KAMAL RAVIKANT | How Loving Yourself Can Save Your Life | Modern Wisdom Podcast 135

Kamal Ravikant is an investor and writer. Do you love yourself? Do you even like yourself? The body and mind you inhabit is the only one you're going to get in this life. That means there is no greater priority than learning to love yourself and work collaboratively, instead of adversarially with your inner being. This is one of the most open and raw episodes I've recorded, thank you to Kamal for being a part of it. Extra Stuff: Buy Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On It - https://amzn.to/2TAEVQ9 Follow Kamal on Twitter - https://twitter.com/kamalravikant Take a break from alcohol and upgrade your life - https://6monthssober.com/podcast Check out everything I recommend from books to products - https://www.amazon.co.uk/shop/modernwisdom #kamal #ravikant #loveyourself - Listen to all episodes online. Search "Modern Wisdom" on any Podcast App or click here: iTunes: https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/modern-wisdom - Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Email: [email protected]

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Chris Williamson?

  Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back. I'm joined by Kamal Ravikant. Kamal, welcome to the show.

• 0:07Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me.

• 0:08Chris Williamson?

  Absolute pleasure to have you on, man. I feel like we're gonna have something really special in front of us today, I hope.

• 0:14Speaker 01

  I hope so too, man. Hope to live up to it.

• 0:17Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I know. So first things first, you had a bit of a turn recently and you were dead for a bit.

• 0:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, for a bit.

• 0:27Chris Williamson?

  What happened?

• 0:28Speaker 01

  This was about two and a half months ago. I went in for elective surgery, just to fix an old injury. And that involved like moving some arteries around and like tweaking arteries. And right before I was being discharged from the hospital,

• 0:45Speaker 01

  the main artery they worked on, the sutures came off, so the whole thing burst. And I basically bled to death. And the only thing that saved me was I was still in the hospital and it burst so hard that it pulled up in my body and then burst out of my body. Not out of sutures, just from the force of the blood. And the only thing that saved me was I was spraying blood everywhere.

• 1:09Chris Williamson?

  So you were cut a little bit like a garden sprinkler system, but just...

• 1:15Speaker 01

  You know, that's a great analogy. And you know, when an artery goes, it's a one-way street. You know, when a real artery goes, it's a one-way street. And they managed to get me right away into an OR and go in and, you know, fix it. And it was a rough experience, man. Like I literally experienced the whole like, you know, like this is it. Your brain just goes into primal mode because it's trauma. It's not like, and there's nothing peaceful about it. It just goes into images and feelings and emotions and just like horror. Because your mind's not designed to see blood spraying out of your body, like in large amount. And you can feel it. You can feel yourself like shutting down.

• 1:59Speaker 01

  You can feel very quickly like just the vitality or whatever just leaving. Just none and you're never even thinking of those words. It's looking back that I'm adding words to the experience. There's no real words that really happen. It's more like emotions and images. And that was a few months ago. So, you know, as we chatted before the podcast, now I'm healing and I'm rebuilding my body. And, and yeah, so it was a bit of a turn, a bit of one that I wouldn't recommend if you can avoid it. You know?

• 2:29Chris Williamson?

  I get it, man. Can I ask where it was coming out of you? Where was the incision?

• 2:35Speaker 01

  Uh, lower abdomen.

• 2:36Chris Williamson?

  Okay. So like right in the alien versus predator, like

• 2:40Speaker 01

  Kind of like that.

• 2:41Chris Williamson?

  The most obvious place for it to happen as well. Man, what a terrifying experience I suppose to have when you are on the cusp of releasing a piece of work that you feel is so valuable and you've worked towards for so long. Was there, were you cognizant, sufficiently cognizant to think like, not now?

• 3:05Speaker 01

  No, you're just, your brain just doesn't know what to do. Uh, I mean, in trauma, your brain just doesn't know what to do. It goes into primal mode, just feelings and emotions and images of who's important to you comes up. Uh, real fear. I've never tasted real fear in my life. That was a real fear came up because it's like, this is it. And it's, and it's a horrible way to go. And, um, so there were no cognizant thoughts. Oh, I have this left or that left, none of that regrets of the dying, any of that, because it was too fast.

• 3:38Chris Williamson?

  Hmm.

• 3:39Speaker 01

  Um, so, uh, but what was interesting was the book, um, when I get out of it, when I, I was in the hospital for a while, you know, on severe narcotics and healing. And just to get out of the hospital, hospitals are terrible places, man. Like, you're a healthy guy, so you'll get a kick out of this. Like, I mean, hospital food in the US, it's like it's designed to give you diabetes. You know, like, I was refusing their meals, and they were like, "Why?" I'm like, "Hey, take a look at what you're giving me."

• 4:09Chris Williamson?

  Making me worse.

• 4:10Speaker 01

  It's like, "How is this gonna help my body heal? Like, give me, you know, a bagel, a piece of cake, and orange juice." It's like, it's, you know, you're literally, they're designed to give you diabetes. You go in healthy, and you come out with diabetes. I was literally like, and they were, they couldn't understand why I was skipping meals. I was like, "I can't eat this garbage." Like, I, my body needs to heal. And so I got, I got out of the hospital, I think a week later, and I was in immense amount of pain. And I was on severe narcotics for a week, and I was supposed to be on much longer, you know? The surgeon said to me, "Look, if anyone qualifies for these drugs, it's you." You've had, like, you've, you've, you're, you're, you know, your body, you need it. You're in a lot of pain.

• 4:54Speaker 01

  And, but a week later, I went, and look, they definitely helped. They make things easier. You just kinda like lie around and, you know, in pain, but you can bear it, and you're kinda like, and it kinda like floating. Not even floating, but it's like, it definitely helps.

• 5:11Speaker 01

  And a week later, I went off cold turkey. Now, why? I didn't need to go off cold turkey. I mean, I could have weaned myself off. I could have been on them longer. And I went cold off turkey, and I was in a lot of pain. Was because I turned in the final draft of this, book to the publisher, and now they were sending me the proofs, when they lay it, lay it out on the page. And things get changed then. You know, they'd been to copy edits and this, and I had to go through and review the proofs. Now, if I didn't, if I didn't do them, like, no one cares as much as the author does. You know, I cared down to every single comma. I care about the feel of the words in the mind, right? And so I had to, and I realized, I was trying to deal with narcotics, and I couldn't. My brain was too slippery.

• 5:55Speaker 01

  Like, I'm, I mean, I guess I could have, but it was, my brain wasn't on it, right? So I went off them, and I had something bigger. I had something bigger than my pain to focus on, that was more important than the pain. So I just went off them, and then I worked on the, on the galleys, word by word by word. And like, the next one would come, and I would work in it, word by word by word. And it was something more important than what I was going through in the moment. And it was an amazing lesson as well, you know, I remember I wrote a little Instagram post about it called "Purpose is Bigger Than Pain." And a bunch of people reached out to me privately, I said like, "Look, I was hooked on narcotics, opioids, and eventually it took like, me getting involved in something or caring about something that helped me get off it."

• 6:39Speaker 01

  I had one person go very, very mad and said, "You don't understand, you know, like this." And I was just sharing my experience. And I really do believe that. Look, you know, that's what made me go off them. So anyway, that was the experience with the book. But so it wasn't in the moment as I was dying. You don't have that, you don't have time for that when it's like a really fast thing. It's like a really fast, sudden, completely unexpected thing.

• 7:08Chris Williamson?

  Well, we think, I think because the way it's dramatized in movies, right? It's like, there's gonna be this moment where I'm able to reflect, the epiphany will come and I will be able to appreciate all the things. You know, if someone has a near-death experience, which is, I mean, you had a beyond-death experience. Like, if that happens, it's dramatized and we get this impression that's what it's gonna be. That it's gonna be this beautiful thing.

• 7:33Speaker 01

  It could, I mean, I think it could be if it's, but I think in trauma, it's different. Your brain just goes into like the primal brain. Because I've had time to sit back and think about it, you know, and it literally was. It was just you're going into shock and horror and, and feelings and emotions and realizing, your brain doesn't go, "This could be it," your brain goes, "This is it." And so it's like literally trying to stop it. And there's no way to stop it, you know?

• 7:58Chris Williamson?

  How much blood did you lose?

• 8:01Speaker 01

  I didn't count, but they told me a lot of significant amount. I mean, I was spraying blood everywhere until by the time they got me to OR, you know? And, and it had pooled up enough to burst out of the body, which tells you there was already a lot lost, you know? So I'm still quite anemic, my body's still making red blood, red blood cells. So my energy levels come and go, but I'm getting better. I'm taking iron supplements, which I've never had to, and eventually eating a lot of red meat. Which, it's just funny, a doctor's telling you, "Eat a lot of red meat, rebuild your iron stores."

• 8:34Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, strange the way that medicine comes full circle. So I think.

