Notice how this shift feels inside your body. Notice how energized you get in a bona fide moment of positivity resonance. Conversations become deeper and more meaningful, connections stronger. You’ll begin to see each new interaction as an opportunity, not as an obligation or obstacle. Your more open stance will be amply reinforced by the positive feelings that you share in the brightened moments spent with others.
Aware now of the ingredients and potency of positivity resonance, you have new lenses through which to view each and every encounter you have with others. True, you are unlikely to elevate all of your interpersonal encounters into moments of positivity resonance. After all, you can only reshape your side of each interpersonal interchange. So don’t judge yourself against unrealistically high standards. Do notice, however, whether you’ve been able to upgrade one, two, or even three ordinary interchanges each day into acts of love. These are the small changes that can add up to big improvements in your health and happiness.
CHAPTER 6
Loving Self
I EXIST AS I AM, THAT IS ENOUGH.
IF NO OTHER IN THE WORLD BE AWARE I SIT CONTENT.
AND IF EACH AND ALL BE AWARE I SIT CONTENT.
—Walt Whitman
The old saying tells us that we can’t love others unless we first love ourselves. It’s true. Even though love is defined throughout this book as moments of positivity shared between and among people, the positivity shared between knower and known—between I and me—provides a vital foundation for all other forms of love. We first need to accept ourselves fully, as worthy partners in positivity, before we can freely enjoy the many other fruits of positivity resonance that we can share with others.
Like all forms of positivity resonance, self-love requires both safety and connection. Either of two obstacles may stand in the way. For some people, both obstacles are fused together into one mammoth and seemingly insurmountable boulder. The first is self-diminishment, or not believing yourself to be worthy of love or acceptance. At an implicit, unspoken level, you may dismiss your good qualities as insignificant and stay locked in on your shortcomings. You may feel it necessary to fill those gaps in your character before you can fully accept and love yourself. You may think, “If only I were _______.” You can fill in the blank with any of your usual suspects, those ideals against which you judge yourself: “thinner, kinder, wealthier, smarter, more energetic, more productive, more organized, more successful, more thoughtful . . .” Then you wait. You withhold love from yourself until you meet those unspoken preconditions. But the waiting never ends, and the self-love never flows.
The second obstacle to self-love presents as self-aggrandizement, or believing oneself to be more special or more deserving than others. Or perhaps you’re not so busy comparing yourself favorably to others, but rather you see yourself as especially capable or triumphant. Your self-esteem is high. This is a devious obstacle to circumnavigate because it masquerades as self-love. Sure as day it’s positive. Even so, a telltale sign that these positive self-descriptions fall short of true self-love is that they are guarded very tightly. As you shield your positive self-views from the light of contradictory evidence, a brittle narcissism emerges. Although narcissism like this is often taken as excessive self-love, in truth it’s something else altogether. In believing yourself to be especially deserving and discerning, or especially wonderful—even at a deep, unspoken or unrecognized level—the slights and shortcomings that all people face as they navigate the social world become magnified out of proportion, viewed as threats or insults to your character. If this is your obstacle, your happiness hinges on whether others treat you in just the right way, or show you the proper form of respect by turning a blind eye to your shortcomings. In truth, self-aggrandizement is often a defense—a protective armor donned to cover up a more negative view of self. It can be self-diminishment in disguise.
Both obstacles to the safety and connection necessary for self-love—self-diminishment and self-aggrandizement—deny the wisdom of sameness and oneness. At a core, spiritual level, there is no social topography, no hierarchy that ranks people from more to less deserving. The truth is you are neither beneath nor above others. Brain disorders aside, all people are fundamentally the same when it comes to their ability to think, to feel, and to yearn for love. All are equally deserving of acceptance, respect, and love, even with their many shortcomings. You are no exception. Just like everyone else, you deserve your own love.
So what happens if you give in? If you accept yourself, right at this moment, just as you are, without preconditions of any sort? Can you, as Walt Whitman suggests, be content with yourself as you are right now, whether fully isolated, or scrutinized by millions? This chapter describes a range of practices that can unlock this greater openness to who you actually are, openness that begets kindness and self-love. These practices coax you to more fully accept and appreciate who and how you are right now, failures and shortcomings and all. I describe both the formal practice of loving-kindness meditation as well as more informal practices, each of which allows you to experiment with self-love. These practices are not self-indulgent, navel-gazing escapes from reality. Like positivity resonance, they build your foundation for health and well-being. Indeed, studies show that self-directed, self-compassionate love is far more vital to your health and happiness than is oft-touted high self-esteem.
Where to Start?
Although people don’t differ in their worthiness of their own love, they differ a great deal in their ability to offer it. For many people—and you may be one of them—offering warmth and tenderness to yourself feels more than a little bit awkward. For whatever reasons, you simply may be unaccustomed to fully accepting and caring for yourself as you are.
