Read This If You Just Need To Remember To Love Yourself

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For some reason, the girl who isn’t in a relationship and genuinely enjoys that aspect of herself is the one most sought after for advice. Maybe it’s because of her extensive experience dealing with men that have taught her a lot about herself and how to be great without a man’s validation and the knowledge of all that women are empowered to become.

That girl is me.

I have a list of friends that come to me crying when they feel rejected, feel so incredibly low and are looking for something, anything, to bring them out of it. They wonder how I manage to be happy and keep my sh*t together; they need help on how to be okay without a guy and dear God I can’t stress enough how important it is to in fact be okay.

When we stop constantly worrying about another individual, the gates are wide open to worry about the one person that really matters: ourselves. We are able to make ourselves our number one priority.

Life has a funny way of giving us the people we need, the people that will teach us something one way or another and this is something to be aware of and so grateful for.

If it doesn’t work out with this lover, then that is perfectly fine and normal. I think a lot of women take rejection so personally, which makes perfect sense in the moment.

Why doesn’t he want to be with me? Why doesn’t he like me? Why does he only want to hook up then leaves and ends up dating someone else?

These are all viable questions that are perfectly acceptable to wonder after a confusing and shocking experience with someone that may not have ended the best.

The thing is those questions need to be directed in a different direction rather than basing them solely on one experience with one person and letting that define the way we perceive ourselves and relationships all together. We have a habit of giving others and their actions way too much credit that results in unhealthy behaviors.

Not everyone is on the same timeline as us, has the same goals, or motives; not everything is going to be peachy all the time, not everyone we like is going to like us back. To accept this is one of the most rewarding things we can give ourselves.

Think about the people we idolize, say famous individuals who have done a lot and we like them for who they are and what they represent, but I know there’s certain people I idolize that wouldn’t necessarily like me. Our personalities wouldn’t match and I’m okay with that. Liking someone has nothing to do with whether they like us back, or at least it shouldn’t. If they do, then awesome, and we can go experience something we were meant to experience, but we shouldn’t beat ourselves up over someone not liking us. It’s okay to say “hey I like you and if you don’t like me then that’s cool”.

Rejection is miserable and it can easily lower our self-esteem and cause us to blame ourselves for all of it, wondering what is wrong with us. But what I have noticed is how easy it is to exhibit some narcissistic traits with rejection, such as “oh everyone should like me, why doesn’t he, I like him so he should too”, but that is not always the case and is a mindset that inhibits us from growing or utilizing the experience to its full potential.

Life is about growth and we grow through our experiences. Every experience we have, whether good or bad we should analyze from a very direct and vulnerable place.

If it is a bad, heartbreaking experience, then we need to accept what has happened, grieve if we must. Then, take that experience and learn from it. What did it teach us about ourselves, about our standards, preferences, actions, the type of person we want to be with, the type of person we want to be? These are sometimes hard to answer, but are the most worthwhile when we can finally be honest with ourselves.

And sometimes, almost always and eventually, these bad experiences end up showing us how strong we truly are.

It is all in good time that the answers finally come to us. I used to despise my friends that say everything happens for a reason, but that saying holds a lot of truth. Everything happens to teach us something in order for us to become the best, most authentic version of ourselves – to love ourselves and accept that we may need some changing and growing up to do as well. We should embrace this and be grateful we are given eye opening experiences to further ourselves on our journey to our best selves.

If we don’t, then life tends to hand us the same situation to try and teach us once again.

We can’t move on until we allow these experiences to move through us, taking the lesson intended.

A lot of the time, it takes some serious damage and heartbreak to bring us to an incredibly low place where we finally have our moment and realize we don’t want to act a certain way or ever feel so terrible again.

Reflect on the past heartbreaks and it is clear what it has given us now that our emotions aren’t controlling us.

There are so many great men in the world and I hate to see one kill so many spirits, but just know that it happens for a reason – it happens to show us a trait or standard we may have been throwing to the wind when we should have been upholding all that we stand for. It is so incredibly easy to let others manipulate our thoughts or even let our thoughts manipulate us. This fear of loss and rejection is inevitable, but to be brave and accepting of life’s hardships will actually make life run a lot smoother and contribute to a more fulfilling experience.

It is all about being confident in whom we are and what we represent and the right guy will come along. Have some patience and focus on what we could do differently, how we are affecting others and how others affect us. Someone out there will sweep us off our feet and everything happening right now will eventually make sense. There is no need to cling to the past and constantly wonder why things didn’t work out, just let it be.

We learn from experience and to practice self-awareness is the best quality to master – it takes a lot of humility but the benefits it brings is almost unexplainable.