A Uniquely Honest Story Of One Entrepreneur’s “Darkness”

The cool thing about problems is when people are honest about them, tackle them and then share their “secret sauce” about how they did it. I’m proud to say that my friend Kamal Ravikant just nailed it in his latest book: Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On It.

Vulnerability & Honesty

I value vulnerability — nobody’s perfect and when someone shares their challenges it’s a sign that they are highly-evolved.

Note: That’s one of the reasons I named Radical Honesty #19 on my list of The 20 Best Business Book Of All Time — it encourages honesty with yourself and then others.

Kamal’s book starts off honest and vulnerable…big time — he admits to falling into a “rat hole” of darkness due to these bummers in his life:

1. his company was tanking,
2. he went through a breakup and
3. a friend of his died suddenly

…how’s that for honest?

He was hesitant about sharing his learnings in a book, but his favorite blogger James Altucher encouraged him to share his learnings with this great advice about how James chooses the material he writes about in his blog:

“I don’t do a [blog] post now unless I’m worried about what people will think about me.”

These guys are talking my language!

Kamal says the key to his breakthrough during his dark times were 3 words:

“I love myself.”

Create A “Mental River” & Ask “The One Question”

Kamal walks through his month-long darkness and the three steps to reaching the light at the end of the tunnel. The three things are:

1. Mental Loop — If you repeat a thought enough (“I love myself”) with emotional intensity, “you’re creating the grooves, the mental river. Then it controls you.”
2. Meditation — He does a couple of meditations a day and shares some tips on that.
3. One Question — When faced with negative emotion, he asks himself this one question:

“If I loved myself truly and deeply, would I let myself experience this.”

The answer, he found, is always “no.”

Say “Yes” To Everything

Kamal points out that in writing his book “fear says that I’m risking what people will think of me.” He was also fearful of letting investors down and of failing.

A monk told him to surrender to all fear by saying “yes” to everything. Fear strengthens the ego and love softens it.

“I love myself.” That’s what got him through.

Nice work, Kamal!