The Glenn Beck Program - Ep 66 | The Miracle of Loving Yourself | Kamal Ravikant | The Glenn Beck Podcast

Episode Date: February 8, 2020

On the surface, Kamal Ravikant has lived an impressive life. He’s traveled the world, served in the U.S. Army, and started several companies and a venture capital firm. But when his business ventures took a steep nosedive, he spiraled into a wild depression, fueled by drug addiction and an abusive childhood. But instead of giving in to destruction and suicide, he wrote a vow: “I’m going to love myself.” Those simple words transformed his life. And he wrote a best-selling book to teach others how to do the same: “Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends on It.” Kamal and Glenn sit down for an honest conversation about self-help, mental health, the reason why addiction exists, and the importance of having a purpose bigger than yourself.  This Week’s Sponsor: Losing your hair sucks! Let’s do something about it! KEEPS offers the generic versions of the only two FDA-approved hair loss products. Go to https://KEEPS.com/SAVE to get your first order of KEEPS hair loss treatment for 50% off! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Do it now. Today's podcast is very, very personal. And it is really meant for people who are struggling with doubt right. now all the way to struggling with deep depression. It is really the secret of life, I think, and it is brought in a very clear and concise and understandable way by a guy who lived it. He was suicidal and not healthy at all. His name is Kamal Ravakant, and he wrote a book. It kind of almost had to force himself to do. He knew it was the right thing, and then almost chickened out. He wrote it and it became a number one bestseller. The new expanded edition is out love yourself like your

life depends on it. This is a very powerful conversation with Kamal Ravakant. I almost didn't publish Love Yourself like your life depends on it. I was terrified. Here I was a CEO who had fallen apart after his company failed, writing a book about how loving himself saved him. I thought I would be the laughing stock and my career would be finished. But I stepped through the fear and I shared my truth with the world and what happened next changed my life. What happened next? What happened next was the book took off. The book took off and changed so many lives. This little self-published book in Amazon, 7,000 words, which is like 40 pages, right? And it was just me sharing my truth and how I'd overcome to this personal adversity by working in my inside, not at the outside, just working

on the being within and how that changed everything. Because you were, you were wildly depressed. To say, you say in the book, to say I was depressed would be a good day. Right, right. That would have been an achievement. Yeah, right. So tell me what you're, tell me where you came from. Well, you know, when you build a company, when you're building companies and you have out of Korea in Silicon Valley, it kind of becomes your ego gets very attached and your success. You know, it's a, it's a human thing, but it's also a very cultural thing in building, building hard and fast businesses.

And then I built this company that when it's going to be my end all, my, okay, you know, I put every single dime I made in the last decade into it. I built it. It was doing great. Then I finally took money from, you know, some pretty spectacular names, and the whole thing blew up. It completely blew up. And I lost everything.

I was making payroll of credit cards, and I was living of credit cards, and I got really sick and depressed. And, you know, my whole sense of identity was attached to my company. It was my expression to the world. And so when that fell apart, I fell apart. And that was such an interesting lesson.

It was like, look, I should have focused on what I gave to it, not what the result is, because the result is bigger than us. The result is dependent on so many different things. but instead I just focused on the result being being me if that failed that means I failed I let everybody down I lost people money I was you know I was a failure and I didn't deserve to be here

and it brought up all these other insecurities and issues and I really didn't want to be here and to put it mildly and one night I remember I was in such misery and I was really really sick I'd been working for almost four years never took a day off you know 12 16 hour days you know, just charging ahead, you know, the whole macho business culture thing. And I realized I can't do this anymore.

I'm miserable. I'm going to either get out of this or die trying. And I staggered over to my desk. I have a journal on my desk. And I sat down and I wrote a vow to myself. Now, something I learned in life is if you make a commitment to yourself, it is a sacred act. It is something to you between you and something bigger than you that is pure. And if you make a commitment, you make a commitment a vow, you know, a marriage vow.

It's a real thing. So a vow to yourself is a real thing. You've got to live it. But what I didn't expect was this vow came out and it was a vow purely in a moment to save myself. I said, I'm going to love myself. I was not that guy who thought about things in those terms. You know, like I need to love myself or I need to like myself. But I don't know where it came from.

It came from something deep within, something pure. Yeah. Just so the audience knows, you and I are friends. Yes, sir. And I think you, I think of you as one of the most peaceful, humble, sweetest men I know. You are just so kind and you think of others. And it would never occur to me that you didn't love yourself. Were you this guy before?

I was. I was. Well, look, we all have our personalities, right? I mean, I've always been, I'd like to think a good man, but no, I didn't love myself, you know. And I had, you know, I came from a childhood that didn't really encourage that or didn't have to represent that. I came from abuse and we had a lot of issues, you know, growing up that you still deal with it. Actually, like, you're always beating yourself up. You don't even realize where that came from, right?

