- Deepak's Newsletter
- Posts
- Ep. 4: L O V E
Dear friends & family,
I hope that you’ve all had a great week! ☀️
This week, I wanted to share some thoughts on a topic that comes up in ALL of our lives: love.
From a healthcare perspective, It’s pretty wild to observe how some of THE most influential factors to our well-being like, nutrition, sleep hygiene, and relationships, are not explicitly taught to us anywhere (not even in medical school!), and we’re sort of expected to just figure it out on our own.
“In every relationship, there are actually three relationships: your relationship with each other, your relationship with your purpose, and your partner’s relationship with their purpose.” - Jay Shetty
From a personal point of view, the ever-evolving strains of demanding work schedules, cultural differences, unexplored opinions, and certainly gender roles, whether we like them or not, have been some of the most challenging problems I’ve had to face in my adult life so far.
Learning how to approach these issues is a skill that I am very much still developing as an adult, a professional, a partner, a brother, a son, and a friend.
In that light, I wanted to share some incredible insights that I came across from a book that I recently read by Jay Shetty, called 8 Rules of Love.
“If there is a gap in how our parents raised us, we look to others to fill it. And if there is a gift in how our parents raised us, we look to others to give us the same.”-Jay Shetty
“The Bhagavad Gita says that divine love of God is to know their greatness but gravitate to their sweetness.”-Jay Shetty
I love this book because it draws from ancient wisdom and also insights from the modern social sciences. His chapters are organized around reflective activities to help you explore your deeper intentions, bringing you closer to yourself—the person you will undoubtedly be in the longest relationship of your life with.
Here are the highlights from my read, although I HIGHLY recommend you read it for yourself!
Rule 1: Let yourself be alone
"Alone, we learn to understand ourselves, to heal our own pain, and to care for ourselves…”In solitude, we practice giving ourselves what we need before we expect it from someone else.” ” There are three stages on the way from loneliness to solitude: presence, discomfort, and confidence.””…Through choices we make in solitude, we set our own standard for how we want to live and love and be loved.”
Rule 2: Don't ignore your karma
"Loneliness makes us rush into relationships; it keeps us in the wrong relationships…And it urges us to accept less than we deserve…”Take the time to appreciate your strengths and admit the areas where you need work.” When we learn from the past, we heal it."
Rule 3: Define love
"We want to build relationships where we are loved for what we love in ourselves.” “People treat us how they see us treat ourselves.”
Rule 4: Your partner is your guru
"But creating something together is better than wanting the same thing. How you handle your differences is more important than finding your similarities." “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.”
Conflict is the beginning of consciousness. —M. ESTHER HARDING
Rule 5: Your purpose comes first
"Your purpose has to come first for you, and your partner's purpose has to come first for them. Then you come together with the positive energy and stability that come from pursuing your purposes."
Rule 6: Win or lose together
“Every time one of you loses, you both lose. Every time the problem loses, you both win.” “Love built on honesty and understanding is deep and fulfilling, but not necessarily peaceful. Partners who avoid conflict don’t understand each other’s priorities, values, or struggles. Every couple fights—or should.”
“…In the Bhagavad Gita, the enemy (and ultimately the loser) is not a person but an ideology. It is darkness, ego, greed, and arrogance. In our relationship conflicts, the same is true.”
Rule 7: You don't break in a breakup
"A lot of us have looked at life waiting for someone … to love us to feel we're lovable," Shetty says. "With empathy and compassion, I ask you to ask yourself: Why? Why are we letting our self-worth be defined by someone else? Why are we outsourcing our value?"
Rule 8: Love and love again
"We spend our whole life wishing, waiting, wanting, hoping to get and receive love," Shetty says, "but when we take a step toward giving love, sharing love, expanding love, we get to experience it right then and there."
We can’t avoid struggle, but the deeper we understand it, the more we can use it to grow.
I’ll sign off this week by saying that learning and growing in all domains of my life is my true passion. After all, The meaning of life is to find your gift & the purpose of life is to give it away…
Have a great start to the weekend, everyone! I’ll see you all next Friday 🙃
Deepak
Currently: reading | watching \ team messages
📚️: The 5 AM Club by Robin Sharma
📽️: The Queens Gambit on Netflix