THE POWER SOURCE
Dating Tips | Relationship Advice | Love Strategies

"DATING ROCKS WHEN YOU LOVE YOURSELF FIRST"

self-es•teem: 1. how highly you regard or value yourself. 2. the opinions or judgments that you hold for yourself. 3. in the context of love relationships, the source of power that starts inside of an individual and radiates out to others.

An honest male perspective: Love always begins with you! You must love yourself first in order to love others. Love is a two-way street of giving and receiving. You can’t give away the gift of love unless you possess it within yourself in the first place. And you can’t receive and accept love if you don’t feel deep inside that you deserve it.

Haven’t we all seen the television commercials that feature the pink bunny who wears cool shades, plays a drum, and keeps on “going and going and going”?

Of course, I’m referring to the famous Energizer Bunny®. Ever since 1989, he has been capturing people’s attention around the world as the advertising icon of long-lasting Eveready Energizer® batteries.

For women looking to persist in their quest for true love, they also need to find an unstoppable, ever-present emotional power source that keeps them “going and going and going” through the inevitable challenges and setbacks in romantic relationships.

LOW SELF-ESTEEM DESTROYS LOVE

A guy wrote the following to me about how his girlfriend’s low self-esteem was dragging their relationship down:

“My girlfriend constantly needs reassurances of how I feel about her. She seems to believe that I will leave her for someone better and has actually voiced those exact concerns to me. Because of this, I

have to make a conscious effort to be more affectionate towards her, but it really doesn’t seem to help any. Don’t get me wrong. I truly adore my girlfriend. After all, she’s my first love and, as a person, she has a lot of wonderful qualities. But I am reaching that critical point where I just can’t take it anymore. What constructive advice can you give me about helping my girlfriend boost her self-esteem so our relationship can be fun again for both of us!

The case above illustrates how having low self-esteem can have multiple negative effects. First, it is unattractive to potential love partners because it brings them down emotionally. Second, having low self-esteem prevents a woman from performing at her best. And finally, when someone has a low opinion of themselves, they send an unconscious message out to others that there must be something wrong with them. In all of these instances, low self-esteem brings love to a halt while high self-esteem would have allowed love the chance to keep on going.

BE A SELF-ESTEEM BUILDER, NOT A WRECKER

Back in high school, I used to pick on an egotistical surfer kid named Charles Krieger. I even went so far as to write a sarcastic poem for my 10th grade English class about his fictitious demise. The title of the poem was “Charles Krieger’s Last Good-Bye,” and it told the story of one foggy morning when a group of us went surfing in dangerous ocean conditions. For added humor, I sang the poem out loud to the tune of the theme song for the Gilligan’s Island TV show.

The final verses of “Charles Krieger’s Last Good-Bye” read as follows:

The sea started getting stormy
The smart guys paddled in to flee,
The only surfer out there
Charles Krieger named was he.

An ugly wave with snaring teeth
Eleven stories high,
“I’m the world’s greatest surfer!”
Was Charles’ last good-bye.

Back in those days, I mistook cockiness for confidence or high self-esteem. The honest truth is that I purposely tried to knock Charles Krieger down a few notches because he was more popular than me with the girls I liked.

My behavior in high-school towards kids like Charles Krieger indicated that I had more cockiness than actual selfconfidence. While it may have looked the same from the outside, tearing down others wasn’t a valid method of building my own sense of worthiness.

Whether you’re a man or a woman, putting down others to make yourself feel more attractive is not a sustainable or desirable method for empowering your life. Choose a more enlightened approach to living life instead by building other people up and thereby raising your own self-esteem as a natural by-product. And further heighten your confidence and self-esteem by improving your personal foundation wherever it’s weak.

YOUR LOVE POWER COMES FROM HIGH SELF-ESTEEM

Above all, a woman’s true power source comes from loving herself. I’m sure that a lot of people will quickly say that they love themselves, while in reality they weaken their own power in unintentional and often overlooked ways like negative selftalk. Therefore, a more accurate gauge of a woman’s true level of self-love is to add up all the good ways she treats herself and subtract away the things that she habitually does to diminish her own positive feelings of self-worth.

In order to attract love into your life, the first place to start is by improving the relationship you have with yourself. By doing this, you’ll be sending out an unmistakable signal to the universe that you are a woman of incredible value, and any man would be crazy not to love and cherish you.

SMART MOVE #3: LOVE YOURSELF FIRST AND FOREMOST

Here are some ideas that will help boost your self-esteem and thereby strengthen your power source to give and receive love:

Rediscover your overlooked personal strengths. There is a popular saying that goes, “It ain’t bragging if it’s true.” In your private moments, be sure to take some time out to remember some of your often-overlooked positive qualities. Why wait around for someone else to give you an uplifting and empowering personal compliment, when nobody knows you better than you do? When your personal power starts to run low, be the first one to do a little bragging in the name of love.

