love yourself | mastery.fm

James Altucher, writing about Kamal Ravikant:

A few weeks later he told me he had been sick. “I was so sick, most days I couldn’t move.”

“What happened? How did you get better?”

He said, “I’ll tell you but it might not sound real. One day I could barely move. I was sick. I thought this is it. There’s noting to live for. I could barely get out of bed. But I crawled up to the mirror in my bathroom and I said to myself, ‘I love you.’

“And I kept repeating it. And repeating it. And the next day I did the same. And the next day.

“And I realized all the ways I hadn’t been loving myself. And I realized how important it was to say it out loud.

“How important it was to mean it. How I had to rewire my brain to love myself.

“And every day I got better. And better. And then even better than I was before I started this. I made a complete recovery.

“I was better.”

And:

“Think about it,” he said to me months later when we met in NYC, “when someone is in love, they almost magically look better. I needed to be in love with myself to feel better. So much of what had happened had weighed on me until I collapsed. Now I needed to love myself. It became a mantra for me.”

As someone explained to me the other day, the word “mantra” has two parts (in Sanskrit): “man” – thoughtfulness with zeal, and “tra” – to protect. So by saying “I love myself” over and over Kamal was protecting the thought, nourishing it, and the love was nourishing the rest of his body, his emotions, his mind, his spirit.

And:

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.

And even more importantly, it will shift the wiring of the memory. Do it again and again. Love. Re-wire. Love. Re-wire. It’s your mind. You can do whatever you want. […] The results are worth it. I wish that for you.

You can read the full blog post here.

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Kamal Ravikant:

If we are made of atoms and molecules, and they in turn from smaller particles which are empty space and energy, then what are we?

Are we our thoughts?

Ever catch your mind in a mental loop, replaying some old story, an old hurt, the same pattern? Who are you? The thought or the observer of the thought?

If you’re the observer, then what is the thought?

Or are you a thought observing another thought?

Perhaps we’re just biochemical storms within synaptic connections in a brain that evolved over millions of years. Or maybe there is an observer, a deeper self. No proof either way.

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.

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Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends on It

Lay Down the Synaptic Pathways