Reddit reviews Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On It

You were very brave to do the right thing for yourself. Childbirth and pregnancy is terrifying and it’s easy for someone else to say you should have gone through that. That’s one of the reasons I didn’t have kids… That whole process is life-threatening and scary and women do die from it.

I don’t mean to sound patronizing - but you are young and as the years go by and you meet new people and build a new life I believe you will be very glad you made this decision.

Your aren’t weak or selfish. You made the right choice for yourself and protecting yourself. It’s YOUR body that wouldn’t had to carry that baby

This book may be helpful. And yes find a therapist!

Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On It https://www.amazon.com/dp/1478121734/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_53tSBbJXF2344

I would recommend that you read the book Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On It (link to Amazon).



I read this book two years ago with not much belief in the knowledge shared here. I didn't fully believe or apply the principles, so it wasn't really helpful.



A few months ago, I came across this book again. Difference? I was desperate for change. I felt like my life was unravelling at the seams. I kind of had a similar background as you but with my father. He would literally laugh at my dreams and tell me I would "be overshined by my siblings," and told me I was "always lacking in everything." He is the reason I often fall into patterns of completely disregarding any achievement of mine. A few months ago, this was my typical day: I relived my worst memories once every few hours in attempt to "understand myself" (now I see it was a form of self-sabotage) and I kept telling myself I was strong for getting through these situations, but it didn't change the fact that I felt like a failure every day. I can't say I know exactly what you feel like now, but I can relate.


Okay, so back to the book. I read this with desperation. By then I was already aware of the importance of your mindset and what you tell yourself, but I didn't really know how to translate this knowledge into practice. And then came this book. Simply put, the idea is to tell yourself this one thing over and over again. "I love myself." It doesn't matter if you believe it or not right now. Just do it. Because you will get to a point where you actually value yourself through this seemingly stupid exercise. I have to say I feel better than ever about who I am. I'm just more secure about the person I am. My flaws, my interests, and all. I was socially awkward because I wanted people to like me so badly. Now, I'm not charming anyone by any extent of the word, but I don't feel that pressure to impress someone or make sure they like me anymore. (It's not completely gone, but eight to nine times out of ten, I don't think "what if they don't like me" anymore.) This is one the most effective CBT techniques I have experienced.



Also, a key idea here was to stop any negative thought process from unfolding by saying the words "not important" in your mind. This has been surprisingly helpful, and I don't go the on crazy negative tangents in my mind much anymore.

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I also recommend you read the book Mindset. It became much easier to make progress and accept that I was making progress in different areas of my life with a growth mindset.

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Best of luck! I hope you do well. I know you can get over this. I'm saying this as someone who has gone through clinical depression, anxiety, and self-sabotage over the past four years. I'm now thankfully completely recovered from depression and anxiety, and am working to get into university with a scholarship while freelancing. I get depressed and anxious, but it's not the magnitude of mental illness anymore.

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Remember progress isn't instant. I don't know how negative your thought processes are, but the "instant change" I outline above is just to show you an example of where you might be. You might be mentally somewhere closer to me three years ago when it took a good year and a half to rid myself of my worst thought processes.

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Good luck!

I like this. Makes me think of my own gratitude practice that I do daily, where I literally force myself to write down three things that I'm grateful for each day. It forces you to look for things to be positive about, and before long you become tuned in to that positivity and start seeing it everywhere.

It also reminds me of Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On It by Kamal Ravikant.

It can seem dumb to people, but it works

Check out this book. You can borrow it for free if you have Kindle + Prime.

I'm going to piggyback that Buddha statement. The Accidental Buddhist gave me such great insight. I try to implement Buddhist philosophy into my life and it has helped me immensely. I cannot even express how much happier I am since I decided to do this.



This was also a nice, short read and helped put me in a nice mindset.

Both of these books are available on kindle unlimited by the way! :)

It's hard, and the fear seems like sticky tar that won't shake off.

You're young and have an exciting long journey of improvement ahead of you.
The core thing to focus on is self-confidence, but what does that mean?

