Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends on It by Kamal Ravikant

PART I - THE VOW

HOW IT STARTED

It's interesting what goes through your minds at moments like these. Time slows down, yes. But that's almost cliché. There's only the podium and the microphone. You step up. The audience grows blurry, as if out of focus. Clock starts.

And then I knew what to do. I would offer something no one else could. My truth. Something I'd learned purely from my experience, something that saved me. The audience came into focus.

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But what surprised me was that life got better on its own. Within a month, my life had transformed. The only constant being the vow I'd made to myself and how I kept it.

One woman told me that sitting in the audience, listening to me, she'd realized that this was the reason she came. All I'd done was share a truth I'd learned.

"You have to," James wrote back. "This is the only message that's important."

"I don't do a post now unless I'm worried about what people will think about me."

WHAT IS THIS ABOUT?

Loving yourself. [...] It's something I learned from within myself, something I believe saved me. And more than that, the way I set about to do it. Most of it, simple enough to be idiotic. But in simplicity lies truth. In simplicity lies power.

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. As if your life depended upon it.

BEGINNING

I'd reached my breaking point. I remember it well. I couldn't take it anymore. I was done. Done with all of this. This misery, this pain, this angst, this being me. I was sick of it, done.

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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.

There was nothing left to say. How long it took me to write this, less than a minute. But the intensity, it felt like I was carving words onto paper, through the desk. I'd been disgusted with myself—I could love another, but what about me? From now on, I would focus only on this thought. For me.

How to love myself, I did not know. All I knew was that I'd made a vow—something far greater than a want or desire, an I-wish or a nice-to-have. A vow. I had to go all in or destroy myself trying. There was no middle ground.

In my bedroom, in the darkness, with a city outside that had no idea of the decision that'd been made, I set out to love myself.

The way I did it, it was the simplest thing I could think of. And importantly, something I could do no matter how bad I was feeling. I started telling myself, I love myself. A thought I would repeat again and again. First, lying in bed for hours, repeating to myself, I love myself, I love myself, I love myself, I love myself, I love myself....

It became the anchor, the one true thing. ***

Then I added anything that could work and if it did, I kept it. If it didn't, I threw it away. ***

***
I got better. My body started heading faster. My state of mind grew lighter. But the thing I never expected or imagined, life got better. Not just better, things happened that were fantastically out of my reach, things I couldn't have dreamt of. It was as if life said, "Finally, you idiot. And let me show you that you made the right decision."

People came into my life, opportunities arose, I found myself using the word magic to describe what was happening.

And through it all, I kept repeating to myself, I love myself, I love myself, I love myself, I love myself. I kept doing the practice.

In less than a month, I was healthy, I was fit again, I was happy, I was smiling. Amazing people were coming into my life, situations were resolving themselves. And all that time, whether I was at my computer or in a meeting, in my head I'd be telling myself, I love myself.

To be honest, in the beginning, I didn't believe that I loved myself. How many of us do? But it didn't matter what I believed. What mattered was doing it and I did it in the simplest way I could, by focusing on one thought again and again and again and again until it was more on my mind than not.

Imagine that. Imagine the feeling of catching yourself loving yourself without trying. It's like catching a sunset out of the corner of your eye. It will stop you.

WHY LOVE?

What if you don't believe that you love yourself? Doesn't matter. Your role is to lay down the pathways, brick upon brick, reinforce the connections between the neurons. The mind already has a strong wiring for love. The body knows it well. It knows that love nurtures, that love is gentle, that love is accepting. It know that love heals.

Your job is not to do any of these. Your job is purely to love yourself. Truly and deeply. Feel it. Again and again. Make it your single-minded focus. The mind and body will respond automatically. They don't have a choice.

Here's the best part, one that makes me smile as I write this. 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.

When you find yourself using the word magical to describe your life, you'll know what I'm talking about.

THE PRACTICE

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

All four gently return me to self-love. That's the beauty of this practice. It's simple, it's practical, and the results are far greater than you could imagine.

After all, if you loved yourself truly and deeply, would you limit your life to what you previously thought possible? Nope. You'd blow your own socks off.

WINDOW ***

Darkness is he absence of light. If you remember this, it will change your life. Changed mine. It is this concept that the practice is based on.

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.

It's that simple. Each time the mind shifts to darkness—fear, worry, pain, you name it—when you notice, clean the window. Light will flow in.

