The Key To A Great Love Life

Learning the art of self-love, or taking better care of yourself, can improve your relationship

- Anna Christensen

What’s stopping you from having the love life you want? It may be your own low self-esteem that’s dragging your relationship down – maybe you’ve been through a tough time, and are finding it hard to love yourself, much less someone else.

“Self-love provides awareness to appreciate oneself and be grateful for who you are, which helps inner growth and intrinsic fulfillments which then support the holistic self,” says psychologist Daniel Koh of Insights Mind Centre.

“With self-love, you will accept yourself as a whole, and have a balance between the positive and negative. This will lead to you being less judgemental and self-critical, and more forgiving towards oneself.”

In his book Being You, Changing The World, self-help guru Dr Dain Heer explains that a shift in mindset can create a happier, emotional life – and that a good relationship will follow.

“Everybody is rushing to get into relationships as if it’s going to be the saviour of their problems. It seldom is, because if you’re looking for a solution to your problems outside of yourself, you just won’t find it.

“If you feel like you’re never going to be happy and you’re going to die if you don’t get something, it repels people. Do you want to be around someone like that? Probably not. It’s pretty simple.”

If you’re having difficulty accepting yourself, here are some ways you can practise self-love.

Figure Out What You Need

Something you could try is to write down: ‘What is one thing I need from a relationship that I’m not willing to give myself?’, suggests Dr Heer.