So you healed a little too much and now the lover girl in you is dead.
I've been there.
You discover the magic of the self-love journey and with this new mindset and independence and power you found within yourself, dating kind of feels pointless, because gone are the days of trying to get your crush's attention or wanting someone else to take you on a date and tell you that you're beautiful and lovable.
Why?
Because now you do all of those things for yourself.
You take yourself on solid dates, you buy yourself the damn flowers.
You spend time cultivating other meaningful relationships throughout your life.
You spend time on your passions and your hobbies, your self-discovery, falling in love with yourself deeper and deeper every single day.
And the best part of it is, you never have to worry about being betrayed, because you've always got your own back.
You have finally realized just how much you bring to the table and that you could literally be doing just about anything else better with your time than trying to convince a man to treat you right.
What I like to call this is the rebirth because you have just been reborn.
You have never looked at life this way.
You have never thought about it this way.
You have a whole new perspective on yourself, on people, on relationships.
Therefore, you can't return to dating in the exact same way as you did before.
That's why it feels so impossible right now.
But I know there's a little part of you that's like but what if I do want a relationship one day?
What if i feel like i am ready to date and actually get really good results out of it?
But firstly, i need to get over this ick within me right now.
That is exactly why i have sat down today to share with you everything you need to know, because i was at this exact same point in my self-love journey.
I became so extremely hyper independent.
The thought of a relationship, of dating, just turned me off.
I randomly developed an avoidant attachment style, which was weird because i was anxious for so long.
It was just a super unhealthy place to be in.
So my solution was to put myself on a brand new journey of healing, of learning about healthy relationships and building up the right mindset to balance my self-love while also dating and finding the right partner and healthy relationship for me.
And that's what I'm going to be teaching you today.
Not only did I live through everything I'm gonna talk to you about today, but I am so knowledgeable on this because of the research and the experiences and the lessons I've learned through it, that I could quite literally write a book on the topic of this video.
Matter of fact, I kind of did.
My self-help book Buy Yourself the Damn Flowers is the ultimate guide to loving yourself, and it is split into three different sections for a reason.
The first section is understanding.
It teaches you all about self-love and how to master it.
Chapter two is healing.
When you start experiencing those obstacles and those roadblocks in the middle of your self-love journey, how do you get through those?
It deals with that.
And then the third section is what we're just gonna be dipping our toe into, for this video is reawakening.
And it's got multiple chapters on different topics.
One being just dating with your new self-love mindset on how to navigate life now that you've been reborn.
Now that you have the self-love mindset that you never had before.
And that is such an important part of the journey that no one ever talks about.
So I highly recommend you guys check it out.
This book is available worldwide.
It's available in bookstores.
It's available on Amazon worldwide.
But I also just launched a special edition version of the book which has all the chapters I just talked about, everything in the OG, plus two brand new chapters on how to be self-obsessed and how to close the gap between your current and ideal self.
This book is only available for a limited time.
You get these two brand new chapters and a gorgeous new redesign.
But once it's sold out, it's never coming back.
This one unfortunately, is only available in a few select countries, and there's never going to be an audiobook version of it or anything.
But you can order it through Amazon, UK Waterstones and, I believe, a few other versions of Amazon in your country.
Before we jump right into it.
I am so happy to be back with a dating and self-love video because you guys know it has been tradition on this channel that every February I always do that kind of content in February because it's all like Valentine's Day themed and Valentine's is my favorite holiday.
Whether you're single or taken, it's just super important to celebrate.
However, just because it's Valentine's season, we mustn't forget we are still at the beginning of a new year, and with that can come so much overwhelm and so many high expectations when it comes to knowing how many goals you have to achieve this year, or maybe the pressures you're putting on yourself.
I could definitely relate.
For this reason, the new year can actually be a really heavy time for some, where you actually need to be giving yourself as much compassion and grace as possible.
And if you struggle doing that for yourself, therapy is a great tool to just feel lighter in the new year.
I always grew up being a big overachiever, and with that came a lot of self-doubt, feeling like everything fell on my shoulders and I always had to do everything myself, and for that reason I struggled in silence for so so, so many years.
