I always loved a huge part of FDS being self improvement or what we call "levelling up"

In short, it is building ourselves up to be our best selves to thrive in life and in turn, dating.

I'd say a scary number of us also need it as we have suffered bad experiences in life and especially dating, myself included.

For a long time I have been on a self improvement journey after a toxic relationship and a few suicide attempts. My journey is still long (ideally life long) but I have come leaps and bounds since starting.

Have you ladies been doing self improvement and found yourselves asking the following :

"but how do I love myself?"

"how do I have high self esteem?"

"why isn't meditation working?"

"why isn't positive thinking working?"

"why can't I implement x into my everyday life?"

Well, here I am to tell you there's nothing wrong with you and you are not bad because you are struggling.

Self improvement I believe is one of the hardest things for a person to do. No matter what stage of life you are at, it is the act of starting yourself all over again from the ground up. It is the act of finding yourself, really looking inside yourself hard to see your flaws and accepting yourself while simultaneously working on those flaws.

I'm telling you you're not struggling to love yourself because you're unlovable

You're not finding it hard to find your qualities because you don't have any

What if you've come onto this post and you haven't started any kind of self improvement and want a direction to go in? Great! That's awesome!

Now I am stranger on the Internet and if you don't care for what I'm about to advise, that's okay too! This is only one paradigm out of 1000s maybe millions and the liklihood of this being the one that completely changes everything for you... Well I can't do math but it's slim. I'm happy to take that risk and if you're happy to take the risk too by reading this, I greatly appreciate it

That would be my first nugget of advice, open yourself up to many different ways of thinking/paradigm shifts. Read that book you're not sure on or listen to that podcast. At the absolute worst, you can sit there and figure out WHY it's wrong, why it's not for you and employing critical thinking skills.

So why isn't self help actually helping you?

All the examples of loving yourself, having high self esteem, believing you're worthy of love etc are all examples of building blocks.

You build them up and when your building is okay, hey! Looks like it's working great

But if you jump right to the building blocks.. You're building them on mud

As soon as a challenge hits you, your building blocks getting shaken, it'll likely fall down, all the work you put into yourself/your building destroyed in moments.

Why is this happening?

You haven't built a stable foundation, no amount of brick building will suffice if you have no foundation because as soon as it's shaken (and it will! Our lives are full of earthquakes and tremors), it'll all fall down.

What the hell is a stable foundation?

The easiest way I can describe it is "it's who you REALLY are"

These constitute as being aware of your beliefs, your values, your flaws, where you see yourself in the world (what are your communities? Work community? Family community? Etc)

We are normally so fixated on how we look, what are skills are, what we do for people, what we provide to the world but we rarely truly focus on the why

If you figure out your values and figure out why they are important to you, those values will ripple into every part of your life because it is fundamentally who you are.

We need to be aware of our values because there will be many times we ignore them unless they're in the forefront of our minds.

For example, I realised I valued kindness. It is something I want to uphold because when I am kind I really feel like my true self. However, I am a human being. I sometimes feel like being selfish, I feel like snapping back at someone or putting someone.

It is then I remind myself that no, I want to be kind. I am doing myself a disservice when I am unkind and I act accordingly even though at first I wanted to act however I wished

How on earth can you love yourself if you have no idea who you are deep down?

Character is such a broad term and might be hard define so here's an exercise

It's 3 years in the future and you're attending funeral. You get there, sit at the back and look to the front

You see a photo of the deceased, it's you.

You are currently at your own funeral

4 different people get up: a family member, a friend, a work colleague and someone you know from a community you're part of (church, volunteering, sports)

Each of them, one at a time get up to the front and talk about you

What do you wish for them to say about you?

That's your answer.

That's the person you want to be, the memory you want leave to all your peers and loved ones.

The next stage is figuring out everything that can be done to become that person. That ideal, the person you want to be, is the one that can have healthy self esteem, that you will love and you will nurture yourself while working towards it. Have the end goal in mind.

It is a kindness to yourself to be the best person you can be.

When who you really are comes to life, you will no longer need to compare yourselves to others, prove yourself to others, work hard for love, respect, admiration because even if it's not being fed to you externally, it will always be inside you

A lack of foundation or a process of building though doesn't mean you are unworthy of love or kindness or respect.

Building this foundation is in itself an act of love/kindness/respect

You DESERVE to be your best, you DESERVE to be nurtured and cheered on to your goals, you DESERVE to put the work in and get to that point.

You will never have a healthy relationship, healthy life or attitude if you don't truly look in yourself and find said self.

Thanks for reading, ladies, lemme know what you think in the comments