And you realize it's a deeper thing. And so, no, I wasn't the love yourself guy. Let me put it that way. You know, I'll tell you one of those, you and I have similar, I mean, reading this, it's like, I'm there, got it. I had problems in my childhood, my mother committed suicide, blah, blah, blah. And that's the way I used to deal with it, blah, blah, blah, I'm fine. I'm totally fine. And weak people have problems with it.

And I'm moving on. It's good. So everything's fine. but it wasn't until I was 30 until I just hit a brick wall that I was like, whoa, no, I am not fine from that. I never have been. And you create a tape young that's just playing over and over in your head. And you don't really realize it. So were you were one of, were you one of those guys that you were like, I'm fine.

I'm fine. I'm a doer. I do things. I join the military. I've climbed mountains in the Himalien. is I do things. I'm a doer. I'll go accomplish anything. That's, that was my, I think my way of not confronting things. You know, I just keep them moving forward. But did you know you weren't confronting things or did you just think that's who you are? You're fine and I'm just moving,

I just do these things. That's a great question. I thought I had. You know, when I was in college, I went to therapy, you know, for some childhood stuff. Actually, in this book I talk about very openly, like, you know, I was molested as a child and then these other things that happened as well and I went and I thought I had covered it it's done I've fixed it right move on right right it's not right it's not right it's not because it's not about it's not about exploring it's about it's about uh letting it go in in the right way and and then you're left if you've done that with the hardest part, and that is forgiving you. Yes, forgiving yourself, which is the ultimate freedom. And it's funny, right? It's like when you realize the weight of what you carry, you know,

it's heavy. It's part. We don't realize we carry. We just think this is our life. This is us. You know, and usually it takes hitting a wall, you know, being humbled. It takes being humbled to really look at ourselves with a different eye. And, but I think that's where, you know, that's where rebirth happens, you know, and probably multiple times in our lives. I don't think we hit a point. It's like, okay, this time I fixed it all. No.

No. I've gotten, you know, I've gotten to the point to where, oh, and I will never pray for humility again because. Oh, that's. That happens fast. Oh, my God. You're so right. Yeah.

That happens fast. And in ways that you didn't think. it would you at least with me i prayed for humility this is in the 90s and really prayed for humility and to be able to be humbled and and and and more quiet and thoughtful and oh my gosh so fast i was humbled but i was humbled in a way to where i was actually pissed about it i was like how do what do you and it took a friend a guru friend of mine anyway isn't this what you've been asking for and i was like Oh my gosh, it is. It is.

So we fight. We might even say we want to be more humble, but we fight against it. That is true. That is true. It's a, you know, it's a, it's a tough one. I'd like to learn more through joy and love than through getting smacked around. Yeah. Yeah.

You know. And so you are, you're finding your, you're finding your. yourself being humbled and it was the loss of the business. It was a loss of business, my identity, my health, all of it just coming apart at one point, you know, and it's funny looking back, I'm like, look, dude, it could have been much worse, but it's funny when you're in the thick of our things.

It couldn't be worse. It's the worst thing ever and life is, this life is just darkness. You know, we fall into that, that hole. But it took that and you know what? It changed my life because of the, a vow, the one commitment to myself. So that can go the other way. Yes, sir. Because I'm an alcoholic, and for probably three years, I made a vow to myself every day. Don't drink. Today, don't drink today.

I'm strong. I can make it. I don't need that. By the end of the night, I was drinking. The next morning I'd get up, and I'd look in the mirror and I would say, you are worthless. You couldn't do it for one day. And I'd make the vow again and I couldn't. So there's, when you say there's something sacred, I believe that to be true.

But I think, I think to do what you did and make that vow and then do it and accomplish it is really, really hard. Yeah, I think it comes down to my belief in the sacredness of that act. If you truly believe something is sacred, you're going to give it more weight

and you're going to put it above you. So what makes that sacred to you? It's a belief. It's a belief that I am committing to everything that exists, something bigger than me. You can call it God, you can call it whatever, but I'm committed to everything. This is it. There's no going back. It's almost like Cortez. The ships are burning.

Yeah. You know, and I understand the alcoholic thing. I went through a phase where I tried to destroy myself with drugs. Yeah. Name them all. I've tried them. And I've seen, you know, I've said, I've seen the devil. You know, the devil is very seductive.

You know, hard drugs. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. There's a reason why addiction exists. And... Explore that for a second. What would you like to know? There's a reason addiction exists.

Well, addiction, you know, I'll give you an example. We were talking about this earlier before the podcast. I went through some really traumatic surgery three months ago, and I was basically dead. And where I bled to death, I was spraying blood everywhere after surgery, after I was dealing in the hospital, artery burst, and I was spraying blood on everyone, and basically bled to death,

and they had to grab me and shove me into an operating room and flash me open and go fix it to save my life. And literally, it was that close. And so when I got out of the hospital, I was in an insane amount of pain because when your blood builds up enough that it bursts out of your body, you know, it's not pretty, right? Oh, I can't imagine. It's like an oil well, you know, coming out of you. I can't imagine. And you don't want to either.

