When you brush your teeth in the morning and you have that first glance at yourself in the mirror, what thought comes to mind? Are you content with what you see or do you wish a different reflection were looking back at you? The moment you realize you’re not having positive or productive feelings, is the moment you need to put dating on hold and focus solely on yourself.
Take a moment and ask yourself: Am I happy? A lot of us are guilty of putting our happiness off by saying things like, “When I lose 20 pounds, I’ll be happy. When I get my next promotion at work, I’ll be happy”. I hate to burst your bubble, but it doesn’t work that way. Happiness comes from within, not from your circumstances, which can be taken away from you with the snap of a finger. The weight of your struggles and pain can feel like a million pounds.
We have a tendency to seek others to fill in the holes we have formed for ourselves. When we don’t heal those holes ourselves, we end up wanting someone to fill them for us but in fact, the opposite tends to happen. The potential partner we seek tends to add more depth of the hole reaffirming how we feel about ourselves and continuing that pattern.
You may be thinking this is not a new concept. We all know that if we don’t love ourselves then we cannot truly enjoy our lives and if we don’t truly enjoy our lives, we end up dating someone who mirrors us, for better or for worse. If it isn’t a new concept then why do we continue doing it over and over? Just know you aren’t alone and there is no use in pretending like everything is perfect and you have it together all the time.
If you don’t do the work to transform your life, to help you create remarkable things into your life and to be the happiest and best version of you- you lose. You’ll never rise to greater things until you truly know who you are, find your purpose and passion and feel truly content in your own skin.
An unloved part of us, an unhealed part, is often what we are so desperately trying to cover up. If this is the case, we look for band-aids, not partners. That’s not fair to you or a potential partner.
This is why happiness and healing open wounds are so important to do before getting into a relationship.
We’re all given a mantra by other other, whether that be a parent, teacher or coach that is negative or limiting in nature and we take it on as our own. Everything we do and everyone we choose to have in our lives is rooted in this mantra. This mantra typically is none of your business since it wasn’t created by you but you have taken it on as your own. These mantras are dangerous and damaging.
Take the mantra you adopted years ago and discard it. Why? Because it’s not useful to you anymore and frankly, it never was. It’s time to construct a new mantra for yourself which is encouraging and full of hope and showing your true potential. You are enough.
How you feel internally, specifically the degree in which you accept, value and trust yourself will have a direct impact on not only the dating experience you have but also on the quality of person you choose to date. When you feel confident and comfortable in your own skin, you operate from a very secure place where your standards match your self-assurance and expectations.
Let’s make a pact right now that from this moment on you start working on accepting, trusting and loving yourself. It’s not going to happen overnight, it is a process but when you start your journey, you will be surprised to see how gratifying life can be and how empowered you can feel.