• 8:41Chris Williamson?

  It's so poetically ironic that a book which the process of once helped you to transform your life, which the reflection of twice helped you to take yourself out of a lesson that you'd forgotten, and the purpose of publishing a third time has been your reason to transcend the most traumatic experience that you've been through in your life. But this thing, this book is, is the anchor that you're attached to. At least it seems like that in the recent history of your life.

• 9:14Speaker 01

  That's a very interesting way to put it. I don't know if it's an anchor I'm attached to, it's a, it's something I feel a strong obligation to, you know. You know, this version that we're pointing out to, this is the second version of it. The original version was a short little book I put out seven years ago, and that took off and, and changed a lot of lives and saved a lot of lives. You know, I had the emails and I met the people, you know, that showed me that. This version is like, okay, I held back a lot. And I, you know, I have the questions for my readers that show that where they were struggling, that I need to show, to share everything that works, and even share where it doesn't

• 9:57Speaker 01

  work with me and why and how to make that work. So it's special. I, it's, it's more of a responsibility, I feel like, and I've, it's a responsibility. And it's so interesting, man. I had, I was having coffee with a journalist today, and I was telling her that it's so strange that I'm alive, that I'm going to get to see this book go out, because I basically almost exited the planet without seeing it go out. It's so, it's a strange feeling, man. I, yeah, it's a strange feeling. Yeah, that's the only way to put it.

• 10:32Chris Williamson?

  I know. It, there is something, whether it's an anchor, whether it's the wind in your sails, whether it's the kite you're attached to, whatever it might be, there is a, a single lineage, a string that is attached to this particular.

• 10:47Chris Williamson?

  Work that is pulling you through life in one way or another.

• 10:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 10:52Chris Williamson?

  And giving you the momentum.

• 10:55Speaker 01

  That's insightful, man. I hadn't thought of it that way. That's quite insightful.

• 10:59Chris Williamson?

  Hopefully, that's not going to be the last thing that we have an insight about. So we've skirted around it for a while. Love yourself like your life depends on it. To the listeners, you will, I often have authors on to talk about their books. And although we are talking about the book today, the purpose of this is not to do a breakdown of like, how to love yourself like your life depends on it. I think that the way that the book made me feel and the topics that it talks about are worthy, they're more worthy of a deeper discussion. And that's not to, you know, lambast discussions that do talk about the book in, in sort of more of a order, transactional manner, but this, this, I think, has some real far reaching implications. So I'm looking forward to getting into it today.

• 11:42Chris Williamson?

  And the first thing that I would say that I noticed was, or the word that I felt when I was reading it was vulnerability, like an absolutely uncompromising degree of vulnerability. So I'll let you explain kind of the back half to third, which is your story going through a breakup.

• 12:05Chris Williamson?

  But

• 12:07Chris Williamson?

  the level of transparency there was scary. It felt sometimes to me like standing on the edge of a building that I knew very well and seeing problems, seeing fears go by. So

• 12:23Chris Williamson?

  talking about the fact that after going through a breakup and making these promises to yourself, even within the time that we're, that we're dealing with, which is only maybe a month or a couple of months or whatever, within this particular window that you're writing, you were bringing up the weaknesses that you had, was weak again today, felt bad again today, this happened again today. And on top of that, it's this complete just opening up of the, of every single emotion that you had. I found it, I found it quite scary to read in a bizarre way, like in a very beautiful way. It was, it was quite scary to read because it reminds you of all of the things, all of the fears, all the mistakes that you make in those sorts of situations. And it was oddly very familiar as well.

• 13:06Chris Williamson?

  So yeah, it was a unique experience to read.

• 13:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, that part is interesting and there's a very strong reason why it's there. And it actually is very effective. Because the first part of the book is basically designed to show you just how easily it's possible to love yourself, no matter where you come from. And you know, showing like, look, basically the overview of how I did it. The second part of the book is, okay, now it's step-by-step manual. Because it's all working on the inside, on the mind. Here's a step-by-step manual, so simple, just do this. And really, within weeks, you'll know, you'll feel it, you'll be like, living it, right? But the third part is actually, we learn best from stories, right? So I've showed you from the, I've showed you, like, look, it's really possible for my life. Second, now I've taught you how to do it, step-by-step, how I do it.

• 13:54Speaker 01

  And how it's worked for all these readers from the previous version. But the third is like, look, but it's an internal thing, right? Now, watch it happen internally. Watch me deal with my own demons. Watch me go through something hard. And this is honest to God, true. Every single word in there is true. Watch me go through a really rough time. And see how I'm applying this. The point wasn't to share my fears and insecurities. I don't want the world to know my fears and insecurities. I mean, who the hell does? I mean, I'm not that crazy, right? It's like, and I share stuff about my childhood. Why do I share it? I don't want my friends to know what I went through when I was a kid. You know, I don't want my mom to know some of the things that are in there, right?

• 14:35Speaker 01

  And the reason why I did it was because I get the emails from my readers and I know what they're struggling with. And I, first of all, and everyone thinks they're alone in their journey. And I want them to know, look, you're not alone. I've been through this, this is what I've been through. And watch. And I'm the guy who came up with this and who applies it. And watch what I'm going through. And, but it's not to show you that, hey, everyone falls. But I show you how I built myself up and from the inside. So even as I'm building up and even as the insecurities are coming up, but the fears are coming up, how I'm working on it. And it's literally what's happening in my mind. So you can see, and then as you can see, start to see the changes happen. It kind of shows you in a way that prescriptively I could not show you, right? And you can see the nuances.

• 15:20Speaker 01

  There's a lot of nuances when you work on the inside. That you can, the nuances explained out better in a story, you see them happening. So by the time it's done, you truly, by the time you're done with this book, you truly understand how to do it. And also, how it's possible, even if you're going through a storm of your own.

• 15:37Chris Williamson?

  The context is so important. So a common analogy that I use is it's the reason why motivational quotes on Instagram don't change people's lives.

• 15:48Speaker 01

  Oh, God, whose life was changed by an Instagram quote? Like, I don't get it. Like,

• 15:53Chris Williamson?

  The problem is that there is a lot of worth in it. You think this, this one single sentence could be the distillation of a, one of the best minds on the planet's life's work distilled down into a single aphorism. But because all that you're seeing is booty picture, booty picture, funny cat video, Maxim, booty picture, booty picture. It's like, I'm just not, I'm not in the, the place for this at the moment, you know, like, I'm getting retargeted by some website I was on five days ago and blah, blah. Like, I'm not in the place for it. And I think that your right context is important and it helps you to understand.

• 16:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it's honestly the scariest thing to put out, you know, for people to see inside what like, you know, here, watch me fall apart and watch me rebuild myself, you know, and how I do it using what I've just taught you how to do in the first two parts.

• 16:47Chris Williamson?

  The, the thing that I'm thinking there is kind of the, the story of the unwilling hero. So you think the hero in every story doesn't go and fight the dragon because he has to, sorry, because he can do, he does it because he has to, and he has to because he can, and he can because no one else can. If you are the person who can do the particular thing and there's no one else to do it, then you have to do it. And that duty bears very, very heavy on your shoulders. But the fact that you are able to go and do the thing that helps everybody else, that takes down the dragon, that raises the consciousness of everyone else, that helps them to transcend their own problems, that is why you have

• 17:32Chris Williamson?

  to do it, because no one else is there for you to do it.

• 17:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I was writing that part when I was going through that storm. And I was writing it more as an exercise to myself and keeping record. Obviously, it's been, I've edited, you know, to make it fit for context. And, but I say that, all I mean is I cut out stuff that didn't belong in the book, right? When you're writing a book, there's a narrative. You can have, it has to serve the narrative. And it was near the end, I realized, oh my God, this is the missing piece of the book. Because I was working on the book and I'd finished, I'd decided it was gonna be part one, part two, but part three was like, look, that's the missing piece. There's no way someone can walk over you by the time they finish this book, not being convinced

• 18:18Speaker 01

  and knowing exactly how to love themselves no matter what. That was the point, no matter what. That's where people get stuck in their stories, but, but, but, but mine is special. We are all special, but like, like the inside is still a shit show for everyone. You know, we all go through our storms, no matter how, you know, how great our Instagram posts are, right? So it's like, it wasn't even being the word vulnerable. I mean, that gets used a lot and the people use that, especially with this book. It was being real. Like, there's not a word in it that's not true and that's not real. You know, and honestly, sometimes like I read it, I'm just like, oh God, man, I don't want people to-

• 18:59Chris Williamson?

  Can't believe I put that out.

• 19:01Speaker 01

  Like, yeah, I can't believe, like, oh my God, this is so pathetic, but like, look, who hasn't felt pathetic? But the point wasn't to show you that I felt pathetic, the show you was how I'm working, what I'm doing on the inside to get over it, to get beyond it, to get better. Because that's what it's about.