Sorry for the details. You know? You're pretty freaky. And I was in a level, I didn't know pain like this could exist, you know, like the level of pain I was in because it was also in the lower abdominal area. there's a lot of nerves there. And so I was on, you name it every kind of narcotic they gave me. You know, in the hospital it was also IVs and pills and that. When I got out, the surgeon said to me, I had multiple surgeons.

One of them said, like, look, if there's anyone who qualifies for these drugs, it's you. You know, so don't worry, we'll keep giving you enough. We just have to call in prescriptions every time because of new laws. And a week into it. And, you know, let me tell they're nice. They indulge the pain. They kind of make you not care. You're just lying there.

And also, you're lying there. incapacitated at a home and I realized a week into it I went off cold turkey just cold turkey why because I turned in this manuscript for this book before I had gone to the surgery it's expecting a basic elective surgery I'll be out and now the publisher was sending me the the final proofs with the copy edits and if and as you know when you're a writer you care about every word and you want your words to be there not the copy editors were and I was looking at the material realizing my mind wasn't there. If I was on these drugs,

I couldn't give my all to this book. And so it was like, I realized, look, this was purpose and that was bigger than pain. I would deal with pain. Forget the drugs. I need to be clear because I have purpose. And I think, and I realized looking at times in my life when I had, when I struggled with,

when I was just like, okay, I'm going to go. I thought I was playing with drugs. You think you're playing. You know, you think you're stronger than them. That's also a very interesting thing. I always thought I was stronger at it. It won't destroy me. I'm different, right?

I'll do it for a little while. I'll get out of it. No one will ever know. And no one ever really did, honestly. You know? But for the grace of God, here am I? Because I tried them all on there, there's dangerous stuff out there.

And I think I was trying to destroy myself. And, but those are the times where I think I didn't have purpose, where I was drifting. But if you have purpose, if you have a vision, if you have something you move towards that you think is bigger than you. For me, this putting this book out to the world. This book is so important. It's bigger than me. It belongs to the world. Whereas me, I'm going to be here for a certain amount of time. I almost left. I may leave again. God.

But the book, but the book was more important. So I had purpose. And I think with addiction, I've talked to some friends about it who've been through it. You know, we're talking about who've dealt with it. And it's like usually they were able to beat addiction when they found something bigger than them. People can find faith. People can find something family. People can find something, you know, whatever. But it's kind of bigger than you.

If I can add a caveat, that is part of it. But unless you deal with what's actually here. Oh, yeah. You just make your life about religion or your job or whatever is bigger than you. Yeah, absolutely right. And then your setup, because I did that over and over and over again. And not thinking that I needed to look inside. And every time I would accomplish that, it was like totally empty.

Yes, that is so true. It becomes addiction of its own. And it's never enough when you get that point. Like there's so you know It's cliche but it's anti-climactic Then your next one the next head The next head You absolutely right

And it's and as soon you realize There's nothing to any of that And then it really Comes raining down on your head Yeah So I was struck by How you talk about

I mean well the name of the book It's love yourself like your life depends on it And it does And I was struck by the way you changed the tapes in your head. And go through that. Yeah, that was, okay, that was actually very interesting because So here I was that night in that journal, I wrote this vial. I sit back and I think, and I wrote it so hard, so desperation, and I think I just carved it into my desk, right, through the paper. And I looked at, I remember being stunned,

like, what is this? But I knew because I had done it, I had to do it, because that comes out of a personal belief. This was sacred, I connected to something bigger, I committed something bigger. What do I, I didn't know, I didn't, you know, like we all, everyone tells us, you know, love yourself, great, how?

You know, it does not mean go take bubble baths and drink champagne, that's not loving yourself, right? It's, one thing I've always known as every, it's always an inner game. It's not the outer. You can't, if you try to change things in the outer, it doesn't last. You change things in the inner,

you start to shift and that lasts. And you have to do it consistently, right? And so I was like, okay, how do I do it? I didn't have access to any books. I didn't want to read other people's theories and how to love myself, you know? Most of them, I didn't know. So I just sat around and I just started trying things.

I started, like I was, you know, like I'm in New York these days and you, I pass sometimes, you know, it's really sad. You'll see people talking to themselves, homeless people. You know, there's a lot of mental problems there. And if you had seen me, you would have thought I was one of those people. I was just walking around and talking to myself,

trying to figure out how do I make myself alone myself. And in the end, I was like, what is the stupidest, simplest thing I can do no matter how bad I'm feeling? I'm just going to start telling myself a lot of myself. And I realized as I started to do it, that I started doing it like loudly in my apartment, not loudly around other human beings, that I quite leave my head.

