Single On Purpose: Prioritizing Self-Love and Personal Growth in Your Journey Through Life, Dating, and Relationships

by John Kim

Sometimes you have to stand alone to prove to others and yourself that you can still stand. —UNKNOWN

Singlehood isn’t just about being single. Singlehood is about being a whole person.

All this is to say that if you muster the courage to start working on yourself instead of just focusing on who you’re going to love, the universe will work through you to make your story bigger than you. Then, when you meet someone who deserves you, you will only bring more to the table as a whole person who is going somewhere.

there is no other side. Your journey never ends. It just changes as you change.

We continue to drift further from ourselves, and the more we disconnect from ourselves, the more we crave connecting with someone else.

What breaks us is not losing a job, or friends, or even a marriage. What breaks us is drifting away from ourselves for too long. It’s not a single event. It’s that gradual drift.

Doing things for the outcome rather than for the joy of the process disconnects you from yourself.

Real work comes from going through the journey, not just from absorbing information.

Self-care doesn’t mean bubble baths and fancy brunches. It really means taking care of yourself daily like you would for someone you love. It means breaking the pattern of putting yourself last. It means not taking on everything. Not overextending yourself. It means blowing out the candle when it’s burning at both ends. It means saying no to things. It means considering your own needs, not over others’ needs but with them, and meeting your needs.

Dance for you and other people will dance with you. Dance for others and you become a show. Not a person.

Friends are crucial to our growth, journey, and happiness.

No one has perfect friends. As in any relationship, there is no such thing as a perfect friendship. The point is to have real friends. Friends who feel honest to you with where you’re at in your life. Friends who encourage your connection to self.

Instead, they are trying to change you. Or they are holding on to the old friendship dynamic between

two of you. Maybe one that worked for you before you started your growth journey. But now the new you makes them uncomfortable. This happens a lot.

Just because you have a history doesn’t mean you have a healthy friendship.

When you’re single, it’s more important to have good friends than to find a partner.

There are far, far better things ahead than any we have left behind. —C. S. LEWIS

You are not moving on. You are moving through.

When a relationship is over, there is loss.

We don’t accept the good parts. We don’t allow ourselves to miss them, afraid that will mean that the one we lost, or the relationship, still has power over us. But

If you don’t grieve the death of the relationship and allow yourself to feel everything you have lost but instead just push it down, you will cope in other ways.

Working on yourself is a never-ending process, not a onetime thing.

But the truth is, even more self-work is needed when you’re in a relationship than when you’re single. Because now the chances of you returning to who you used to be before you embarked on your self-betterment journey are much greater.

Step 1: Accept That Your Relationship Has Expired

Your relationship has expired. It was not meant to last one day more or less. It has run its course. Not because of you or your partner, but for a different reason: your relationship hit its expiration date. You have to believe that.

Step 2: Cut the Cord

There’s no way around this one. You must unfriend, unfollow, and unsubscribe.

Respect the relationship and what you had by respecting the expiration.

Space is what heals. If you don’t get it, you won’t be moving through.

Step 3: Take Ownership

Step 4: Focus on You

Step 5: What Are Your New Non-Negotiables?

Step 6: Smash the Clock

Closure happens right after you accept that letting go and moving on is more important than projecting a fantasy of how the situation could have been. —SYLVESTER MCNUTT III

“Closure” requires nothing from the other person involved.

Maybe I hadn’t fully grieved the loss. And maybe she hadn’t either. I don’t know. Because there is no time line or finish line with closure.

Closure is not a door. It is a bridge. To a new and better “less shit-carrying more living in the present with more capacity to love” you.

But happy starts with a choice, like everything else. Then creating a space that produces the feeling of happy. To do that, we must hang our lives on three things: Meaning. Joy. Engagement.

Nothing wrong doesn’t always mean there’s nothing wrong.

You have to choose to engage, every single day.

Engagement means showing up in your truest form every day. Showing up for everything.

Engaging even when things are bad doesn’t mean allowing yourself to drown in it. It means experiencing all of life’s seasons.

When you believe you are worth something, the universe moves.

Worth is something you build.