I personally love dating myself. Im a great cook, Im really funny, Im AWESOME in bed, I believe in myself, I take myself for long walks, shopping trips, lunch, my friends like me, my pets like me, Im free to travel anywhere at any time and Im not too bad to look at

It’s really important to learn to love yourself. It may be cliché but you cant love someone else until you love yourself first.

What does that mean? It means figuring out what you love about yourself, what makes you cool – IN YOUR eyes.

And uh, yeh, it IS okay to be nice to yourself and to think nicely of yourself. Ignore those people who say youre being vain, ignore the voices in your head that tell you that its not OK to have nice thoughts about yourself.

I want each of you reading this to give yourself permission to make a list of all the things you like about yourself, all the accomplishments youve made in your life and try to remember all the compliments youve received, or nice things people have said to you.  On the daily. Train your brain to pick out the nice things and not the nasty things and soon the nasty things dont seem so nasty.  Trust Mama Dame!

Which reminds me, the first rule of loving yourself is learning to accept compliments!

Think about it, how do you feel when you compliment someone and they dont accept it? Awkward right? I mean you wouldnt have said anything to them (at least I hope not!) if you didnt mean what you were saying. So, how do you think people feel when they give you a compliment and you shove it away or sweep it under the rug or pretend it wasnt said?

From now on, you accept compliments graciously. Even if you dont believe it, you say thank you to the person who gave it to you. Compliments are verbal gifts and you should never reject a gift.  Everyone loves giving gifts and you need to learn to love receiving them.  It is completely OK and The Dame encourages it!

So now, the reason you want to get into an awesome relationship with yourself is so that you dont get into a shitty one with someone else.  Shitty relationships with other people usually happen because we dont really like ourselves or know ourselves. Disaster!

If youre not in a relationship, its OK! Its a perfect time to spend time with yourself. What type of movies do you like? What kind of food do you like? What makes you laugh? What flowers make you happy? Do you like animals and kids? What about long walks on the beach?

Find out all the things about yourself that you would like a loved one in a relationship with you to know. Find out your loves and your limits. But most of all, find out what makes you cool.

See, this is the important part. When we know what makes us cool, likable and desirable, we dont settle for someone who doesnt see it in us. You learn to know what you deserve and you make damn sure the person lucky enough to be with you knows it too and counts themselves lucky.

If you wouldnt count yourself lucky to date yourself, why would anyone else?

See?

So from now on my lovelies, you are going to give yourself permission to be nice to yourself, to like who you are – including your quirks and your snorting laugh – and to accept compliments. Youre also not going to let anyone make you feel bad about yourself because they dont know you like you do and they never will.

See how its so important to know yourself? So that you know what you deserve. People will treat you how you let them treat you and if you dont know how you deserve to be treated, that could end up being a shitty situation.

Good luck and let me know how it goes!

xo