Kamal Ravikant: The Power of Self-Love and Sharing Your Truth
photography source: facebook
Kamal Ravikant is the author and entrepreneur who shared his journey to self-love and acceptance in the self-published book “Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends on It”, which addresses the importance and urgent need for self-love in today’s world.
Kamal knows the misery pretty well. In 2011 the company he was nurturing for over ten years suddenly and embarrassingly went under. Additionally, he was ill, sick, and tired of dealing with heartache and his thoughts.
The author of “Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends on It“ experienced a profound depression that made him physically ill and bedridden. And this state of things couldn’t last forever - he reached a breaking point.
Kamal started searching for the source of light in his darkest moment of life. And this is where his transformational journey began.
In the act of desperation, he climbed out of bed and made a vow, and the following chant turned out to be his only source of light in this dark moment and the turning point in his transformational journey.
"This day, I vow to myself to love myself, to treat myself as someone I love truly and deeply - in my thoughts, my actions, the choices I make, the experiences I have, each moment I am conscious, I make the decision I LOVE MYSELF."
Kamal Ravikant decided to share his experience and the process of spiritual healing as a daily practice that improves physical and emotional well-being.
Here are my lessons from Kamal’s works.
1. Share your single important truth.
Kamal Ravikant in one of his most insightful videos “One of the Most Important Lessons of My Life”, pointed out the importance of living and sticking to our truths, describing the philosophy behind the publication of his bestselling book “Love Yourself”.
He did not expect the book to become a bestseller and give him so many extraordinary opportunities. Kamal just wanted to share his truth and show what practice helped him start to love himself. And the book was a self-publishing phenomenon that reached number #1 on self-help books on Amazon. He said:
“It showed what happens when you just take your truth and you work so hard on your craft and you share with the world. Whatever our passion is, whatever’s that we really care about and then put it out to the world, share the way that’s helpful. My god. It transforms other people’s lives and more partly transforms your life. The world gives you way more than you ever gave it“
Kamal stated that contrary to popular belief, the universe is in your favor if you just start to live and share your truth. Once you start being authentic, the world will respond in ways you could have never imagined. Life will blow your socks off.
Ravikant shared reader-oriented lessons and a powerful and transformative personal story of the practice in action. Kamal expected nothing in return, he just wanted to improve the quality of people's lives by showing what he learned.
The power lies in simplicity. Find out what your truths are and what you've learned, and show it in the most vulnerable way. The world's response will go beyond your expectations.
2. Three complementary components of Self-Love.
Kamal shared his exact self-love practice and broke it down into three complementary components which are: mental loop, meditation, and one question. This simple and practical schema brought far greater results than Kamal could have imagined.
Kamal pointed out that there is one requirement to make this pattern works. It’s a fierce commitment to loving yourself. You have to use your mind as a tool that has no choice but to adapt and respond. Be open and the rest is easy.
1) Mental Loop
Kamal Ravikant, during his darkest time, had only one crucial thought that was running through his head: “I love myself. I love myself. I love myself“. And there were two main reasons for doing so.
Firstly, he had nothing to lose, so Kamal was trying everything while remaining open to the possibility of loving himself.
Secondly, we as human beings often falsely think that we are thinking, and most of the time - we are just remembering. In short, our brain is a pattern-recognition machine. We're running familiar patterns and loops in our heads for all kinds of emotions. It helps to keep us alive, but it also makes us programmable.
Kamal summarized the performance of the mental loop in the following way:
“And that is why a focused mental loop is the solution. The goal here is to create a groove deeper than the ones laid down over the years - the ones that create disempowering feelings. They took time as well. Some we've had since childhood. It takes time, sure. Took me a month to go from misery to magic. But you will notice changes, shifts in your feelings, beautiful happenings in your life. Expect them.”
Keep replaying the positive loops and expect beautiful changes.
2) Meditation
Kamal has developed his own method of meditation that lasts seven minutes and is accompanied by music. He plays music and imagines stars, galaxies, and beaches because it helps him to associate meditation with good feelings. And when he inhales breath he focuses the mind on loving himself, when exhaling, oppositely, he shifts focus to let out whatever is in the mind and body.
In his bestselling book, Kamal shared the seven-step method for meditation.
Step 1: Put on music. Something soothing, gentle, preferably instrumental. A piece you have positive associations with.
Step 2: Sit with back against wall or window. Cross legs or stretch them out, whatever feels natural.
Step 3: Close eyes. Smile slowly. Imagine a beam of light pouring into your head from above.
Step 4: Breathe in, say to yourself in your mind, I love myself. Slowly. Be gentle with yourself.
Step 5: Breathe out and along with it, anything that arises. Any thoughts, emotions, feelings, memories, fears, hopes, desires. Or nothing. Breathe it out. No judgment, no attachment to anything. Be kind to yourself.
Step 6: Repeat 4 and 5 until the music ends.
Step 7: When music ends, open your eyes slowly. Smile. Do it from the inside out. This is your time. This is purely yours.
3) One question
Kamal, during tough times, dealing with negative thoughts and interacting with people who have their issues and mental loops, found himself asking the following question:
If I loved myself truly and deeply, would I let myself experience this?
