Kamal Ravikant - Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends on It

In December of 2011, I was a participant at Renaissance Weekend in Charleston, SC. Not what you thinkno jousting knights or fair maidens. Instead, a conference attended by CEOs from Silicon Valley and New York, Hollywood types from LA, and politicians and their staff from DC. Its like TED, but everyone is assigned to participate in panels or give a talk. The application asked for awards won and recognitions received, and as an example, listed the Nobel Prize. Really.

I have no awards to speak of. Or pedigree. No Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley on my business card. When the founder of the event introduced me to the audience at a talk I gavethe topic assigned to me, If I could do anything...he said, Kamal cannot keep still. Whether as an infantry soldier in the US Army or climbing the Himalayas or walking across Spain on an ancient pilgrimage, hes always moving.

Hed done his research. I dont remember the rest, but I remember his last line, Im sure hell have something interesting to share with us.

I had exactly two minutes to stand on a podium and address an audience of scientists, Pentagon officials, politicians, and CEOsall far more qualified than I to talk about pretty much anything. The speaker before me had been the youngest person to graduate from MIT. Full honors, of course.

Its interesting what goes through your mind at moments like these. Time slows down, yes. But thats almost clich. Theres only the podium and the microphone. You step up. The audience grows blurry, as if out of focus. Clock starts.

And then I knew what to do. I would offer something no one else could. My truth. Something Id learned purely from my experience, something that saved me. The audience came into focus.

If I could do anything, I said into the microphone, I would share the secret of life with the world. Laughter from the audience. And I just figured it out a few months ago.

For the next two minutes, I spoke about the previous summer, when Id been very sick, practically on bed rest. The company Id built from scratch four years ago had failed, Id just gone through a breakup, and a friend I loved suddenly died.

To say I was depressed, I said, would have been a good day.

I told them about the night I was up late, surfing Facebook, looking at photos of my friend whod passed, and I was crying, miserable, missing her. I told them about waking up next morning, unwilling to take it anymore, the vow I made, and how it changed everything. Within days I started to get better. Physically, emotionally. But what surprised me was that life got better on its own. Within a month, my life had transformed. The only constant being the vow Id made to myself and how I kept it.

Afterward, and for the rest of the conference, people came up individually and told me how much what Id shared meant to them. One woman told me that sitting in the audience, listening to me, shed realized that this was the reason she came. All Id done was share a truth I learned.

A month later, a friend was going through a difficult time, so I quickly wrote up what Id done that summer and sent it to him. It helped him a lot. Months after, I shared it in an email with James Altucher, a dear friend and my favorite blogger. He replied, offering to feature it as a guest post on his blog.

Naturally, I refused.

Truth be told, I panicked. Lots of my friends read his blog. Im an entrepreneur in Silicon Valley; its fine to write about start-ups. But this stuff?

You have to, James wrote back. This is the only message thats important.

I shared my fear with himwhat would people think? His response, something that I will never forget and will always be grateful for: I dont do a post now unless Im worried about what people will think about me.

So I struck a deal with him. Id kept notes about what Id learned, the practice, how Id succeeded and failed. I would put those together in a book and send it over. If he liked it, Id publish it.

And thats how we ended up here.