Hello guys!
I’ve read this book twice now and I love it. It has so much depth in it yet simple and easy to read. I learned a lot through this book and I’ll probably read it for the third time again when I feel like I need it.
Today it’s easy to get caught up with for example university/studies, carrier, social media and a lot more and then you kind of forget yourself in the process. Then you start living your life for everyone else, to get acceptance, validation, and no matter how hard you try or how good you are doing you don’t truly feel happy. And I guess that’s where this book comes into play. Happiness comes from within us. Love is within us. We cannot expect others to make us happy. The first step to happiness is to love ourselves and that is what this book is all about and I love it! Don Miguel Ruiz explains beautifully why you should love yourself first and how it is important. Now I wont go into all the details about why and how cause I think you should find out yourself by reading the book and also we all have different experience reading such books depending on who we are and our past. I do want to share a few realizations and some of my favorite parts of the book with you:
Forgiveness
A topic he discusses in the book that I really found interesting was forgiveness. To forgive yourself and forgive everyone else who have hurt you. Not for their sake but for your own sake. To let go. It is such a beautiful way of seeing it. I’m good at holding grudges and I take things too personal and can be sensitive and feel deep emotions (if that makes sense) and I’ve always struggled letting go of those emotional wounds but I realized through the book that I need to do that for myself, to get rid of that burden. I loved the way he looks at forgiveness. It’s beautiful.
No Judgement
Another topic I really enjoyed reading is how we judge ourselves and others and how it affects us. You know that negative voice in our mind telling us we are not good enough, we are not worthy and we dont deserve good things or we are not smart enough etc. No one is perfect but I think it’s important to not have those limiting beliefs about ourselves. It makes it harder to grow as a person..
Fear
He also discusses fear versus love. How we do things out of love and how we do things out of fear. This was one of my favorite parts of the book! It made me a lot aware of why and how I do certain things. I have a lot of fear I’m struggling with but I didn’t realize how much until I reread the book once again. I need to share just this part of the book with you guys:
“Love has no expectations. Fear is full of expectations. With fear we do things because we expect that we have to, and we expect that others are going to do the same. That is why fear hurts and love doesn’t.”
That’s deep I know. I love this part. I think this part speaks for itself so I dont need to elaborate on it but just read it a few times and think about it: do you do things based on love or fear?
I sometimes do tend to do things because I expect that I have to and then I expect others to do things the same way which is not fair. Life is so much easier if we all just do things out of love with no expectations.
Emotional Wounds
Ok, so he discusses a lot of things. Now I’ve chosen to point out only a few parts cause I could keep on talking about everything from the book but I think you should read it yourself instead. I feel like I’ve already shared a lot from the book but I have just this last one: Emotional Wounds. One thing I found very fascinating was how he explains how we are as kids and then when we in our young age go through something and get some emotional wounds how we change our behavior because of fear or hurt and how it shapes us as a person when we get older.
When I look at kids smiling and enjoying just the tiniest things I always “envy” them cause they dont worry about anything. They dont have any fear or limiting beliefs and they dont hold any grudges. They let go so fast. We have so much to learn from kids actually. The older we get the more we go through in life. You know life happens for all os us. But it’s like we get more and more skeptical because of life which is sad. I think one of the goals in life is somehow to find that child in you again, that can let go, worry less and enjoy even the small things in life..
So guys that’s some of my thoughts and reflection on the book. I hope it made sense to you :P Let us know what book you are currently reading!
