Before you YOLO, Perfect(ish) Your SOLO; Part 2 #selflove
So today is Valentine’s Day and I figured ‘what better time than now to share some of the things I’ve come to learn about that heavily sought after four-letter word’? The word that makes the world go ‘round. The word that all beings yearn for but many feel they cannot “find.” Again, not that four-letter word, that four letter word is pretty easy to nail down (pun intended) in our present day Swiping-Age (rolling my eyes).
I’m talkin’ bout L-O-V-E, luhhhv. Now, I’m not just drawing on my own experiences with love, because that wouldn’t tell the whole story. I’ve learnt a lot about love from my family and friends and their experiences and anecdotes, too. (Don’t worry friends, I won’t call you by your name and I’m only sharing because you’ve helped shape how I think and feel about love, and I’m hoping to help someone else out there come to revelations of their own.)
Lesson #1: You cannot truly love or be loved if you do not love yourself. #selflove
Self-love is a very real thing, and as cheesy and corny as it may sound, I believe that you can’t “find your person” or be able to enjoy a healthy romantic relationship if you don’t love yourself first.
Now, we all have our days where we just ain’t feelin’ ourselves. We feel like failures, we feel fat, we feel ugly, we feel inadequate, we feel like we are not where we should be in our careers, we feel inferior to others, we feel lost, we feel like “what in the actual fuck am I doing?!” That is supes normal, and I totes feel you.
But if at your core, you do not like yourself for whatever reason, you need to dive deeper into resolving that (therapy!) before you even think about “finding someone” else to love you. You can’t expect some tall, dark and dreamy drink of water (not sure how this phrase originated, but I really dig it) to ride in on a white horse and rescue you from loving yourself by loving you enough for the both of you.
That shit is not healthy. And while it may seem to work well for a bit, it likely won’t last long.
Self-love is ensuring that you’re taking care of yourself mentally. Self-love is treating your self with the kindness & compassion you show others. Self-love is lessening your negative self-talk while increasing positive affirmations.
* BTW Positive affirmations don’t have to be all hippy-dippy (unless you dig that sort of thing, I sometimes do):
Think less: “I am a beautiful being of this vast universe, I am intrinsically connected to all other beings on this planet and radiate light from within my soul; I am surrounded by abundance”
And more “I am generous & caring, I am smart & funny, I am a work in progress whose beauty shines through at every stage, I bring light to others’ lives and am surrounded by abundance”
Whatever it is that YOU need to hear, tell that to yourself, and OFTEN. All it takes is more awareness to change your negative thoughts and self-talk into positives. As soon as you catch yourself going down that rabbit hole of “I’m fat, I’m a failure, etc. etc.” STOP those words in their MF tracks, and replace them with positive ones “I am progressing towards my goals every day” and “I am exactly where I’m meant to be.”
And on those especially bad days when you want to murder people & positive thoughts just aint happening, show yourself some grace. Give yourself a break. Self-love is also allowing yourself to feel all of your emotions. It’s OK to feel sad and down and like everything sucks. For me, on those days, I show myself some extra love by going on a long drive, listening to my EMO-est crème-of-the-crop jams, and letting all my emotions wash over me.
Yea, I cry. I cry a lot. In those moments, I feel like the star of my own Romcom or Dramedy (which I am). And I just cry and cry and dramatically nod my head either in agreement of the lyrics “yes, omg exactly, yes” or shake it no like “yea effing douche, men suck!”
-> My sister has found this to be hilarious and weird my entire life (she prefers upbeat music) “OMG Koo, this music is so depressing, put something else on!”… but for me this weird thing I do is therapeutic AF. I like feeling all my emotions; I physically can’t hide from or mask my emotions. Also, being sad and letting it all out to songs with some deep ass lyrics is like having your own movie soundtrack. TRY IT.
When me and my high school boyfriend would be going through yet another one of our breakups, I’d blast songs like Hoobastank “The Reason” (which was our song) when I was missing him, or Sugarcult “Pretty Girl” when I was feeling wronged and wanted to murder him. but I digress…
Put in the (hard) work of mastering your self. Take time and use the resources available to you (be resourceful!) to become more aware of and understand your behaviors, thoughts and emotions (therapy, meditation, yoga, EMO playlists, etc.). Then you’ll be on your way to knowing what truly makes you happy (and sad), what challenges and motivates you to continue to grow and strive towards being your best self, and ultimately what you want.
WHAT do you WANT? WADDAHYU WANT!?
Lesson #2: Stop Looking for Romantic Love.
