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

by John Kim

work on areas of my life other than love.

forced to look at myself, by myself, without the buffer of another person.

But I had to tell myself I was choosing it.

because they had no one to kiss in the morning and do nothing with on a Friday night, they saw themselves as failures.

They internalized the idea of not having a partner as being defective.

a relationship is not required for you to be happy.

feels hopeless, lonely, or frustrated and doesn’t know what to do about it.

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

having a healthy relationship with yourself first.

Humans don’t come with an owner’s manual, so we never learn how to truly take care of, connect to, and build a healthy relationship with ourselves.

this book isn’t about finding someone else. It’s about finding you.

I’ll tell you why you feel lonely. Because what you get from an intimate partner is something you can’t get from anyone else.

Loneliness is the struggle that needs to be overcome.

desperation will only poison whatever relationship you do find yourself in.

it’s the deep belief that you will always be alone.

Go out and live. Stop waiting, hoping, and being afraid.

you must be okay with the possibility of never finding your one.

They found freedom and comfort in their own self and realized that, yes, you can want a partner, but life doesn’t have to stop because you don’t have one.

Love and relationships are only one part of your life, not your entire life.

When you actually build your own life, a life that is honest to you and stands on its own, the fear of being alone starts to fade.

And because we finally feel seen, we believe we have found ourselves. But what actually has happened is that we have begun losing ourselves in someone else.

We make sacrifices because we believe that’s what being an adult looks like. We put our own needs and wants aside for others.

So we numb with food, drugs, meaningless sex.

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

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

you don’t allow yourself to be happy until you get what you want.

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

Reconnecting with your spirit can be anything that brings you back to yourself, that makes you feel alive and human. That allows the essence of you to shine.

reunion can also happen just by channeling the feeling of who you used to be and allowing that feeling to ripple through you, without having to know what that looks like. That feeling about yourself before all the realities of life got in the way.

Loving yourself can be a box you check. Liking yourself requires a journey.

reconnecting with yourself is not about repeating an activity. It’s about finding something that produces that same feeling so you can reconnect with your spirit.

Understand that self-care is different from self-love.

If you’re nowhere near a place of love for yourself, self-care can be a conduit to self-love.

think of it as connecting to yourself or disconnecting from yourself. If you start building a better relationship with yourself by giving yourself what you need and treating yourself better, in your actions, words, thoughts, and intentional practice of self-care, you are connecting to yourself.

How is your relationship with yourself these days? Forget about loving yourself. Do you even like yourself? If not, why? What happened? Is there something you need to let go of or accept? Do you need to forgive yourself for something? Do you need to cut the bond keeping what you do tied up with what you’re worth? Are you answering

honestly?

self-care is not just a coping method. It’s a way of connecting.

Practicing self-compassion and forgiveness, which, by the way, is a daily choice. Being easier on yourself. Giving yourself space to be human. Self-care is building a better relationship with yourself by listening to yourself and giving yourself what you need and deserve.

How you talk to yourself is actually more important than how you treat yourself. Because how you talk to yourself will determine how you treat yourself. Words turn into actions more easily than actions turn into words.

All those ways in which you’re not supporting and speaking to yourself are the ways you should support and speak to the people you love. That’s what you need to work on.

healthy relationship with your body will give you balance and permission to be yourself.

Living in your head and leading with logic prevents you from being present.

The here and now is where life is lived, and the way to get there is through your body, not your mind.

To reconnect with your body, you have to reset your default from thinking to being...

Your body is a radar system that guides you on your journey.

You establish a healthier relationship with your body by accepting it, dropping into it, and moving with it. Not once, but as a lifestyle.

Step 1 is to become aware of this. Notice your thoughts. Don’t judge them. Just practice noticing them. Also, notice the feeling in your body when you have those thoughts.

After you do these three steps—becoming aware of your thoughts, questioning your thoughts, and finding the patterns in your thoughts—you’ll be able to pull back and see what’s going on. You’ll no longer believe that bad things happen because you’re unlucky or defective. You’ll understand that this thought is distorted and a reaction to false beliefs about yourself. Once you see the process, you can choose to fix it by stopping it. When you notice your distorted thinking or false beliefs or fear, instead of reacting, you can evaluate.

As I mentioned earlier, transformation takes a daily practice. The goal is to get to a place where you start to notice a difference. And you have to believe that your new practice will work or you won’t do it.

You connect to yourself by treating your mind better. Thread books, audio or print, into your daily life. Books make you better. I promise.