I am so glad that a couple of years ago I was brave enough to pursue therapy, especially in a family where that wasn't normalized and no one had ever done it before and no one ever talked about it.
But I can wholeheartedly say that therapy has been such a positive journey for me, giving me so many tools and insights that I couldn't have found on my own, and that I needed another opinion on the things that I was struggling with.
Because sometimes you need an outsider's perspective when you're so deep in your own situation or struggle.
Throughout my therapy journey, I personally have always stuck with BetterHelp.
I find it so easy and so convenient with my busy schedule, but I've also found the best results and the best therapists on the platform.
They're also a trusted paid partner of mine and the sponsor of today's video.
I think BetterHelp was so successful and efficient for me because when you go on the website, you fill out a questionnaire and you fill out all of your unique preferences and your situation so that it can best match you to a therapist most suited to you as quickly as possible.
Because I went through the process of trying to find a therapist on my own and I wasted so much time and didn't even get the result I wanted to in real life.
Plus, even on BetterHelp, if you do find a therapist that's not quite the right match for you, you get to switch to a different therapist at no extra cost anytime.
I found a female therapist on my journey that specialized in the area that I was struggling in and gave me the most insight and advice because she was so experienced in that area, as opposed to just a general therapist that might talk about a lot of different areas.
She knew exactly what she was talking about.
She made me feel so validated and I just felt like it was such a safe space to talk about this particular issue.
And that is why I will always shout from the rooftops about BetterHelp.
I have recommended them to so many of my friends.
You guys can check them out as well using the link below in my description, which is betterhelpcom forward.
Slash tamcore.
And that will actually get you 10 off your first month so you can let BetterHelp support you in feeling lighter for 2026.
Okay, let's get into it, learning how to date with your new self-love mindset and lifestyle.
My first point is the most foundational, and that is to learn that love is safe, because all this men are trash.
You can't trust them.
You're gonna wake up one day and they're gonna betray you, and you need to learn to manipulate them, protect yourself.
And all of this is bs.
Okay, it is fear mongering.
It is a scarcity mindset at its finest.
It is quite literally the equivalent of someone telling you don't invest your money because you're going to lose it all anyway.
What?
About 90% of the things in this life is a gamble situation.
That then, doesn't mean you need to be worried every single day, thinking you're always going to lose out on a situation.
Now that you've done all the inner work okay, because that was the priority you have to rewire the narrative and introduce yourself to a new perspective on relationships and dating, because a lot of the time, the reason that we go on self-love journeys and we actually pour all this attention and work into ourselves is because we got hurt and burned by the dating scene or
Maybe you got your heart broken and that's what led you to your self-love journey.
While those negative sides are 100 valid.
If that is all you think about and if that is all you believe, that is all you are ever going to attract.
And that goes for literally anything in life.
To give yourself the best possible shot at having a good, healthy dating experience and finding the best partner for you, you have to look at it in a loving way.
You have to have full conviction in the belief that the man that is right for you wouldn't cheat on you and wouldn't betray you and isn't like every other guy out there.
That, of course, there is somebody that is on your level and can bring as much to the table as you can, and that will love and protect you.
In a way, it's also a self-loving mindset.
Now that you finally understand that you are so worthy of everything you want, it shouldn't be hard to rewire your belief system to understand.
Yeah, I'm capable of finding the right man.
And no, it's not going to be a struggle.
And no, they're not going to take advantage of me because I'm worth so much more than that.
And I'm going to attract better than that.
You know that you are that enough that you do not need to play games to get somebody's attention or do tricks and manipulation and strategies just to be able to keep a man, because you don't need one anymore.
Love is safe.
The reason that you feel icked out by it is because you were grieving.
The last version of you who experienced the dating and relationship world because she got burned and she had negative experiences and that's all your memory is of it might even think dating is boring now because your reward system is entirely different.
You don't get happy or feel valued or feel like life is great just because a man approves of you or likes you.
But you used to, and because of now that big change in your reward system and your dopamine and your nervous system, it feels like oh, this is boring now.
I don't enjoy this in the way that i used to, but you're actually in the best, healthiest place possible.
You're finally doing it right, if it's not ticking all these boxes inside of you of like, oh my God, this feels great and I feel like the best version of me, because you already realized how to be the best version of yourself when you are on your own.