• 19:16Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, it's not a, it's not a pity party. It's not you signaling with your level of vulnerability.

• 19:24Speaker 01

  Oh God, no.

• 19:26Chris Williamson?

  It comes across as transparency. And transparency that is done, like I say, laying yourself on the fire so that other people can walk over you, is kind of the way that it feels to me.

• 19:35Speaker 01

  Well, it's also a point of like, let me show you how I get better.

• 19:40Speaker 01

  The point is, how, let me show you a practical application of this now.

• 19:43Chris Williamson?

  It's all like you're talking, talking in theory about whatever it is that you're going on about. You're like, no, no, no, no, I put this in practice. It's seeing the guy that has the crazy diet or does the training regime and sings the song and then goes out and wins the fight or does the race or does the whatever.

• 19:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, um, it really, I was, in fact, I was like, partially trying to convince the publisher that I wanted to cut that last third. And that's the one that they love the most. Every one of the publisher loves the most. And they're like, look, you've done something special that we beg our authors to do, and you've done it in spades here. The level of, you know, like the level of transparency that you've shown is, like, I was actually, at one point, I was like, come on, let's just cut this part. Let's just like, and they, you know, it's kudos to them that it's still there. I was scared. But that's when you know you have something real, you know, when you're really scared of shoring all of yourself. But the point is not to share, show of yourself. Look, man, there's far easier way to make money and make a living, right?

• 20:44Speaker 01

  And I, and I do those, I do venture capital, right? Like, that pays well. It's a matter of what helps the reader, what really supports the reader, what transforms the reader. That's the point, because there was an original version of this book that did so well, right? Why come out with an expand, a significantly expanded, it's like four or five times the size, right? And yet, every word matters. Why do that? Like, so if I'm gonna do that, then I gotta, I gotta go all out, because I don't want to do another version after this. This is it. This is a soup to nuts version. I'm done. Right? I didn't hold back, I didn't hold back here. You know? I'm, I'm, I'm, um, I'm proud of this work.

• 21:25Speaker 01

  I'm proud of, um, I'm proud of what it's, I'm proud of the people who've supported me and what the book is gonna do. I saw what the original version did. I'm very curious to see what this version's gonna do.

• 21:41Chris Williamson?

  In the nicest way possible, you should probably be a little bit scared. I think that it could.

• 21:46Speaker 01

  Terrified might be the word, actually.

• 21:49Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, honestly, man, there's some people for whom this will be the message that they need to, they need to hear. And I think, again, if you are the hero that has to go and, and sacrifice a lot so that others can live a fuller life, so that others can live in more freedom without the tyranny of whatever particular dragon it is that you've managed to wipe away in their mind. I think that's a really worthy cause. I also think it's an incredibly worthy reason to come back from the dead.

• 22:24Speaker 01

  That's, uh, thank you, man. I really do feel like this book is the reason, you know, it's coming out soon and on January 7th. And this reason, the book is a reason why I get up in the mornings now, even when I'm in pain, you know, I get up because I have a podcast to do. I get up because I, you know, until recently, I was still like, um, you know, to the point where I was like, uh, like it went down to the last, like even the, the blank pages that insert in the beginning of the end of the book. I was like going back and forth with the publisher about it. Like I care that much, you know? Um, it's a beautiful, like it's something that I, actually yesterday, I finally got the hardcover copies. They're beautiful. The publisher really went all out. Harper One like really believes in this book. And you can tell they spent extra money on the, on the hardcover versions. If anyone's going to get the book, I highly recommend

• 23:09Speaker 01

  trying the hardcover. It's, uh, at least I'm holding the American version. It's, it's stunning. And, um, and, uh, it's like, it's why I get up these mornings. It gets me up, you know, like no matter if I'm feeling pain or whatever, I have a duty to, because it's not just writing it now, but duty to now put it out to the world.

• 23:30Chris Williamson?

  It's the wind in that sail, man. It is. It's the kite that's sort of pulling you through different bits of turmoil. And it is that single string, that one string threaded woven through each of the different bits of trauma that you've had. So we've, look, we've flirted around it and skirted around it this long. Why is it important to love yourself?

• 23:51Speaker 01

  Look, I, I, one thing I'll be very clear of, I'm not a, I'm no expert. I'm just a guy, right? I didn't go to school. I don't have a PhD in loving yourself, you know, like, you know?

• 24:02Chris Williamson?

  I think I know a few people on the internet that do.

• 24:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, you know.

• 24:12Speaker 01

  That's really funny, man. I'm gonna use that and I'll credit you for it, but that's really funny.

• 24:17Speaker 01

  Look, I'm not that guy. I was a startup guy. I'm a guy who was in the US military, you know, I was an infantry soldier in the US Army. You know, I might, my, the things when I think about my favorite things I've done, I've climbed in the Himalayas, you know, I've done like crazy stuff. I do, you know, I like doing things like that. I'm not the guy who sits, um, sits around and says, you know, I don't have a ponytail. You know, like I guess I have long hair, but I don't have a pony, you know, I'm, I, I don't, I'm not the guy who was, you know, I was building startups in the valley. I was building companies from scratch, you know, I'm a doer. I, I taught myself to write over years and years and years in rejection letters. Like, you know, studying the greats to be a better writer, like I believe in doing and creating things.

• 24:55Speaker 01

  So I wasn't the guy who was sitting there thinking this, but this was something that, that happened when I, I, I hit a bottom like seven years or eight years ago.

• 25:05Speaker 01

  When a company I'd built and I'd self-funded after four years fell apart and I lost everything. You know, like here I was, I'd done well, I'm like, I'd done well and I lost every dime I'd made. I was living off credit cards, you know. But along with that, I lost my sense of self and I fell apart. And it was, the loving yourself was something I decided to do in a moment of desperation. And it came from something deep within me that I didn't even know I wanted, but it came from a desperate need. And I set out to do it because I believe in the power of commitment. I committed to myself that I would do it. And, you know, I, I show in the book why that's so important, how to make that commitment, because it's a sacred act. The commitment to self is a true sacred act. And when you go all in, you know, things happen, right?

• 25:44Speaker 01

  And so I didn't know how to do it. Like I said, I don't have a master's, a PhD, a bachelor's, I don't have a high school or a kindergarten education in that. You know, I didn't grow up with that, right?

• 25:57Speaker 01

  So I had to figure it out. But the one thing I've always believed in is like working, if you work on your inner self, you gotta work on your inner self. And something in me went deep and I just started doing things in my inner self that started to work. And when they worked, I went deeper. If they didn't work, I threw them away. I didn't care. I was trying to save myself. And, and out of that came this like basic practice on loving myself. Within a month, I really, really was, and it shifted my life. And over the years, I've gotten lazy and let it go. And old patterns and loops start to run again. And insecurity start to run the show, rather than this rock solid base of just, just, just full love for myself. And by the way, loving yourself does not mean being a selfish prick, excuse my language. Right?

• 26:42Speaker 01

  It's deeper. You know, it's, it, there's a, there's a, there's a depth to it. That, that goes beyond, so, you know, it's not selfish, it's not narcissistic. You may make, um, uh, you make better choices for yourself, but you don't make necessarily selfish choices. You make, um, more thoughtful choices. And so it changed my life. It really changed my life very, very quickly to the way it was like, nothing had done, anything I'd done pale to it, because it was completely transformative. And so I would share with friends and then they convinced me to write a book on it. And so like, I purposely wrote a very, very, very short book. It was like forty something pages, you know, on purpose. Very short, very to the point. I put it out on Amazon, self-published, and it took off.

• 27:27Speaker 01

  It went viral. People will buy a dozen copies and give them out to friends and family. I started getting emails from people who said this stopped, literally stopped them committing suicide. I met some of them and personally it was like, look, one man, you know, he had a gun in his hand when he was reading it. And like, after he read it, he put the gun away. You know, like, I have plenty of stories like that. You know? And then from like, young teenage girls to women in their seventies or senior citizens and people have like, I, we don't have much in common in life experience, like, but what we have in common is we have the human mind. The human condition is, is the fundamental foundation we all have. And, and it showed me just like, look, it's not just me. But you know, we all have our own struggles and love is such a primal thing we're wired

• 28:11Speaker 01

  for, rather than try to work on thirty different things, work on the one thing that matters. The one thing we could always use more of. No one says, "I have too much love." You know, if they do like bully for you, I want to study from you.

• 28:24Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 28:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I think that's why like it's, I never said, I'm not the love yourself guy. I'm not the guy.

• 28:34Chris Williamson?

  I tell you what you are now. You definitely are now. You do not have any choice. And if you're, if you're not the love yourself guy, then bringing another version of this book out is the wrong idea.

• 28:43Speaker 01

  Like, I'm not the guy who set out to be that.

