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

by John Kim

Feeding your soul may mean finally quitting that nine-to-five that’s been draining your life for the last ten years and starting a new career, one you’re actually passionate about.

Feeding your soul is the action part of building a better relationship with yourself. Giving yourself what you need. Because that’s where your truth lives. In your soul. Not in your mind.

You connect to yourself by having a better relationship with your soul.

We’re not meant to do life alone.

Friends are crucial to our growth, journey, and happiness. If you form honest connections with friends, they will help you connect to yourself as well as build your confidence.

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.

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

Pick a passion or interest. Then engage with a community engaged in it.

Get. The. Fuck. Out. There. Engage with the world.

Stop being so picky about what you like to do and don’t like to do.

Sometimes the best times happen when we lea...

Doing things that may be uncomfortable is a form of conne...

not everyone’s love journey is the same.

You don’t have to be in a new love experience to give yourself a new love experience. You can make the one you’re in now a new love experience.

Clearing out your relationship residue can bring self-awareness you never had before.

Relationships take a shit ton of work, and no relationship is flawless.

But we still buy into the illusion and believe that we are less than because our lives don’t look like the images that surround us.

With no tools or knowledge of what a healthy relationship actually looks like, we love strictly with what we feel and what we’re used to.

Love then becomes a knee-jerk response to the other person stemming from our wounds, a way to fill holes in ourselves.

didn’t know that relationships meant constantly looking inward, expressing your truth, and holding a safe space for your partner.

Taking ownership and creating a space is what it means to love. Looking inward without defensiveness is what it means to love.

Because you can’t build anything healthy and sustainable with someone else until you’ve let go of the old.

Acceptance is the beginning of any healing. When we don’t accept something, it continues to grow, like a virus. We may be able to bury it for a while by distracting ourselves, but it will eventually come back.

Acceptance allows you to start moving through, past what happened, so you’re finally able to let go and be present in what you’re in now.

But the truth is, even more self-work is needed when you’re in a relationship than when you’re single.

However, there is a difference between compromise and compromise of self.

When you stop working on yourself, you start drifting. First, with yourself. You start compromising your sense of self.

The what-ifs keep us holding on, feeling like shit.

We drown in our emotions, questioning whether we made the right decision or could have done more. All these thoughts keep us stuck.

Space is what heals.

The way you avoid history repeating itself is by taking ownership. That’s how you get your power back.

That’s how you connect back to yourself.

Taking ownership makes you accept the breakup, learn from it, and form a desire to be better.

You’re moving on, but you’re not moving through.

The soil for growth is so rich when you’re single. But only if you are focusing on you. Not on finding someone else.

Instead of thinking about going on sad dates with yourself, think about things that you’ve always wanted to do but didn’t because you didn’t have the time or the money, or you were afraid. Like traveling, picking up new hobbies, taking that Bollywood dance class you’ve had an eye on for so long. If saying yes to new experiences means “dating” yourself, then you should be dating yourself even when you are in a relationship.

As you do this work, you also practice self-compassion and forgiveness. Accept your story, let go of what you need to let go of, and start leaning into your evolution.

Because it’s never about the sex. It’s about giving yourself new experiences so you can discover what you want and don’t want, what works for you and what doesn’t, what you like and don’t like.

And you can’t get to your truth unless you are always searching, exploring, and discovering. That’s what building a relationship with yourself looks like.

Communication isn’t just about feelings.

What’s stirring inside you? What are you curious about? How do you want to be loved, explored, desired? How do you want to be touched that’s different and new? Do you want to bring toys into the bedroom? Act out a fantasy? It’s not about fucking somebody. It’s about rediscovering yourself through new experiences that change your definitions.

New experiences will bring the two of you closer together and make it less tempting to look over the ...

Sexy runs deeper than what your body looks like. Sexy is a mindset, an attitude, a journey that requires you to know, love, and accept yourself as you push and build yourself.

the connection to myself—the comfort with self through movement—that made me feel sexier.

building a relationship with your body based on substance, not the superficial. Substance is where sexy is born. If you’re just going through the motions or moving for someone else, the relationship you build with your body will be superficial and most likely short-lived.

Any movement that produces dopamine but also requires discipline. Any movement that becomes a part of your daily life because you love doing it so much.

started liking myself only when I started listening to myself, treating myself better, and practicing self-compassion, self-care, and self-discipline, all of which shaped my character. It wasn’t until I finally allowed myself to know me that I started to like me. But

Because if you don’t like yourself, it’s impossible to feel sexy.

Maybe for you acceptance of your sexuality means abstaining for now. Not having sex for a while. Maybe sex has become the barrier to intimacy. Yes, you read that right. Maybe you’re fucking your feelings.

Feeling sexy is not extra or optional, not just something that happens when we fit into a tight dress or get a compliment from a stranger. Sexy is a basic human need. Like food, water, and sleep. And the only person who can fulfill that need is you. You must feed your sexual need daily or you will feel incomplete. Invisible. Not