Love yourself First: How you’re looking for love in all the wrong places

Being a solo traveller has a few connotations attached to it – be it the immediate assumption that you are in some way running away from your problems, choosing to be a nomadic gypsy, or the old and faithful “she’s just getting it out of her system”.

>>> 8 months later, I’ve still got the sense of adventure very much in my system.

But it certainly isn’t rare to find a solo traveller – female or male – who have chosen to pack their bags and hit the road after a break up. Why not? I couldn’t think of anything worse than to be stuck in the same place as my (now ex) seeing how quickly they’re moving on or how slowly neither one from the relationship is able to do so. It’s only natural to want to ‘get it out of our system’ and cleanse ourselves from old feelings, emotions and energy.

So we travel.

But something I learned after my first ‘post-break up trip’ was never to seek love (or lust) while still getting over a previous relationship. We naturally need time to heal and more importantly – to learn to love ourselves first.

After all, no one else can love you before you first learn to love yourself.

Why? Because until you love yourself – imperfections and all – you will not be your truest version of yourself and thus getting into a relationship pretending to be a certain version of yourself — which is a recipe for disaster.

So instead of looking outwards for love, look inwards. Ignore what’s going on around you – whether your friends are happily in a relationship and it seems you’re the only one who is still single… whether people ask the dreaded ‘why are you still single?’…and disregard your conscious telling you that you need to ‘find someone’. Because it shouldn’t be about finding someone, it should be about finding yourself, first. The rest comes a by-product of your own happiness and when it arrives, it will be worth the wait.

Real love is…

Everywhere. In the feelings you have toward a place you love visiting, in a type of food you love eating, in a film you love watching, in a moment, in a personal joke only you find funny… love is everywhere. Keep your eyes, mind, and heart open and you will find love – just not where you’re expecting to find it.

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