• 28:45Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 28:45Speaker 01

  Right. I'm not the guy who was like, I'm going to teach the world to love themselves. No, I was just doing stuff and I was trying to get better. And then I was just sharing it. That's all it was.

• 28:55Chris Williamson?

  Discovery.

• 28:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. And you know, here's a little, here's a little interesting irony in life. So while I was building startups, I was teaching myself to write and I was teaching myself literary fiction, you know, which I want to be a literary fiction writer. And I was writing novels and that kind of stuff and collecting rejection letters. I was studying Hemingway and all the greats, you know, started with him and that clean, clear prose. Like it's much harder to get a deeper concept with simple words than it is a deep concept with large words. Right. And I was training myself to be that kind of writer that like anyone in the world can pick up my book and with a basic grasp, completely get what I write about. So I was writing travel stuff and this and that, and like adventure stuff and so forth. And, you know, never went anywhere.

• 29:38Speaker 01

  And then when I wrote, wrote that little book, because I had the craft out and I could express what I had to say, that little book took off and put me on the map as a writer. So interesting, right? The what I, and it's not what I set out to be a writer for. But because I'd worked on the craft for all those years, it allowed me to be able to do this. And then this put me on the map.

• 30:00Chris Williamson?

  Again, it comes, it comes back to what I just said before, like you don't get to choose the journey that you are called to do. You don't necessarily get, yeah, you don't get to, you don't get to choose that. If you're the one that can slay the dragon and you're like, well, I'm not a dragon slayer. And you're like, well, you can, so you are. Grab your sword, you're off. And that's the way it goes. Certainly one of the things that it makes me think about there is Jordan Peterson's advice about being precise with your speech. And I think that increasingly, as I'm exposed to great podcasters like Aubrey Marcus, who's now a mutual friend of ours.

• 30:37Speaker 01

  He's great, man. He's the real deal.

• 30:39Chris Williamson?

  He is the real deal. Him, Sam Harris, you know, the guys that Ben Shapiro, even all of these guys have different speaking cadences. They swim in different waters. They talk about different subjects, but the thing which unifies them is the precision in their speech. There is no more, there is no less than they need. It is as lean as is as is possible. It's like one of those Belgian bulls. And it is just lean, powerful, precise speech like a sniper. And I think, you know, the fact that you had to write or you chose to write such a short book meant like, there's no time for fluff. There's no time for waffle and extraneous information and all this stuff. It's not, it's just, this is what I mean to say.

• 31:21Chris Williamson?

  And again, I can't remember who it was I was speaking to, Nat Eliasen, I think, from the Made You Think podcast. And what he said was 95% of self-help books, not putting Love Yourself in a self-help category, but it's a good example to use. 95% of self-help books are a 5,000-word blog post that

• 31:46Speaker 01

  Oh, they're tweets. But look, I was actually talking to the journalist I was talking to. I was like, look, the thing with self-help. And it's kind of ironic because I'm now, now I'm a self-help writer, but I look at myself as a writer who's writing self-help from his experience, right? Most self-help books I read are written by people who want to be self-help people. The book is just a brand thing that they want to get out. It's very obvious. You can read it. You can tell. Especially if you care about the craft of writing, right? And they're filler of things. And they're filler of things that don't serve the reader, that just fills pages, you know, which is just lazy. You know, which is just if you're gonna put something out, don't be lazy.

• 32:26Chris Williamson?

  It's because I think part of it will be signaling, look, if you're gonna spend fourteen dollars on a book, you wanna feel like you're getting your money's worth. And I think bizarrely getting your money's worth means looking at a thick book. But that's actually the wrong way to look at it. You want the book to be as short as is possible.

• 32:44Speaker 01

  And and effective. But you know, you can fill, you know, a thousand page book and make it every word effective. It's just, it's work. It's real work, you know? That's the thing.

• 32:59Chris Williamson?

  So we were talking, we were talking earlier on about the fact that loving yourself is a transformative process. And it's a commonality between everyone, right? It's one of the few things that we all need to do. That's what you identified. And I think I go back to Alain de Botton from the School of Life, who's one of my, one of my favorite content creators. And I can say he's coming on Modern Wisdom next year. I've managed to get him in my inbox. So he'll be on next year, which will be amazing conversation. And what he says is that he's referring to depression, but this talks about any negative thought patterns. He says, depression feels like a personal curse bestowed on us.

• 33:40Chris Williamson?

  Like it's this very unique pathogen, this virus that was designed and it's fed to us and only us. Yeah, you might have pain, but my pain is special. My pain is my pain and you don't know, no, you can't understand my pain because it's this. And you can't, you can't give me the route out of this because it's not that. And we, the fact that we don't understand how inherently flawed and vulnerable and terrified and winging it, like how little of a clue everybody has from the most competent person that you've seen to the biggest blunder on the planet. No one has a clue and everyone's just kind of winging it as we go through life. But the fact that you feel, because you're so

• 34:24Chris Williamson?

  immediately aware of your own experience. And you get to see all of your blunders up first. You get to see all of your insecurities. You get to see all of your failures and worries and concerns and resentment and bitterness. And all of that stuff, you see it at this front row view. And the fact that you're able to see that and yet you only get a highlight reel of everybody else makes you always feel like the curses that you have are personal for you, they're bestowed exclusively on you. And I think that trying to find a commonality, which is the wind in that sail, it's the kite that you hold on to, that everybody, that's universal, I think that that is really, really important.

• 35:03Speaker 01

  Well, you know, it kind of goes back to what you were talking about, you using the metaphor of the hero. Something I write about in the book, it's like, look, I think as an adult, we get two choices, whatever story we're going through, let's look at it as a story. Because fundamentally, it is, memories aren't facts, memories are stories created in our mind. There is no facts in the human brain, they're all stories created around events that are actually very malleable stories, right? And we only have one simple choice, am I going to be a hero or am I going to be a victim of this story? And it's our job to create, make ourselves hero of that story. And how you make the hero of the story is

• 35:45Speaker 01

  not the one who just sits there eating bonbons at the beach all day. The hero of the story is one who steps up, makes a stand, says, I'm gonna make my stand, I'm gonna choose something better, do something bigger and get through this, and I'm gonna come out of it. I'm gonna, you know, whatever I care for is gonna come out of it. That's how you become the hero. So through all of this, we can use this to become, whatever it is we're going through in life, whether it's good or bad, we can use it to become the hero of that story. And then, when you start to feel as the hero of your story, when you start to actually see the changes that you made and then the effects, man, talk about self-confidence, talk about how good you feel about yourself, you know, and it's all you,

• 36:28Speaker 01

  you know, it's a beautiful thing. I love that metaphor you're using, by the way, you know, and it's something I've used as well, and I use in the book, and I talk about my childhood, I'm like, look,

• 36:40Speaker 01

  Like I, you know, I could, I could point to all those things and say, look, I was a victim, you know, and sure enough, children can get away with being a victim, you know? I mean, at some point, yes, but I'm an adult now and look what I, look what this child chose to do. Because of this child, I'm here, you know, how damn proud I am of this child. And, you know, he became the hero of the story and I'm, I'm here as a result of him becoming the hero.

• 37:04Chris Williamson?

  Man, how amazing. So there's a million different doorways open at the moment in my mind. Um, I want to come back to the fact that the entirety of the book, to me, feels like a, a letter to yourself or a memoir to yourself, as if it was written by another you, as if it was written outside of your body and it, treat yourself as if you are somebody you are responsible for helping, right? Another Jordan Petersonism there. The fact that you are able to, do you know the statistics about, dogs completing their antibiotics courses? Do you know this?

• 37:37Speaker 01

  No, that's an interesting thing to bring up. I'm curious.

• 37:40Chris Williamson?

  Uh, if you have a dog, the likelihood of it completing its course of antibiotics given to you is about 90%. The likelihood of you completing your course of antibiotics, 50%.

• 37:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 37:52Chris Williamson?

  Why? It's because it's much easier, it's much easier to care for something else than it is to care for ourselves.

• 37:58Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 38:00Chris Williamson?

  Why don't we think about what happens in an aircraft malfunction? You're told to put your mask on first because if you are suffocating, you are of little use to anybody else, including the ones who need you the most, even though you don't know that they're there. That's why you got, you got, you got to sort your own shit first and you have to treat yourself as if you are someone that you were responsible for helping. So that's one and I want to, I want to kind of come back to how, how I think all of that links in. But I had a, um, I had a, a bad couple of weeks recently, um, and it was, start last week, actually, as I began reading the book. And the book was one of a number of different influences which occurred at the same time, but it was something that I needed to read.

• 38:42Chris Williamson?

