Kamal Ravikant on Facing Death and Loving Yourself

I'm living in a way I've never lived before. First of all, I'm truly grateful for every day, everything, but I'm only doing what I want to do, when I want to do, on my terms ... I will cut off relationships in a heartbeat with friends if they're an ass to me once. I don't care. I'm too good. I don't have time for this.

And what I did was, I just sat there the entire time through the pain, and I would just imagine myself on a beach, doing my gymnastic rings, feeling healthy, feeling powerful, feeling completely cured. Everything was great. And you know what? ... I think, 4 or 5 months later, I was doing my gymnastic rings on a beach, watching the sunset, just enjoying it, feeling great...

It's the inner game ... The inner game is the ultimate game. If your inner game's off, everything's off, because your inner game will get you through the good and the bad. And the inner game will make the bad bearable; it'll get you through it. But if the inner game is off... that's when it's really bad.

I remember thinking, I am a good man; I don't deserve to go like this. This is not how I deserve to go. And then I thought, oh, shit, I have no choice... I had to give in to that. And in that moment, I remember having to give in to that. I had no fucking choice.

The greatest inner reward comes from the thing that was purely yours. It's purely yours. That you just kept at it, that you give to the world.

My main thing was I can't let my mind get destroyed by this. I cannot let the pain, the emotions, destroy my mind—because if my mind goes... If I become a shit show there, everything else is way worse.

Years ago... I went to see Maya Angelou speak ... She mentioned something before she started reading her poems. She said, 'Thousands of years ago, a Roman poet wrote, I'm a human being. Therefore, nothing human is foreign to me.'

I remember surrendering to it, and lying back, and that's when I finally closed my eyes, and I surrendered to it. And I kind of fell into this dark, dark blackness ... But it's literally like falling into a dark ocean.

It's funny how in moments of stress is when we work hardest ... And when I came out of it, when I got my health back, it's like my personality was different. It's like my inner being is different.

You know, in all these things... the only thing that matters is who am I going to be through this? That's all that matters. You get to that point, and that's a choice you have to make.

It's easy to say yes to the short-term quick money hits, but that takes you away from the big long-term thing...

The most important thing I learned from myself... is always work on my mind. Always be better at my mind.