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

by John Kim

it’s imperative to take advantage of the time you’re unattached. Instead of searching for someone to be with, you must explore you. Your patterns. Your definitions. How you love and why. Your dreams. The dent you want to make in this world. You must explore your relationship with self. You must be with yourself first.

The truth is, you don’t have to be in a relationship to be happy. Sure, a relationship can bring you lots of joy. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be in a relationship—we’re all human. But a relationship is not required for you to be happy. It’s not the only way to find joy in your life. Your happiness isn’t contingent on loving someone else. That’s something that’s been programmed into you by movies, advertising, social norms, social media, and old blueprints.

A thriving relationship is one in which two whole people come together and do life with each other, not at or around each other.

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. We know what conditioner works the best on our hair. We know what foods we need to stay away from. We know how to take care of other people. But we don’t know how to feed our soul. We don’t know how to draw boundaries with Sharpie instead of chalk. We don’t know how to recharge. We don’t know how to dissolve our cognitive distortions. We don’t know how to unshackle who we are from what we do. We don’t know how to truly love ourselves. Not in a “checking off a list” way from reading self-help books, but in a deeply honest and sustainable way that changes us from the inside out.

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.

Just because I wanted to help others didn’t mean I had helped myself.

Self-care is a lifestyle. Not a checklist or a T-shirt.

We don’t take care of our bodies because we have a poor relationship with them. We don’t value our bodies for the miraculous machines they are. Instead, we push them away, reject them, detach ourselves from them. Or on the other extreme, we see our body only in relation to our sex appeal. We measure our worth by the shape of our back, butt, and legs.

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.

The thing about growth is that it isn’t a constant. Just because you’ve done work on yourself doesn’t mean you’re done or won’t snap back into old ways. We are like rubber bands. Working on yourself is a never-ending process, not a onetime thing.

But here’s the thing. When you stop working on yourself, you start drifting.

Closure is achieved “when we are satisfied that the puzzle has been assembled to our satisfaction, that the answers have been reached and it is, therefore, possible

But here’s the thing. When you pull the curtain back and start playing back the documentary instead of the highlight reel, the “angel” turns into a demon pretty quickly. That “lightning” is followed by the thunder of dysfunction. Those feelings may be powerful and real, but are they healthy? Of course not. Young love rarely is. Sure, the attraction is real. But it’s also produced by your wiring, by childhood trauma, by commercials. Young love is new love, and any new experience will be the most powerful a young person has ever had.

I could now try to love without my past. I could stop comparing. Stop tracing. And when I started being present instead, I discovered a new soul and a brand-new love experience.

as I started to connect more to myself, discovering a sense of self and worth, my definition of beauty changed. It went from two-dimensional to four-dimensional. When I went from seeing beauty in a cardboard cutout to recognizing it in a real person, I was able to feel beauty instead of just seeing it.

beauty is no longer skin-deep. Beauty is about soul and capacity.

It starts with kindness. Without kindness, it’s all just makeup to me. Beauty is about not being judgmental, about depth, about awareness of self and your effect on others through your words and actions. It’s about thoughtfulness, support, communication, banter, eye contact. Beauty lies in having your own life. In love and appreciation for your body, in having an open mind, in being open to different perspectives and opinions, in trying to understand before trying to be understood. Beauty is being gentle but strong, careful with your words, and able to forgive right away instead of holding on to resentment. Beauty is honest and consistent communication. Beauty is not complaining, not seeing yourself as a victim, not making everything about you. Beauty is lining up your actions with your words, practicing gratitude and compassion, believing in things...

Beauty is vulnerability, commitment, consistency, communication, standing in your truth. Beauty is responding instead of reacting. Beauty is leaning into and growing through life’s turbulence. Beauty is being ...

Just because it feels familiar doesn’t mean it’s love. Love is not about the old. Love is about the new. And love takes time. It requires a peeling of the layers. Love becomes a process. It starts with a daily choice. Then action to back up that choice. Some days love is easy. Some days it’s hard.

Attraction is a flash in the pan. Love will be around long after those flames burn out.

Love is found in moments. The moment when you realize you were heard. Maybe for the first time. The moment you realize he’s not trying to change you.

It doesn’t matter which door you enter. You can create new definitions so you can give yourself new experiences. Or you can give yourself new experiences so you can create new definitions. Either way, what’s important is that you break old patterns.

It’s old patterns that keep us locked. New experiences and definitions break that lock by creating new thoughts and behaviors, leading you to different choices and ultimately a different relationship with yourself. A better relationship. One that’s stronger and more authentic and closer to your truth and who you want to be. This is how you shed old definitions and old patterns. This is how you evolve. This is how you bring more to the table when you do find someone who deserves you.

Many of us forget that a rich colorful life doesn’t just happen. We have to engage in it for color to appear, and it requires effort and intention. We can’t just live on the sidelines and expect life to be bright.

It’s time machines that cripple us the most when we are single. We live in them. More than when we are in a relationship, we dwell on our past and obsess about our future. Because when we love someone, we don’t think about ourselves.

But when we’re single, we’re left alone with ourselves. This can be an uncomfortable place we don’t like sitting in, one we’re not used to. So we search for someone else so we can be part of something else.

Allow yourself to feel your feelings, but know that they are just that—feelings. Not facts or truth. Feelings will flow through you. And then they will pass.