We all dream of the day that we meet our true love. Whether it’s off of a dating app or through a chance meeting at a favorite coffee spot, falling in love with our soulmate is something that all of us hope to achieve sooner rather than later.
But sometimes, it feels that it will never happen. If you’re wondering why you never seem to find the right partner, the answer is closer than you think.
Finding True Love
The #1 reason you can’t find true love is that you don’t yet love yourself.
While self-love can look differently for many people, it is something that so many of us are missing, perhaps because we have never been taught how to love ourselves.
If you’ve yet to find the greatest love of all, we’ve got the answers for you.
Though self-love is a journey, regardless of where you are in yours, we can all make steps to fall more in love with ourselves. Keep reading to learn how to find true love within yourself.
1. Recognize Your Accomplishments
Life passes us by so quickly that we spend most of our lives planning and worrying about the future and doing all that we can to ensure our goals are met. However, this type of mindset leaves little room for celebrating ourselves and our accomplishments.
A key part of transforming your mindset to one of self-love is learning to take pride in your accomplishments. Regardless of how productive you are or how much you got done this week, take notice of what you’ve already done.
By making a list of everything you’ve accomplished, you’ll be able to remind yourself of all your achievements and you’ll see just how capable you are and how valuable your energy is.
2. Be Kind to Yourself
We all have a voice inside our heads as we go throughout the day. This is the voice of our self-talk and will vary depending on how we feel about ourselves.
While it may not seem like it at first, the way you think about yourself can seriously change your life. For example, if you constantly think “I’m so dumb” or “I’m so stupid” after making a mistake, this sort of negative self-talk will eventually erode at your self esteem.
These thoughts will spill over to your life and will seriously prevent you from experiencing the level of self love that you deserve.
3. Change What You Can
Is something standing in the way of you liking yourself? While you should love yourself as you are no matter what, if there is something you don’t like that you have control over, you can change it.
This advice isn’t necessarily about physical attributes–it can refer to how you think and act.
Are you overly critical of yourself? Are you incredibly anxious? If this is the kind of behavior you’ve witnessed in yourself, you have the power to change this.
Start by monitoring the way you think and how you respond to certain things. Once your mind starts wandering in that direction, stop yourself. While this retraining will take time, you’ll find that you will feel entirely different about yourself through the process.
4. Learn to Trust Yourself
We often value trust so much in our relationships with others but we fail to think about it in relation to ourselves.
While you may not think about the fact that you’ve been distrustful to yourself, it happens more often than you realize. Whenever you tell yourself you’ll do something but end up going back on your word, this is an example of you giving up on yourself.
Grow in your self-love by boosting your self-trust through the following methods:
- Remind yourself of moments when you’ve kept your word to yourself. These memories will show you that you are reliable and can handle anything you put your mind to.
- Keep the promises you make to yourself. After setting a goal, do everything in your power to follow through with it.
- Trust your judgement. While it’s perfectly fine to ask others for help, ultimately, you get the final say when it comes to your choices. Whether your decision follows the advice of others or not, you get the final say.
- Accept your flaws and learn to love everything about yourself. None of us are perfect, so learn to love yourself–flaws and all.
5. Date Yourself
Since romantic love is so celebrated by our society, many of us believe that we can only go on dates with a romantic partner. However, this isn’t true at all.
Do you have a favorite restaurant that you love to go to? Is there a certain movie that you’ve been dying to see? Take yourself out on a date and spend time enjoying your own company.
If you can’t spend time alone with yourself, you’ll never know just how enjoyable your own company is. How can you expect your true love to?
6. Create a Vision Board
A major component of loving ourselves is knowing that we are living our best lives. Make sure you are reaching for your dream life by keeping your future goals at the forefront of your mind by making a habit of creating vision boards.
Whether you create a vision board in person or on Pinterest, this activity will allow you see that your biggest dreams are all achievable.
Regardless of how big or small your goals are, you have what it takes to see them through. Keep reminding yourself of this truth by regularly updating your vision board.
7. Invest in Yourself
Part of learning to love yourself involves fostering your desire to keep learning and growing in life.
As long as you’re breathing, you’re never too old to learn something new. If you’re working to fall more in love with yourself, don’t ever stop growing.
Invest in yourself by taking a class, getting a certification, renting a few books, or spending time learning from a mentor. This practice of constant exploration will show you that you are truly limitless in your abilities.
8. Learn to Love the Silence
In the hustle and bustle of our daily activities, it is often difficult to carve out time for total silence. Though most of us underestimate the power of silence, having the opportunity to take just a few minutes each day to sit quietly and alone is invaluable to self-love.
Use this time of solitude to completely declutter your mind and separate yourself from all the stress you have in life. This act of self-care will do wonders for your self-love.
The process of sitting quietly and focusing on clearing your mind will renew your energy and restore balance to your thoughts and emotions.
9. Stop Looking for Love
Are you a serial dater? Are you so determined to find the perfect partner that you are always looking to find true love wherever you go?
Whether you’re constantly swiping through Tinder or you’re spending all your free time going on as many blind dates as possible, this isn’t the best way to find true love.
Though it is quite a cliche to say, “love will find you when you stop looking for it”, it’s true.
When you focus so intensely on trying to find the love of your life, you put all your time and energy into ensuring you identify and attract the right person. Once you meet someone, you may end up rushing into things, simply because you’re trying to make your true love happen overnight.
While dating is fun, there is something to be said about taking things slowly and letting life simply happen as it wants to. Instead of actively searching for your soulmate, it’s time to look inside and see that you are your own true love.
10. Handle Your Past Pain
Emotional baggage is certainly something that can prevent you from moving forward.
It is impossible to truly fall in love with yourself if you’re still being weighed down by all of your past pain. Start the healing process by identifying the hurt that you feel and understanding what issues they stem from.
Once you learn where your pain is coming from, it’s time to go through the forgiveness process. While this isn’t easy, it’s incredibly important as you work on loving yourself a little more each day.
As you continue to work on your baggage from the past, you’ll find that you’re able to free your mind and your heart, which brings you one step closer to being emotionally and mentally prepared to find true love.
Final Thoughts on Finding True Love
No one can tell you exactly how or when you’ll meet your true love, but we can tell you where to find the greatest love of all. Look within to find the first person you must fall in love with before you meet your soulmate.
Learning to love yourself is a process that takes time. Enjoy this journey of self-love and keep these 10 tips in mind. True love will find you, but make sure you love yourself enough for the both of you.