Stop living to please others. Most of us were raised to try to please other people, whether it was our parents, teachers, coaches, friends, or other family members. But as adults, there is a limit to how much energy we can spend on pleasing others before it is at the expense of our own desires. You can show how much you truly love yourself by choosing to prioritize your own needs over those of others. After an initial adjustment, this strategy will end up freeing up more positive energy in your life, which other people will find naturally attractive.

Practice more compassion for others. When we put ourselves in other people’s shoes and feel empathy for their challenges, we are practicing compassion. This emotion helps us to open up our hearts and value other people. Even a small act, like looking people in the eye and saying “hello,” sends a clear message to that other person that they matter. A simple, yet profound principle to remember is that you can’t elevate another person’s selfesteem without also elevating your own.

Learn to laugh at yourself. We would all agree that having a great sense of humor is attractive to others. And when we are able to direct this humor toward ourselves, it offers multiple benefits. First, it acts like a safety valve and takes off some of the pressure of everyday living. Secondly, it prevents us from taking ourselves too seriously. Also, it can prevent us from being too hard on ourselves when we don’t measure up to our own high expectations. Lightening things up has the attractive side-benefit of putting others at ease, too! They don’t have to worry that we’ll be too hard on them also.

Say positive things that boast your self esteem. Here is a list of things that you can say to yourself in order to build your self-esteem. Your ability to rediscover and reaffirm your best human qualities will greatly affect how much you truly like and respect yourself. The more often you repeat this exercise with emotional intensity and congruent physiology, the more immune you will be to the negative comments of others. That way, you’ll naturally become more attractive to everyone including the opposite sex.

List your personal breakthroughs. We all have proud moments when we were able to overcome a particular challenge successfully. Taking an inventory of these breakthrough moments and appreciating our progress can raise our self-esteem. For example, I experienced a personal breakthrough when I appeared on the NBC television talkshow The Other Half (mentioned previously in this book). For a guy whose biggest fear was public speaking, this was a feat that I’m still very proud of today. What accomplishments are you most proud of? Make sure that you create a list of your breakthroughs and put it somewhere where you can look at it regularly. Remind yourself of how wonderful and courageous you truly are.

Stop the critic inside you. There is an internal voice within each of us that likes to remind us of our fears and limitations. When faced with a major challenge, this voice will often proclaim, “No you can’t!” So it is our responsibility and duty to quiet that self-sabotaging voice. Listen instead to the powerful inspiration of your own inner and outer voice with repeated positive statements like “Yes, I can!” and “If it’s to be, it’s up to me.” When possible, do this in front of a mirror. By reinforcing the message that you send yourself with strong tonality, sincere emotion, and congruent facial expressions, you’ll be replacing your inner critic with a private cheerleader. This is a great way to raise and maintain a high self-esteem.

Get comfortable with your own body. It’s also important to accept and appreciate yourself on a physical level. While we can’t all have “the perfect body,” it’s a good practice to remove any awkwardness or shyness that we may have with ourselves. A constructive thing to do is to stop thinking about how flawed your body looks and to start paying attention to how healthy your body is becoming. The healthiness of your body is something that you can have immediate control over through diet, discipline, exercise, and relaxation. And the bottom line is that a healthy body is a sexy body, which is all you really need to convey to men and, more importantly, to yourself.

Accept compliments graciously. Many people have difficulty accepting compliments. They will often respond by lowering their heads or saying something to minimize the compliment. The internal effect is that you rob yourself of the self-esteem boost that you could be receiving from the other person. Instead of rejecting the next compliment, be ready to accept it graciously by holding your head high and saying, “Thank you.” Do this and you will also allow the sender of the compliment to enjoy the gift of giving.

Treat yourself to well-deserved rewards. It is a healthy practice to reward yourself periodically with special treats. That way, you’ll be sending a clear message to yourself that you deserve to be treated well. If you don’t feel worthy of accepting rewards in life, how can you expect another person to feel that you’re worthy of their attention and love? Small indulgences like a trip to the spa for a facial and massage may do more than just make your body feel better. Such special treatment revitalizes the essential spirit of self-esteem, and it will power your love life.

By following these simple guidelines, a smart woman can create and maintain a healthy self-esteem and keep herself energized throughout her journey to love.

PUT A HIGHER VALUE ON YOURSELF NOW!

Take a moment now and think of one specific way in the past that you’ve unintentionally lowered your self-esteem. Maybe you’ve been far too critical of yourself or perhaps you’ve been someone who hasn’t been able to accept compliments graciously. Can you see how that kind of habitual action would make you less attractive to prospective suitors? Now resolve to respond in only positive, empowering ways in the future.

When it comes to building and maintaining your selfesteem, why wait for tomorrow? What can you do right now in order to increase your love for yourself? Is there a welldeserved reward that you need to treat yourself to today? Is there a personal strength that you can write down this moment and savor for yourself?

Looking out for “Number One” makes perfect sense, especially when it comes to increasing your value to others and putting yourself in the position to give and receive love.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Dating sucks when you’re scaring men away inadvertently with your low self-esteem and self-destructive behavior. But dating rocks when you love yourself first and send out a clear signal to prospective men that you’re a special woman who rightly deserves to be recognized, appreciated, and loved.