How Loving Yourself Can Save Your Life - Kamal Ravikant - #135

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Oh, hello, friends. welcome back to Modern Wisdom. My guest today is Kamal Ravikant, and we are talking about his new book, Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On It. This is probably one of the deepest and most personal podcasts that I've done so far. I was at the end of a very intense period of work. I was in a very unique place for me. Kamal is recovering after literally almost dying. So those things combined made for an incredibly intense, very connected conversation. It's certainly a bit of a departure from some of the more bright and fluffy episodes that I've done recently, but it's very real. And I feel fortunate to have had the ear of Kamal and the platform and the atmosphere to get some of these thoughts and feelings that I'd had in my head at the time out. Hopefully these will resonate with you too. I've found myself over the last couple of weeks, as I've had to sit on this episode for a little while, I've found myself reflecting on the things that I spoke about with Kamal and there was a lot of takeaways that I had myself from this and I've kept in touch with him. We may be seeing him back on later this year. So yeah, enjoy this one. I want to hear your feedback. You know where I am, at chriswillex on all social media. But for now, please welcome the wise and wonderful Kamal Ravikant.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back. I'm joined by Kamal Ravikant. Kamal, welcome to the show.

**Kamal Ravikant** (1:46)
Thanks for having me.

**Chris Williamson** (1:47)
Absolute pleasure to have you on, man. I feel like we're gonna have something really special in front of us today, I hope.

**Kamal Ravikant** (1:53)
I hope so too, man. Hope to live up to it.

**Chris Williamson** (1:56)
Yeah, I know. So first things first, you had a bit of a turn recently, and you were dead for a bit.

**Kamal Ravikant** (2:05)
Yeah, for a bit. What happened? This was about two and a half months ago.
I went in for elective surgery just to fix an old injury. And that involved moving some arteries around and tweaking arteries. And right before I was being discharged from the hospital, 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 sitting in the hospital and it burst so hard that it pulled up in my body and it burst out of my body. Not out of the sutures, just from the force of the blood. And the only thing that saved me was I was spraying blood everywhere.

**Chris Williamson** (2:49)
So you were kind of a little bit like a garden sprinkler system, but just...

**Kamal Ravikant** (2:54)
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. You can feel very quickly, like just the vitality or whatever, just leaving. And you're never thinking those words. It's looking back and I'm adding words to the experience. There's no real words that really happened. It's more like emotions and images. And it 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 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.

**Chris Williamson** (4:10)
Can I ask where it was coming out of you? Where was the incision?

**Kamal Ravikant** (4:15)
Lower abdomen.

**Chris Williamson** (4:16)
Okay, so like right in the alien versus predator, like-

**Kamal Ravikant** (4:20)
Kind of like that.

**Chris Williamson** (4:21)
The most obvious place for it to happen as well. But man, what a terrifying experience I supposed 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?