But one thing I did was it started to shift my thoughts away from all the negative thoughts, which were the opposite of loving myself, which were the darkness. This all of a sudden gave me a ray of light. And then what was interesting was, I think about three, four days in by accident, I started making myself feeling it,

by just feeling breath, by feeling light, by feeling love coming in when I said it, and something just shifted. I was like, oh, wait a man, this is something here, so go into it. So I would just go down these rabbit holes and try things, and if it worked, I'd go deeper. If it didn't, I'd throw it away.

It was a clinical trial, sample size of one. The only one that matters is the self, if you're going to work on yourself. And before I knew it, I was trying these things, and I was, like, keeping records off it. And a little obsessively, I must admit. When you're in that place, that's all there is. Yes. Yes. You understand.

Like your life depends on it. That's what I like. Like your life depends on it. you know in that space it does. You know what it was? I remember having this image in my head that I was hanging off a cliff just with my fingers. And that's all I had was my fingers. And I had to love myself with that desperate intensity that that was going to save me and pull me up. Like that kind of intensity is what I walked around. And you know what? It worked. So my father taught me. He was a practitioner of philosophy

from California that was big in the 40s and 50s and 60s. And it's called the science of mind. Oh, yeah, Ernest Holmes and those guys. Yeah. It's great, right? Yeah, yeah. And that's why I think you and I have so much in common, why I recognized so much of this.

And my father said to me at one point, he said, you're thinking all the wrong thoughts. and he said get up tomorrow and just make a check mark of how many negative thoughts just split a paper positive negative and then just don't think about them don't dwell on just check check check before i got to the first stoplight 45 minutes up in the morning i was i had like 30 negative no positives and i was like got it and great exercise yeah it is powerful exercise it is it is is and um uh when you when you first think of just think i love myself it's really hard because you're most likely not in the place of loving the opposite yeah and you and you so you don't believe it

you've rebelegated right right but the the the science of mind is the idea that the word is the the most powerful thing. Everything starts as a thought and all thoughts are creative. And so if you're thinking all these, you're creating this negative and you have to train yourself to think the other way because the world is going to say horrible things about you. You know what I mean? You got enough negative going on.

You have to be the source of your own positive. And I don't, for me at least, it took a while. to say those things and have that change because I had looked at myself in the mirror for three years and said, Oh, that's right. You're nothing. So you, this happened to you quickly?

Because I was doing it so intensely. And so then what I also realized was, look, I can't keep this intensity up all my life. You know, I'm going to go off and live and I'm going to, So what I did was after a while I almost created like a little practice, like a mental practice I would ever do that I would do every day that would keep it going forward. You know, what I realized was, look, we spent a lot of time, talking about health and fitness.

You know, if you want to get in shape, you go to the gym every day. You don't go to the gym once a year. You know, we talk about eating healthy. If you want to don't have diabetes or heart disease, you eat a certain way every day. You don't just do that once a year. But the mind, the most importantly, the inner,

the most importantly is the one we pay the least attention, to as the one that we have to work on daily. It's the most powerful. It's the most important. It runs the whole show. Mm-hmm. You know? And the mind is different than the brain.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah. So it was, originally was the intensity, but then this practice that I came up with,

and then honestly, you know, how you said about how looking in the mirror and then, you know, like, like, you know, making the commitment not to drink and then you drank that night, over time I would get lazy and I would start you know when things get going going good oh I got I got it it's figured out life's good it's on autopilot now I don't need it you know and so like I get lazy

and that's another thing I wanted to share in the book is like look look what happens to the mind it goes back to old grooves and these old patterns come up you know patterns are patterns they will be there our job is to put a new a more powerful more empowering and beautiful patterns to serve our life. I was reading this, you know, talking about the new thought. I was reading this new thought book recently. And he said, you know, God acts, the devil reacts. And he's talking about the nature of the mind. So we can either be proactive in our thoughts and who we want to be, or we can be reactive. Where's the power? You know, where's the control? Where's the choice? It's in acting, it's in choosing consciously. And I don't know how. And I'm grateful for it. I still

point what brought, it wasn't about to like myself. It wasn't about to be better. It was about to love myself. And I think I stumbled into something really powerful and primal, because we are all wired for it. You know, we're just literally wired for it. It's our deepest need. It is our deepest need and it's our deepest gift. You know, that's the irony. You know, we are what we see, you know, we are what we're seeking here. So I stumbled on it and, you know, for the grace of God, here am I. So as a Christian, and I know you've taken Eastern and Western philosophy and kind of taken the best

of all of them but somebody said to me the day I can't believe you believe in what you do with your faith I'm like not jamming it down your throat buddy works for me it just works for me

and we were talking about it and I said quite honestly I don't even care if it's true in the And it's true to me. And it makes me a better human being. Yes. And what I needed was the Christian ritual of baptism. I needed take my sins, all the crap that I've done, take it all away,

wash me clean so I can start all over again. maybe that's true i think it is maybe that's true maybe that's just a psychological game it doesn't matter it works it's really important so how did you wash all of that stuff away well i also have a background you know in christianity i was baptized actually southern baptist in full penning georgia boot camp the full on immer the full on dunking the whole works right so and actually started the Bible quite thoroughly for a while. So I know quite well. And then I've gone and explored the world and just try to take everything in and see who, what works for me? In the end, you know, it's, it's so interesting you say that. It's like ultimately what makes me better? What makes me a better me? That's all

