Radical Self-Affection
There is an ancient Buddhist practice that asks us to be ever-mindful of how precious human life is, and that by being affectionate and kind to ourselves, especially when self-doubt and painful regrets take center stage, we honor all of our life experiences. This ancient teaching, which we can all borrow from regardless of our personal ideologies or religious beliefs, can feel initially quite daunting because it asks us to treat ourselves with respect and gentleness. It is a practice wherein we accept our human frailties without sinking into depressive “poor me” thinking. By learning to take genuine ownership of our deficiencies, frailties, vulnerabilities, and troubles with the help of radical (uncompromising) self-affection the work of transforming our shortcomings into action-based determination to do better next time becomes achievable.
Self-Love
By no means does radical self-affection mean letting ourselves off the hook when we have acted improperly or hurt someone. Rather, it means we significantly decrease the constant blows of critical self-judgment, unceasing self-punishment, and unending lamentations for our human imperfections. The problem is that in our perfectionist culture there are so many unreasonable things we are supposed to achieve all at the same time. With sharp obedience, we are instructed to keep certain categories as our main priorities: Intelligent and fashionable and successful and popular and generous and entertaining and creative and powerful and forgiving and industrious and resilient and funny and attractive and sexy and spiritual. On any given day we silently bombard ourselves with doubts as to whether who we are and what we do is acceptable. A very unsettling and disturbing way to live and yet we all fall prey to this kind of negative scrutiny several times a day. When such moments occur, we automatically turn to others to help calm our inner turbulence. We rely on them to loan us their support, confidence, strength, courage, grit, and kindnesses until we are able to re-activate and lean on our own radical self-affection.
Well-being
While ever-so-pleasant and helpful to receive care and heartwarming affection from others, it is vital to our overall well-being to keep in mind that the best comfort and most genuine affection comes from Self. No one knows better than we the exact kind of comfort and nurturing affection we need in any given moment. Unfortunately, most of us were not taught about self-affection because it is often misconstrued as being weak, needy, self-indulgent, or arrogant. The healing effects of radical self-affection allows us to flourish with the beauty and richness of life, even in hard time.
“Radical self-affection is the embodiment of self-forgiveness; forgiveness for not being perfect in our imperfect human life. ”