This links into step number two, which is you need to condition your mind.
It's because all you've been doing is conditioning your mind with thoughts of independence, self-love and solitude for so long that your brain literally can't even imagine anything else right now.
It's like that thing, right?
If you're on a road trip and somebody says, how many yellow cars do you see?
All of a sudden you see so many yellow cars because that's what your focus has been shifted to.
But if at the end of the trip, after counting all those yellow cars, someone said how many red ones did you see?
You'd be like, huh?
You wouldn't even know what's going on because that's not what your focus was directed to.
The same goes in this situation.
So after a self-love journey yes, there is that natural resistance to dating and that is completely normal.
Do not criticize yourself for it, because I'm telling you it's normal and all of us go through it on our self-love journeys.
All it means is now it's time to re-familiarize yourself with that world, with the dating relationship side of life, and start consuming those thoughts and those ideas, but obviously in a very smart strategic positive, healthy way.
So reading books about relationships, my favorites that I've spoken about before and will forever recommend All About Love by Bell Hooks and Attached by Dr Amir Levine.
There's also Love by Jay Shetty and a couple of more, but honestly, just go to a bookstore, go in the love and relationship section and have a read of those.
I've read many, okay?
And I think it's good to pour your time into that, because if you are going to get into a relationship, you want to give it the best shot you possibly can.
You and your partner both want to talk about love and relationship and dating podcasts.
I know Jay Chetty has done so many over the years.
Me and Boif used to speak about those episodes in detail so much, especially when we first started dating, because it really allowed us to see if our mindsets were compatible.
It was just the healthiest thing we could have done and I highly recommend that.
But also it was a really good thing for me because I was rewiring my perspective on what it meant to date and be in a relationship with somebody.
I would go on YouTube or TikTok and I would follow couple creators that made a lot of couple and relationship content and just normalize that in my world again and allow myself to have a more positive view on it, rather than not doing any of those things and not having a strategy and then constantly being bombarded with random gossip and stories and scandals about celebrities who have been cheated on or marriages that have fallen apart.
That is the noisiest part of the internet.
And those are the stories you are always gonna hear, whether it be online or through a friend of a friend.
Okay,
People love to rehash those stories.
Rarely ever does anyone talk about the healthy, successful relationships.
Why?
Because the people in those relationships, they are quiet.
They're at the back of the room.
They're enjoying their relationship.
They are not going online and talking about it.
So you really have to seek it out.
This then links into my third step, which is rewiring your beliefs.
So how can we do this practically?
So first you need to identify what is the limiting belief you have when it comes to love or dating or relationships.
Let's say in this situation, your limiting belief is that men are not loyal.
Step number two is for you to figure out what is the context behind this belief.
For example, it could be because you watched your friend get cheated on and you saw all the aftermath of that and how much pain it caused her.
Maybe it's because your parents got divorced.
It could be something even more deep and subconscious, maybe something that happened to you in your childhood.
Or it could literally be as basic as simple online stories and narratives and celebrity cheating scandals and opinions from you know influencers online and whatnot that you have internalized for so long.
The next step is you need to do the work to be able to release that context, to not let it have a hold over you anymore.
For example, it could be forgiving your dad for how he treated your mom, or maybe the breakdown of their relationship, if that's relevant to you.
Maybe it would be forgiving a past ex.
Again, we forgive, we do not forget.
This doesn't mean you have to be pally with them, but it means allowing yourself to process what happened, allow yourself to journal about it, go to therapy about it, please give yourself so much grace and compassion when going through this process and being able to release any of that anger and resentment which is clogging up all of your emotional capacity and clouding your judgment when it comes to your own dating life because you're still harboring all of these past memories and emotions remember you're not guilty for having these limiting beliefs in the first place you were simply going off of experiences you had so don't use this as an excuse to step back into self-criticism And then the final step in rewiring your limiting beliefs is to then replace it with the new empowering belief.
And the way you do this is to look for evidence and arguments that support it.
So, like I said, reading relationship books or looking at successful relationship stories online can help you bring in this new narrative and believe in that one more.
And the reason this works is you basically need to look for as many reasons or stories or evidence as possible to make this new belief make sense and be logical to your subconscious mind, if your subconscious has been holding on to this limiting belief for so long and running with it for so many years.
