More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
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.
If I loved myself truly and deeply, would I let myself experience this?
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.
Fighting fear doesn’t work. It just drags us in closer. One has to focus on what is real. On the truth. When in darkness, don’t fight it. You can’t win. Just find the nearest switch, turn on the light. James Altucher, in one of his best blog posts, talks about how he stops negative thoughts in their tracks with a simple mind trick. “Not useful,” he tells himself. It’s a switch, a breaker of sorts, shifts the pattern of the fear.
Beautiful irony. Fall in love with yourself. Let your love express itself and the world will beat a path to your door to fall in love with you.
That’s the thing about loving yourself, you start to tolerate less what doesn’t serve you—especially from yourself. This alone changes your life.
Asking the right question is the most powerful tool I’ve found in choosing the path to magic. In that moment when I’m about to repeat an old pattern, make a familiar and comfortable mistake, I pause, breathe deep, let the light flow in, and ask myself: If I loved myself truly and deeply, what would I do?
If I loved myself truly and deeply, with all my heart, wanting only the very best for myself, wanting and deserving a magical and beautiful life, would I do this?
The key, at least for me, has been to let go. Let go of the ego, let go of attachments, let go of who I think I should be, who others think I should be. And as I do that, the real me emerges, far far better than the Kamal I projected to the world. There is a strength in this vulnerability that cannot be described, only experienced.
One of the most transformative lessons of loving myself has been this: If it scares me, there is magic on the other side. I cannot emphasize this enough. If there’s ever a rule for life, this is it. Look, any of us could fill a book with our fears and all the perfectly legitimate and beautifully crafted reasons for them. But they don’t serve us. Only stepping through fear does.
The first: life happens to me. This is the place we normally live from, especially as a victim. The second: life happens for me. This upends everything. You look for the good that life is giving you, including the lessons. The third: life happens through me. Where you flow with life and don’t even have to look for the good because you’re experiencing it.
One: Your thoughts and emotions create your internal state. Two: Your internal state influences your external state. Three: Your external state affects your life.
