The Resilient Mind - Are You Creating Your Own Problems? - Naval Ravikant

Episode Date: September 28, 2026

Naval Ravikant is an entrepreneur and investor whose journey embodies the essence of mental mastery and self-actualization. As the co-founder of AngelList and an early investor in companies like Uber and Twitter, he combines strategic thinking with a deep philosophy on wealth, happiness, and inner peace. Naval’s reflections on self-awareness, decision-making, and mindset have inspired millions to take control of their inner world.This episode is brought to you in partnership with Chris Williamson. For more inspiring videos visit: https://www.youtube.com/@ChrisWillxTake action and strengthen your mind with The Resilient Mind Journal. Get your free digital copy today: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/Download_JournalExplore tools from past guests of the podcast. Some links below are affiliate links, meaning we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you:💓 HeartMath: https://www.heartmath.com/resilient🧠 Muse: https://choosemuse.com/resilientmind🌿 Brain Ritual: https://www.brainritual.com/THERESILIENTMINDThis episode is brought to in partnership with Motiversity & Chris Williamson.🌍 The Resilient Mind Podcast is a proud member of 1% for the Planet — building resilient minds and a resilient planet. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Do you really need that many problems in your life? Again, I would say try to focus on just one overarching problem and then go solve that problem. If you want to be successful, define success very concretely. Focus on that and everything else. When it enters your mind, it becomes a problem, whether it's a judgment about the girl walking down the street or the car that just cut in front of you or whether it's like, you know, this, your accountant did this stupid thing. Like, yes, it's going to trigger you. But observe for a moment that like it's triggering me. I've created a problem.

do I really want to have this problem right now? Do I want to spend the energy in this problem? Or do I want that going somewhere else? And it doesn't have to be that over. You don't have to, the mind mud wrestling with itself is also a problem. Because I'd love to do that. My problems have got problems and I have a real problem about fixing my problems. Yeah, exactly.

So you're going to be much happier and much more focused. Again, I think happiness and focus and success can kind of complement each other. You're going to have much more energy. Just think about as mental energy. You're going to have much more much more. energy to focus on the actual problems you want to solve if you don't start unconsciously, subconsciously, reactively picking up problems everywhere. So before anything can be a problem that takes up your emotional energy, you have to accept it as a problem. You can be choosy about your

problems. Happiness is being satisfied with what you have. Success comes from dissatisfaction. Is success worth it then? Oof. I'm not sure that statement is true anymore. Like, I'm made that statement a long time ago. And a lot of these things are just notes to myself and they're highly contextual. They come in the moment. They leave in the moment. Happiness, okay, so very complicated topic, but I always like the Socrates story where he goes into the marketplace and they show him all these luxuries and fineries. And he says, how many things there are in this world that I do not want? And that's a form of freedom. So not wanting something is as good as having it. In the old story with Alexander Dionysius, right? Alexander's goes out and

conquers the world and he meets Dionysius living in a barrel and Dionysius says, get out of the way you're blocking my son. And Alexander says, oh, how I wish I, you know, could be like Dionysius in the next life. And Dionysius says, that's the difference. I don't wish that I could, sorry, Diogenes, Diogenes. Diogenes says, I don't wish to be Alexander. So two paths to happiness and one path is for success. You get what you want. You satisfy your material needs or like Diogenes, you just don't want it in the first place. And I'm not sure which one is more valid. And it also depends what you define success.

If the end goal is happiness, then why not cut to the chase and just go straight for it? Does being happy make you less successful? That is a conventional wisdom. That may even be the practical earned experience of your reality. You find that when you're happy, you don't want anything so you don't get up and do anything. On the other hand, you know, you still got to do something. You're an animal. You're here.

You're here to survive. You're here to replicate. You're driven. You're motivated. you're going to do something. You're not just going to sit there all day. Unlikely, some people do. Maybe it's in their nature.

But I think most people still want to act. They want to live in the arena. I found for myself as I've become happier is a big word, but more peaceful, more calm, more present, more satisfied with what I have. I still want to do things. I just want to do bigger things. I want to do things that are more pure, more aligned with what I think needs to be done and what I can uniquely do.

