I’ve used my years of wisdom to help my friends through every step of their relationships having felt like the third party in many of my friends’ relationships. Because I’ve been in my fair share of relationships over the years. The success or failure of a relationship is determined by one key ingredient. Looking back at the times when I’ve struggled and felt tortured trying to figure out why guys act the way they do, and seeing my friends in similar predicaments, one fundamental and major issue is seemingly at the heart of the matter.
Richard and I offer a lot of relationship advice on this site. Helping you understand why that guy who seemed so into you at first is suddenly acting shady or why the guy that acts like your boyfriend won’t just call you his girlfriend. While we’re happy to supply you with these explanations, we’d be negligent if we didn’t cover one fundamental truth about relationships: you will never find love with another until you find it within yourself.
When you love yourself, you care less why he’s being shady and blowing you off or why he won’t just put a label on it because you know your value and your worth. You won’t even need to hook up your loyal girlfriends and listen to them tell you that you can do so much better than him! I know, it’s one of those facts where you roll your eyes but in truth, it makes all the difference in the world.
When you love yourself, you feel the whole world reacts to you differently. You’ll notice strangers looking at you with a curious smile, people will be friendly and kind to you for seemingly no good reason at all. Members of the opposite sex will go into a fuzz trying to prove they’re worthy and friends will always seek you out and want to be in your company. Why? Because people who love themselves have that inner light that draws others in. People orient towards that magnetic force of positivity that they have and want to be near.
How do I know this? Yep! Having let my pendulum swing wildly from self-love to self-loathing far too many times through the years and the changes seen, are staggering each time both in myself and the way others respond towards me.
The past few months, I’ve seen myself on a bit of a spiritual journey some might say. I’ve been reading and talking to experts. I was lost and I wanted to find that pure, unwavering self-love and hold onto it. I’ve spent a lot of time learning from others and reflecting upon my own life and have uncovered some wonderful ways to help you attain that ever-elusive but endlessly rewarding love for yourself.
Read: Make Your Days Better and Brighter With These Beautiful Quotes
Diary Writing
We could all really learn something from our pre-teen by resurrecting the act of consistent diary writing. It’s kind of funny how the act of writing in a journal gets left behind in our teen years. Diary writing helped me get through a lot of trying moments during my teen years and is doing the same for me in adulthood. It’s hard to really depict yet you build up an extremely solid feeling of self and self-awareness through diary writing. Personally speaking, I've found a great deal about what I truly desire and what my values are deep down. I’ve also learned to recognize bad thought patterns and I’m now better able to adjust them on the spot.
Down the road, your diaries will serve as almost a history book chronicling the hardships that characterized your life. I am amazed when I read through my old entries, through thoughts and feelings that are no longer with me but definitely made an unforgettable impression and formed who I am.
Always See The Good In Others
This may sound easy, but trust me, it’s a lot more challenging than it sounds! When I say always see the good in others, I mean ALL others. The friend who bails whenever it matters, the ex who cheated on you, the coffee guy who screwed up your order, yet again, the co-worker who didn’t pull his/her weight leaving you to pick up the slack, and so on.
When you start seeing the good in others, you will first and foremost be a much happier person. Over time and in practice, you will automatically be trained to always see the good in everything, including yourself.
When something goes wrong, you won’t be worked up over it, instead, you’ll be able to extract those hard-to-see pieces of good and use those to move forward. A much better alternative to burying yourself underneath the bad, don’t you think?
Give To Meditation
Meditation gives you the chance to spend some valuable time with the most important person in your life, YOU. Between school, work, groceries, appointments, and happy hours, we can easily loose ourselves in the hustle and bustle of everyday life. It’s also very easy to lose a sense of who you are and what you really want in life while you’re struggling to just get it all done.
At first, the idea of meditation sounded absurd to me, not to mention, boring and a huge waste of time. It’s difficult to describe what happens within you when you turn off the TV, laptop and phone and just sit with your thoughts but it can be magical and extremely edifying.
In any relationship, you have to make out time to spend with the other person, the same applies to your relationship with yourself. So try to set aside a minimum of 10 minutes a day to just sit with yourself and listen to nothing but your thoughts. Meditating can also do wonders when it comes to lowering your level of stress and that inner quietness will do wonders for your overall well-being and self-satisfaction.
Change It or Accept It
Everyone has things they like and dislike about themselves, both physical and internal. As opposed to dwelling on the things you don’t like, make a concerted effort to either work on said traits, or embrace them as being part of who you are. When you’re in a relationship, it simply means that person is dating all of you, not just the bits and pieces you want them to see.
In order to be in a truly successful relationship, one in which you don’t need to rely on the way the other person perceives you, then first and foremost you need to learn to accept and cherish all the pieces that make you who you are. I mean when you think about it, if even you can’t learn to love certain aspects of yourself, how can you expect anyone else to?
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