Confidence that you are good enough just as you are, because honestly, even though I know almost nothing about you, you really are. Learn to define your self worth from within, because there is literally only one person on this planet who has the right to define that worth. You can choose to define yourself by the irrational fear of how the 'other' perceives you, but what you're really doing is defining yourself by your own self-consciousness, which is in fact yourself anyway. Learn to love yourself and no amount of hate or doubt will crack your spirit.

If you're worried about your looks, then work on them. Not because others will like you more, but for the pure and simple personal reason that it will make you feel better. Get acne medicine, face wash, workout, and eat well. Always treat yourself with the advice you would give someone you loved.

The last thing you ever want to do is approach girls with neediness. It makes you nervous because there are stakes at play, and it bleeds through your body language. You said you're fine talking with other guys, probably because you don't need anything from them. They are not tied to your self worth as it seems you've done so for women. You need a girlfriend because everyone else has one, there's something wrong with you because you don't. Fuck that.

One last thing, don't put all the pressure on keeping an interesting conversation on yourself, it makes no sense to do this. Conversation is a two way street, if you ask an open ended question and they don't give an interesting response or enough material then that's not on you.

'What do you do for fun?'

"I dunno, watch movies..."

You'll feel pressure, don't fucking say 'cool...'. I've seen so many conversations die because of this.

The most valuable thing you can do is become comfortable with the pressure and silence. Fight the pressure to say something. In fact, do this, next time you find yourself in a conversation, or a group conversation, pause and count 2-3 full seconds everytime someone finishes saying something. Only then can you say something. It might feel awkward, but just trust me, get used to it.

The most interesting thing to most people is themselves, learn to become interested in that (what makes the other person tick) and conversations become naturally interesting. That's the important thing, what makes people tick. 'Oh you like rap music? That's pretty aggressive music, are you an aggressive person?'. The topic of conversation doesn't matter, because they are all avenues to get to know who the other person is.

EDIT: One last book...

I reached a really low point a few years back where I was thinking about suicide. As I thought about how crappy everything was, I had a thought that made me wonder - "Mormonism isn't the way to happiness but I wonder if science has figured out the best ways to find happiness?"

That led to me doing some research about happiness, which is largely found in the field of positive psychology. I realized I could retrain my mind to be happy independent of my circumstances (no matter how good or bad they are) by doing a few simple things.

The things that made the biggest difference when I was at my lowest point were meditation using the mantras from this book: http://www.amazon.com/Love-Yourself-Like-Your-Depends/dp/1478121734/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1414870961&sr=8-1&keywords=love+yourself+like+your+life+depends+on+it

The thing that has made the biggest difference long term is exercise (start now).

Things can and will get better. The trick right now is just convincing yourself that this is true. I'm here to tell you it is. You can do this. It may not seem like it, but you can.

This very short book has helped: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Love-Yourself-Like-Your-Depends/dp/1478121734

The premise of the book is that loving yourself cures depression. I don't love myself, but one of his recommendations is to ask yourself when feeling depressed "if I loved myself would I put myself through this experience?". Strangely, it works at times. I think to myself if I loved myself like I love my partner then I wouldn't put my partner through whatever it is I am experiencing at that time.

I'm not a fan of self help books, but it's only short. It has made me think about how I can start to love myself, instead of hate myself!

I swallowed my pride and started reading/listening to self help books. Based on other people's recommendations:

www.amazon.com/dp/0767921968 - funny and made me feel better if just for a few days; somewhat targeted towards women but I found it helpful

www.amazon.com/dp/1478121734 - finished it in less than hour and trying to follow its mantra.. strangely, I think it might be helping. Too early to tell but it's interesting.

I e-borrowed the first one from my library. Maybe possible with the second one too.

You sound like you need this book.

And because Reddit is Reddit; I am not affiliate in any way with this book or the author.

http://www.amazon.com/Love-Yourself-Like-Your-Depends/dp/1478121734/ref=la_B0086HMAIY_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1421109828&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.com/Love-Yourself-Like-Your-Depends/dp/1478121734

It's worth a read.