So in that sense, I think that being happier can actually make you more successful, but your definition of success will likely change along the way. Status games, the allure of accruing, whether it's fame, actual fame, or just the competition comparison trap, it's always there. There's a real drawer of being swayed by social approval. How should people learn to get less distracted by status games in that way? I think it just helps to see that status games don't matter as much as this. they used to. In old society, let's go back, hunter-gatherer times, there was no such thing as wealth.

You just had what you could carry. There was no stored wealth. So wealth games didn't really exist to wealth creation games. All that existed was status games. If you were high status, then you got what little was available first. But even back then, you had to earn your status by taking care of the tribe. Now we have wealth creation where you can actually create a product or a service. You can scale that product or service. And you can provide abundance. for a lot of people. And that's not zero sum. That's a positive sum game.

I can be wealthy. You can be wealthy. We can create things together. And clearly, since we are all collectively far, far wealthier than we were in hunter gatherer times, wealth creation is positive. But status is limited. There's limited status to go around. It's a ranking ladder.

It's a hierarchy. And so to rise in status, somebody else has a lower end status. Now, you can have multiple kinds of status. So you can expand some kinds of status, but it's not like wealth creation where it can go infinitely where we can all be, you know, living in the stars and moon bases or Mars colonies or what have you. So just realize the status games are inherently limited. They're always combative. The worst outcome in the world is not having self-esteem. Why? Yeah, it's a tough one. Well, I look at the people and I don't want to offend anybody, but I look at the people who don't

like themselves and that's the toughest slot because they're always wrestling with themselves. And it's And it's hard enough to face the outside world. And no one's going to like you more than you like yourself. So if you're struggling with yourself, then the outside world becomes an insurmountable challenge. And it's hard to say why people have low self-esteem. It might be genetic. It might just be circumstantial. A lot of times I think it's because they just weren't unconditionally loved as a child.

And that sort of seeps in at a deep core level. But self-esteem issues can be the most limiting. One interesting thought is that, you know, to some, extent self-esteem is a reputation you have with yourself. You're watching yourself at all times. You know what you're doing. And you have your own moral code. Everyone has a different moral code. But if you don't live up to your own moral code, the same code that you hold others to, it will damage your self-esteem. So perhaps one way to build up your self-esteem is to live up to your own code, very rigorously have one and then live up to it. Another way to raise your

self-esteem might be to do things for others. If I look back on my life and And, you know, what are the moments that I'm actually proud of? There's very far and few between. And it's not that often. It's not the things you would expect. It's not the material success. It's not having learned this thing or that. It's when I made a sacrifice for somebody or something that I loved.

And that's when I'm actually ironically most proud. Now, that's through an explicit mental exercise. But I'll bet you at some level I'm recording that implicitly. So that tells me that even if I am not being loved, then the way to create love is to give love, to express love, through sacrifice and through duty. And so I think doing things like that can build up your self-esteem really fast. Not registering it emotionally.

Is that a... It's fundamental. It's so fundamental. It's just so many things in life. Okay. Can we dig into that a little bit? Because, again, I've only seen you as you, right? I didn't know you 20 years ago.

I didn't know you as a child. So I've only seen you with this holistic selfishness, the integrated self-prioritization, whatever we could. I don't know what we called it. Selfish is fine. I'll take selfish. I'm very selfish person. Don't contact me.

I also get the sense, too, that maybe people have lived obligation life for so long that they actually kind of struggle to tap into what it is that they want. They've hidden their wants and their desires and their needs and they've deprioritized themselves so much for so long. They go, what do I want, actually? What is it? Do I want to go to this thing or not? Because all I've done is be fucking puppeted, right? I've been marionetted by other people's desires for so, so long. I can't even tap into that anymore.