This may be a particular hang-up for those of us born and raised in cultures that foster deflating self-criticism, puffed-up self-aggrandizement, or both. Initial research bears this out. Kristin Neff, a developmental scientist at the University of Texas at Austin who has pioneered scientific assessment of a form of self-love that she calls self-compassion, has found this to be the case. Her research shows that people in cultures—like the United States—that are heavy on both self-deprecation and high self-esteem show lower levels of self-love and by consequence experience higher rates of depression and dissatisfaction with life. By contrast, people in cultures—like Thailand—where Buddhism infuses more self-acceptance into daily life show higher levels of self-love and by consequence seem to suffer less depression and dissatisfaction.
Indeed, lore among those who teach LKM is that barriers to self-love are particularly high among Western students. Sharon Salzberg, cofounder of the Insight Meditation Society, in Barre, Massachusetts, is perhaps the leading Western teacher of LKM. It’s no overstatement to say that she is the person most responsible for first bringing the practice of LKM from the East to the West, having first encountered this ancient practice in India in the 1970s and then practicing it intensively in Burma in the 1980s. I’m lucky to be able to draw on Sharon’s deep expertise while I craft my experiments on LKM’s effects, as she serves as a consultant on my research grants.
Sharon tells me that Western students frequently encounter difficulties or resistance when encouraged to direct loving-kindness toward themselves. Some even fall asleep at this stage. Others quit altogether, judging themselves to be incapable of it. Making matters worse, in traditional LKM formats, the self is an early, or even the first, focus. Before moving on to offering loving-kindness to others, the traditional sequence is to first offer loving-kindness to oneself. For many, this becomes a seemingly insurmountable obstacle.
Noting this, Sharon offers a story about the first time she met His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama. It was back in 1979 on his first trip to the West. As part of his visit, he came to her center in Barre and gave a talk to the group of students who’d been sitting a meditation retreat there. One student raised his hand to confess that he’d been practicing LKM for some weeks and had come to the conclusion t
hat he was incapable of directing love to himself. Sharon recounted how stunned and puzzled His Holiness was. “You’re wrong!” he told the student, albeit in his characteristic light and loving tone. “You have Buddha nature!” he proclaimed, referring to the possibility of awakening that is ever-present in all people. The ability to direct warmth and tenderness to the self was apparently a nonissue for him and to those he most frequently taught.
Sharon also tells me that the reason that the traditional Buddhist practice of LKM begins with the self is because the self is presumed to be an easy target for love. Indeed, wishing oneself well was thought to be as natural as breathing, or as seeking out food when hungry or water when thirsty. Having practiced the skill of cultivating loving-kindness for the easy targets, like a cherished teacher or mentor, a dear friend, or oneself, students will then have developed key skills before they approach the harder targets, like unknown or difficult people. The logic is not to slam those new to the practice with the hardest parts first, but rather to build their skills gradually, starting with easy targets and working up to the more difficult ones.
Accordingly, if you find that directing love toward yourself is especially problematic, you might consider whether to practice with easier people first. Perhaps start with a teacher or mentor to whom you feel especially grateful, or a friend who the mere thought of can melt your face into a smile. After you’ve spent considerable time—perhaps even weeks—practicing cultivating warm and tender feelings for these people, then you can begin experimenting with cultivating warm and tender feelings for yourself. You may in fact be your own most “difficult” person on which to focus in the next stage of your practice. If so, you’re in good company. That’s a common experience. Rest assured, the order of targets to which you direct your warm wishes matters far less than the time and energy you devote to developing this habit and skill. Your aim is simply to condition your heart to be more comfortable and familiar with warm and tender sentiments.
Sidestep Obstacles to Self-Love
As I introduced the practice of LKM in the previous chapter, I suggested that you lightly reflect on the good qualities of the person or people for whom you are extending your good wishes. Here I expand on the logic of this. As you visualize a particular person, gently name what’s good about him or her: “Generous.” “Kind.” “Accepting.” “Honest.” “Grounded.” “Inspiring.” You don’t need a long list, one or two traits will do. Let yourself begin to see these one or two traits not simply as labels, affixed to these people in superficial ways, but rather as deep expressions of who they are in this world, of who they’ve been to you. Here you might lightly visualize the particular actions of this person that exemplify each trait. Keep in mind that calling up another’s good qualities does not require you to deny or disguise his or her bad qualities or shortcomings. Rather, it’s simply an invitation to shift your focus in this moment toward the good and be open to it. Think of it as turning toward the light, just as a sunflower tracks the position of the sun. It’s not that the sunflower is unaware of darkness, but rather that, in moments of daylight, it finds more energy—quite literally—in the light. You can, too.
When you’re ready to practice directing loving-kindness to yourself, you can follow these same steps. See yourself, in your mind’s eye, from a cherishing observer’s perspective. This is not the time to imagine yourself as you looked the last time you had your portrait taken, whether in posed formality or orchestrated informality. Instead, see yourself just as you are, holistically, without any pose or intended impression to create. Imagine yourself as you are now dressed and sitting. Or perhaps you can build a mental self-image based on a truly candid snapshot that someone else took of you while you were going about your business, completely unaware of the camera. Once you have this mental image of yourself in mind, lightly name a few of your good qualities. “Caring.” “Curious.” “Hopeful.” “Creative.” “Patient.” Consider whatever comes to mind right now. There’s no need for this to be some final “best” description of your character. Simply use the good qualities that come to mind as a springboard for your tenderness and warmth, a way to remind yourself of your neglected strengths.
