"Naval Ravikant " by navalravikant.com is licensed under CC BY 3.0
Naval Ravikant isn’t a traditional self-help guru. He has no book to sell you. No course. No speaking conference. But what he does have is a completely-free Twitter account.
He’s used the platform to amass more than one million followers. And while Ravikant’s expertise is in venture capitalism — his early investments include Uber and coincidentally, Twitter itself — he’s instead used the social media channel to philosophize with his followers. We’ve hand-picked five tweets Naval most deserving of “food for thought”:
How To Get Rich
Wealth-creation is an age-old topic for self-help gurus. And each guru has their own system for accumulating money — whether that’s investing in real estate or heck, even gambling at Canadasportsbetting.ca or another sportsbook.
Naval’s method, though? Welp, it’s the subject of not one single tweet, but rather a “tweet storm” involving 36 separate posts. Let us tell you, it’s no get-rich-quick scheme either.
In the tweets, Naval stresses ownership. “You’re not going to get rich renting out your time. You must own equity — a piece of a business — to gain your financial freedom,” one tweet says.
Naval’s other key point is using outside resources to exponentially grow your riches. One tweet reads, “fortunes require leverage. Business leverage comes from capital, people, and products with no marginal cost of replication (code and media).”
There’s other gems among the tweet storm, however, for the sake of time, the two pointers above were the ones Naval harped on the most. For his entire thoughts on wealth creation, you can click this link.
Happiness & Children
Ah, yes, happiness. Here’s another subject that society and the self-help world have obsessed over for centuries. Naval has a unique take on the subject, which is described in the below tweet.
"Children are happy because: 1) They're not self-conscious 2) They lack a sense of time pressure 3) They've no goals. The bottom line is they are living from moment to moment, and the mind is not there to interfere in their bliss."
In other words, Naval is saying to be present. So much of human suffering comes from thinking about the past and the future — two realities that can’t be controlled or changed. Once both are let go, true happiness follows.
"Naval Ravikant " by Getty is licensed under CC BY 3.0
Success & Happiness = Mutually Exclusive?
One more tweet revolving around happiness and perceived success. This one’s a doozy:
“If you want to be successful, surround yourself with people who are more successful than you are, but if you want to be happy, surround yourself with people who are less successful than you are."
There’s a lot to unpack with this one, but we get the sense Naval is encouraging his followers to pick one — success or happiness. Naturally, humans like to compare themselves with others. This is great when you’re trying to scale up the social hierarchy, but crippling once you’re standing atop the ladder. Thanks to our tendency to compare, enjoying success and happiness simultaneously is incredibly difficult.
Compound Interest
Naval’s tweet on the subject: “"All the benefits in life come from compound interest — relationship, money, habits — anything of importance."
The concept of compound interest is typically applied only to investing. But Naval uses the same line of thinking to get massive returns in personal ventures too, whether that’s relationship- or habit-building.
What we believe Naval is getting at with this tweet is the greatest life gains take consistent effort and time. For example, think about going to the gym. You won’t burn 30 pounds of fat in one workout, no matter how good it is. However, do the same caliber of workout every single day over a year span? Welp, then your effort compounds over time and chips away at that fat in due time.
You’re Either All In Or Not
We’ve saved the simplest of tweets for last. While only eight words long, it packs a lot of punch for such a short message — "if you can't decide, the answer is no."
The root of this message is clear: if you show even the slightest of indecisiveness, then something is off internally, either with your “heart” or mind. Those two must be in alignment for follow-through — no ifs, ands, or butts about it.
A blogger from TX.