And saying no feels like a war crime. So I think it's really good to be able to view your own mind and your own thoughts objectively. And that is the big benefit of meditation. It creates a small gap between your conscious observation, self, and your mind. And that lets you then look at your thoughts and evaluate them a little bit like you would, a third party's statements. And if you just, you just, you would, you would, you just take your mind to be you and they're integrated in one and the same at all times and you're

reacting from the mind, then you're not even going to question things that come into your mind. Anything that comes in that creates your reaction will immediately create a reaction. But if you can observe your thoughts a little bit, and not in some woo-woo way, but you can even just do it through therapy, you can do it through journaling, you can do it any way you would like. You can just take long walks. You don't have to meditate and do lotus position. All that is unnecessary. Sort of thinking about happiness, obviously, a topic of yours that's a...

It's honestly the one that I feel least qualified to talk about. Is it like a guy that's got long arms teaching you how to bench press or a dude that's really tall teaching you how to deadlift, someone that feels like they came from behind the eight ball? Yeah, you're asking a crazy person about their thoughts. So just thought it through. Is happiness still more about peace than it is about joy? It's just one of those overloaded words that means different things to different people.

So I'm not even sure we're communicating the same language. But what is happiness? I think it's just basically being okay with where you are, Not wanting things to be different than the way they are, not having the sense that anything is missing in this moment. Needing something to change. Your current positive situation being contingent on an adjustment. I'm getting something from the outside world. Ironically, I think most people, if you were to ask them when they were happiest for a sustained period of time, not for a brief moment,

because pleasure can override happiness and create kind of this illusion of happiness. But if you ask people when they were happy for a sustained period of time, they were probably doing some variation of nothing. That's interesting. Because in the chase is this sort of lack, this contingency. That's right. But then you get bored. If you just sit around all the time, you get bored. So you want adventure, you want surprise.

I want the world to surprise me and I want to wrestle with it in ways that are somewhat predictable but somewhat not. And you kind of end up back where you started. So I don't know if necessarily... For some people, pure happiness is the ultimate goal. They want to just be blissfully happy wherever they are, whenever they are. But I think other people, most people would say, well, I'm here in this world, I'm here in this life. I don't understand it or why, but I want to be engaged. I want to be surprised.

I want to do things. I want to accomplish things. I want to want things and then get them, right? That's kind of the whole game that we're all playing here. What is happiness? I think it's just basically being okay with where you are. Not wanting. Not wanting things to be different than the way they are,

not having the sense that anything is missing in this moment. If you can observe your own thoughts and view them a little objectively, then you can start being a little more choosy, a little more critical, and you can realize that there are no problems in the real world other than maybe things that inflict pain on your body. Everything else has to become a problem. in your mind first. You have to view it and interpret it and create a narrative that it is a problem before it becomes a problem. And then you realize that a lot of your emotional energy is spent

on reacting to things that your mind is automatically saying are problems. And you don't need all those problems. Do you really need that many problems in your life? Again, I would say try to focus on just one overarching problem and then go solve that problem. If you define pain as physical pain, then it's a real thing. It happens and you can't ignore it. But that's not what we mean by suffering. Suffering is mostly mental anguish and mental pain. And it just means you don't want to do the task at hand. If you were fine doing the task at hand, then you wouldn't be suffering. And then the question is, what's more effective to suffer along the way or just to interpret it in a way that it's not suffering? You hear from a lot of successful people. They look back and they say, oh, the journey was a fun part, right?

That was actually the entertaining part, and I should have enjoyed it more. It's a common regret. Just be careful because your attention is the only thing that you have. You can fritter it away on anything you like. One big anxiety resolve for me is just ruminating on death. I think that's a good one. You're going to die. It's all going to zero. If you can keep the idea in front of you at all times that you're going to die

and that everything goes literally to zero, what's sort of stress about? Yeah, for better or worse, life is very short. How should people deal with its briefness? enjoy it. There's a little thought exercise I like to do, which is you can go back into your own life and try to put yourself in the exact position you were in five years ago, 10 years ago, 15 years ago,

20 years ago, and you try to remember, okay, who was I with, what was I doing, what was I feeling, what were my emotions, what were my objectives, and really try to transport yourself back and see if there's any advice you'd give yourself, anything you'd do differently. Now, you don't have new information.

