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

by John Kim

Radical acceptance is the practice of accepting life on life’s terms and not resisting what you cannot change. Radical acceptance is about saying yes to life, just as it is.

Instead of meeting someone who will save you from your situation, you will meet someone who can share your current joys.

But things don’t just break people out of nowhere. 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.

We are not born just to do things. Or just to love other people. Our potency and our path forward are first found in our connection with ourselves. And it’s through this connection, this evolving, growing, expanding relationship with ourselves, that we honestly, genuinely, and meaningfully do things and love people.

It turns out that God did talk to me. Just not through words. God talked to me through the events and people who appeared in my life.

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.

My life was about rebuilding now. It revolved around structure, daily routines, and getting shit done.

Self-care is hard. It’s weird. You feel selfish and guilty doing it. You’re not used to it. You’ve been programmed to take care of others and not yourself. And it’s not like you’ll wake up one day and suddenly love yourself after you decide to start practicing self-care. Yes, it starts with a decision, but it takes thousands of little actions, moments of tending to your needs, realizing that you matter and that it’s your responsibility to take care of yourself if you want to be a better father, brother, husband, wife, teacher, artist, athlete, writer, or CEO. Self-care is a lifestyle. Not a checklist or a T-shirt.

Self-care is where a better you is born. It’s your own soil for growth.

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.

Self-care could mean telling yourself you matter. Acknowledging how far you’ve come and who you are today because of it.

Any relationship—including the one you have with yourself—is a process of discovery. Your relationship with yourself is a daily practice, and as in every relationship, some days are going to be easy and some days are going to feel impossible.

Let’s break down the relationship you have with yourself into three simple categories: your body, your mind, and your soul. To have a better relationship with yourself, start by feeding and connecting to these three areas.

Just Googling shit on the internet isn’t as powerful as reading or listening to books. Books are more than information. They have stories, voice, and perspective. They are personal and will leave a much greater imprint than Google ever will. I’ve learned more from audiobooks than from all my traditional school education combined. They’ve really changed my life. Now I feed my brain by “reading” constantly.

Our past relationships define us. They lay the tracks. They print the blueprints we follow. But most important, they either connect us to ourselves or disconnect us from ourselves. Simply put, healthy relationships encourage us to connect with ourselves. Unhealthy relationships prevent us from connecting with ourselves.

That’s because drama, jealousy, control, and chasing get intense and it’s easy to mistake intensity for love.