If You Can Do These 9 Simple Things For Yourself, You're More Of A Grown-Up Than 95% Of People
Austin Loveing | Unsplash In order to have a healthy relationship with another person, you must be a grown-up yourself. If you don't show yourself self-love, how can you expect to show someone else love? By taking care of ourselves, we will also be improving our relationships with others and making them healthier. Loving yourself and being comfortable with who you are is crucial to maintaining productive connections with people in other parts of your life.
It's super important that we never forget to take care of and be there for ourselves, even when we're in serious relationships. We can never lose sight of our own wants, needs, and dreams. So, how can we go about doing this? What can we do to ensure we're taking proper care of ourselves and practicing self-love in a mature, adult way?
If you can do these 9 simple things for yourself, you're more of a grown-up than most people:
1. Be there for yourself
You know how much you love yourself when you’re there for yourself. No matter what. You support your dreams, stay focused on your priorities, and you also forgive yourself for making a wrong decision. After all, life is but a lesson. If your other half doesn’t believe in your dreams (and you want to stay with them despite this), then it doesn’t throw you off the track.
You know that life is short and that you’re on a mission to become the best version of yourself. Thus, no one can stop you. You give yourself all the support and time you possibly need to pursue your dreams.
2. Stay balanced
Finding inner balance is one of the most liberating things in life. It comes with age or a healthy detachment from life situations. Staying balanced means that you don’t start drifting in your life based on what your partner wants. You can be in the middle of an argument, yet you recognize that it’s just a temporary situation and that you both might have blinders on. You stay calm and don’t let the quarrel settle in your heart.
3. Stay open-minded and flexible
ArtHouse Studio / Pexels
When you love yourself, you’re always on a track of self-development and inner growth. Sometimes this means leaving someone who is continually hurting you, or you outgrow them. You know that you don’t need to stay in a relationship out of obligation or fear.
Psychological flexibility research shows that being able to adapt your thinking and behaviors when a relationship stops working for you leads to better mental health overall. When people can recognize that a situation is harmful and shift their approach instead of staying stagnant, they experience fewer symptoms of depression and anxiety.
4. You steadily grow into your potential
A person who loves themselves knows that they were born to make amazing things happen. A fulfilling life can’t be found on the surface. Thus, you’re committed to knowing your true self, and as a result of it, you grow into your potential. It doesn’t matter whether your partner is on the same page as you because you believe in a deeper meaning of life, and thus, nothing can stop you.
5. You’re whole
Since you’re 100%, you don’t need anyone to fulfill you. Your partner is just a cherry on top, but you don’t need them. Although you love to share your life and yourself with them, you know that you feel great by yourself too.
Thus, you enjoy moments when you’re recharging your batteries or going on trips alone. Just as it’s essential to have common hobbies, you realize that it’s also vital to devote some time to your craft.
6. You have integrity
Anh Nguyen / Pexels
The integrity comes from respecting your core values and having a sense of honesty. There is no one for whom you’d divert from what you firmly believe in. Even if your partner has different perspectives on specific subjects, you speak and act in alignment with your conscience. A self-loving person doesn’t try to buy someone’s love by bending their inner values.
A study on autonomy found that when you act in line with your core values, you experience better mental health and emotional stability. People who maintain that kind of integrity in relationships end up forming more stable and fulfilling connections because there's no inner conflict eating away at them from pretending to be someone they're not.
7. You do what’s the best for you
Although you’re in a committed relationship and you work as a team, sometimes you need to decide whether you do what’s best for you or you sabotage your happiness. Admittedly, there might not be many such situations, but if they come, you know that you need to allow yourself to do what is in alignment with your heart and soul.
Maybe your partner wants you to move to another country or stay in a job that you don’t like. But you remember that your inner growth is a priority, so at the end of the day, you do what works for you.
8. You're not codependent
Codependency doesn’t belong in your life because the same way you respect yourself, you also treat others. Your philosophy is that you trust your partner, and if they undermine your trust, then you’ll do what your heart asks you to do. But otherwise, you give them complete freedom, and thus you’re also free to do what you want.
Another face of codependency is making them your external source of validation. But you recognize the fact that everything you need is within you. Hence, you don’t need to change to deserve their love.
9. You don’t stay in toxic relationships
An abusive relationship can take different forms. Sometimes it’s apparent, as in a case of home violence, but other times it might not be so easy to tell.
Studies on intimate partner violence have found that emotional abuse, like ridicule and put-downs, can actually be more harmful to mental health than some physical violence. The tricky part is that long-term emotional abuse can erode your sense of self so gradually that it becomes harder to recognize what's happening and even harder to leave, which is exactly why getting out matters so much.
As a self-loving person, you’re cautious about the subtler forms of mental and emotional abuse. You can see when your partner controls or manipulates youu and you put a definite stop sign on such behavior.
Sylvia Salow is an author, public speaker, and life coach who encourages people to grow into their potential by moving past any fears and mental limitations so they can create the life they deeply desire.
