Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On It by Kamal Ravikant

Rating: 10/10

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A short read on and simple reminder that change can only be brought about from a point of initial self-acceptance. Change attempted out of contempt or spite for ourselves will always be unsustainable. This book provides a short framework for how we can improve our relationship with ourselves, something we could all use a little bit.

Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends on It by Kamal Ravikant

The truth is to love yourself with the same intensity you would use to pull yourself up if you were hanging off a cliff with your fingers.

“This day, I vow to myself to love myself, to treat myself as someone I love truly and deeply - in my thoughts, my actions, the choices I make, the experiences I have, each moment I am conscious, I make the decision I LOVE MYSELF.”

As you love yourself, life loves you back. I don’t think it has a choice either. I can’t explain how it works, but I know it to be true.

Comes down to three things which I’ll explain in later chapters:

1. Mental loop 2. A meditation 3. One question

Any negative thought is darkness. How do you remove it? Do you fight fear or worry? Do you push or drown away sadness and pain? Doesn’t work. Instead, imagine you’re in a dark room and it’s bright outside. Your job is to go to the window, pull out a rag, and start cleaning. Just clean. And soon enough, light enters naturally, taking the darkness away.

I once heard someone explain thoughts as this: we, as human beings, think that we’re thinking. Not true. Most of the time, we’re remembering. We’re re-living memories. We’re running familiar patterns and loops in our head. For happiness, for procrastination, for sadness. Fears, hopes, dreams, desires. We have loops for everything.

If you had a thought once, it has no power over you. Repeat it again and again, especially with emotional intensity, feeling it, and over time, you’re creating the grooves, the mental river. Then it controls you.

The goal here is to create a groove deeper than the ones laid down over the years - the ones that create disempowering feelings. They took time as well. Some we’ve had since childhood.

Instructions

Step 1: Put on music. Something soothing, gentle, preferably instrumental. A piece you have positive associations with.
Step 2: Sit with back against wall or window. Cross legs or stretch them out, whatever feels natural.
Step 3: Close eyes. Smile slowly. Imagine a beam of light pouring into your head from above.
Step 4: Breathe in, say to yourself in your mind, I love myself. Slowly. Be gentle with yourself .
Step 5: Breathe out and along with it, anything that arises. Any thoughts, emotions, feelings, memories, fears, hopes, desires. Or nothing. Breathe it out. No judgment, no attachment to anything. Be kind to yourself.
Step 6: Repeat 4 and 5 until the music ends. (When your attention wanders, notice it and smile. Smile at it as if it’s a child doing what a child does. And with that smile, return to your breath. Step 4, step 5. Mind wanders, notice, smile kindly, return to step 4, step 5).
Step 7: When music ends, open your eyes slowly. Smile. Do it from the inside out. This is your time. This is purely yours.

I found myself asking this question: If I loved myself truly and deeply, would I let myself experience this? The answer, always, was a no.

Another meditation This one, I’m a little scared to share. People will think I’ve lost it. But it is powerful.

Step 1: Set a timer for 5 minutes.
Step 2: Stand in front of a mirror, nose a few inches away. Relax. Breathe.
Step 3: Look into your eyes. Helps if you focus on one. Your left eye. Don’t panic, it’s only you. Relax. Breathe slowly, naturally, until you develop a rhythm.
Step 4: Looking into your left eye, say, “I love myself.” Whether you believe it that moment or not isn’t important. What’s important is you saying it to yourself, looking into your eyes, where there is no escape from the truth. And ultimately, the truth is loving yourself.
Step 5: Repeat “I love myself” gently, pausing occasionally to watch your eyes. When the five minutes are up, smile. You’ve just communicated the truth to yourself in a deep, visceral way. In a way the mind cannot escape.

There’s a solution here, a powerful one. If a painful memory arises, don’t fight it or try to push it away - you’re in quicksand. Struggle reinforces pain. Instead, go to love. Love for yourself. Feel it. If you have to fake it, fine. It’ll become real eventually. Feel the love for yourself as the memory ebbs and flows. That will take the power away.

James Altucher, in one of his best blog posts, talks about how he stops negative thoughts in their tracks with a simple mind trick. “Not useful,” he tells himself. It’s a switch, a breaker of sorts, shifts the pattern of the fear.

Fear, when used properly, is a useful tool. It serves us well when near a blazing inferno or standing at the edge of a cliff. But outside of this, it’s hijacked the mind. To the point where it’s difficult to distinguish the mind and our thoughts from fear itself.

Key is this, when in darkness, have a light switch you’ve chosen standing by.

So, I ask myself, if I was to look deeper, why am I down, why isn’t my life an expression of, well, awesomeness? Once you’ve experienced it and you know it’s possible, then you should be doing everything in your power to keep it that way. It’s just too good.

“if I loved myself, truly and deeply, what would I do?” I love this question. There is no threat, no right or wrong answer, only an invitation to my truth in this present moment.

The answer is simple: I’d commit to the practice. And I would also share the next thing I’ve learned, which is, don’t let yourself coast when things are going great. It’s easy to wish for health when you’re sick. When you’re doing well, you need just as much vigilance.

This I know: the mind, left to itself, repeats the same stories, the same loops. Mostly ones that don’t serve us. So what’s practical, what’s transformative, is to consciously choose a thought. Then practice it again and again. With emotion, with feeling, with acceptance.

You can argue that obsession fuels innovation in our society. True, perhaps. But quite often, behind obsession is fear.

Whenever I notice fear in my mind, instead of pushing it aside or using it as fuel, I say to myself, “it’s ok.” A gentle yes to myself. To the moment, to what the mind is feeling. Often, that is enough to deflate the fear. From there, I shift to the truth of loving myself.

If I don’t feel like I’m growing, I’m drifting, depressed. But what I didn’t know, until the practice of self-love showed me, was my belief about growth: real growth comes through intense, difficult, and challenging situations.

What we believe, that’s what we seek, it’s the filter we view our lives through. I’ve actively thrown myself at intense and difficult situations. All situations where I grew, but at what price?

“you must love others first.” I respectfully disagree. It’s like what they tell you during pre-flight instructions; in case of emergency, if oxygen masks drop from above, put yours on before you help someone else.