Live Your Truth

by Kamal Ravikant

And those times, the best thing I can do is reach out to someone who truly loves me, ask them for help, to hold out their hand.

Sometimes, the only way to evolve is to open ourselves fully. Be raw, honest. Vulnerable.

And the greatest healing — for you, for those around you — it comes from opening. Opening yourself wide. To your humanness, to your feelings. And ultimately, to yourself.

When you search for truth within, and then you see it outside yourself, you know instinctively if it will work for you.

I choose who to be in this moment.

when I change my mind, my world changes.

On a night like tonight, when I’m away from civilization and I see the glittering sky above, rather than counting — I know it’s impossible and for some reason, that stops me now — I think of the light reaching my eyes. What I’m seeing existed millions of years ago. I’m looking at the far far past. And out there, beyond the haze of the Milky Way, galaxies and nebulas, and more galaxies, so many, our rock just a minor speck of sand in the beach of the Universe. When I think of that, I think of myself, so tiny and brief, and yet, who I am, the potential of me so big and vast.

I can change myself, how I respond, who I am being. That is where all the power resides. Inside.

Whatever he decided he wanted to do, wherever he decided he wanted to live, he just went and did it. If there’s a definition of freedom, I think it’s this: living life on your terms.

If I accepted my mortality to my core, never knowing when the chain snaps, then how would I live?

Life is a series of choices and all we can do is make them.

We are human. We will make mistakes. It’s the nature of our being.

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?

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

Hope may get us out of a rut, but it will not transform. Only fierce action, doing whatever it takes.

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.

Whatever you experience in your life, choose for it to make you grow in amazing and unbelievable ways.

Now I know what success is: living your truth, sharing it.

I listen to the same music when I meditate.

Most importantly, I repeat my truth in my mind, “I love myself,” accepting it with each breath.

I walk outside with my coffee, sip slowly and take in deep breaths, making myself feel love for myself. Five breaths. Sip coffee, love myself, feel it.

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.

I love this!

but the only way to overcome them is to face them, say to ourselves: this is what I know to be true. And list it.

The simple act of putting your truth on paper, only you and your thoughts, it is one of the most powerful exercises you can do.

“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 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.

The more you do it, the more you open yourself, the more you trust the process.

“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.”

“prayer will take care of it.”

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.

“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.”

There is no should. There only is. And when you accept that, letting the emotion rise, the feeling crest and crash, say to it, “it’s ok. I accept you.” Even say to it, “I love you.” There is power there. There is freedom.

First, the desire. Next, the belief that you’ll figure it out as you go along. That’s what it takes to make the jump.

I am not the outcome. I am never the result. I am only the effort.

The company failed. That was the outcome. And I, with my sense of self attached to the result, believed that I’d failed as well.

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

“But he gave me the courage to try. This idea that you throw everything away and start again.”

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.

challenges come. And when that happens, it’s not that your truth failed you or you it. Far from it. This is part of your personal evolution — you need to commit more, you need to go deeper.

Is this hard? Depends. If you fight it, yes. If you see it for what it is and use it consciously for your growth, you will end up in places that will astound you.

When we work on ourselves, on knowing who we are, what we stand for, what is real — our truth — we have no choice but to live it. And in that process, we will live the greatest version of ourselves.

One thing about discovering a truth: first you live it, and after you experience the transformative results, it is real for you unlike anything else. Then you almost become obsessive about sharing it.

Then I put it out to the world. That last step, the crucial one, is where I’ve seen many talented people stop.

The question is — and this creates the rest of the story — how long does it last? Do you take that risk, keep that promise you made to yourself that one night under the stars when you were really really happy? Do you go all out? Or do you fall asleep once again and if you’re lucky, Tyler will come knocking.

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.

The act of going within, finding our truth, and then sharing it, it helps us far more than we know. Because when you find that gift and express it to the world, it is better, you are better. It’s just the way things are.