  Um, and what I felt at the time was I was very much at the mercy of what was happening in life. That I, I'd, I'd piled a lot on, this podcast is a, a, an absolute labor of love and it is one of my, one of my primary passions. But it is a punishing schedule to release two episodes a week. It is challenging. I have a number of other businesses. I have this, that and the other. I'm not singing the woe is me song. I'm trying to give you context. That's all. And. I just, it got too much. And I was like, look, like, I just want to, I just want to put my hands in the air. I just want to give up. I'm like, I'm just, I'm just sick. I'm just gonna go to bed. I was gonna go to bed and I'm not gonna bother checking my phone and I'm gonna feel bad about the fact that I'm in bed. But I'm gonna do this like that. That's me. That's my defense mechanism. Like, no, fuck it.

• 39:26Chris Williamson?

  I don't need to. I don't have a boss. I run my own company. I'm single at thirty one and don't have any financial liabilities that I can do whatever I want. And the company continues to go. I don't have any kids. I'm not, I'm, you know, I have no reason to generate my own meaning during the day, right? No reason at all. Most people, I've got to get up. My boss will shout at me at work. I've got to get up. I've got to get the kids to school. I've got to get up. My missus is here. And that structure that they have, that help gives them momentum. It gives them that pull, right? It's the wind in their sails to pull them through. And I was just like, do you know what it is? I'm fucking sick of creating. I'm sick of getting over my own inertia.

• 40:06Chris Williamson?

  Like every morning I got to get up and it's fuck, this sucks. Like, there's no one here telling me like gassing me up, like saying, yeah, man, let's come up. Let's get it. Let's get after it. Now go to the gym. It's still working for you. It's like, no. Like, it's me that has to do this to myself. And if I don't do it, no one is there to say you should have done it, except for me and my own feelings of loathing and guilt and self referential. You shit house. Why didn't you get out of bed? And I was like, no, fuck, like, this is just, I can't be arsed. Bollocks to it. I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna do this. And that's like, I'm sort of flip flopping around, just going to the shop, maybe like fart out half a gym session, go home, not really do anything, just wallow in being feeling shit.

• 40:50Chris Williamson?

  Uh, it's been a while. It's been a while since I felt like that. And I was like, fuck. This, this sucks. Like, this is, this is a place that I thought I'd conquered. I didn't think that I was gonna end up having to deal with this again, again, again, for the fucking however much time. I'm thirty one. How is it that life, just life, what's the problem, Chris? Oh, well, um, kinda, I just got a little bit too many projects on at the moment and the.

• 41:18Chris Williamson?

  Amount of agency and the vastness of choices that my life has gives to me is it's weighing heavy and you're like, okay, there's starving children in Africa, there's people who are literally bleeding out of their abdomen and it's spraying everywhere like a garden hose like in America and blah, blah, blah.

• 41:36Speaker 01

  Like a sprinkler.

• 41:37Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, that's it. Like, what, what, what are you doing? Like, why is this a big deal? And I, I was just, I was so sick. And one of the things that you say in the book, which verbalized something that I'd been feeling for a long time, was talking about how life happens to me, or life happens through me.

• 41:59Speaker 01

  Three stages, to me, or for me, or through me.

• 42:02Chris Williamson?

  Through me.

• 42:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's almost a step by step, leveling up.

• 42:06Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. And what, what is that, that particular dynamic? It's from victim to actor to hero? Probably something along those lines?

• 42:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it's more of an internal thing and, and the expression of it being external. It's something I've learned. You know, like, life happens to me is, I think seems to be a modus operandi as human beings. We think everything happens to us, but that's where victim mindset comes from. And that's a very standard thing, you know, like, life happens to me. Life happened for, for me is, that happened as I started to love myself. It just felt like life was starting to just turn, like, all of it was just turning in my favor. And that's something that other people noticed too, as I start to do this. It's very interesting, as within, so with them, you know, the old saying. And then, I think the next higher level, as you go deeper, is, it's almost like you start to feel like,

• 43:00Speaker 01

  like, what your insight is, starts to become, your expression starts to become, sorry, your outside starts to become an expression of your insight. And you almost feel like you're just flowing through life and life is flowing through you and it's, and it's wonderful. And I'm not saying it's always easy, you know, because we are human beings and we're living, living a human life. But it's a beautiful way to experience life. And it's, it's not one that you force. It's not one that you intellectually say, okay, I get it. And I'm going, it's not a matter of intellectually getting anything. It's a matter of living it, you know? Um. So it's it's something that happens as you start to do this, as you start to.

• 43:42Speaker 01

  And look, you can choose something else besides loving yourself. You can just be just work on something that makes you better in the inside and you'll notice the same things. And we all have. We all have gone through like maybe flow in our life, but things just start to work. And if you look at it, it's it's a reflection of your inner state.

• 43:59Chris Williamson?

  It is. So, yeah, I'm I'm I'm thinking about the amount of discomfort and just general angst and all this sort of stuff. Um. And then I woke up one morning and I was like, you know, it is I'm sick. Like, I'm I'm absolutely sick of feeling like I'm at the mercy of my life. I'm at the mercy of my thoughts. Like, this is not, this is absolutely not the hero's journey. This is absolutely not the way that this was supposed to go. Um. So I started to reframe things and there isn't. There are certain things that you can do which change course very quickly. I'm hesitant to talk about like this one thing, it came down from the clouds and like, you know, my life, my life changed upon this, this single moment.

• 44:44Chris Williamson?

  But I was able to reframe my thinking and it made a very, very big difference very, very quickly. And one of the main things was, yeah, perhaps there are some quirks of my own consciousness, perhaps there are some quirks of everybody's consciousness that's listening. And with those come some benefits, with those come some curses, right? Like, it is both a blessing and a curse to feel everything so very deeply. The depth of my consciousness causes me to suffer all of these little aphorisms that you hear. But the point is that this is the vessel that I've got. This is the vessel I've got. This is the mind I've got. And to the people that are listening, it's the consciousness that you are in, that's the one you've got.

• 45:28Chris Williamson?

  Like, you know, whether you believe in reincarnation or something sort of a little bit more exotic, that's cool. But right now, the only thing that you've got is The brain that you're living in. So you've got to work with it. Like, there has to be something, you have to make it work, because the alternative is just lying in bed and eating biscuits. And like, that sucks. Like, that's not a cool way to spend a day. So I thought, right, I need to, I need to really try and reframe what's going on. And there's some concepts that came to mind, leaning into discomfort from Ben Bergeron on Chasing Excellence, where he talks about leaning into discomfort as if you invited it through the door. It's like a good friend. So, okay, yeah, yeah, cool. This is, this feels like a little bit, a little bit

• 46:10Chris Williamson?

  uncomfortable to me, but that's cool. This is why I'm here. This is because it's a place of growth for me. And this is part of my process. And the fact of the matter is, that the way that I came back to it was, yeah, maybe I've got to get over my own inertia. Perhaps that's, perhaps that's just part of life. Perhaps it would be great if there was this big support structure that kind of brought me through everything. Perhaps it would be brilliant if there was someone gassing me like a hype man, you know, like DJs have got on stage, like just hyping me up every morning, like, yeah, man, let's get out of bed. Let's go get it. How's that about a don't? That's, that's, that's not the situation that life has for me at the moment. So I, I got to make this work and I have to work out how I can make this work. And taking control, taking

• 46:53Chris Williamson?

  agency over the things that I can control, because there are some things that I can control. And doing that and being proud of the things that I am able to do, being proud and feeling happy with the person that I've become. And it, you know, when you talk about the traumatic experiences that you've had through childhood and then putting them out on display for, fuck knows how many people are going to read this book, like a lot of people, like essentially,

• 47:26Chris Williamson?

  it's probably safe for you to guess that pretty much everyone that you meet, the vast majority of people that you meet, or yeah, a majority of people that you meet for the rest of your life are going to know what's in this book.

• 47:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:38Chris Williamson?

  And the fact that, the fact that someone is, you're prepared to do that. I'm like,

• 47:45Chris Williamson?

  You need to be able to own everything it is. All of the failings, all of the scars, all of the trauma, all of the good and the bad. And you have to, because the alternative is lying in bed, eating biscuits, or worse.

• 48:00Speaker 01

  Look, if you're gonna put something out to the world, you gotta give it your best. Otherwise, don't do it, if you want it to last. You know? That's one of the, I mean, the, the stuff that's in that book is there for a reason. You know, is purely designed to be of value. Yeah.

• 48:19Speaker 01

  So when you, when you start looking at that way, it makes it, it makes the choice much easier.

• 48:23Chris Williamson?

  Getting on to the second section of the book, which is where you actually start to talk about the process. Would you be able to go through that? Would you be able to explain the process of, of going from forgiveness?

• 48:35Speaker 01

  I'm happy to. You know, the one, the one caveat I would give is the reason why I wrote the expanded version was because there's a process here. You know, this is a process that I've refined over the years. So to try to give a quick synopsis, I would say it'd be like telling someone on a podcast how to do a, how to do squats and deadlifts. I would say like, you know, like, you know, if you're gonna do it, you know, like, really pay attention in the book, because there's nuances, and those nuances matter, and they make it easier, and they make it faster, and they make it last. But fundamentally, it all starts with, if you're gonna leave the, if you're gonna go to the future, you gotta leave the past behind. So it's an exercise that I've done over the years to forgive myself. A very simple exercise of self forgiveness, and it works.

