Love yourself like your life depends on it.

The only good sub-head here is “Because it does…”

This book is an updated version of the original e-book published by Kamal Ravikant.   Karma led me to read it and I’m glad I did.  It’s one of those strange things I’ve learned to listen to.  You find yourself reading a book you never heard of that you had no intention of reading and it smacks you in the face.

Karma.

This is one of the positives of the connected world we live in.  Works like this from people like Kamal can find their way through the gatekeepers and change the world one life at a time.  It is a book for this time and place. It is a book for this generation.  It is a wise book that might just save your life.

…

I heard Kamal interviewed on a podcast that I sometimes listen to.  As an endurance runner I listen to a lot of podcasts.  Podcasts fill the void of timeless time of long runs and base runs every week.  Even so, there are those podcasts that I listen to religiously, those that I binge listen to, and some that I listen to if the topic of the day interests me or I’m running low on inventory.

One of the ‘sometimes listen to’ podcasts is the Hal Elrod podcast.  He wrote book “The Miracle Morning” that was very impactful for me a few years ago.  I credit Hal with getting me to adopt a mindfulness practice and a morning routine.

This was the start of my toboggan ride to the end of Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends on it.  I had a long run.  I was short on podcasts.  I downloaded Hal’s.  I listened to Kamal tell his story.  I listened to Hal say that Kamal’s story saved his life.  Hal has been going through a bad cancer and it has been a real physical and emotional challenge for him.

I had some Amazon credits, so I downloaded Kamal’s book to my kindle app when I got back from my run.  I like to have a few books in the kindle que on my phone in case I get stuck somewhere.

Fast forward to my trip this week.  As I’m rushing around packing I forget to bring the book I’m supposed to be reading for work.  There I am, stuck on a plane to Vegas with nothing to read and into the book I dive.  Five hours later I’m very happy the universe arranged this for me.

Spoilers start at this point if you want to bail out and go read it for yourself.

This extended version grew out of an original post by Kamal about how he saved himself from depression and suicide by simplifying everything down to loving himself.  Taking this one elemental, core thing of self-love and self-engineering tactics to use it to save his life and then change his life.

In this version we get the original simple process of rising from the ashes using self-love.  In addition, he goes into some detail of the specific tactics and methods to leverage the self-love.  Lastly, he tells the story of forgetting about his discovery, reverting to the norm, failing again and having to relearn how to love himself, again.

This book hit me at the right time.  As they say, when the student is ready the teacher will appear.

I have started a new role at a new company and as I sat in the cheap seats on that flight to Vegas, even with all I know and practice around mindfulness and positive intent – I was shaky.   Less than a month in I’m drinking from a fire hose and expectations are rising.  I feel that exquisite pain of knowing that I’m not prepared and being thrown into the fray anyhow.   This makes my mind very noisy.  This makes my mind run around in circles like a demented squirrel on crack.

Kamal’s situation when he came up with his original piece was failure.  He was the CEO of a startup and he failed.  He was depressed and alone.  Then one day, in the midst of this depression, this low of lows, he decided to do something.  Something simple and powerful. He decided to love himself.

This is brilliant.  Because at the bottom of all the noise in your mind is this fear that you are not loved.   The problem is that you have set external standards and then begin to hate yourself for not living up to them.  You look to others or external things to validate you.  When that doesn’t happen you are left empty, with nothing.

If you forget all that and just focus on one thing, self-love, you can wipe the slate clean of those externalities and regain yourself.

This is not self-love in a egoist, fawning, megalomaniac way.  This is the self-love of acceptance and gratitude.

The tactics he uses to leverage this simplicity are very simple and similar to the Miracle Morning.  It’s a 4 step process.

First is “the Mental Loop”  – This is where you repeat “I Love Myself” as part of your daily practice.  This is his pattern breaker. Whenever he starts to go dark, he pauses and repeats this to himself with some breathing and it snaps him back to the positive.

Second is meditation.  Start each day with a brief meditation where “I love myself” is the breathing mantra.

Third is the ‘Mirror’ – This is where you set a timer for 5 minutes, stare into your own eyes while repeating the mantra “I love myself”.

Fourth is “The One Question” – “If I loved myself truly and deeply, would I let myself experience this?” and this is for those times out in the world where the externalities try to knock you off track or your bad habits try to take over.

In the revised edition he goes into some detail on how all this works.  The one thing I found very useful was the reminder that daily mindfulness works and is necessary to stay balanced. As I went through the stress of the week meeting new people I was able to close my eyes occasionally, breathe in the self-love and breathe out the stress.  It allowed me to reset from stress-mode and back into empathy, kindness and gratitude.

This is a powerful read.  I have already recommended it to people who were in need of it.  I’m so glad it found me when it did.