Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On It

Mental loop

I sit at my desk. San Francisco sparkles through the large bedroom windows. A Coca Cola sign blinks off, then rebuilds itself, one letter at a time. I see cars on Market street, red taillights. The famous tower over twin peaks is swallowed up by the night, hidden by fog.

A neighbor's balcony light comes on. Sliding door opens, a woman in shorts and t-shirt steps out, kneels to pick something up, then returns inside. The door shuts.

If you were to open up my head at this moment and peer within, you'd find yourself asking with a thick Southern drawl, "Does this boy not have an imagination?"

There is only one thought running through my head: I love myself. I love myself. I love myself.

For days, ever since I made the vow, this has been my only focus. Sometimes as a whisper, sometimes silent. When I brush my teeth, mumbling. In the shower, loud. Non-stop. I love myself, I love myself, I love myself.

I have nothing to lose. This is all there is. I love myself, I love myself, I don't give a damn about anything else, I love myself.

I once heard someone explain thoughts as this: we, as human beings, think that we're thinking. Not true. Most of the time, we're remembering. We're re-living memories. We're running familiar patterns and loops in our head. For happiness, for procrastination, for sadness. Fears, hopes, dreams, desires. We have loops for everything.

We keep replaying the loops and they in turn, trigger feelings. It's automatic to the point where we believe that we have no choice. But that is far from the truth.

Imagine a thought loop as this: a pathway laid down by constant use. Like a groove in rock created by water. Enough time, enough intensity, and you've got a river.

If you had a thought once, it has no power over you. Repeat it again and again, especially with emotional intensity, feeling it, and over time, you're creating the grooves, the mental river. Then it controls you.

And that is why a focused mental loop is the solution. Take this one thought, I love myself. Add emotional intensity if you can - it deepens the groove faster than anything. Feel the thought. Run it again and again. Feel it. Run it. Whether you believe it or not doesn't matter, just focus on this one thought. Make it your truth.

The goal here is to create a groove deeper than the ones laid down over the years - the ones that create disempowering feelings. They took time as well. Some we've had since childhood.

Which is why this requires a focused commitment. Why it must be a practice. Forget demolishing the grooves of the past. What you're creating is a new groove so deep, so powerful, that your thoughts will automatically flow down this one.

It takes time, sure. Took me a month to go from misery to magic. But you will notice changes, shifts in your feelings, beautiful happenings in your life. Expect them. There'll be more and more until one day, you'll be walking outside in the sunshine, feeling good, loving life and life loving you back, and you'll stop and realize that it's now your natural state.

Can you imagine a better way to be?