• 49:18Speaker 01

  And then like, I, everyone I know who's done it, it works. It's very simple, and it's literally, you start to realize the weight of what you've been carrying, and it's time to let it go. You gotta let go, before you really, because now we're stepping into the future where we're gonna be loving ourselves. So you gotta let go of the past. So the first is doing that exercise. Then the second is on the power of commitment. You can't just say, okay, I'm gonna love myself and then do, you know, when we say things like this, especially with things we're not used to. If you've been eating bonbons all your life, you can say, I'm gonna go, you know, train for Mr. Olympia, you know, be Mr. Olympia. You gotta, you better have a plan of action. You better have a commitment, you have some serious commitment, right? You don't just do, go to the gym when you feel like it and eat your, you know, chicken breast and broccoli when you feel like it. You know, whatever Mr. Olympia eats.

• 50:04Speaker 01

  You know, but you get, you know, it takes significant commitment. And I think for the, for the, most importantly for mindset, this fundamentally is a way to like, is a mindset. It's a, if I can use the word heart set, it's working in your heart and your mind, right? That takes, the way to really shift it fast is to make that commitment. So I show how to, how I made my vow to do it and how you can make your vow. So it's a forgive yourself, make the vow. Then the rest is, you gotta keep your vow. And then the rest is the practice that I, you know, of loving yourself. And it's a very simple practice based on

• 50:41Speaker 01

  how to make yourself feel on a consistent basis. And through various things, through a very short meditation. A lot of people have a hard time doing, but it's actually quite important. And then even little things like, you know, throughout the day, 10 breaths, where you stop and you make yourself feel and how to do that. And using the concept of light. I found that for me, the concept of bringing light in as I did that, for some reason, always really helped. We're, you know, we're wired for love, we're wired for light, you know? So when I go, we're wired for. And so it's a very simple practice. And, you know, it basically involves your breath and some of your thoughts during the day, which, both of which you're gonna be doing regardless. But what you're doing is you're taking that, that monkey in your mind, you're putting reins on it, you know, or like, let's say it's a horse and it's a wild horse and you're putting reins on it

• 51:26Speaker 01

  and you're training it to go where you want it to go until it eventually starts to walk in there on its own. That's all it is. And it's training, it's mental training. And it's not, it feels a little foreign in the beginning because how often have you been taught that? You know, to just work on the mind itself. But it is the most important thing we got. It is the one that affects everything. You could have everything going great in your life, but you could inside feel horrible, you know? Or vice versa, or just be steady. You know, I was talking to my brother about this, maybe a month after the whole experience. And I was like, man, it's kudos to my mindset, how I'm just like, how My state of mind is to this whole experience. Like kudos to the work I've done, it shows. You know how my mindset is about this whole thing.

• 52:11Speaker 01

  I mean, look, there's some really hard moments. Some really, really hard moments, really challenging. And, you know, I get to them quickly and boom, I'm back to solid. You know, um, I, you know, but that comes from, that comes from like the work I've done on myself. You know, it's kudos to that. It's like, it's like, you know, your body, when you work out, if you go to the gym every day for a year for 365 days, you know, and you're eating like lean and healthy, your body will show. There's no way you can hide. No, people are not gonna, you know, you see someone today and see them 365 days from now, and you've done that, they were like, oh, my God, what happened? Right? Imagine the same with your mind. Right? And then the mind is the one that starts it all.

• 52:55Chris Williamson?

  You have to lead with that mind first. You have to have that mindset that you want to have the change. And what I really like is, it's not, the, the, the idea of loving, loving yourself is not simply a concept. There is a structure, there is a framework that you can instantiate into your daily routine, into your daily practice. You know, James Clear, Atomic Habits, we do not rise to the level of our goals. We fall to the level of our systems. And that's a system there. That's how you take the concept. This is the system that you follow. And here's a story which drives the nail home with a sledgehammer that's like the size of a house.

• 53:36Speaker 01

  And shows you also the nuances. You can do that in stories that you can't do otherwise. Um, that the mind will tune out. That you cannot really get it. So like, if you hit that point in your head, you know, it's okay. You know, here's what I need to do.

• 53:53Chris Williamson?

  Why do you think that so many people aren't loving themselves naturally?

• 54:00Speaker 01

  I don't know, man. That's the, I think it's part of the human condition. Um.

• 54:06Speaker 01

  I honestly don't know. Like, I mean, we all can have theories about it, but I can have theories about my own, you know, but like I got to the point, like I said, I come, I my, my mindset is more of a doer. So my mindset is how do I find a solution to this rather than try to figure out why the problem exists? That's theory. I could spend a whole lifetime going there, right? I just want to fix it. I want practical. So that's, that's my bias. So I'm at the point where I think I, I remember in the book I wrote, like when I first wrote it, when I was first coming up with it, it's like, you know, I was, I wondered about why my mind wasn't going to those negative places. But it's like, you know, when you're on fire, you don't need electricity, the nature of combustion. You just want water, water, right?

• 54:49Speaker 01

  And that's what I believe in, like just, just like put yourself out of fire. Think, uh, that matters. You, you know, the human condition can be a shit show. Okay. How to make it better? How to make myself better? You start with yourself, as you know, with the, with the airplane analogy. And then you, you start to make others better around you just naturally. It's pretty, it's really interesting how that works. You make yourself better, the ones around you start to get better. So it's just a natural ripple effect.

• 55:18Chris Williamson?

  During the podcast that I did with Aubrey, he used this analogy that was fantastic. And he said that in order to serve, you have to be fit for service. And that was manifest as you do not serve others from your cup. You serve them from the saucer which overflows around your cup.

• 55:42Speaker 01

  Oh, interesting. That's a, that's a very interesting metaphor. Interesting.

• 55:49Chris Williamson?

  If you haven't sorted your own shit, it's difficult to help the people with theirs.

• 55:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, even like the forgiveness thing, the self forgiveness exercise, you know, it's like, look, forgive yourself first. You, if you, you know, especially we, we, you know, we're taught forgive others. Well, you can't forgive others unless you're able to forgive yourself. Truly forgiveness, true forgiveness starts with the self. When you start becoming someone who just naturally forgives themselves, you start to forgive others much easier. It becomes more of a natural expression of it.

• 56:22Speaker 01

  And look, forgiveness only, I mean, the lack of forgiveness only hurts us.

• 56:28Chris Williamson?

  We're carrying enough baggage day to day, right? We don't need to carry the baggage of the past. There's enough challenges that are going to come up. There's enough things which need fixing. There's enough people who we can help.

• 56:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, look, we carry enough in us anyway, and we keep on adding more along the way. You know, no one's perfect. You know, like, there's no... It's a matter of how do I just be a better human? You know, given the operating system I got, how do I just be better and better and better?

• 56:59Chris Williamson?

  One of the points that you bring up in the story is the fact that you are annoyed or upset at yourself for being back in a place that you thought that you had conquered and also one that you had essentially become a... maybe not an authority on, but at least some sort of leader within the space of loving yourself, and you'd let that slip. That is such an interesting situation, I think. So many people who do work on themselves fall back into old habits. But when you fall back, not only have you got the old habit to deal with, but there's the second-order referential guilt of,

• 57:41Chris Williamson?

  "Fuck, I thought this was done well."

• 57:45Speaker 01

  Right, right, right.

• 57:48Chris Williamson?

  It was the first time that I've ever read a story where someone dissects that.

• 57:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's... Thanks, man. Look, I'm human, right? I want to... Like, I never promised my own perfection. Like, my faking perfection serves no one. And I wanted to show, like, look... Because I have all... I have so many emails from... I don't know, tens of thousands. It's like a significant amount, right? And I read them all. I respond to them. I've got to understand what the challenges are. I want to show them, like, look, you're not alone. You know, but I think, as you were explaining, my depression feels so personal, and all of her stories feel so personal. I wanted to say, like, look, you're not alone. You're reaching out to me for advice. I go through the same thing. And, but this is what I do to get over it. This is what I do to get better. Again and again, I return to the same thing. And, look, I'm the guy who came up with this.

• 58:38Speaker 01

  And, look, I stopped doing it. I got lazy. And then, you know, when something hard happened, I kind of fell apart. Right? And yeah, and, and like, talk about embarrassing, talk about feeling shame, you know, like,

• 58:51Chris Williamson?

  I'm supposed to be the guy.