I can work on. And so, not just better, but a better, you know, it's like, it's like capitalism. You can use capitalism to become rich. Or you can use capitalism. to help people and feed people and lift people and make their lives easier. And the byproduct will be you get rich. You know what I mean? Yeah. And so it's not just a better person that you, I'm guessing, that you were striving for, but it's a more loving, serving, giving.

Well, that's a better version of me. Yeah. And, you know, here's the funny thing. when you do that, the world becomes that for you. Like, look, that little book I put out, right? Where did it take me? About a month to write because I wrote a lot and I edited down to what I just wanted to put out.

And it took off, and it went off self-published, no marketing, whatever. So went on to sell like half a million copies, right? I have so many emails from people and I did something most authors don't do because I didn't expect to sell any copies. I didn't see, Glenn. I expected to sell 10 copies

and I was going to buy eight of them to give to friends. And I basically put my email address in the back of the book. I was like, hey, if you're interested, just email me. Well, guess what? People emailed me. I have thousands, if not tens of thousands of emails from people about what the simple act of sharing my truth did for them. I would change their lives. I have met people because some people wrote me.

I was like, I got to meet you to confirm this. Who said, I had a gun in my hand. And someone had a gun in someone giving me a book and I read it put the gun away. And I met a guy who was, who's told me about, you know, a bag and the pills, and he read my book, and he put those away, went home and put away and put his daughter to bed instead. You know, like these kind of stories. And what did I do? All I did was share my truth, just my process, right? And so when you're, and I did it from a loving place. I was loving myself then. If I wasn't, I wouldn't have taken the risk. I would have been in, I thought I was going to be a complete, you know, basically tart and feather written out of Silicon Valley. Like, what are you doing? You lost. It's scary. You inspire investors' money and now you're writing a little book, hey, look at me, I'm loving myself. I mean, that's crazy.

That's crazy talk, right? Right. Especially when it starts with, hey, kind of mental breakdown. You know what I mean? It makes everybody feel good. Like, who's going to invest in me again? Yeah. Right?

And instead, look, all these people that just were so generous or so kind just came out of nowhere, bought the book and told me in their stories about their lives changed. It changed my life. So it's not about that, I say this with respect for what you're teaching in here, but it's, there's something to be said when you're in this place of despair, suicide. You know, the darkness is, you feel absolutely alone. And you feel like everybody will judge you. You feel that nobody else could understand this.

Most people don't in your life. You can't really explain it. And when somebody speaks from a very vulnerable place about that, you tend to look around going, I thought it was just me. And we all have pieces of this in us. Yes, we do. You know?

And so it's healing just to know I'm not alone. It's actually one of the reasons why I did the expanded version, because I get some all these emails, I also got a lot of questions. And I realized I'd held back a lot because I was still scared of putting myself out there. And so if I was going to do it, if I was going to have this book, I know, well, I need to be full out. So I need to share, like, how I've used this to overcome childhood, this, that, whatever. because people need to know they're not alone.

So take us through. How do you get past your childhood? Getting past is maybe not the right word. It's coming to terms and still loving that part of yourself. Like one of the biggest shifts that's been for me is, and look, I don't need to put my dirty laundry in a book. I did it for a reason, right? Every word is here meant to help.

And why do I share, you know, my mom doesn't know yet that I was molested? I have to have that conversation with her. you know and I put it in a book and I haven't told my mom yet I'm terrified Glenn it's gonna break our heart and yet I put in a book well yeah that's because I was getting emails so much in time I wrote a book I wrote a book about my mom's suicide and I hadn't talked to my dad about it wow and and I was terrified what is he going to say what is he going to say because as a family we never talked about it and so we never really. I'd gotten together with my sisters and said, okay, I'm on a journey to try to get better and we have to talk about mom's suicide. And my sister jumped up, my younger sister jumped up.

And she's two years older than me. And she said, I did not kill her. And I said, whoa. What? And I said, of course, where did that come from? And she said, you said to me because they had an argument right before, I'm 13, 14 years old. And I said, if something happened to her, it's your fault. She had carried that into her 40s. Yeah. Into her 40s.

And I know what you're feeling. Talking to your mom. Yeah. It's terrifying. But why do these things? It's because they help. if we're going to put our work out to the world, we have to tell the truth, right?

