1. Own up to your personal shortcomings and deficiencies.
You can’t possibly find success in love if you refuse to acknowledge your own imperfections. A lot of us will make he mistake of being too arrogant to think that we are above self-improvement. There is always room for self-improvement. There is always room for growth and learning. And if you think that you are too perfect as you already are, then there is something inherently wrong with your approach to love already. Love has a way of humbling people. And if you can’t be humble, then you are never going to be able to reconcile your ego with love. In love, there is very little room for ego. And you need to make that choice for yourself early on. Do you love yourself more than you love the act of falling in love with someone else? The answer is up to you.
2. Let go of any emotional baggage from past failed relationships.
You can’t expect to find success in future relationships if you are still too hung over previous relationships. That is just too much emotional baggage for a single person to bear. When you are in a relationship, it’s always going to be a kind of emotional whirlwind. You don’t always have full control of the situation and you are never going to be able to tell just how you’re going to react to certain things. And that’s why it’s important to have a strong emotional core; a foundation on which you can fall back on whenever things start to get a little overwhelming. But if your emotional foundation is already compromised by emotional baggage from previous relationships, then it puts your current relationship in jeopardy. And you don’t want that.
3. Learn to explore beyond what you already know and are familiar with.
Sometimes, you can get a little too comfortable in your comfort zone that you end up depriving yourself of living a life that you are supposed to be living – a holistic one. You have to remember that love can come from absolutely anywhere. And if you limit yourself to looking for it in the places where you are comfortable, then you are also limiting your chances as well. You need to open yourself up to finding love in places where you would never expect to find it.
4. Allow yourself to get vulnerable with someone.
You are never going to be able to let someone into your life if you don’t allow yourself to be vulnerable. To a certain extent, love is always going to require a sense of vulnerability from you. Love is a risk. It’s a chance that you’re going to have to be willing to take. And if you can’t take that chance, then you’re never going to be able to find love for yourself at all. Yes, it might be scary. But that comes with the territory of love. It’s never a sure thing, and that’s why the payoff is always going to feel so much better once you find a way to make things work.
5. Really take some time to figure out what you want out of love and life.
You can’t ever find happiness or meaning in love and life if you don’t know what you want. At the end of the day, it all boils down to you. You have to know yourself enough to know just what it is you’re looking for. Otherwise, you are never going to find contentment and happiness in your love life.
6. Focus on the parts of yourself that are really worth loving.
You have to be able to really learn to love yourself before you can convince other people to fall in love with you as well. This is different from the first entry on this list. While the first entry was focused on humbling yourself, this entry is focused on propping yourself up. No, you can’t see yourself as a perfect being who is beyond growth and development. But you can’t be seeing yourself as a worthless pile of filth either. You need to be projecting the best parts of your personality; and you need to be owning up to them. Once you learn to fall in love with the parts of your life that are worth falling in love with, you are also unconsciously giving other people the permission to do the same.
7. Be willing to compromise.
Coexistence is really all about compromise. You are a very special and unique individual. You come equipped with a very specific set of skills, ideologies, and feelings. So naturally, whenever you encounter someone else, there is a risk of clashing with that person. But when you are gifted with the ability to compromise, the clashes don’t always have to be so bad. Conflicts in themselves aren’t inherently destructive; it’s really all about how you manage and handle the conflict as two separate individuals. And if you never teach yourself the value of compromise, you are never going to find success in your relationships.
