This is an excerpt from a review I wrote on my blog about Kamal's book, which truly has changed the direction of my life -
What would you be doing with your life right now if you were madly, truly, deeply in love with yourself? Just sit quietly for a moment with the question. Close your eyes and really think about it.
What would a person in your shoes do if they really loved themselves? I'm talking the kind of love a parent has for their child, the kind of fierce intensity that will drive them to do anything to ensure their child's wellness and happiness.
Even if it means giving up everything they have.
I didn't know that happiness began with getting the inside stuff right. With facing the truth about what I wanted from my life, no matter how crazy it might have sounded. So I ate. And in between eating, and working, and going out and showing how cool and happy I was by having massive drinking nights with my buddies, I started searching.
I read all the self-help books from my Dad's shelves, all the Tony Robbins and Brian Tracy and Zig Ziglar, and I loved it. I bought my own books, `Change Your Thinking', `Authentic Happiness', `How To Change Your Life in 30 Days'. I'd sit and have coffee and read and journal and dream, but I just couldn't figure out how to get from where I was to `there'.
And so I'd close my book and go home and I'd eat, and my deep down worries that maybe I wasn't so special after all would drift away.
When my (first) marriage ended, my husband wondered how he hadn't seen it coming just by looking properly at my bookshelf.
I wondered too.
In the end I did give up everything I had and start afresh. Everything, even my toaster.
And I built my life anew, a much happier and more fulfilling one. I've ticked off many challenges, said no to a bunch of `you gotta dos', and I'm enjoying my ongoing development. Safe to say, I love my life, most of the time.
But when I read Kamal's book and I looked in the mirror and tried to - without blinking - say `I love myself', I cried.
And I could just do it anyway without looking away, but at the same time I could hear the little voice telling me -
As if. You don't love yourself. Not truly. You're not worthy of love.
You have unpaid debts, a messy house, photos that haven't been printed in years. Things to put on ebay, and projects to finish.
You haven't even cleared out your inbox.
Who are you to love yourself?
The voice will tell you that if you just do this one more thing, then it will all be okay. And because you're human and you like to believe there's an answer, you listen. And you strive to do the one more thing, all the while worrying about the other things you haven't yet achieved.
You don't stop to think about whether the things you're working your life away for reflect self-love or just quiet desperation. And the need to keep enough, to be enough.
So stop.
Think about the stuff that consumes your head and your life. Think about the fact that you have one - ONE - life to live, and that it is slipping through your fingers as we speak. There goes another second of your life, DEAD. Gone, forever.
Did you love it? Did you love yourself during in it?
And how would the next year of your life change if you were madly, truly, deeply, passionately in love with yourself?
The direction of my life has changed in the past 8 or 9 days since reading this book. The real me, the one I've been hiding without knowing it, thinking won't be good enough, is coming out to play.
I thought I was healed because I quit bulimia years ago. I thought my happy, healthy, successful life was enough. And I didn't understand why it didn't feel like enough, why I felt as though I was still having to impress people or do things a certain way even with working for myself.
Starting to love myself is helping me to find myself. I hope it can do the same for you.
Get the book. It will change your life.
Kat
[...]