Don't pretend you've got to be. gone back and, you know, bought a stock or bought Bitcoin or whatever. But just knowing what you know now in terms of your temperament and a little bit of age-related experience, how would you have done things differently? And I think it's a worthwhile exercise to do. So don't let me rob you of the conclusion. But I'll tell you for me, I would have done everything the same except I would have done it with less anger, less emotion, less internal suffering. Because that was optional. It wasn't necessary. And I would argue that someone who can do the job at least peacefully, but maybe happily, is going to be more effective than someone who has unnecessary emotional turmoil.

And the journey is not only the reward, the journey is the only thing there is. Even success, it's human nature to bank it very, very quickly. Because the normal loop that we run through is you sit around, you're bored, then you want something. Then when you want something, you decide you're not going to be happy until you get that thing. then you start your bout of suffering or anticipation while you strive to get that thing. If you get that thing, then you get used to it, and then you get bored again, then a few months later you want something else. And if you don't get it, then you're unhappy for a bit, and then you get over it, then you want something else, right? That's the normal cycle.

So whether you're happy or unhappy at the end, it tends not to last. Now, I don't want to be glib and say that, oh, there's no point in making money or being successful. There absolutely is. Money solves all your money problems. So it is good to have money. That said, there are those stories that shows that people who break their back and people who win the lottery are back to their baseline happiness two years later. Yeah. Again, I don't know if that's entirely true.

I think money can buy you happiness if you earned it because then along the way, you have both pride and confidence in yourself and you have a sense of accomplishment and you set out to do something and you were right. How do you shortcut that desire contract? you could focus, you could decide that I don't want most things. I think we have a lot of unnecessary desires that we just pick up everywhere. We have opinions on everything, judgments and everything. So I think just knowing that those are the source of unhappiness will make you be choosy about your desires. And frankly, if you want to be successful, you have to be choosy about your desires. You have to focus.

You can't be great at everything. You can't be great at everything. You're just going to waste your energy and waste your time. Don't do something you don't want to do. Why are you wasting your time? There's so little time on this earth. Life goes fast. What is it?

4,000 weeks? That's your lifespan. And yes, we hear that, but we don't remember it. But I guess I'm keenly aware of how little time I have, so I'm just not going to waste it. Don't fitter away your life on randomly schedule things and things that aren't important. Don't matter. Events and weddings and, you know, tedious dinners with tedious people that you don't want to go to. To the extent you can bring freedom into your life, optimize for that, you'll actually

to be more productive. You won't just be happy or more free. You will be more productive. Because then you can focus on what is in front of you, whatever the biggest problem of that day. When I wake up in the morning, the first four hours are when I have the most energy. And that's when I want to solve all the hard problems. And the next four hours are when I kind of want to, you know, do some more outdoorsy activities or I want to work out or maybe I can, you know, have some meetings, but I'll try to do those last second based on whatever the day's priorities demand. The last four, hours I kind of want to wind down. I want to hang out with the kids and I want to play games or read a book or something like that. So having that flexibility and freedom is really important.

So you can just put whatever is most needed into the slot at that moment. I reject this frame that efficiency and productivity and success are counter to happiness and freedom. They actually go together. How so? The happier you are, the more you can sustain doing something, the more likely you're going to do something that will in turn make you even happier and you'll continue to do it and you outwork everybody else. The more free you are, the better you can allocate your time. And the less you're caught up in a web of obligations and commitments, and the more you can focus on the task at hand.

So what matters is just being present for the thing. So if you're doing something that you want to do and you're fully there for it, there's not wasted time. If you don't want to do it and your mind is running away from it and you're reacting against it and you're wishing you were somewhere else and you're thinking about some other thing or you're anticipating some future thing or regretting some past thing or being fearful of something,

then that's wasted time. That's time that's being wasted when you're not actually present for the reality in front of you. So my definition of wasted time, yes, I do want some material things in life. And there are things that have more value than others within this life.

But this life is very short and bounded. So the true wasted time is a time that you're not present for when you're not there for it, when you're not doing the thing you want to do to the best of a capability such that you're immersed in it. If you're not immersed in it,

in this moment than you're wasting your time. Thank you for listening. Continue strengthening your mind by subscribing and listening to our other episodes.