And I get emails from people, and they're struggling with it. And I have to say, like, look, I've struggled with this, and this is what I've done. And all of these things, they're human things. What doesn't have to be in through X or Y or Z to identify? Because inside we're the same, fear is fear, pain is pain, love is love. In the end, it's the internal thing. One of the biggest shifts I had,

as I started looking myself as I was loving myself, for looking at myself from a loving place because it becomes a state of being. And then your thought shift. It's almost like you look at your memories from a different place. And so this child that I was almost ashamed of, right, that I kind of like,

when I had memories, I would just block them off. I realized, oh my God, the strength. Imagine this child what it took to go through all this and say, somehow get through it and become the man I've become. It's because of him. I owe him. That is strength.

What I thought was what I was looking at is shame and weakness. All of a sudden, I look back and I'm in awe of this child. What a blessing that is. It really is. It completely shifts everything. And it's just same event. Event hasn't changed. It's looking at it from a place of love for myself, which is a love for this child.

I hate to quote Marianne Williamson. Miracle is a change of perspective. And that's a good one. So what are you afraid of talking to your mom? What's your greatest fear on that? I'm afraid of the guilt or the pain she'll feel about maybe not being able to protect me at this place we were at where it happened. I don't know. I don't want to cause any pain to my mother.

Part of me is like, maybe she will read the book. But you know. Your family's like my family. They're not impressed. Hey, I got a bestseller. Yeah. Yeah. I think my brother, are you ready?

It's like, no, I've been busy with family where I'm like, dude, I almost died putting this book out. And you ever read the book? That's so funny. That is so funny. So, you talk about, I think it's six years later. About six, seven, oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, where you're on the role. You're going.

And six years later, fall apart. What happened? I stopped doing the practice. I stopped eating my own dog food. I thought I had it, so I just got lazy. And I let life, instead of acting, I started reacting to life. I was having issues in life,

so I started reacting to life. And eventually, I had a painful breakup happen with someone I love more than anything I have ever loved and I fell apart with it. And what was interesting was, I didn't, it wasn't just the falling apart with it that was hard. It was the, now I was dealing with

shame like, look, I'm the guy who wrote the book and not to do this. I'm the guy who gets these emails from people and how not to do this. I'm the guy gets email with people saying, you've helped me not to do this and look at me falling apart. And I realized I had to go back in to what I had literally saved me once and just do it again. And what's funny is this has happened a couple of times and each time I go do it again, part of me is like, is it going to work? It's like there's this hope or trust, but it's still like, is it going to work this time? I don't know because it's funny to mind, you know, just the tricks it plays. And so I had to do from scratch.

And what I did was at the time, I kept a journal of what I was doing in my internal self. And as I was doing it and I started getting better and better and better. I realized, oh my God, this is one of the missing pieces of the book because there's so many nuances on working on the inner self. What I did was I kept a record of what I was doing in the inner self. For instance, what do you do? Tell me, take me through your practice. Well, for example, there is the foundation, which is I literally make myself feel love for myself all throughout the day. Where I walk in with a bit breath, with light, with feeling it in.

Look, I can walk around thinking anything I want to think. Why don't I choose the thought I want to think? And I just do it consciously until it becomes the dominant thought. That takes practice. People, people, I say it's all the time. Even in my own family, everybody will be upset, including me, about something stupid. And I'll just finally stop and go, stop, stop. Why are we dwelling on this for another second?

Just let's just let's all let it go. It happened. None of us wasn't our fault, blah, blah, blah. It's over. Life is such a choice. And I don't think people understand. When I was getting better, I was reading Einstein and,

and Hawking and Carl Sagan. I'm fascinated by time and space. The idea of space time. It's one. There is not, it's only to mark your position in a map. It's only they. to say space time.

Oh yeah, that happened to me when I was here. And the planet was there. And I was standing here. Well, I'm not there anymore. That has nothing to do with today unless I don't file it away properly. Do you know what I mean?

Oh, very much so. Very much so. In fact, you know, I recently read this quote that just made me laugh and laugh and laughing. and Einstein quote, and Niels Bohr, you know, Niels Bohr was father of quantum mechanics. And, you know, Einstein has a famous quote saying, you know, God doesn't play dice for the universe.

And most people don't know Niels Bohr's retort to that. He's like, Einstein, stop telling God what to do. That's good. That's good. I laughed, I think, for an hour. I don't know, you know, just, yeah, it's, you know, it's thought. We think we're thinking most of the time. be running loops with just patterns, right?

It takes conscious effort to steer the thought, to steer the horse. But it's a thought that runs the show. So my fundamental thing is this one thought about love and being a love for myself, right? Just pure. And, you know, I talk about faith in here. I talk about belief. You know, it could be God loves me. It could be whatever.

