5 Lessons from the Best Book I’ve Read So Far This Year

Few books have made such a profound impact on my mindset as Marianne Williamson’s A Return to Love.

It feels like my life can be distinctly broken into “before” and “after” reading A Return to Love.

The way I want to live my life just seems a little bit clearer now. “The Goal” is coming into focus. 

Though it’s hard to whittle the messages in this book down to five little lessons, I figured writing something about it was better than writing nothing. 

So here goes. 

In recent years, spirituality in the West has grown in popularity, driven in large part by figures like Jay Shetty and Gabby Bernstein. As a result, manifesting has become a popular practice. 

The idea with manifesting is that if we ask the universe for something, eventually it’ll hand it over to us.

While this might sound a little “woo-woo” to some, the cool thing is that neuroscientists (like James Doty, for example) are finally starting to understand the science behind the effectiveness of manifestations.

Here’s the rub: most of us are doing it wrong. 

Many of us are after the same goals—happiness, success, fulfillment—and we think we know exactly what will deliver us to those states.

So, what do we do? We manifest a new job. A new car. A new lover. 

But the truth is, we really don’t know if any of those things will get us to our goal. In fact, they probably won’t. 

Williamson has the answer: 

In a recent therapy session, my therapist asked me to define what “love” means. 

Embarrassingly, I had never really thought about it. It’s one of those things that I assumed I knew, but when asked, I realized I didn’t know how to put it into words.

So, I stumbled over a meandering and vague response about connection, feeling like I was back in high school trying to BS my way through the exam question I didn’t know the answer to. Finally, he cut me off, saying “Okay, so you have no idea.” 

I now know: to love someone, is to accept them—just as they are. 

And refusing to accept the people in our orbit is what brings on heartache. 

In Williamson’s words: 

Many of us think we’re doing a favor to others by pushing them to be their best selves. But there’s a fine line between calling someone forward and making them feel small and incapable. 

To truly call someone forward, you have to accept (and thus love) them first: 

If you’re feeling a lack of something—love, acceptance, happiness—give it to others. The universe will send it right back to you. 

The sad reality is that we often react by doing the opposite. When we feel unloved, we tend to grow bitter and close our hearts to the world. And spreading bitterness will only ever breed more coldness in our hearts. 

This works for both the good and the bad:

So give out what you desire—forgive people who have wronged you, love people who are hurting, accept people who are not yet their best selves. 

We’re all addicted to negativity—and it’s slowly killing us. 

From an evolutionary standpoint, it makes sense that we’re particularly attuned to the bad stuff. Our survival depended upon how effectively we registered threats. 

But in a world where we are (largely) free from imminent danger, this bias is seriously messing with our inner peace. As Williamson points out, negativity can be as destructive to us as alcohol is to the alcoholic. 

And the worst part is that we carry an inexhaustible source of negativity around with us—our minds. 

Though we tend to blame others for our misfortunes, the truth is that we are all our worst critics. 

Learning to notice our negative thoughts and actively focus on shifting to a more positive mindset, regardless of what is happening in the outside world, is necessary to achieve peace and happiness.

Williamson’s philosophy centers around the belief that love and our ego are perpetually in battle. 

And, unfortunately, in today’s society, our egos are largely dominating. 

Any time we choose to focus on things like success, greed, and power to the detriment of love, acceptance, and peace, our egos win out. And it’s making our world sick. 

In our careers, we tend to care more about prestige and money than helping others. 

In our relationships, we tend to care more about sex appeal than kindness and stability. 

In friendships, we tend to care more about validation and distraction than fostering real connection.

So we all walk around feeling like something is just not quite right. Our minds are poisoned, and it’s setting us up for unhappiness in:

We can all do better—and when we choose to focus on healing the world, only then can we heal ourselves.