Love comes in SO MANY different shapes and forms. Instead of focusing all your precious time and energy on finding a romantic partner, open your eyes, BE in the present moment, and become more aware of the love you already have in your life.
Stop going on countless dates with dudes you “met” on Tinder LIKE IT’S YOUR JOB! Spending all of your free-time trying to find “the one” is draining, exhausting, and a distraction from the people in your life who already think you’re fucking fantastic and love you!
~Story time~
So about that 5-week Bumble-stint I mentioned earlier… on one occasion, I scheduled 2 dates back-to-back because #efficiency. Looking back at it, of course it’s funny and amusing and makes for a great story. But at the time, it was stressful AF and felt more like running off to hectic client meetings than “dates”.
(I air-quote dates because woooooould we call pounding rosé & IPA without so much as an offer or mention of food a date?)
I actually enjoyed my happy hour (HH) date more than I expected … which is ironic considering the second time I saw HH dude was the HORRIBLE date I briefly touched on in a prior post, and may tell you about later…
Anyways, the HH date made me an hour-and-a-half late to the second date, oops, but luckily the second-date-dude was sweet enough (or bored enough?) to wait for me, and we actually had a really good time (I think? From what I remember… I don’t remember much TBH…) We dated for a hot second, I liked him, but it didn’t work out (schocker!).
Maybe I should’ve taken my car getting towed the next morning as a sign…
Moral of the story? Even just doing the serial-dating thing for a few weeks exhausted me and made me realize that I didn’t want to spend my time “looking for love.”
(I cannot say that phrase without picturing one of the 20-somethings on The Bachelor in the interview room with a one-liner like ‘Virgin Taxidermist’ or ‘Scared of Pillows’ getting choked up about how she thinks she might be able to potentially see herself possibly falling in love with the man she’s now known for 12 whole days!… BID)
I’d rather spend my time with people who already appreciate me, and I them, than spend another minute small-talking and pity-laughing at some dude’s lame- and sometimes sexist and/or racist- jokes.
Instead, how about focusing on nurturing the relationships you have with the people you care about most?
Or focus on cultivating new friendships.
Try to meet new people by doing new things (or old things!) that bring you JOY.
The rest will fall into place.
Go to the gym, take a zumba class, have a glass of wine (or 3 bottles, one block of cheese, a package of hummus, a box of clubhouse crackers, 10 pieces of Dove dark chocolate promises, two hookahs…you know who you are) with your BFF, cook a dank meal with your mom, listen to old school Persian tunes with your baba, take a candlelit-lavender-bath and listen to love songs because YOU CAN EFFING LOVE YOUR SELF!
Ya feel me?
*Lesson #3: Find deep, meaningful connections within your non-romantic relationships.
This is probably the most impactful lesson I’ve learnt so far; at the very least, it’s the one I’ve been reflecting and working on the most in recent months. I started thinking a lot about this concept because of my own desire for meaningful human-connection (for the love of GOD PUT YOUR PHONE DOWN) and after hearing friends of mine, and strangers, complain about just wanting to connect with someone on a deeper level.
I think people just want someone who can be their mirror, someone who seeks out the uniqueness and authenticity of who they are and who they have the potential of becoming; someone to highlight their strengths and gently point out their weaknesses, in order to help them get closer to their potential. Somebody who thinks they’re beautiful, in every way. We all just want somebody who will celebrate our wins and help us cope with our losses.
Somebody who just gets us, and loves us PERIOD.
Someone who appreciates and loves our quirks, extreme weirdness and dad jokes, who thinks we’re hilarious (no? just me?). Someone who wants to make our life a little easier, better, brighter, happier… am I getting warmer?
But then I thought, maybe we already have people in our lives who do satisfy all of these things; maybe the problem lies in the fact that everyone is searching for THE ONE person who will satisfy all of these things… but perhaps that isn’t how it works (there are exceptions to this rule, I’m sure).
So why not work on improving our relationships with all those people who check some of these boxes for us, instead of searching for ONE human who checks them all? Maybe we need to stop looking for everything in ONE PERSON and open our minds to the multiple sources of deep connection and love we already have around us.
JUST (the) TIPS:
Start loving yourself instead of trying to find “the one” who will love you enough for the both of you.
Work on understanding and mastering your self-talk and thoughts.
Stop expending so much time and energy on finding “the one” and instead, use that time & energy on the people and things that bring you joy, the rest will fall into place.
And lastly, but not leastly, look to the people already in your life for the deep and meaningful human connections you seek; maybe you will one day find your lobster and they’ll check all the boxes… but in the mean time, be resourceful and LOOK WITHIN to check those boxes by your damn self!
~No one is you. And that is your superpower~