• 58:53Speaker 01

  Well, I never set out to be the guy, but like, I wrote the book on it, right? Like, that was from my experience. And I wrote it from my experience. And so I'm wanting to share that as well. Like, look, like, we will, there are times when we will, when we fall. What do we do? We step up again, knowing what works, and we do it again, and we go back at it. That's part of life.

• 59:21Chris Williamson?

  There's people who don't have that rulebook. There's people who don't have that, those tactics, those frameworks to fall back on. Um, I've had a couple of friends over the last few years who have, uh, taken their own lives and thinking about them, they are people who had a complexity of mind which caused them to suffer, but who didn't have tools to deal with the suffering. That's like a commonality between them. A lot of them were people who

• 59:58Chris Williamson?

  they wanted, they wanted to become better, but didn't have a route out of it. They didn't have something prescriptive. They didn't have

• 1:00:07Chris Williamson?

  that wind in the sail, the kites flying limp, and

• 1:00:14Chris Williamson?

  it seems to them to be only one way out after that.

• 1:00:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, I understand. And I've lost friends. I've been there, man. I've been there close to it. So I understand.

• 1:00:27Speaker 01

  It's hard. It's, uh, you know, to be or not to be, the ultimate question, right? Sometimes when you hit that very close, it becomes almost appealing. Uh, but it's just another pattern. It's another, um, I said, it can even be an addiction to go there, you know, so.

• 1:00:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's hard, you know, like I have lost friends too. It's but the way you put it was very was wise describing like who you know a lot of that their condition.

• 1:01:00Chris Williamson?

  So going back to what we were talking about to do with viewing yourself as someone else. It is it's obvious that we're able to give compassion to other people that we struggle with for ourselves. We give advice to other people that we struggle to do for ourselves. And the number of times that I've given someone a piece of advice that I wholeheartedly could have done with heeding myself is like it's almost like you're it's like what it's kind of like projecting, but it's advice projecting. Like you're not projecting your insecurity. It's you're projecting the answer to your own insecurity or your own problem onto someone else, but you still don't listen. It's so bizarre. It's so bizarre. And then thinking about love yourself like your life depends on it. It almost sounds like a sentence you're saying to someone else, not to yourself, but you

• 1:01:45Chris Williamson?

  can say it to yourself, right?

• 1:01:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, that that sentence actually came from a talk I gave and which actually led to the writing of the original version of the book. And it really was, I was like, look, if you go at it that way, it changes your life. If you go with that kind of intensity, like if you're hanging off a cliff and with just your fingers and it's loving yourself that's going to save you, how does how hard would you do it? That's that's kind of when you go all in on things, it's that's what I'm trying to say. Basically, the whole concept go all in, commit, go all in, commit, go all in. You know, that's where transformation happens. And so loving yourself, love yourself like your life depends on ultimately, that's what it is. Commit to it like truly commit, go all in and watch transformation happen.

• 1:02:34Speaker 01

  It's pretty beautiful.

• 1:02:35Chris Williamson?

  There's no reason to do anything else, right?

• 1:02:39Speaker 01

  You know? Meaning?

• 1:02:40Chris Williamson?

  By by all provable thoughts of what is going on in the world at the moment you have this life, there might be something else, there might not. But the one thing that we do know is that we have what's here and now. So why go half in? The only reason is perhaps because it's too difficult to go all in. But like if the only thing that you need to overcome is difficulty, and that's the difference between you taking control and life happening through you or life happening to you and being the victim and and playing that that role. You need to commit.

• 1:03:16Speaker 01

  I think honestly, a lot of our difficulty, I'll speak from experiences, is self-created. A lot of our internal difficulties are self-created, just stories, right? But look, it's easy to say that. How's that gonna help anyone? You know, we all know that. So, but look, going all in is a secret. Committing, going all in is a secret to greatness. You know, like in entrepreneurship and in sports. Look at athletes, you know? How many of like amazing athletes half-ass their training all their life? You don't get that. Why is that? You know, there are always outliers. It's the outliers who change the world. And they're always the ones who really go all out. You can have talent, but talent will only get you so far.

• 1:03:59Speaker 01

  It might get you early wins, but then when you're in the pros, all of a sudden, you know, you need way more than talent. You need a lot of practice and skill. You had to have like really worked on your, on your sport. It's the same thing with the inside, you know? Like it, it, it really is committing and going all out. Or you can use all out or all in. You know, I, when I was editing the book, going through edit process, had to like confer. Sometimes use all out.

• 1:04:23Chris Williamson?

  Fading backwards and forwards between it.

• 1:04:25Speaker 01

  But, but you know, it's the concept, just go all, if you're going all in on something that truly matters to you, that's where like magic happens, right? Um, and, and you know, that comes from also commitment, but you have to commit. Whether you make a conscious or unconscious commitment, you are committing if you're going all in. And might as well make it a conscious thing. So then like you learn how to do that for other things that you may not have confidence in, but you want, and you learn, well, I'm gonna make a commitment and I'm gonna keep it. It becomes a way of being. It's become a way of being for me and it's, it's really transformative.

• 1:05:03Chris Williamson?

  The ability to make a promise to yourself and fulfill it, I think is such a powerful and underrated simplistic way to help people move forward, right? Like how many people that are stuck in a rut just struggle? They, they've broken promises to themselves so many times. I'm gonna, tomorrow I'm gonna start the diet. This week I'm gonna go to the gym. I'll stop smoking. I'll be nicer to my partner. I won't cheat on my partner. I won't do this. I won't do that. Like how many times? And then every time that that promise gets broken, it's like. We're coming back to it being like there's two people. You're looking at yourself like another person. So if you had a friend who was consistently breaking promises to you,

• 1:05:49Chris Williamson?

  you'd be like, I don't trust you. I don't, I don't, you're not going to do that. You're not gonna, you're not gonna, you're not gonna stop smoking. You're not gonna do whatever. But the difference is you can't not have that thought because it's inside of your own head. So that dialogue begins to make it harder and harder and harder. So I'm a big advocate for sobriety, for productivity. So I think it's a massively underused tool that people can do to give themselves more time or more money or more calories to spend on things they care about. And the thing is that if you, in the 21st century, surrounded by a culture where everyone's partying all the time, especially in the UK, like big drinking

• 1:06:29Chris Williamson?

  culture, if you can go sober for 90 days or six months, say, like, what else can't you do? Like, the deck of cards just tumbles after that. It's like you, you were the, the one person that was on a night out that wasn't drinking for six months. Or you do, pick your point, pick your challenge, right? Like, once you've done that one thing,

• 1:06:54Chris Williamson?

  it's all right. Well, hang on, I, I, I made a promise to myself and I kept it. Shit. What, what else can I do? What else can I promise myself that I'm gonna do? How, how, how much more momentum can I start to build up? And you talk about this, right? You talk about, about greasing the groove, about a river, about sort of carving the, the path of a river. And our thought patterns, our thought patterns being deep and our thought patterns needing to be recreated.

• 1:07:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, like, look, you know, the classic neurons that fire together, wire together, that these are mental loops and groups that are running the show. So it's about creating like just new grooves that's that run the show. And we gotta do it consciously. We had too many, if we create unconsciously over our lives. It's just, it's, you know, taking over the reins and doing it consciously until the horse walks there, you know, starts walking in the direction where you want to do good, go naturally. That takes training. And the horse doesn't just do that on its own. Right? Yeah.

• 1:07:52Chris Williamson?

  It's a horse that's incredibly disobedient, incredibly naughty horse. But yeah, you know, that, that idea of making promises to yourself and keeping them and having faith in your own word and having trust.

• 1:08:05Speaker 01

  It's a great path to self-confidence. You know, if you trust yourself, you know, like I have a fundamental trust in myself. And that's like, that's something special. And how did I do that? You know, I just started making, keeping commitments to myself. You know, and so, and you learn, I'm not perfect. Sometimes I break them, you know, it's a, but you like get up and you, you know, you recommit and you go at it again. You know, you don't quit, right? You don't give up. You learn from it and you recommit and you go at it again. You go at it again.

• 1:08:41Chris Williamson?

  One of the things that you bring up, so the story at the end of the book is about a breakup. And inherently with that, you need to let somebody else into your life. You need to allow someone to be a part of your life. But what we're talking about here is loving yourself. That's inherently quite an independent thing. This is you on your own. How do you marry those, those two things together? For the majority of people listening, they will either have or end up with some sort of significant other, hopefully very happily for a long time. But they also need to have that framework in place that is just them. But they need to be sufficiently open to allow that other person to permeate into it. How, how do those two?

• 1:09:24Speaker 01

  Oh, this, there's nothing, there's nothing opposing about each other. One's just a way of being. And when you're loving yourself, you're way more loving to others naturally. You're way more accepting. You're way, you're, I mean, you just are. There's nothing, you know, that doesn't fit there. It's not being separate for someone. It's not taking time away from someone. It's just a way of thinking, a way of being inside. And that has nothing to do with, we have enough thoughts about ourselves inside. All this is doing is just channeling it to something that serves you and serves your life. And if it serves you in such a positive way, it's going to serve the ones you're around.