And this question works beautifully because the answer is always no. If you truly love yourself, you wouldn’t let yourself experience negative emotions in a highly destructive way because you care about yourself. Kamal stated:
“This question is deceptively simple in its power. It gently shifts your focus from wherever you are - whether it's anger or pain or fear, any form of darkness - to where you want to be. And that is love. Your mind and life have no choice but to follow.”
Again, Kamal pointed out the importance of using the mind as a tool that has no choice but adapts. The power of this question lies in its simplicity. You have only two answers - yes or no. But when you find yourself asking this question, the answer is probably no. So you have to shift the perspective and focus from negative emotions to where you want to be - a space of love.
3. Golden Rule.
Everyone struggles when it comes to doing something scary that goes much beyond our comfort zone. And Kamal has for it a golden rule that he always tries to remind himself:
“When something scares me, there’s magic on the other side.“
The author of “Rebirth”, as a man with a strong background in Silicon Valley, doesn’t believe in inspiration. Instead, his results and metric-oriented character believes in transformation. And the best transformations happen when you have to jump off the clip and sprout your wings, even when you feel extreme fear.
Following Kamal, to gain this kind of attitude, you have to master two skills. Firstly, accept that everything happens because it makes you better, so you have to look at life as it’s happening to you. Secondly, follow your true self, and whatever you do, let it be the true expression of you.
Kamal has a great experience with startups and connections with successful and fulfilled people. He found a pattern that these kinds of people share in common:
“I know people extremely wealthy, happy, and fulfilled. Those are the ones I want to like. Those are the ones who are my mentors. And for all of them I’ve noticed one pattern, including her, that whatever happens, it’s never like this is happening for me. They all look at life as life is happening to them.“
The author of the bestselling book “Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends on It” shared that fulfilled people internalize the above-mentioned attitude. They may fall and lose, but they know the higher purpose of this kind of experience. It always happens to make them better.
The second part of gaining this attitude of doing something scary and letting your wings sprout is to follow your true self and express yourself. And Kamal has a great explanation for it:
“Whatever I do is the expression of me. Everyone has things that are full an expression of them. Writing, I would do if I was stuck in a deserted island. I would write in my head because I love sharing knowledge. Whatever I learn, I just want to share it. And the fund, I love helping entrepreneurs. So it’s just me. It’s stuff I would do whether I had money or not.“
Every time you want to experience great things, you have to fall off the cliffs and sprout your wings.
4. Finding Fulfillment.
One of the most important speeches made by Kamal was “The power of Love and Entrepreneurship“. His performance struck a chord with many people because he shared some timeless and life-changing wisdom on why self-love is really what truly matters in life and how to find fulfillment.
Kamal highlighted the importance of picking up one great idea and sharing it with the world.
“What I just care about is fulfillment. And there are basically four things that matter in fulfillment, and which includes worldly success.”
1. Pure expression of yourself
“People talk about finding your passion. For me, this is a definition, just what is you? And I think that actually helps people when they’re trying to find their passion. Just what is an expression of you? That’s it.“
2. Give your all
“If it’s an expression of you, you got to give your all because you know when you’re holding back, you know. We can be our best friends and our worst critics, and this way you can be your best friend and give you all to something that’s naturally you.“
3. Put it out to the world
“Whatever you create, you got to put it out to the world. You know, I could have written that book and I could have just, you know, just sent the doc to my eight friends to shut them up, and that would’ve been it, right? But it would not have created magic in my life. The magic is when you put it out to the world. Because when you give your full self, your full-on self and you give your all, you put your heart into it, the world just, gosh, the world just gives you so much. It gives you more than you ever could have expected“
4. Let go of the outcome
“One of the key things in life is we are the effort. We’re never the outcome. And if you do that, if you just focus on your effort, who you are expressing yourself to the world than just setting out to the world, ironically, the outcome is far better than you could have planned for. Guaranteed. I mean, really, guaranteed.“
5. The Price of Fulfillment
“The price is not necessarily the accolades or the money, I mean, those are nice, those come. But the real price, actually, is who you become in the process. The price for me has been who I’ve become.“
Kamal noticed that finding fulfillment is only happening through actions. It can’t be done by visualization or any more passive ways. You have only one choice, and that is to jump off the cliff and sprout your wings. Internalize the attitude that whatever is happening it’s to make you better. If you fall, lick your wounds and get up.
Whatever your truth is, live it, share it. The world will respond in ways you never could have imagined. Life will blow your socks off.
In the end, I want to leave the quote from Kamal’s book “Live Your Truth“ that resonates with me, and I found it as a good culmination of the whole blog post:
“I promise you that the same stuff galaxies are made of, you are. The same energy that swings planets around stars makes electrons dance in your heart. It is in you, outside you, you are it. It is beautiful. Trust in this. And you and your life will be grand.“
Summary:
The power lies in simplicity. Pick up one single important truth and show it to the world in the most vulnerable and genuine way. The world’s response will go beyond your expectations.
The three complementary components of self-love are mental loop, meditation, and always asking yourself one question. “If I loved myself truly and deeply, would I let myself experience this?“
“When something scares me, there’s magic on the other side.“
If you want to find fulfillment don’t be scared to give your all to the world without the expectations of a great outcome. Everything you do let it be the pure expression of yourself.
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