You know, whatever is your thing. Whatever is your fundamental primary thing, live it inside. Don't give it lip service. Don't give it like one day a week service. Live it inside. And that's where transformation happens. That's one thing I've learned. You work in the inside

that that kind of focus, transformation happens. You get better and your life gets better. Every single time, your action gets better, your thoughts get better, people around you get better. It just is the nature of reality

that I've learned. And so I start with the very basic thought and I make myself, sometimes what I'll do is I'll just stop throughout the day and I'll take 10 deep breaths. Just 10 deep and prep-you-know-you-know-breathing, right? And deep and purposeful breaths,

and just let in light and let in love for myself and breathe out whatever needs to go. And usually by the eighth breath, you know what comes out? Thank you. So it becomes a cycle of love and gratitude, love and gratitude, bringing in love, releasing gratitude. And I walk around in that. And, you know, this is just adding in compounding in my head

where like that becomes my state of being. Now, I'm not perfect at it. I don't think ever will be, but it sure beats the alternative, which is just letting my mind being a monkey throw bananas everywhere. And it will eventually become fear and loathing.

Fear and loathing. Darkness. You know, one of the best things someone ever told me was, look, darkness is the absence of light. When you're in darkness, if you're in pain, if you're in fear, loathing, anger, whatever, you don't fight it.

You don't win by fighting darkness. What you do is you go to the light. How do you go to the light? He said, find the nearest switch, put it on and turn the light, go to the window, pull out your rack, start cleaning the window, right? And light will come in,

naturally take the darkness away. So in the inside, on the mind, this is, I'm creating light. I'm literally creating light for myself. And it works. You know, it's really simple. Like the truth profound, the best things always are the simplest,

you know, to the point of being idiotic, Almost, right? Almost, yeah. Love yourself like your life depends on it. You're like, okay, that's a great bumper sticker. No, no, no. It's true. I should do it.

It actually true. And my life is completely transformed once after that practice. Literally my life is the only drawbacks have been my own. Like I'm the one who slowed down. I'm the one who didn't work in my inner self. and I've just learned again and getting them. Whenever I start working my inner self, life gets better.

When I was in the hospital, right? So I go in for the surgery, elective surgery, all that I think athletic injury. It's supposed to be out. Next morning, they're releasing me. You're doing great. I walk out and all of a sudden,

something happens. I almost fall in pain. And I look as a soccer ball-sized bulge in my abdomen, and then it bursts and blood is spraying everywhere. Oh, right? Gosh. And it gets everyone's attention. I bet it did.

You know, like, in a hospital, best way to get attention is spray blood on people. Yeah, I bet. I bet. And let me tell you, it's a horrific memory. Your mind, your brain is not designed to see blood spurning out. It's not, it's not a normal everyday thing. It's not something we're designed for. And then being taken the OR, and I literally got to the point where

I had to do this, I was thinking, this is it, because I could feel the life-forstrating out. I could feel, I could feel my body just going, and the pain and the horror and the shock and the surrender, thinking, I remember this one moment, looking around at the mayhem around me, almost in slow motion, all the scour people and scrubs running around,

grabbing instruments and, like, you know, seeing all the, and thinking, this is my last experience. And then thinking, what a shitty, messy way to go. I literally thought that. Like, really this? And I remember this immense, there were only thoughts of love and fear.

It wasn't with thoughts, it was like flashes and images of love and fear, of people I love, and fear and this terror. And I remember the anesthesiologist came and she had these really cool glasses and dangly earrings. And she was like leaning over saying, I'm about to burn ivy and I just pushed it away and I grabbed her hand. and I said, look. And I just, I don't know why I had to tell her, I'm scared. And she did something. She put her hand on my hand. And it calmed something down. And something we thought, okay, this is it, this is it. This is it. And I let go. And I remember like falling, this is before the anesthesia. So this wasn't this. I remember falling backwards into darkness thinking, okay, here I come. You know,

and then waking up, you know, after they had saved me. So now, I'm, I'm going to, I'm, you know, I'd gone in for supposed to be out in a day, right? Walking around, but the next thing I know, I'm in really, like, ICU level, you know, I'm in the hospital for every narcotic known of mankind, all this in a really bad place. So I made a choice then, like, look, I'm not going to let this become bad. I'm going to, while I'm here, I'm going to work on my mind.

I'm going to do things. One is everyone around me, I'm going to make sure they feel good about themselves. I'm just going to make that a little exercise. And the other thing is, I started making myself every chance I could, making myself feel blessed that I was still here. Make my self-feel gratitude. I consciously did that. I'd be there writing in pain.