On to my fourth point.
You need to remember that self-love is not a bridge between relationships.
Self-love is an ongoing journey that you must respect and honor for the rest of your life.
And it's important to also remember that this journey is never gonna look the same.
It's gonna go through so many different places.
It's gonna look different at times through different phases of your life.
And it should, because that is a reflection of your growth and evolution.
So even this place that you're at right now watching this video, figuring out how you're gonna go through your dating life now with your new self-love mindset, is a part of the self-love journey.
It's not you walking away from it. or abandoning it.
That's just how it has to look at this moment in time.
And it's about figuring out how you balance that self-love and solo dating while also balancing a new person in your life or a new partner.
Especially because I think a lot of people disregard the need to intentionally focus on a self-love journey and self-love practices in day-to-day or weekly life because they're so consumed with their long-term relationship or their kids or their job and every other stressful thing in life that you kind of just leave your self-love journey behind and you can't remember the last time you touched it or engaged with it or or gave it any real thought or intention.
But it's important you don't fall into that trap.
It's important you still take yourself on solo dates and buy yourself flowers and take yourself on trips, even though you have a partner that is going to do those things for you and with you as well.
You have to remember that you can't rely on your partner to fulfill every single role in your life.
You can't rely on your partner to make you happy and make you feel loved, because you're the one that's supposed to be doing that for yourself.
You're the only one on this entire planet that can ever make yourself feel understood, feel heard, feel truly loved and cared for, because nobody knows you like you know you.
So now tell me, how would it ever make sense to abandon that part of yourself, to stop doing your journaling, to stop taking yourself on dates, to stop your self-discovery, to stop building a relationship with yourself, when you are the person that can give you the best relationship possible, because you know yourself most?
And this is so important when it comes to dating, because dating doesn't have to be this big scary thing anymore.
Once you're still being consistent on your self-love journey, you realize dating is simply an addition.
That's all it is.
And it links into my favorite belief and way to view relationships, which is two people can flourish and grow and build their happiness and abundance individually in their lives and then also come together and share all of that.
And I think that makes the most loving healthiest, happiest relationship possible.
My fifth point is one of my favorites, and this is to revisit your expectations and your standards, to create a new list.
So i want you to build out a whole new list of what you want in a partner, what your standards are and what you're looking for.
You can even categorize it with, like the shallow standards, like maybe their height, maybe what they look like, then their values, maybe their interests, their likes, their preferences, then maybe another section on how they treat you and so on.
That is personally what i did.
I think it took up four A5 pages in my journal.
And I made this actually on my self-love journey, which was in 2021.
So five years ago now.
It's so insane.
I wrote this list.
And then a couple of months later, I met Boif.
Boif came into my life.
And when I tell you we had absolutely no mutuals, we weren't even from the same city, like we should have never met.
Like there was no way we were supposed to cross paths.
Like no one could have ever even introduced us.
We have A4, 5, Yeah, age gap.
So again, just random for us to have met, right?
We met over a shared love of museums.
That was literally our first conversation.
That was one of the tick boxes on my list of standards, that I wanted somebody who was into books and museums because I weirdly had never dated anyone like that before.
But it was really important to me.
One of the main like first dates he took me to was the museum we were talking about and he took me on a trip to London and we went there and he literally ticked off every single thing on my list down to the height I wrote for him, down to the job, okay.
In my little shallow list, I put, I would love for him to be in the creative field.
And I was a bit more specific with what that job was.
I won't share it on here though.
And when I met Boyf, he didn't have that job at that current moment in time.
And then, a year into being together, he quit his job, started his own business, is now in the creative field.
And I'm like the list keeps coming true.
Okay, it's some sort of magical list, but I believe it's a magical list because I wrote it at a point in my life where I had such confidence and such self-belief and self-love and I was like these are my intentions, this is what I want.
And since writing that list, I had another person who came into my life and was trying to date me and he was saying all the right things and doing all the right things and I looked at him and I was like you fall short of my list, because I'm here for 100 of what I want and I'm not settling for the 90 anymore.
I love myself too much for that.
As soon as I stopped talking to that guy, both came into my life a week later.
