Naval Ravikant on Clubhouse - 4/13/21

I think children give you the unique opportunity to genuinely love something more than you love yourself. And I think that is really important for being happy because the moment you love something more than you love yourself, you're no longer self-obsessed; you're no longer thinking about yourself all the time. And the source of misery is thinking about yourself all the time.

You have to find something bigger than you in life eventually, and if you don't, you blow yourself up—maybe not physically and literally but probably mentally ... That could be children, that could be God, that could be a cause, that could be some personal spirituality, that could be some movement, that could be some circle. It could just be the 20 cats that live in your apartment and you love them to death. But whatever the heck it is, you got to love something more than you love yourself because if you don't, you blow your brains out.

If meditation is real... it should be doable by anybody anywhere—because it's literally the art of doing nothing. Any creature can do nothing. It's like the most basic thing—just do nothing. And anyone should be able to do it and should be able to do it in any place at any time. If you need a special mandala or a special cushion or a special sarong... that's not real. That's just human man-made usual bullshit. If something is truly universal, then it is available to all human beings at all times in all places.

The spiritual body is completely covered up—you lost touch with it because modern society is so full of choices and distractions that we're just always amusing ourselves. We're amusing ourselves to death ... You want to give that a chance to emerge. And, right now, I would argue that most people are spiritually obese—and I mean like 300-pound obese; I don't mean 180-pound obese ... That means that their true self, which they've lost connection with—their subconscious, is buried under layers and layers of non-inspection.

Every successful person I know has an action bias—almost to a fault. When they think of something, there's a very short interval before you find them just doing it. And they're okay with failing. They're okay with iteration—trying over and over and over. In fact, the least successful people are the ones stuck in analysis paralysis.

Any desire will cloud your happiness. Think of happiness as your natural state. It's like the sun shining, but any single desire is a cloud covering that sun. And most of us have many, many desires, so those clouds cover the sun and, in many cases, completely block it out. And sometimes you have so many unresolved desires and issues and anxieties, they just completely blot out the sun.

The physical body, in modern times, needs more movement than it gets ... The physical body is under-stimulated. So, go exercise; go stimulate it. The stomach is over-stimulated. We eat too much. We drink too much. So, you fast to take care of that. The mental body is probably over-stimulated with junk food and under-stimulated with healthy food. So, you probably need to consume less social media and maybe more podcasts or maybe more books.

The biggest mentor, the biggest teacher is reality—it's the environment giving you feedback. And how are you going to interact with your greatest mentor, which is reality, if you're just sitting around waiting for some monkey to show up and be your mentor?

Look at all the people who go to work and work hard all day. They hate it. They come back and they're exhausted, but yet they can jump into a video game ... On an objective basis, a difficult video game is just as much work as 'real work,' but yet it's not exhausting because there's no suffering in the video game. The stakes are low. You don't feel stressed about how things are going to go ... You don't care much about the outcome, so you can let go. And when you let go and you don't care about the outcome, you don't suffer as much.

A clear thinker, to me, is someone who gets their feedback from reality instead of society.

I think peace is happiness at rest and happiness is peace in motion. So, if you are living a very peaceful and calm life, but then you engage in activity, you will naturally find that that activity is happy.

Marriage is a vehicle, ultimately, for having children, right? So, I know there are people who get married and don't plan on having kids, but I would question whether marriage is the best route because no matter who you're with—they could be the most interesting, attractive, perfect person in the world—you're gonna get bored of them after a decade. This is human nature.

I think people are sort of waiting for someone else to transform their life. No one's going to change your life; you just got to take action. Mentorship is so overrated. Yes, you can take inspiration from other people. But guidance—you're living your own very unique life; you're on your own unique timeline with your own unique DNA having your own unique experiences. It's very hard for somebody else to step in and do that.

One way you can see that we're meant to be naturally happy is just watch little kids, right? Little kids running around are naturally happy. If your child is not happy, you say 'What's wrong?' On the other hand, if see an adult who's very happy, you say 'What's up?'

I think we have to be very, very careful anytime that our notions of what is good for the individual line up with what is good for society ... 'That person's behavior is good for society' — usually it's actually bad for that individual ... Anytime you see that something lines up very neatly where something looks like it's good for the individual and good for society, it's probably not true.

I don't buy the extrovert introvert thing. I just think in environments where you are not suffering, where you're enjoying yourself, you will maintain or gain energy; and in environments where you are not enjoying yourself where the stakes are too high, you're too self-obsessed, you care too much about the outcome, and there's too much stress, and too many unknowns, then you will lose energy.

Whoever wins in the decentralized social network space, whatever that blockchain is, will not only create something like a better Twitter, it will also create an Instagram, it will also create a TikTok, and it might create a Clubhouse.

I live for that great conversation—that great dinner party conversation where you connect with the other person, you say something interesting, and they see something interesting, and you build on that, they build on that, and you learn something. Those, to me, are really incredible conversations. What I don't enjoy is like 30 people sitting around and grooming each other.