What if no good qualities come to mind? No need to worry. That happens to people. It’s completely normal. In her first book, simply entitled Lovingkindness, Sharon Salzberg speaks of “relearning loveliness,” drawing her phrasing from the beloved poem “Saint Francis and the Sow,” in which American poet Galway Kinnell describes how Saint Francis gently put his hand on the forehead of a sow to remind her “in words and in touch” of her value. Sometimes, you can forget your own loveliness. You forget the many, many reasons for which you wholly deserve love. Your loveliness isn’t about outward beauty. As Kinnell’s poem reminds, a pig is hardly what you’d imagine first when considering what’s lovely. And yet, through the sow’s actions—through the generosity she offers in the simple gesture of feeding her offspring—the sow is lovely, fully lovely, from snout to tail. When you recognize how your own actions have contributed to the greater good, you, too, can relearn your own loveliness. As you recognize your own value and value-added, as Kinnell puts it, you open as a flower, “from within, from self-blessing.”
If you have difficulty summoning your good qualities, try sidestepping this obstacle by imagining how those who care for you might see you. Be like Saint Francis to the sow. Imagine for a moment stopping the busy pace of your daily life. See yourself stopped, freeze-frame, in the midst of your daily activities. Now imagine: Approaching you in this freeze-framed moment is someone who cares for you, someone who, at one time or another, has appreciated you and shown you warmth. This could be a mentor or a dear friend, your partner, parent, or another loving relative, either alive now, or long gone. Imagine that this person’s intention is to remind you of your long-forgotten loveliness. Perhaps like Saint Francis, he or she rests a hand on your brow and reminds you, in words and in touch, of your good qualities. What would he or she say? What would you remember? What image of yourself would emerge?
Try This Meditation Practice: See Yourself
as the Target of Others’ Love
You can circumnavigate your own particular obstacles to self-love by visualizing the cherished people in your life themselves engaged in the well-wishing that typifies LKM, whether or not they have actually practiced this technique formally. Imagine all your beloved mentors and friends, all your treasured family members, standing in a circle around you. You are now the center of each one’s attention and loving regard, the hub of this imagined social gathering.
Just as, in LKM, you extend your own wishes for each of them to feel safe, happy, healthy, and at ease, the feeling is often mutual. These other people wish for you to feel safe, happy, healthy, and at ease. Visualize how it is that you might be represented in each of their minds and hearts. On to which of your good qualities would they shine a light? Gently hold those descriptions of you that surface in your mind and let them soak in. Recall your many actions that underlie these characterizations of you. Allow yourself to see those actions as deep indicators of your worth. Draw sustenance from the positive regard in which these cherished others hold you. Relax yourself into its warmth, feeling the safety and security it offers you. Now visualize the unfurling of good wishes emanating from each person’s heart to yours. Like the spokes of a wheel, these wishes connect the outer ring of your circle of supporters to you, its hub. At this point, you might visualize all of those gathered speaking the classic phrases of LKM in unison, with your own name inserted:
May you, [your name here], feel safe and protected.
May you, [your name], feel happy and peaceful.
May you, [your name], feel healthy and strong.
May you, [your name], live with ease.
Adopting this loving observers’ perspective on yourself can offer an “appreciative jolt” that allows you to see—and truly feel—how it is that you add value to those around you. From this perspective, you can better discer
n your good qualities. Of course, you still have your own unique set of less-than-good qualities as well. If your mind gets pulled toward those, gently invite yourself to table those shortcomings for now. You can always examine them later. This is a rare moment to spotlight the good in you and you don’t want to miss it.
Another way to bypass your obstacles to self-love is to visualize yourself together with any or all of these individuals and to speak the phrases of LKM as “we”:
May we feel safe.
May we feel happy.
May we feel healthy.
May we live with ease.
You can think here of the good qualities that you and this other person (or persons) share, and visualize the good wishes that emanate from your heart as surrounding and infusing the two (or more) of you. You might find that thinking of yourself together with these cherished others provides a more comfortable stepping stone on the path leading you to direct love toward yourself.
Even if you have a hard time populating the circle with people who you know appreciate you, you can populate it with any or all of the people around the globe who have—or have ever—practiced the ancient technique of LKM. After all, each one of these people—whether an aging widow in Thailand, a thirtysomething prisoner in Texas, or His Holiness the Dalai Lama himself—has practiced extending the wishes of loving-kindness to all people, because all people yearn for and deserve to feel safe, happy, and healthy, and to live with ease. Perhaps it can help you to visualize yourself as tucked into the masses of humanity for which others have extended their earnest expressions of love.
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