1. MENTAL LOOP

***
For days, ever since I made the vow, this has been my only focus. Sometimes as a whisper, sometimes silent. When I brush my teeth, mumbling. In the shower, loud. Nonstop. "I love myself, I love myself, I love myself."

I have nothing to lose. This is all there is. I love myself, I love myself, I don't give a damn about anything else, I love myself.

***
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 reliving 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.

We keep replaying the loops and they, in turn, trigger feelings. It's automatic to the point where we believe that we have no choice. But that is far from the truth.

Imagine a thought loop as this: a pathway laid down by constant use. Like a groove in rock created by water.Enough time, enough intensity, and you've got a river.

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.

And that is why a focused mental loop is the solution. Take this one thought, I love myself. Add emotional intensity because it deepens the groove faster than anything. Feel the thought. Run it again and again. Feel it. Run it. Whether you believe it or not doesn't matter, just focus on this one thought. Make it your truth.

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.

Which is why this requires a focused commitment. Why it must be a practice. Forget demolishing the grooves of the past. What you're creating is a new groove so deep, so powerful, that your thoughts will automatically flow down this one.

It takes time, sure. Took me a month to go from misery to magic. But you will notice changes, shifts in your feelings, beautiful happenings in your life. Expect them. There'll be more and more until one day, you'll be walking outside in the sunshine, feeling good, loving life and life loving you back, and you'll stop and realize that it's now your natural state.

Can you imagine a better way to be?

2. A MEDITATION

Each day, I meditation for seven minutes. Why seven minutes? Because I put on a piece of music that I like, one that is soothing and calm, piano and flute, one that I associate good feelings with, and it happens to be seven minutes long.

I sit with my back against a wall, put on my headphones, listen to the music, and imagine galaxies and stars and the Universe above, and I imagine all the light from space flowing into my head and down into my body, going wherever it needs to go.

I breathe slowly, naturally. As I inhale, I think, I love myself. Then I exhale and let out whatever the response in my mind and body is, whether there is onen or not. That's it. Simple.

There is something to this, the thought of light flowing into my head from galaxies and stars. The concept of light itself. Just like love, the subconscious has a positive association with light. Plants grow toward the light. As human beings, we crave light. We find sunrises and sunsets and a bright moon beautiful and calming.

Once again, there's no need to consciously create healing or anything positive. The subconscious takes care of it. All you have to do is give it the image—in this case, light; give it the thought—in this case, loving myself. It does the rest.

This is an intense practice because it is focused. But does it feel intense? No, quite peaceful, actually. I think that's what real emotional intensity is, one that creates peace and love and growth.

Why music? Since I listen to the same piece each time, it now acts as ann anchor, easily pulling me into a meditative state. A crutch perhaps, but a nice one.

Do this meditation consistently. You will notice the magic that occurs.

3. MIRROR

If anyone ever looked in your eyes, knowing that you loved them, this is what they saw. Give yourself the same gift.

4. ONE QUESTION

It's easy to say "I love myself" while locked inside my apartment, recovering from being sick. Tougher when I'm back to the land of the living, interacting with people who have their own issues and mental loops.

That is where the question came from. In dealing with others and reacting to their negative emotions with my own, 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.

It worked beautifully. Because I'd been working on the mental loop, the step after no was clear. Rather than solving the emotion or trying not to feel it, I would just return to the one true thing in my head, I love myself, I love myself, I love myself.

This question is deceptively simple in its power. It shifts your focus from wherever you are—whether it's anger or pain or fear, any form of darkness—to where you want to be. And that is love. Your mind and life have no choice but to follow.

THOUGHT

I'm fine with not knowing. I enjoy thinking about it, but mainly to remind myself that ultimately, everything is theory. I care about what works. What creates magic in my life.

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.

Lay down the synaptic pathways until the mind starts playing it automatically. Do this with enough intensity over time and the mind will have no choice. That's how it operates. Where do you think your original loops came from?

The goal, if there is one, is to practice until the thought you chose becomes the primary loop. Until it becomes the filter through which you view life. Then practice some more.

Sounds like work. Perhaps. But the nature of mind is thought. Choose one that transforms you, makes your life zing. The one I found, I love myself, is the most powerful one I know. You might discover another. Regardless, please do it.

It is worth it.