It was a test from the universe that I passed because I stuck to my list of standards and I was not about to sacrifice that or settle for anybody.
I get questions a lot about, you know, do I manifest a partner?
Do I manifest love?
Is that what you're into?
Do you believe in that?
I believe that you can manifest literally anything you want in this life.
Whatever you want, you go for it and I'm not here to judge that.
My just personal opinion is when you can manifest anything you want in life, why would you manifest a man?
I don't believe in actively manifesting a relationship, because I think manifest things for yourself, manifest for your career, for your happiness, for your mental health, for your family, for experiences and travels.
You want to go on, okay.
But if a relationship is super important, then that's absolutely fine.
I just prefer the standards list method.
And even writing that list of standards and expectations is also a really great exercise in your self-love journey because, as you're writing them, it boosts your confidence, because you are assuring yourself that you are worthy of having somebody who ticks every single one of these boxes.
You are worthy of having somebody like this in your life, and you were so confident in that fact that you can just move on with the rest of your day and know that it's coming.
It's also really important to note that, while many people do focus on the aesthetics of their partner and all the things they're gonna get from their partner on the list, which is absolutely fine, it's also important to consider how this partner is going to show up in the relationship for, like the really core, important parts.
For example, how does he handle conflict?
How does he choose to communicate in difficult situations?
How does he repair after making a mistake or if you've had an argument in a relationship?
How does he treat people when no one's watching?
How does he respond to bad situations or just disappointment in his life?
And so on.
These are the questions you really need to answer to figure out who you're really looking for, beyond just their height and hair color.
My sixth point is it's so important to find the balance with your independence.
Just don't slip into hyper independence.
That's what I did.
It's not cute, okay?
We're not here for the extremes.
Hyper-independence turns into such a problem, when it turns into these beliefs of oh, I always do everything alone.
I don't need anybody.
Nobody needs to think like that.
Very unnecessary.
Matter of fact, I might say it's actually a very unhealed way to think and to behave.
And I say that because I'm just calling out myself and how I used to be, okay?
When you've been hurt enough and you haven't healed from that and you don't feel like it's safe to be vulnerable with anyone again, you're gonna resort to those thoughts and those beliefs.
And you're just shooting yourself in the foot if you're living that way, because you're never gonna let anybody in again.
And you're never gonna give yourself the chance to build and bond with a friend or a partner ever again.
And that's what life is all about.
True, healthy love and intimacy is about vulnerability.
It's about opening up to somebody.
It's about you being able to be softer without abandoning yourself.
And that is a huge strength.
That is bravery.
It's not weakness.
It's not you depending on anyone.
As I said before, the most healed way today is to be neutral and to let it just be a stable, smooth journey where you're just curious, without having to dive in and be too attached or too needy or rush into it too soon.
That way, without giving it all this emotional weight and importance and intensity, you can make better clearer, more logical decisions in the people that you choose to see again, or the conversations that you have, and honor your self-love and your needs.
My seventh point is be prepared to be disappointed.
I say this because there will be no more fireworks when you date.
Dating after self-love isn't this huge, exciting bout of butterflies and feeling intoxicated with the love and the emotions and the feelings?
It's very quiet and it's very safe and it's stable and it's neutral.
Dare i say, maybe it's going to be a little bit underwhelming because it's going to feel that different to your pre self-love dating life, when you were rushing into it, when it was exciting and when it was about, you know, wondering if somebody likes you or not or whether they would even put in the time and effort to take you on a date.
You're already aware of all of those things.
You're aware of your value.
You're not waiting for somebody to tell you that anymore, because you're not waiting for those things.
When somebody does compliment you or they want to take you on a date, it's not this exact thing anymore.
You're like yeah, I know, that's what I deserve.
Plus the kind of guys that give you the fireworks and the butterflies because they love bumming you.
You're not going to attract that kind of company anymore now that you have this different energy and this different mindset.
It just doesn't work that way.
Like, once your energy and your mindset changes, those people kind of just fall out of your bubble and fall out of your life and you just won't attract those kind of people because you are not energetically aligned with them anymore.
