Live Your Truth

by Kamal Ravikant

“Surpass today what you were yesterday.”

What are the key components of one’s life? Buckets, that if you fill daily, even if just a drop, move you forward and create progress. So that who you’ll be months from today will be vastly better in all the ways that count.

we don’t stumble accidentally into an amazing life. It takes decision, a commitment to consistently work on ourselves. The best ones I know, like the two above, they do it daily.

whatever the external experience is, I choose who to be in this moment. I choose what to feel in this moment.

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?

For me, it was loving myself. For one friend, feeling worthy. That transformed his life. For another, abundance. Opportunities literally throw themselves at him. For many, I’ve seen it to be their faith.

The only rule is that truth must empower you, make you better in every way possible. That’s it.

Set the ego aside. Reach out, share your truth, tell someone, “This is who I am. This is what I stand for. Hold me to it.” Be accountable. Often, we’ll do far more for another than we will do for ourselves. Use that to your advantage.

Hemingway, whenever he was stuck in his writing, would tell himself to write one true thing. A true sentence. Then, he would write another. And another. It is the best rule I’ve ever found for writing. Write a true sentence. Something that is real for me. No showing off, no extrapolation, just a simple string of words that equal what I know to be true.

“resist nothing.”

Resist nothing. Like the Tibetan monk who once told me that he found peace by saying yes to all that happened.

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.

Peace is knowing that life is. Just is. How we choose to react to it determines our reality.

“Wait,” I shout. “Wait.” He slows until I’m alongside. We both ride in silence. “Go ahead,” he says gently. “Ask.” I look at him, the galaxy unfurling in front of us. Stars everywhere. “What’s the point,” I say. “Of everything. What’s the point?” He smiles. Neutrinos pop around us, fizzle. “You are,” he says finally. “You are the point.”

“What’s the point,” I say. “Of everything. What’s the point?” He smiles. Neutrinos pop around us, fizzle. “You are,” he says finally. “You are the point.”

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.

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,”

“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.”

I am not the outcome. No one is. I am my effort, what I put on the table. That’s it.

I once heard that we all want good judgment, and good judgment is the result of experience, and experience is the result of bad judgment.

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.

Whatever area you want to increase confidence in your life, cross the threshold. Do it again and again until it is your norm.

I am human. Here I am, fallible, judging another fallible being through the lenses of the past, through fear. I thought I had to forgive my father to be free. Turns out, I had to forgive myself. If you come to it that way, forgiveness for others is not just easy, it’s a way of being.

My hope is that with this knowledge, I start with myself first. Always myself. Then, the virtue flows naturally from the inside out.

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.

“Life is a river,” a wise friend told me. “It’s flowing. You’re never at the same place twice.”

the insights that we receive when away, they are useless unless we live them.