"This is a practice. You don't go to the gym once and consider yourself done. Same here. Meditation is a practice. Working out is a practice. Loving yourself, perhaps the most important of all, is a practice."
During the past two weeks, I read three short books. Here’s a review of one of them: Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On It by Kamal Ravikant.
[Side Note: The other two books I read are On Great Men by Thomas Carlysle and Confessions of a Sinner by Saint Augustine. I enjoyed both and highlighted a bunch of great quotes, but they’re less readable than the books I’d to introduce in Influential Book posts. If I wouldn’t sincerely suggest a book to a close friend, I won’t include it here.]
Twitter-Sized Summary
After finding himself sick, broken-hearted, in financial trouble, and in mourning, Kamal Ravikant resolved to stop being miserable. This very short (like 63-pages short) book shares the techniques he used to pull himself out of depression, and instructs how to find peace and happiness by intensely and sincerely loving yourself.
Author Profile: Kamal Ravikant
Kamal Ravikant doesn’t have any special awards, pedigree, or powerful titles. He’s worked with incredible people in Silicon Valley, but more or less he’s just a “regular guy” who hit rockbottom and discovered a technique to pull himself out and find peace and happiness. He self-published this book on Amazon within a few days of writing it, and after blogger and friend James Altucher shared his story and recommended the book, it’s taken off.
Who Should Read This
- Anyone feeling temporarily down or lost.
- Anyone who has felt the magic of being on top of the world and wants to sustain that feeling.
- Anyone who needs a reminder that anything worth attaining, including happiness, takes practice.
Who Shouldn’t Read This
- Anyone who constantly lives in a state of joy.
- Anyone unconvinced or uninterested in the power of the mind.
How This Resonates With Me:
1. Anything worth attaining, including your own happiness, takes practice and work.
A couple months ago, when I temporarily got lost [See: How to Get Lost] and forgot why I was traveling, I came to a simple realization: To prevent this from happening again, I must constantly remind myself why I’m here.
From that point on, I decided that every single day, I would reconnect with The Why. Daily. Constantly. Always remember why.
From this realization came another, simpler realization: Anything worth attaining takes practice and work. Including something as simple as reminding myself why I’m traveling.
In this stream of thought, two types of people came to mind: Athletes and Monks. Why does the athlete practice daily? Why does the monk pray all day, every day?
Both the athlete and monk know their goal. And they know the optimal physical or mental state they need to reach their goals. They know because they’ve been there before. But they’re not always in that state.
The athlete needs to be focused. She knows what it feels like to be focused. She’s been there before. She’s felt it.
The monk needs to be present and one with God. He knows what it’s like to be in that perfect state. He’s been there before. He’s felt it.
But although they know the state they need to be in, getting there isn’t easy. Reaching that state takes practice.
So the athlete practices daily to help herself get closer, more quickly, to that peak physical and mental state. The monk prays constantly to help himself reach that state of consciousness and oneness with God quicker and with more intensity.
Their goal is simple, but it’s not easy.
Unfortunately as humans, we’re not perfect. We can’t just flip on a switch to reach a certain physical, mental, emotional state. But with practice, I think we can get there quicker. The same thing goes with happiness and inner peace. This is where Love Yourself comes into play.
There will always be Ups. There will always be Downs. There are times when we feel aligned with the universe and everything is going great. Then there are times where we feel down and nothing seems to be going our way.
We know the feeling of being on top of the world. But reaching that physical, mental, or emotional state takes work. It takes constant, persistent, dedicated practice.
The key is accepting that both the Ups and Downs will happen. And the challenge is in prolonging the Ups and shortening the Downs. Getting there takes practice.
I’ve had a few friends approach me recently about feeling down or lost. The best I can offer is the main message in this book: Love Yourself. And like anything else worth achieving, quickly getting and staying in that state takes practice.
Want to read more? This book is available on Amazon: Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On It.
Full Disclosure: Some of the links in the post above are affiliate links. I only recommend books or services I use personally and would genuinely suggest to my closest friends.
