The One Book That Saved My Life

At the start of 2016, I had my arm cut off.

Not literally but it felt like it. My relationship was starting to crumble. There wasn’t any reason, these things happen. People move on.

I was in denial. It was like I was trying to reattach my severed arm with my Grandma’s knitting needles.

My Grandma doesn’t even knit.

We broke up three, probably closer to five months after we should’ve. She was to kind to let me go, I was to in love to come to terms with what was happening.

I was still in love with her for months afterwards. We worked together for six months after we broke up. My life was a movie. I was living out 500 Days of Summer. I sent flowers to work on her birthday, I wrote her a card and dropped it off in her letterbox.

If I went to a doctor, I would’ve been diagnosed with depression.

The knitting job I had done on my arm had become infected and now the rest of my body was slowly shutting down.

The day after we broke up I cried whilst making tea in the morning. I stood there letting the tears flow, it was the first time I let myself cry without holding the tears back. It was a good cry.

I put on a positive face to the outside world but inside I could feel the gangrene slowly beginning to cut off my air supply. Every time I saw her I could feel my heart swell up in my chest. Like a ghost limb, there but not.

For months I told myself I’d get her back. I took the best approach I knew how. Total ignorance. She would walk past and I wouldn’t break my stride. Not even a gram of eye contact. How smart am I?

We were sitting down at the lunch table directly opposite from each other. She asked me a question and I kept eating. She asked another and I may have managed a groan, I can’t remember. My break finished and I got up from the table, packed up my things in a robotic fashion and walked the other way. Rudeness is never necessary. I’m sorry Darcy.

My subconscious took over. It decided my conscious mind had no idea what it was doing so it stepped out from the back seat and took the wheel.

It was shielding my heart from total failure.

I was pulling from both ends. One part of me wanting nothing more than to talk to her and give way to emotions flowing through me, the other a statue.

Throughout the six months we worked together post breakup I would write how I was feeling each night and think about where the emotions were coming from.

We had so many great times together, I didn’t want the negative feelings ruining the good memories. I wouldn’t let them take over.

50,000 words in, I struck the equivalent of a paleontologist finding the fingernail of a T-Rex. I took out my smallest brush and was careful not to damage anything. It was well past my bedtime but the discovery filled me with a rush of adrenaline.

Keystroke after keystroke I started to uncover the hidden fossil within the dirt.

A few hundred more words and I’d found the prehistoric king of the jungle. It was rough, but it was there.

I had devoted all of the love I had to her without leaving any for myself.

When we broke up, I’d lost the most powerful force in the universe.

Over time, I started to refuel my love tank. I was running on fumes for months. I spent too long driving around searching for a gas station instead of just stopping the car.

A week after my discovery I stumbled upon a book by Kamal Ravikant . It would later become the only book I’ve ever read cover to cover more than once. It’s funny how to universe works like that.

Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On It saved my life.

After reading it, I got my arm back. I felt like an angel. From a shell of a human to a divine being. I could feel the energy oozing out of me. I had a spring in my step.

Amazing things started happening without reason.

All because of one thing. The title of the book says it all. Kamal even states that the book could be summarised in two words, love yourself.

Kamal’s words had strapped rocket boosters to the T-Rex I found and sent it into orbit. Space T-Rex.

I started to love again.

Loving myself.

LOVE ROCKS

I don’t buy into the idea of love sucks. Love is amazing. It’s the best feeling in the universe.

I’ve never been more in love with someone than I was with Darcy. Bad day? Didn’t matter. I got to go home and see her. University was hard? Didn’t matter. I thought of her and it was okay.

I just read Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On It for the second time. I’m making it a yearly tradition.

Why? Because to truly love someone else again, I’m going to have to love myself first.

This is my priority in life. To love myself.

When you love yourself wholeheartedly it’s a superpower.

Only after living it for the past year have I started to experience this. It’s a daily practice.

Bad day?

Doesn’t matter, I love myself.

Got declined from a recent job application?

Doesn’t matter, I love myself.

A girl I liked doesn’t want to go on another date?

Doesn’t matter, I love myself.

When you love yourself wholeheartedly, it rubs off onto others. Loving yourself is the best thing you can do to help others.

At 8000 words, Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On It is possibly the shortest out of all of the other books mentioned here. Take a 30-minute break from the internet and spend the time reading the single most useful book I’ve ever read.

Read it in its entirety.

Your life depends on it.