Making my fellow self-feel gratitude. Because, or I could make myself feel miserable. It was my choice. And look, I think that really helped get me through it. You know, it's thought is a, thoughts are conscious choices. We just don't realize it. But if we do that, I think because I've done, this loving myself thing before, I knew the power of my thought on me. And so I do walk around

at times feeling blessed because of that, you know, feeling grateful. Well, it's amazing because you will look back on that experience, just like every other, quote, bad experience of our life. And at some point, you look back and go, that was really beneficial. There was something powerful and good about that and you will be grateful for that moment because the the fear goes away and and and that's what i mean to really master the mind that's what you have to be able to do is be grateful when the thing that you despise is happening to you yeah that's the hardest part that's really hard but look it's i almost asked myself tell myself what choice to I have because otherwise I know what the result will be. If I just give myself to pity and feeling

terrible, and let me tell you, there were moments where I did, you know, and you feel like, you're like, why did this happen? The witch is never, there's never an answer to that, right? If you do that, there's no way out. The only way out is to consciously choose who I'm going to be on the inside and make that something that's, you know, God acts, devil reacts. You know, just choose that, choose that, choose that. And it's something that's available to all of us, and it's not a religious thing. It's not an Eastern philosophy or Western philosophy thing. It's a human thing.

It's a purely a human thing. We all have it, and then we all have this choice. Tell me how you would have defined success before your company's collapse. Oh, it was, I'm embarrassed to say this. It was like, you know, we used to call Silicon Valley FU money. You know, that's an actual term. And I'm embarrassed to say, but I remember using that term. Yeah, that was my...

It'll have enough money just to tell everybody else F you. F you. But the funny thing is, if you really know who you are, what you stand for, you can do it anyway. You do it anyway. And you know what better opportunities come when you stand up? And it takes all the fear away. Yeah.

You have no fear. When you master this, you've dealt with all the worst parts about you. And it doesn't bother you anymore. And you, in fact, probably very open about it because you realize it helps other people, so they know they're not alone and they can get past it as well.

So there's nobody that, there's nothing you're afraid of. There's somebody's going to go, well, I know who you really are. That's right. That's the best part. It's great. You just laugh.

You just like that. That is the best part. It's freedom. Yeah. I mean, you don't. I mean, you're not. Yeah. That's me.

I'm flawed. Yes. Yeah. Welcome to the show. Yeah. I had a really powerful person sit in their office and I knew that they had done, you know, investigative work on me. And they were trying to get a leverage.

I'm an open book. And, and, and, uh, I've called into the office. And he sets all these documents down. He says, you know, people are trying to take you down. And people are trying to find out everything they can about you.

And I said, I'm sure they are. And I knew it was him. And he took these documents and put it up. I think they were all just file folders with empty pages. And he said, you know, you have a really good wife. And that was my look. And the hair stood up. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I said, yes, I do. And he said, it's always a problem when a man does something to hurt his wife. And I looked at him and I said, I know. That's why that's never happened. And he stared at me for what seemed like four hours, but it probably was 30 seconds, just locking eyes. Right. He put that away. I don't know if I would have had the strength to sit in a meeting

if I knew all of the bad things that I had done and all of the things that could have been said about me, not necessarily about that, but something else. If I hadn't already dealt with it and just open about it, the power that fear would have had over me, you know? Then you could, once you do this, You sit with anybody, you know, like, well, I've heard, oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

Worse, actually. The best thing is when you do it from a place of giving value to others. Because there's no value in here's my dirty laundry world. There's a lot of that these days. And I'm, you know, in the name of vulnerability and I can't stand it. That's just sharing your garbage with the world, throwing more garbage. No, share it. How did you get better with it?

How did you use it to be better? How did it, how did you heal? You share that, you share the process, you heal others. Just by throwing your garbage out there actually hurts everyone else because everybody else is like, oh, well, they're like that. Why should I be any better? Instead of saying, here's what happened, here's what it meant, here's how low it was, and here's how I fixed it, and you can beat it. Then that's really powerful. Yeah, I think we have a responsibility to do that.

You know, it's, if we go through something, you know, it's what we make of it. In the end, it's what we make of it. So I look back at this child. And, you know, so there was a lot of different kinds of abuse that happened, right? And I look back and some of the things that I used to, look who's become, he's become this very loyal man. And he was a loyal person. He was loyal to people. He was a fighter.

You know, he was like, I'm going to get through this. This is by, you know, I went on to like study martial arts, join the military, do this, do that. You know, it's because of him, I kind of became that man. It's because of him I can write these books with the sensitivity I can. You know, all these things that come from what we think was trauma and horrible. But yet, we look at, you know, the gifts. I'm in awe of who

the people that goes, what we go through and who we become because of it. You know, that's what makes us special.

That's what makes us in my, in my, you know, if I use the word, in our own self, great. Yeah.

Great or terrible. Fair enough. Fair enough. Yeah. If you choose. Yes, it is a choice. It's a choice.

You know, I have very low tolerance for, very, very low tolerance from people who use their past as an excuse. to hurt others.

That is the worst thing you can do for yourself. Worst thing you can do for the world. Your past is not an excuse. Use your past as a launching ground. Use your pass as a gift. It all is ultimately in the end. The name of the book is Love Yourself like your life depends on it.

Kamal Ravakhan. I love you, brother. I love you, God. Thank you. Just a reminder, I'd love you to rate and subscribe to the podcast and pass this on to a friend so it can be discovered by other people.