal and I wrote down, I forgive myself, but I wrote down, for everything I was holding against myself. I forgive myself for, wrote it. I forgive myself for, wrote it, felt it, wrote it, felt it, wrote it, wrote it, felt it, wrote it, wrote it, until I was done. And then I actually made myself, I read it out loud again and again to feel the weight of what I was carrying.

when you realize the field when you feel the weight of what you've been carrying all the unnecessary garbage you want to drop it you're like I don't want this anymore right and there's something about writing with a pen on paper there's a power in there there's a declaration there

so I did that again and again until I was where to let go then I just hiked out to the ocean and then ball it up and just give it over give it over to bigger than me whatever's bigger than me just take it you know because that can handle it. I can't, but that can.

Sure. Right. And it does. And then I realized, this is the perfect time to write the vow. Because I recommit to myself occasionally, right? And this is the perfect time to write the vow. I'm just like it go to the past. Let me create my future. So let me write a vow to love myself and the way I'm going to love myself in the future. And then set out to do it. So it's like it was a beautiful

little transition. And I think it just took what I had done before. forward to such a great level that now anytime I write down the vow I first I do the self-forgiveness exercise and you don't need to go by an ocean or anything you can throw in the toilet in the garbage you can burn it you can burn it you can burn it you know you can do whatever you want it's the intention you're letting go you're giving it over you know actually last time I did I think I threw it in the garbage disposal yeah done gone like I've given it over I've dropped the weight time to actually fly

Thank you.