Live Your Truth by Kamal Ravikant Favorite passages

“Somewhere along the way, you do your best, and then you surrender. Let go. Of attachment to outcomes. Attachment to what you desire. Like a paper lantern you light and then release into the night sky. You do your best, you let go.” 

“There is one rule, though: once you discover your truth, you have to go all in. Fully. Every single chip.” 

“Throughout the book, at the end of each section, he repeats only one phrase: You should investigate this thoroughly. If you could boil his teachings down to one thing, that would be it. And I understand. Knowledge is never enough. Even action, if it’s just following a prescribed way, will never fully express your potential. But to dive in, test each theory out, kick the tires, keep what works, discard the rest, add your own — that’s where magic happens.” 

“There is a rhythm to everything,” Musashi wrote. “To music, battle, even mounting a horse. You cannot ignore it. Rhythm to being in harmony with others, and a rhythm to not being in harmony with them.” If I could add to it: a rhythm to being in harmony with oneself. 

“Here’s what happens: when I change my mind, my world changes. If you think about it, makes sense. When your sense of self and happiness comes from within and isn’t a roller coaster ride dependent on others or circumstances, you approach life differently. You make better choices. You draw to you the people and situations that matter. The others, they fall away.” 

“I may not be able to change someone. I may not be able to change a circumstance. But I can change myself, how I respond, who I am being. That is where all the power resides. Inside.” 

“I remember sitting on that plane, open sky through the window, processing the news. The hardest part, I’ll never see him again. That classic full laugh of his, how he always had fun wherever he went, whatever he did. If there was a guy who lived life on his terms, he was it.” 

“Tall, bald, the biggest grin. First a DJ in London, then a promoter, then a kite surfing instructor in the Caribbean, then a talented silversmith. Whatever he decided he wanted to do, wherever he decided he wanted to live, he just went and did it. 

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Ask yourself: what is it, that if I believed it down to my core, would change everything? Make the fears irrelevant? Make the person I’d become so unbelievably amazing that I’d blow my own socks off? 

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Once you decide on it, the requirement is a commitment to live it fully. Not hope. Hope may get us out of a rut, but it will not transform. Only fierce action, doing whatever it takes. Knowing that we will fall often, but we will pick ourselves up, move forward, keep our commitment to ourselves because it is the most important one there is.” 

“Hemingway, Cobain. Both killed themselves. But what if they hadn’t? What if they’d gone with the experience, whatever they were feeling, whatever they were fighting, knowing that it too would pass, and left behind would be the knowledge, the gift they could put into their art?”

“Now I know what success is: living your truth, sharing it. Whether through a book, raising a child, building a company, creating art, or a conversation. Whatever human endeavor we choose, as long as we live our truth, it is success.” 

“Most importantly, I repeat my truth in my mind, “I love myself,” accepting it with each breath. This meditative state, it’s the single most powerful way to lay down new pathways in our brain, new synaptic connections that serve us, nourish us from the inside out. It creates progress faster than anything I’ve ever experienced.” 

“If you think about it, how much time do we spend in our heads wishing things were another way, beating ourselves up, beating others up, crafting a different past, wishing for a different future? All of that is resistance. All of that is pain.” 

“Peace is letting it be. Letting life flow, letting emotions flow through you. If you don’t fight them, they pass through quickly and you feel better. I think women understand this better than men.” 

“Peace is saying to yourself, “it’s ok.” Peace is knowing that the maze the mind plays in is not the truth. Peace is knowing that life is. Just is. How we choose to react to it determines our reality. This is incredibly practical. Not easy, I know. But each time I do it, freedom.” 

“I think perhaps a better thing to want is fulfillment. A deeper state, one that comes from within, from being your best self. From living life the way you really wish to live it. Then, happiness emanates from within as a byproduct. Naturally. And how does one live a fulfilled life? By deciding for themselves what is true — whether it’s love, faith, commitment to family, a mission, whatever it is — and then living it. Every person I admire who’s successful and radiates an inner happiness, they are living their truth. It’s that simple. Decide what your truth is. Then live it.” 

“Life is emotion,” he said, “life is feeling. If you’re not feeling, you’re dead.” He paused. “Suffering is in the resistance. When we resist the moment.” Suffering is when we resist the moment.” 

“All suffering is when we say “no,” when we say, “I want it another way,” when there is no surrender to the present. “Freedom,” he said, leaning back and widening his chest on purpose, “is when we fully open ourselves. To the moment. Experience the moment and let it pass.” 

“Louis CK is my favorite comedian. He takes risks, goes inside to uncomfortable places in ways most of us never do. And that’s what makes him so good. His honesty, his raw truths.” 

