8 Rules of Love: How to Find it, Keep it, and Let it Go

The final rule encourages love for all, not just for romantic partners but for family, friends, the community, colleagues, strangers, and the Earth. It begins with a story about broadening the potential for love. Shetty argues that love is also about service and that people can find love at all times in their lives and with everyone. He explains how the fourth stage of Vedic life, Sannyasa ashram, is the stage when “the body, mind, and soul are dedicated to serving the divine and uplifting humanity” (248). Sannyasa ashram, or renounced life, means renouncing “material desires” and focusing on spirituality.

Sannyasa ashram corresponds with the book’s stage of perfecting love by giving it to others in the world. This rule details how to expand love to friends and family by understanding them, believing in them, accepting them, and appreciating them, as well as how to handle difficult people by creating distance and guiding them to other resources. The chapter also offers an exercise for choosing how much time to give different categories of people in one’s life. Shetty recommends organizing one’s contacts into different groups based on closeness and then deciding how much time one wants to give people in a certain category.