The Moment of Suffering is A Moment of Truth...
Nugget from Naval Ravikant
Hello Friend!
Lately I’ve been re-reading my highlights of The Almanack of Naval Ravikant (one of my all-time favorite books), and one of these highlights stopped me to reflect for quite some time…
It’s probably the third or forth time I’ve read this particular highlighted passage, but it stops me to reflect every single time I read it! Because it goes against human nature (so our mind tends to forget about it), but it’s critical that we remember it and apply it (if we want to ever achieve anything of worth in life).
So I picked this passage for today’s letter!
👤 Doers
💡Nugget
🟠 Naval Ravilkant:
One definition of a moment of suffering is “the moment when you see things exactly the way they are.” This whole time, you’ve been convinced your business is doing great, and really, you’ve ignored the signs it’s not doing well. Then, your business fails, and you suffer because you’ve been putting off reality. You’ve been hiding it from yourself.
The good news is, the moment of suffering—when you’re in pain—is a moment of truth. It is a moment where you’re forced to embrace reality the way it actually is. Then, you can make meaningful change and progress. You can only make progress when you’re starting with the truth.
The hard thing is seeing the truth. To see the truth, you have to get your ego out of the way because your ego doesn’t want to face the truth. The smaller you can make your ego, the less conditioned you can make your reactions, the less desires you can have about the outcome you want, the easier it will be to see the reality.
What we wish to be true clouds our perception of what is true. Suffering is the moment when we can no longer deny reality.
Imagine we’re going through something difficult like a breakup, a job loss, a business failure, or a health problem, and our friends are advising us. When we’re advising them, the answer is obvious. It comes to us in a minute, and we tell them exactly, “Oh that girl, get over her, she wasn’t good for you anyway. You’ll be happier. Trust me. You’ll find someone.”
You know the correct answer, but your friend can’t see it, because they’re in the moment of suffering and pain. They’re still wishing reality was different. The problem isn’t reality. The problem is their desire is colliding with reality and preventing them from seeing the truth, no matter how much you say it. The same thing happens when I make decisions.
The more desire I have for something to work out a certain way, the less likely I am to see the truth. Especially in business, if something isn’t going well, I try to acknowledge it publicly and I try to acknowledge it publicly in front of my co-founders and friends and co-workers. Then, I’m not hiding it from anybody else. If I’m not hiding it from anybody, I’m not going to delude myself from what’s actually going on.
What you feel tells you nothing about the facts—it merely tells you something about your estimate of the facts.
REALITY IS MY DRUG. THE MORE I HAVE OF IT, THE MORE POWER I GET AND THE HIGHER I FEEL.
— 50 Cent
📁 All the ideas in this article are saved and classified in a searchable database, which (as of August 2024) contains 2,100+ timeless insights, sourced directly from remarkable Doers and Entrepreneurs (picked from books and interviews/podcasts).
I call this database Doers Notebook, and I’ve recently opened it for anyone who wants to access it!
🤔 Why did I build this?
Well, as the Latin motto goes, “A chief part of learning is simply knowing where you can find a thing.” And since it’s all 🔎 searchable, we only need to type a keyword to immediately get a list of insights related to it!
For instance, if I’m unsure about how to get more sales in my business, I can simply type the word “sales” and immediately get 88 search results! In this case from Jim Edwards, Peter Thiel, Naval Ravikant, Paul Graham, Sam Altman, Balaji Srinivasan, Nassim Taleb, and many other remarkable individuals.
It’s like having a 🧠 second brain from which we can pull wisdom on demand.
And this is super valuable because it can significantly decrease the error rate in our judgment.
“In an age of infinite leverage [code and media], judgment is the most important skill.”
- Naval Ravikant
I actually made a video where I went through the list of insights I got for the keywords “sales” and “creative”. So, if you wanna get better at sales and learn to be more creative (and also see all the features of the database and how you can get access) then definitely check out the video 👇
💥 Stuff I Loved
Happy Friday ;)
Julio xx
P.S. If you liked this article, you'll definitely enjoy my 140-page free ebook. It’s packed with 43 big ideas (from top influential doers and entrepreneurs) to become better, richer and wiser. Download your copy here!
Naval is a few writers I actually reread. His tweets are incredibly compact and full of wisdom. Highly recommend...