“Here we are, thinking that one needs to be in love with another to shine, to feel free and shout from the rooftops, but the most important person, the most important relationship we’ll ever have is waiting, is craving to be loved truly and deeply.” ― Kamal Ravikant, Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On It
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“Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On it”is a powerful short book written by Kamal Ravikant to help you, as the title suggests, love yourself.
Now, this book seems like it does what thousands of other self-help books tell you when it comes to self-love, but as someone who has read a lot of self-help books, I think this book offers something different with its directness and practical tips that you can actually follow, instead of listening for just inspiration.
For an audiobook that I’ve listened to and finished on the way back home from work on Audible, I found a lot of wisdom and actionable guides on how to practice self-love instead of being told to just believe it. This is why I rate this book highly.
“Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On It” — Book Review
At the beginning of “Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On It”, Kamal starts off with the reason for writing this book: hitting rock bottom.
It was when Kamal was dealing with difficult situations such his own business tanking and sickness is when he just had enough of accepting life’s same conditions. He wanted a significant change to take place. But that change was never going to be some sort of external help or validation, as most of us tend to seek in this situation. To Kamal, that positive change was to be internal—a shift in mindset. The mindset of loving oneself.
Kamal explains how this simple but consistent change in his attitude and treatment towards his own self drastically changed his life around within a month. Yes, a month.
The funny thing about loving yourself is that it works even if you don’t believe in it. You don’t have to truly believe that you love yourself to love yourself. If you practice the three simple methods Kamal mentions, it will work anyway.
You just have to fake it till you make it. Once you make it, you’ll wonder why did you even had to fake it in the first place.
“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 as well. It knows that love nurtures, that love is gentle, that love is accepting. It knows that love heals.” ―
Meditation & Self-love
One of the most important things to understand about self-love is that it’s not a belief. You cannot really love yourself once and just be done with it. Self-love is a muscle for the mind that you have to keep exercising for life. What separates those who truly love themselves from those you don’t isn’t in knowing self-love, because we all do. But the difference is the consistent reinforcement of self-love in the mind. The conscious decision to repeatedly seek self-love for it to settle in the subconscious.
And what is a better way of speaking to your subconscious, the place where all beliefs and mindsets are rooted, than by meditation?
Because meditation helps clear the mind of all distractions to maintain focus towards a single thought or a pattern, it’s also one of the easiest and simplest way to train your mind to love yourself. In “Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On It”, Kamal shows how you can easily do that with two very effective and simple meditation methods.
Before writing this review, I wanted to see for myself if this meditation method works. It made sense on for it to work on paper, but I wanted to review what the book preaches as well, and not just the content itself.
For a week every day, I woke up and meditated for seven minutes and followed Kamal’s steps. And to be honest, it does make a difference. After a couple of days, I’ve noticed a slight positive change in how I felt towards myself, which then somehow reflected toward people. I noticed becoming more patient, less distracted, and more willing to engage in meaningful conversations.
It’s hard to put in words, but I’m continuing with these meditation techniques and see how it goes on the long run.
Fear & Self-love
Fear is probably one of the main reasons why people cannot develop self-love. In most cases, people who struggle to grow as individuals usually don’t struggle with the development process itself, but because of the doubts and fear of judgment that come before taking the initiative to change.
Self-love is being honest with yourself and giving you what you need. Even if people think you don’t deserve it. It also means saying “No” sometimes and standing your ground to change how’re you being treated or seen.
It’s not just about knowing and following steps, but sometimes you will need to disrupt the nagging thoughts that give you reasons (excuses) to wait, stop, or hesitate.
In “Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On it” Kamal talks about his own experience with fear of judgment when he wasn’t sure about publishing his book. He actually thought it wasn’t good enough!
This surprised me because I would never have thought that such a helpful and valuable book might have never been written in the first place just out of doubt.
To deal with fear successfully, Kamal states how first recognizing fear for what it is and then letting go of it can help you confidently start on your path to change without looking back, just as he did with this book.
Forgiveness & Self-love
Another reason why people hold back from loving their own self is feeling guilt, shame, or unfulfillment because of a certain event that might have happened in their lives. People never seem to notice how heavy guilt and shame is; how they take so much space from the mind that they don’t leave room for peace and growth.
Forgiveness isn’t meant for just others, but it’s also meant for you. There are times when you must forgive yourself for things you cannot take back, and as much as it’s always easier than it sounds, but every second you do leave shame settling in is also a second wasted from helping you navigate towards the self you want to become.
In “Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On it”, Kamal tells a story about him and his wife both dealing with situations and choices they weren’t exactly happy with, and how they managed to let go of what they held against themselves.
To me personally, how they dealt with it was a beautiful experience that I have vowed to myself to copy once I get the chance.
It’s the things we hold against ourselves that weigh us down more than anything. ― Kamal Ravikant, Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On It
Conclusion
To be honest, “Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On It” is criminally undervalued at 5$. This book might be short, but there’s a lot of valuable perspectives to pick up on for self-development. The very simple instructions mentioned will definitely help you achieve a sense of fulfillment that makes a huge difference on a daily basis.
However, it’s crucial to know that in order for those three self-love practices to work, you must commit to the process for the effects to take place. You must be consistent with the meditation methods or else this will end up being an inspirational talk, and we want more than that.
Since it’s audiobook version is about thirty to forty minutes, I would recommend listening to it on Audible since it’s also passionately narrated by the author himself.
Stay committed to loving yourself.
For more practical tips on how to develop self-love, here’s an article I’ve written on the common mistakes we tend to do that hold us back from truly loving ourselves.
If you have liked this review, consider sharing it with someone who might find it helpful. And if you’ve already read this book, let me know what you thought about in the comments below.
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