I’m teaching myself to love myself. Actually, I’m sort of conning myself into it by constantly telling myself that I love myself. Several people have suggested this as a way to rewire the brain and the subconscious. Matt Kahn gives a pretty compelling argument here as does Kamal Ravikant in his book, Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On It. I am beginning to realize that it does. At least a happy life does.

The first time I listened to the Matt Kahn video many months ago, I foolishly decided to try out repeating “I love myself” on a long training run. There I am running along in a beautiful country park, telling this to myself, and suddenly I start feeling terrible. I didn’t make any connection between the phrase and the discomfort, so I keep repeating “I love you” and just slow my pace down a bit. I feel worse and worse until finally I have to stop running, because I feel like I’m going to vomit. I’m standing there, looking down at a beautiful reservoir, doubled over in pain and I realize that actually there is nothing wrong with my physical body. I am just feeling nausious, not actually physically sick. The light turns on.

Saying this one little phrase to myself over and over dredged up a lot of crud. I walked a lot that day, and did a lot of clearing. Lots of breathing out nastiness and letting go. I didn’t think about the practice much after that until recently when I read the book by Ravikant.

I’ve decide this time to stick with the practice until I have it wired into my brain, until it is the new default thought loop that plays over and over in my head. It is a lot better than all of the other things that are in here!

As I’m getting into it things are changing, of course. Yesterday, I started realizing that I don’t generally know what I want. Like pretty much EVER.

That’s a stunning realization.

No vomiting yet.