Instead, you are going to attract nice guys that you think are a little bit boring but are actually really good candidates in considering for dating because they're going to treat you right and they're serious and they're loyal and they are aligned with you and that's why they're coming into your life.
Don't fall into the trap of thinking boring equals wrong.
I think boring is just the stage before it gets really, really, really good.
And I think it should be boring at the start, when you are getting to know each other, when you are sussing each other out, you're thinking how do you communicate?
What are your values?
Would I go on a second date with you?
And then slowly slowly slowly, as you're figuring out more information about each other, as you're getting more aligned, as you are building a connection, that's when it gets really good.
This is also why i always say i think honeymoon periods are bs.
I actually think the best part of a relationship, and the part you should really be excited for, isn't those first two, three months where you're in the honeymoon period.
It's when you live together.
It's when you get married because truly, when you're with the right person, it gets better every single day, because with each day that passes, you know each other more.
You've experienced more together.
You've lived more life together.
Therefore, you have more to fall in love with each other about.
That's the new era of dating, when you have self-love because you are picking the partner that is right for you.
My eighth tip is to observe instead of auditioning for love.
Because your pre-self-love dating era it was all about proving, it was all about chasing, it was all about waiting for him to text you back.
But once you've healed and you've gone through that self-love, you're just in observational mode.
We are over that phase of, oh my God, do they like me?
Am I good enough for them?
Do they think I'm pretty?
The questions aren't about them anymore.
It's about you.
Do I like them?
Do I feel relaxed around them?
Do they meet my list of standards and expectations?
Do I feel more like myself around them or am I more guarded?
Do I feel like my boundaries are respected around them?
You see the difference?
Now you're not trying to be selected.
You're not trying to be chosen by anybody because you've already chosen yourself.
You are now assessing who is fit to be in your life.
Being in this observation mode is so great because you're going to have such clarity and information in seeing somebody for who they really are, rather than falling into the old trap that we all do before we love ourselves, which is falling in love with the potential and the idea of somebody before we even know them.
You're gonna stop auditioning and performing for somebody else to like you and you're gonna reclaim all of that power that I know you have now in making sure that you don't let anybody waste your time and that you're gonna do yourself the best favor on the journey of dating.
And lastly, before the video ends, I wanna say something.
Remember that the journey that you're going on right now in dating and finding romantic love, you are not the same girl that you used to be, meaning.
Your experiences are gonna be so very different.
And it's not even so much about the type of person you're gonna find and the conversations you're gonna have.
It's now about the confidence and the inner security and the self-assurance you exude.
That is gonna change and set the tone of all of the experiences you have.
You will never find yourself with low value, time-wasting men ever again.
Your energy doesn't match that anymore.
You will never attract the same experiences that you had before.
Please trust that.
Please know that the journey will be better now because you are better now.
Because you understand that you've always been good enough.
And that brings us to the end of this video.
Now, that was truly just a sneak peek of the journey and the rebirth after self-love.
I truly go into it way more in depth in my book, By Yourself, The Damn Flowers.
There's an entire chapter just dedicated to dating with self-love.
It has many practical exercises and examples and tables and charts to kind of show you what is dating like before, self-love versus after, to really paint the best picture for you.
But also in the rebirth, realignment third section of the book, there are loads of chapters on what life is supposed to look like, whether it be with your friends, with your family, with your partner, when it comes to celebrating Valentine's Day, living day-to-day with your self-love mindset.
It's a Weird place to navigate that I think nobody really talks about.
After you've kind of gone on this core self-love journey and now you're just being consistent with it and everything looks and feels different and you're just a new version of yourself.
How do you deal with that?
I talk about it all in my book.
So feel free to check it out, especially the limited edition, because it's only here for a limited time and you're gonna get two extra chapters.
I would love if you checked it out and if you read it, and if you do, please send me a DM on my Instagram.
I would love to hear your thoughts, because it is my baby and I truly put it out into the world, because every single woman deserves the knowledge to understand how to love herself.
But thank you so much guys for watching.
Thank you for being here.
Thank you for still being here at the end of the video.
Please comment down below.
Let me know what was your favorite step.
What was your favorite part of the video?
And what do you want to see from me in future?
Because I love reading those comments.
And I will see you same time next week for a brand new video.
I appreciate you.
Bye.
