Who’s Naval Ravikant? And What He Can Teach You About Wealth, Purpose and Happiness
The Almanack of Naval Ravikant is 232 pages of pure wisdom
The Almanack of Naval Ravikant is 232 pages of pure wisdom.
Written by Eric Jorgenson, it is an edited compilation of all the millionaires tweets, blogs and podcast best bits. Naval is an angel-investor — ‘someone who scouts out small and promising businesses and gives early support in return for stocks’. His biggest finds were Twitter and Uber, success stories that speak for themselves.
This is why his name carries so much credibility.
Moving to New York from India in his early childhood, Naval’s mother couldn’t afford a nanny, or to send him to daycare.
She used the public library as a substitute. Having a passion for books, the future prodigy spent entire days reading.
How entrepreneurs become philosophers
The first thing that strikes people about Naval Ravikant, is his passion for both technology and spirituality.
Having made a name for himself in Silicon Valley with a net worth of $60-million (as of 2022), Naval began tweeting about his underlying beliefs about business and life in general. His most famous tweet-storm begins with “How to Get Rich (without getting lucky)”, which has had a noticeable effect on the entrepreneur culture.
Read it, it’s great, and you’ll notice themes that pop up everywhere.
https://x.com/naval/status/1002103360646823936
The interesting thing is how philosophical and psychological the advice is. Naval doesn’t care for explaining the ins and outs of how to create wealth (it’s too specific). Instead, he talks about the underlying thought processes that allow him to make the million-dollar decisions he does.
We’re conditioned to think that rich people and ethical spiritual people are polar opposites.
What’s unique about Naval, is that he expounds on the practical uses of a deep understanding of philosophy (and spirituality) in the working world. Instead of sitting under a tree for years to ‘reach enlightenment’, meditate and bring awareness into your thought processes, so that you can make clearer decisions. Don’t join the debating team, but learn the fundamentals of reasoning or (any subject) so that you can make more informed decisions.
How to be happy
“Happiness is the absence of desire”
“People mistake happiness with pleasure” Naval argues. If you think about the above quote in terms of your last frivolous purchase, did you feel good because you got what you want? Or did you feel good because you no longer wanted it? When we’re happy (or at peace), we are in a state where we want for nothing.
Nothing is on our mind except the present moment.
When we begin to want something to be different, i.e. to be hotter/colder, more or less, this to be present and that to be absent, we are taken out of the moment of peace in order to think about how we can bring that thing about. This brings in tension, anxiety and effort in order to manifest it.
What if you just didn’t want it in the first place?
The meaning of life
Naval gives 3 answers:
We have to find it ourselves
Churchill’s meaning was to lead war time Britain to victory. Eric Clapton’s was to play the blues. It’s subjective. We can’t say ‘this’ is the meaning of life, because it would be different for everyone. And if there was 1 meaning of life, why would everyone always be asking what it is? Wouldn’t we have figured it out by now?
There is no meaning
“You were dead for the first 10 billion years of the universe, and will be for the last 70 billion before the heat-death of the universe”.
I don’t necessary agree with this, but I think it’s something everyone should to some level accept might be the case. It sounds depressing, but doesn’t also speak to the miracle of life? If life was eternal, wouldn’t it be worth nothing? The fact that this could possibly be the only shot you have at experiencing existence, means you should go out and make the most of it.
We’re all heading for oneness
In the beginning, we were one big explosion, everything spread out across the cosmos. Eventually the universe will contract and pull back in (so I’m told, I’m not a physicist ). The second law of thermodynamics states that the all matter tends towards entropy, i.e. dissolution and chaos.
Maybe the meaning of life is to become that primordial bundle of energy again.
We’re just in the middle of that process.