• 1:10:06Speaker 01

  You know, it just is. There's nothing about it that's not compatible. You know, no matter what, even if you're like wrapped around someone 24/7, you're still gonna be having your thoughts. You're still in your head. You know, that's the thing to realize, you're still inside your head. And so what's gonna be happening inside that head? What's gonna be happening inside that head when it's a shitty day? You know, not all days are great days, you know, what's gonna be? What's gonna be the solidness in there? That's yours. That's your choice. And that's for you to work on.

• 1:10:41Speaker 01

  And like when you work on that, making that better, like who you're around, who you're wrapped around 24/7, you're better with that person.

• 1:10:49Chris Williamson?

  It's easy to see the problem that you came up against, and I have as well many times. You call it coasting. I got comfortable, so I coasted.

• 1:10:59Speaker 01

  Or lazy.

• 1:11:01Chris Williamson?

  Pick your semantic.

• 1:11:05Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I got, I got comfortable, so I coasted. I, I, I no longer did the practices that I know that are good for me. And it's easy to see how that happens, right? And the particularly interesting thing about your story is it is for many people, uh, rug flip day is the nightmare scenario. It is the number one thing, a partner saying to you, you haven't done anything wrong, but this is no longer happening is,

• 1:11:37Chris Williamson?

  it's the, the worst day of their life. It's, it's, that's exactly what they're fearing all the time. And

• 1:11:46Chris Williamson?

  someone being comfortable before that, letting those frameworks go, no longer doing the things which give them the strength and the structure to get through a situation like that. That's where that weakness lies, right? And that comfort and that coasting before. So what I wondered was, the motivation for not coasting? Is it out of fear of what might happen? What's? How does someone continue? When things do get comfortable? How does someone continue to have the drive from when things were uncomfortable?

• 1:12:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, because that's the point of Hammer Hunn again and again, because that's been my biggest weakness. And that's been the weakness of a lot of the readers that reach out to me, right? So it's like I, sometimes I'm going to drive home and like, that's why I make the part two, the manual, creates a practice out of it, creates a consistent practice that you can do again and again, and creates like very simple things, like the 10 breaths, that you can do no matter what. So you always continue going forward, right? Is it out of fear? No, but after a while, it becomes like, look, I just want my life to be this way. I want my insight to be this way. Because fear only brings you so far. You'll run out of energy, but you, your fear can only take you so far. You'll burn out. Versus when you're doing it, something that's, that just fundamentally is making you better.

• 1:13:05Speaker 01

  And, but it takes conscious choice. It takes conscious recommitment. And I talk about that too. You know, you don't just commit once. You don't just commit when you're 15 to, to work out at the gym. You're like, you know, you're doing these unconscious commitments, you know, where you're stepping up and doing things if you want to be in better and better shape. But you are doing these commitments and it's a, it's a process of recommitting. And sometimes you know you'll coast. It's, and it's part of being human. But then when you realize it, then recommit and go back at it again, because you will be better and your life will be better. And look, if it's out of fear sometime, then all right, use that to drive you, but that will only take you so far. Commitment is what's going to get you. It's going, what's, fear will push you and you'll run out of energy. Commitment pulls you forward, you know?

• 1:13:50Speaker 01

  There's my commitment to this book that pulls me forward, gets me out of bed, even though I'm, you know, recovering and I'm in pain, gets me up and gets me doing what I need to do, no matter what. It's not fear. Fear won't do that. Fear won't get you off narcotics.

• 1:14:06Speaker 01

  That easily. They're alluring, man, I'll tell you.

• 1:14:10Chris Williamson?

  Talk us through that. Tell me, tell me, tell me what it's like. What were you taking? Or what were you given and what's the sensation?

• 1:14:15Speaker 01

  I was on everything. I was on like severe IV and narcotics and, and oral combination all the time. And you need it because you're, you've been split open, man. You know, they split you open when they go in like to save your life. It's not, it's, um, you need it. You're in bad pain. Um, oh, it dulls the pain. It dulls you. It dulls the pain. Now I have friends of mine who find out that I have some, you know, they're like, oh, can we have some? Because they, they call them happy pills. And I can see that. I guess if you're not in pain, then it just kind of like dulls whatever else. And you can just be float, float, be floaty. So I can see that. Um, and, uh, but I won't, I, I refuse to touch them now because like

• 1:14:59Speaker 01

  the moment for them passed. And, and there is a, you can see the allure. Like if you're just, I just want to be floaty and not care. You know, like, um, I can see the allure, especially if you don't have, if you don't have something pulling you forward. I can see the allure for that more and more and more. You know, I can see why these things, there's a, there's a severe opioid crisis in the United States. You know, you look at a lot of, it's like severe poverty areas where the industry is gone and people don't have much hope, you know? Um, and often people are in emotional pain. You may start off with physical pain, but then these also dull your emotional pain. And so then it's very hard to then get off it.

• 1:15:43Chris Williamson?

  Feeling feelings is hard.

• 1:15:46Speaker 01

  Uh, well, it's, it's hard. Yeah, it's hard. But it's also, yeah, it's hard. But then also feeling good feelings is also nice, you know?

• 1:15:57Chris Williamson?

  That's the thing. The, the lows give the highs, right? Like...

• 1:16:01Speaker 01

  I don't have to give the highs. Listen, I don't like that because you don't have to always be hitting bottom to hit high. Uh, but they do give you, they do show you. They, they make you appreciate the highs more. Right. And I don't think you can, you can, if you're gonna numb your feelings, that meaning you're numbing the top and the bottom, right?

• 1:16:21Chris Williamson?

  Let me rephrase, let me rephrase that. You have to risk the ability for you to go low to allow you to be able to go high with your normal feelings. You're perfectly correct that whatever the range is, you're nerfing top and bottom, right? And you don't get to feel the happiness when you're on particular narcotics, but you're also inoculated from feeling the lows. And for some people, that middle section is just safe enough. It's fine.

• 1:16:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, you have this pleasantness on narcotics and you're kind of less caring, you know, less giving a shit, you know, which I get, you can see this, but I'm, I'm, look, I'm just giving my own experience on it. And I would keep in mind, mine was also like I was a significant amount of pain. So like part of it with that whole narc, I was just going to dull the pain, you know? So I may not be the best person to give a full experience breakdown on it. But what I do know is that it, I needed my mind to work, what's something I had to do that was so important to me that that was more important than dulling whatever need to be dealt.

• 1:17:27Chris Williamson?

  As you've said, if you didn't have that, what does it leave you with? Pain that needs to be, that needs to be taken away.

• 1:17:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, because it's very easy. You know, you're in immense pain to give you this, boom, it dulls down. You know, who would say no? Right?

• 1:17:43Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I, like I say, as I, as I read through this, the, the transparency was something that was quite shocking in a nice way, especially towards the, the latter part of the book, talking about all of the different failings, all of the different problems that you'd come up against, all of the different weaknesses, the, uh, woke up this morning and was weak, texted her again, like that, those short sentences, you just, I felt the emotion that I've been through in those situations, coming through with that. And the main

• 1:18:23Chris Williamson?

  The key message there was what you brought up at the beginning, which is we all have these failings. This is not a personal curse that's bestowed on you. All of us are challenged and terrified and winging it and confused and scared and lonely and all of the rest of the things. And it's our job to try and transcend that. It's our job to try and come up with something which helps us get past that.

• 1:18:49Speaker 01

  We have to become the hero of our story, our choice. It really is. You know, commitment and going all in.

• 1:18:58Chris Williamson?

  Man, Kamal, today has been fantastic, man. I really, really appreciate you coming on. January 7th, you said?

• 1:19:07Speaker 01

  Correct, correct.

• 1:19:09Chris Williamson?

  Amazon, where can people hassle you online if they need to hassle you?

• 1:19:14Speaker 01

  My email address is in the book. Drop me an email. You'll find me on the usual social media, you know. Yeah, reach out.

• 1:19:22Chris Williamson?

  Amazing, man. So links to Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends on It will be in the show notes below. Links to Kamal's socials will be in there as well. And if you need his email address, buy the book.

• 1:19:36Speaker 01

  Fair enough. I think that's a fair trade, right?

• 1:19:39Chris Williamson?

  That's the way to do it, man. That is the way to do it. Look, I've really enjoyed this, man. I'd love to get you back on next year. I know that the listeners will want you back on as well. So, you know, let's, let's try and organize a date and we'll, we'll have another discussion.

• 1:19:52Speaker 01

  Let's do it. I'd love it. I'd be very curious to see next year.

• 1:19:56Chris Williamson?

  It'll be awesome, man. Thank you so much for your time.

• 1:19:59Speaker 01

  My pleasure. Thank you.