The most magnificent force in our universe (perhaps in our multiverse) is love. And we can get radical about it! Radical self-love can heal and inspire us to manifest our dreams and live a fulfilled rich happy life.
And though it is good and honorable to extend kindness and compassion to others, it is just as important to extend some of that compassion to ourselves. And as we grow and evolve we learn that self-love is at the root of our self-awareness journey.
What is Radical Self-Love
Radical self-love is a commitment and meta-practice to love yourself without judgment. This act of unconditional love demonstrates a firm and unwavering commitment to honor, accept, love, trust, and respect yourself as you prioritize your well-being.
Thus, at its core, the practice is about:
- recognizing and affirming your inherent worth and value as a human being,
- accepting and loving yourself regardless of external circumstances, past mistakes, or societal expectations.
- embracing all aspects of oneself, including the parts that are often rejected or judged by others.
To this effect, self-love or “love yourself” is not a slogan. It is a meta-practice, meaning it is a practice that encompasses other practices. It requires a consistent and ongoing effort to prioritize your well-being and take care of yourself on all levels – physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual.
Committing to radical self-love can be challenging, especially for those like me who were once indoctrinated and a part of a culture that values self-sacrifice and putting the needs of others before your well-being.
However, radical self-love is a commitment to our well-being that not only empowers our self-worth, but it is also essential for creating a fulfilling and meaningful life. By loving and accepting oneself fully, one can cultivate more compassion, empathy, and love toward others.
What Is the Difference Between Self-Love and Radical Self-Love?
Both self-love and radical self-love are the practice of loving ourselves in every moment, flaws and all. But what is the difference between self-love and radical self-love? To a degree of measure, there isn’t a difference. However, in practice the difference between self-love and radical self-love is intention.
When we practice radical self-love, we are intentional about prioritizing our well-being and knowing our self-worth.
Just as with self-love, we don’t wait until we change or transform our mindset, life, or circumstances before we love ourselves–we love ourselves through all stages of our transformation and personal growth.
Hence, intention comes into play when we deliberately align our behavior, habits, and life practices with loving ourselves unconditionally and beyond measure.
The beauty of the meta-practice is as love and peace grow in our heart space, we treat ourselves with the same kindness and compassion that we would offer to a dear friend.
Oh, yes, it’s a connection with your soul.
As such, when we embrace radical self-love, we tap into a deep well of strength and resilience that enables us to navigate our personal growth journey with care and face life’s challenges with grace and ease.
That grace empowers us and helps us enhance and expand our personal insight, intuition, and discernment.
An agent for well-being empowers our self-worth
Subsequently, when we are radical and intentional about self-love, we tune into our inner voice and trust our intuition. We become more attuned to our needs, feelings, and true desires. With a heightened sense of awareness and intuition, we make better decisions that help to manifest our vision of purpose in life.
On a soul level, radical self-love refreshes, restores, and heals. Love has the power to heal old wounds, release negative patterns and beliefs, and help us to let go of the past so that we can move forward with greater clarity and hope for our lives.
The 7 Practices of Radical Self-Love
Accordingly, there are 7 practices associated with radical self-love. Those practices include self-awareness, self-acceptance, self-care, self-compassion, self-forgiveness, self-trust, and self-respect. Let’s explore each.
Self-Awareness A Radical Self-Love Practice For Identifying and Recognizing Your Values
Self-awareness is a journey in which you are in many ways remembering who you are mentally and spiritually. At the core, you are being honest with yourself about your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.
Furthermore, while practicing self-awareness you commit to identifying your values and recognizing when you’re not living up to those values so that you can make changes accordingly.
Your self-awareness practice as a part of a commitment to radical self-love empowers your self-worth through your self-knowledge. To know thyself and love thyself is powerful.
Self-acceptance–The Practice Essential for Personal Growth
Nevertheless, you won’t intentionally commit to self-love if you can’t accept who you are.
Accepting yourself for who you are, without judgment or criticism means embracing both your strengths and weaknesses, and recognizing that they make you unique. Self-acceptance allows you to be kinder and more compassionate toward yourself.
But that’s just one component of self-acceptance.
Self-acceptance is not stagnation. As it relates to self-empowerment, self-acceptance is knowing where you are on your personal growth journey. Self-acceptance removes you from the repetitious cycle of shame.
Your self-acceptance practice endows you with grace for personal growth.
Additionally, with grace, you accept where you are, who you are, and how you got to where you are with a willingness to change anything that no longer serves you.
Self-Compassion is a Radical Self-love Practice to Restore Hope
Similar to self-acceptance, self-compassion is about showing yourself some kindness, generosity, and grace. It means acknowledging your struggles and hardships and responding with empathy and understanding.
It’s not about pushing yourself to do things that you are not prepared to do. And just as well, self-compassion is not about perfection. Self-compassion helps you intentionally walk in compassion for yourself and others.
In this manner, your commitment to radical self-love empowers you with hope and reassurance.
Self-care is a Practice for Living in the Overflow
Radical Self-care is a practice that requires you to give from your overflow–abundance. It requires you to refill your cup before you try to give to others. Like radical self-care, radical self-love involves taking care of your physical, emotional, and mental health.
Why? Because once more, radical self-care is radical self-love.
It means making time for activities that nourish and replenish you. Self-care is essential for preventing burnout and maintaining a healthy work-life balance.
When self-care becomes radical, your commitment to Radical Self-love empowers you to prosper and expand your creativity.
Self-forgiveness is a Radical Self-love Practice for Failing Forward
But sometimes we need to unburden ourselves to truly prosper. Give ourselves some grace. No amount of empowerment and self-worth can make up for beating up on ourselves for mistakes we’ve made in the past.
Forgiving yourself for failures, past mistakes, and shortcomings is a part of resiliency and learning to fail forward. Self-forgiveness means letting go of self-blame and self-criticism and understanding you can recover from a failure, loss, or indiscretion.
You can move forward with greater self-compassion and self-acceptance. Most importantly, when you learn to forgive yourself, you can learn to trust yourself again.
Self-trust is a Radical Self-love Practice that builds Self-Efficacy and Confidence
It takes radical self-love to even begin the process of self-trust. Self-trust is building self-efficacy in such a way that you become confident in your abilities, know-how, and decisions.
It means believing in yourself and your capacity to handle challenges and make good choices. Self-trust is self-confidence.
Self-respect is a Radical Self-love Practice that Affirms Our Worth and Value
And yet, confidence and efficacy are difficult to build if you are not treating yourself with dignity and respect. Self-respect means setting boundaries, saying no when necessary, and remembering your worth and value.
Self-respect helps cultivate healthy relationships and you learn to stand up for yourself when needed.
Therefore, when we practice self-respect in our commitment to radical self-love we show up for ourselves and know our worth and value.
Your Self-Worth is Empowered by Radical Self-love
Again, radical self-love is a meta-practice that involves multiple practices to help individuals cultivate a stronger sense of self-worth. These practices include self-awareness, self-acceptance, self-care, self-compassion, self-forgiveness, self-trust, and self-respect.
By engaging in these practices, individuals can experience a greater sense of empowerment and self-love.
This commitment to self empowers you to embrace your authenticity and live your life to the fullest. As you continue this meta-practice become empowered and self-realized. On this path of life you know you are worthy of love and respect, and all the beauty life has to offer.
Each day you choose to intentionally embrace radical self-love, you commit to experiencing greater happiness, fulfillment, and success in all areas of your life.