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Carol Kean's Reviews > 8 Rules of Love: How to Find It, Keep It, and Let It Go
8 Rules of Love: How to Find It, Keep It, and Let It Go
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Let me rephrase: Jay Shetty's book is good. It's comprehensive, with advice from therapists, insights from the Vedas, and common sense. Never mind the 'until now!' hype; young readers want freshly packaged wisdom.
My review at Newsblaze sounded a bit too harsh. THIS IS A GOOD BOOK. Not "new" and unprecedented but still useful those who have not read a gazillion other books about love and relationships.
Back to my original goodreads review:
"Nobody sits us down and teaches us how to love. So we’re often thrown into relationships with nothing but romance movies and pop culture to help us muddle through. Until now."
Sorry, this book is not ground-breaking. Nothing new under the sun here. It’s all good advice, of course. And it’s all been around for some time now, not just in ashrams and the Vedas. Books, couples counselors, advice columns, blogs, podcasts - nothing is new. Some people just phrase things with a fresh twist, like "Swipe right."
A Catholic priest Father Vu, posted (on Instagram) “Date Night Discussion Questions” for married couples, and I had just read a nearly identical set of questions at 5:30 a.m. that same day in the "8 Rules" book. Does sleep deprivation make me a grouchy book reviewer? Eh. No, I just bristle at promises like “until now,” we’ve never had so much useful advice in one book.
The very title sets my teeth on edge. Rules. Pick a number. Any number of RULES on how to live, love, thrive in this world. It’s a marketing gimmick. Like the click bait ads - “Five Foods You Must Eat to Ward Off Cancer” - Headlines with numbered lists attract readers, as do "Secrets" -
That said, I have read the entire book, more than once. This is not the kind of book you read cover-to-cover in one weekend. It’s packed full of exercises, anecdotes, scientific studies, the wisdom of the Vedas, quotes from family therapists and assorted life coaches, and ideas we’ve seen in other books or in memes all over social media.
Shetty joined an ashram at age 21. For three years he lived as a monk, studying the Vedas, which were written more than five thousand years ago. Their relevance in the modern world “amaze and inspire” him, he writes in the Introduction. This book is rooted in Vedic principles, “applying Vedic concepts in ways they haven’t been used before, applying spiritual concepts to earthly relationships.”
Eh. He had to go there, didn’t he. It wasn’t just the Simon & Schuster employee trying to schill a book; the author himself says he’s doing things that have not been done before. Like Moses coming down from the mountaintop, he brings us rules.
These rules are rooted in The Vedas.
“The Vedas describe four stages of life, and these are the classrooms in which we’ll learn the rules of love so that we can recognize it and make the most of it when it comes our way,” Shetty explains. “After we learn the lessons of one level, we move to the next.”
However, many of us pass through the four ashrams without learning our lessons.
“If you haven’t learned the life lessons of an ashram, life will keep pushing you back to that phase of life in one way or another,” Shetty says.
The book follows the order of the ashrams, which parallel the progression of relationships: “from preparing for love, to practicing love, to protecting love, to perfecting love.”
Brahmacharya, Grhastha, Vanaprastha, Sannyasa. I won’t summarize it all here; you can read the book yourself or check out Shetty’s podcasts and videos. What you can’t do is learn the Vedas yourself online. One YouTube video warned that nobody can study and understand the Vedas without a guru to explain them.
No wonder Shetty is training thousands of new life coaches to share his insights into the Vedas.
I’m not a fan of the “exercises” and advice sections. This book has so many pages and so many questionnaires and assessments, it felt like I was investing hours with a therapist. For thirty dollars, you might find the book is quicker and easier than weekly therapy.
Overall, I can endorse this book for young people who have not already read a hundred other titles with similar messages.
The long version of this review is published at Newsblaze.
My review at Newsblaze sounded a bit too harsh. THIS IS A GOOD BOOK. Not "new" and unprecedented but still useful those who have not read a gazillion other books about love and relationships.
Back to my original goodreads review:
"Nobody sits us down and teaches us how to love. So we’re often thrown into relationships with nothing but romance movies and pop culture to help us muddle through. Until now."
Sorry, this book is not ground-breaking. Nothing new under the sun here. It’s all good advice, of course. And it’s all been around for some time now, not just in ashrams and the Vedas. Books, couples counselors, advice columns, blogs, podcasts - nothing is new. Some people just phrase things with a fresh twist, like "Swipe right."
A Catholic priest Father Vu, posted (on Instagram) “Date Night Discussion Questions” for married couples, and I had just read a nearly identical set of questions at 5:30 a.m. that same day in the "8 Rules" book. Does sleep deprivation make me a grouchy book reviewer? Eh. No, I just bristle at promises like “until now,” we’ve never had so much useful advice in one book.
The very title sets my teeth on edge. Rules. Pick a number. Any number of RULES on how to live, love, thrive in this world. It’s a marketing gimmick. Like the click bait ads - “Five Foods You Must Eat to Ward Off Cancer” - Headlines with numbered lists attract readers, as do "Secrets" -
That said, I have read the entire book, more than once. This is not the kind of book you read cover-to-cover in one weekend. It’s packed full of exercises, anecdotes, scientific studies, the wisdom of the Vedas, quotes from family therapists and assorted life coaches, and ideas we’ve seen in other books or in memes all over social media.
Shetty joined an ashram at age 21. For three years he lived as a monk, studying the Vedas, which were written more than five thousand years ago. Their relevance in the modern world “amaze and inspire” him, he writes in the Introduction. This book is rooted in Vedic principles, “applying Vedic concepts in ways they haven’t been used before, applying spiritual concepts to earthly relationships.”
Eh. He had to go there, didn’t he. It wasn’t just the Simon & Schuster employee trying to schill a book; the author himself says he’s doing things that have not been done before. Like Moses coming down from the mountaintop, he brings us rules.
These rules are rooted in The Vedas.
“The Vedas describe four stages of life, and these are the classrooms in which we’ll learn the rules of love so that we can recognize it and make the most of it when it comes our way,” Shetty explains. “After we learn the lessons of one level, we move to the next.”
However, many of us pass through the four ashrams without learning our lessons.
“If you haven’t learned the life lessons of an ashram, life will keep pushing you back to that phase of life in one way or another,” Shetty says.
The book follows the order of the ashrams, which parallel the progression of relationships: “from preparing for love, to practicing love, to protecting love, to perfecting love.”
Brahmacharya, Grhastha, Vanaprastha, Sannyasa. I won’t summarize it all here; you can read the book yourself or check out Shetty’s podcasts and videos. What you can’t do is learn the Vedas yourself online. One YouTube video warned that nobody can study and understand the Vedas without a guru to explain them.
No wonder Shetty is training thousands of new life coaches to share his insights into the Vedas.
I’m not a fan of the “exercises” and advice sections. This book has so many pages and so many questionnaires and assessments, it felt like I was investing hours with a therapist. For thirty dollars, you might find the book is quicker and easier than weekly therapy.
Overall, I can endorse this book for young people who have not already read a hundred other titles with similar messages.
The long version of this review is published at Newsblaze.
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Finished Reading
January 13, 2023
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Trey
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Jun 21, 2023 06:05PM
This is an astute review!
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