“But he gave me the courage to try. This idea that you throw everything away and start again.” With no routine to fall back on, he had to dig inside. He started talking about his feelings. And who he was. 

“And then you do those jokes,” he says, “and then they’re gone. You gotta dig deeper, and you start thinking about your fears and nightmares and doing jokes about that. And then they’re gone.” He dug within, layer after layer after layer. What he really wanted to say but was afraid to. At the time, he was a new father and having a tough time at it. So that’s what he started talking about, no filter. “Whoa,” he says. “I was somewhere new now.” 

“Fast forward. New specials every year, completely new material, each one deeper and deeper, relevant to who he is at that point in life. Here’s something I’ve learned about truth. When you first discover and live it, it transforms your life. In no uncertain ways. But it doesn’t end there. You cannot stay at the same level as when you first practiced your truth, life won’t let you.” 

“The employee runs away, stumbling, fear everywhere. Watching it, I remember thinking, that guy can act. Ed is beside himself. “That’s wasn’t funny! What was the point of that?” Tyler breathes, smiles. “Tomorrow will be the best day of his life,” he says. “His breakfast will taste better than any meal you and I have ever tasted.” He hands Ed the revolver, walks away. Ed opens the chamber, peers through where the bullets are supposed to be. Empty.” 

“overcomes the obstacle, gets the girl, rides off into the sunset. We are Tyler. The truth is, we’re that poor sad blubbering employee. Living asleep, going through the motions, punching the clock. And then a near miss, a diagnosis, a loved one gone. Kicked awake by Tyler. Kicked awake by life.” 

“I cannot emphasize enough the quality of those you surround yourself with. There were others I could have shared the manuscript with. Ones I know would not have been as supportive. Friends in other parts of my life, yes, but a risk like this one, they would have talked me out of it. Creating something of value, expressing yourself to the world — it is risk. Love is risk. And like love, it is often foolish. Madness even. And like love, it creates some of the most meaningful and fulfilled moments of our lives. If you’re about to take a risk — one that comes from within, one that expresses your true nature, that brings up fear after fear after fear — you know what to do. One: do the work, create the value. Two: draw the people that encourage you closer. They’re the only ones that matter. Others may applaud you after the fact or pull you aside one day at a party and confide that they never could have done what you did. Your job is to smile and remember the ones who helped make it happen. We’re human. We flourish in tribes. Odds are, you’ll need them again.” 

“Sit down, grab a piece of paper, write down what you want to do or be, a vow to yourself. Go all in. The board is already behind you, gravity has taken over, you’re falling… The commitment is the most important part. Not a promise, but deep and from the heart, there is no going back. You have burned the bridges, sunk the ships behind you. This is the only true thing that matters.” 

“Take that piece of paper, put it somewhere you will see it daily. Read it aloud each time you see it, feeling what it would be like to experience that reality. But that is not enough. Do the work. Do the work. Do the work. Do the work. Do the work. Do the work. Do. The. Work.” 

“The things I carry are my thoughts. That’s it. They are the only weight. My thoughts determine whether I am free and light or burdened. Regardless of whether the world is exploding or celebrating, my inside determines the quality of what I experience outside.” 

“I think that is why many traditions emphasize present moment awareness. Because that takes us away from the maze our brains seem to constantly run around in, slows us down, makes us breathe, and just be. Even for brief moments, just be.” 

“That idea you had, the company you wanted to start, the book you wanted to write, the song you wanted to sing… Look behind you. It’s closer. Even if you are one of the lucky ones who gets to do a full tour on this planet. Plenty of time, right? Read up on the regrets of the dying, those in nursing homes. Same, throughout. Not loving enough, doing the shoulds instead of the wants.” 

“Come back with your son in two weeks,” he says. “I will tell him then.” The woman is disappointed, but leaves. Two weeks later, she returns, son in tow. Gandhi looks at the boy and says, “stop eating sugar.” “What the…?” The woman’s response. “Why did you not tell him two weeks ago?” “Because before I could tell him to stop eating sugar,” Gandhi says to her, “I myself had to stop eating sugar.” I’m just a guy who figured out how to love himself. And if you apply what I discovered to yourself, exploring it from within, it will transform your life the way it did mine. I know that.” 

“Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Hemingway said that. True. But I think he left something out. Sharing what you have created with the world, it is the most collaborative and life-affirming thing there is.” 

Twitter: @kamalravikant Newsletter: http://newsletter.founderzen.com Please feel free to contact me at k@founderzen.com I would be honored if you reviewed this book. Thank you.