Ah, February 14th. It’s that time of the year again that every single person dreads.

Imagine seeing everyone else around you getting coupled up. 

You see all those billboards and advertisements around you promoting how sweet and fulfilling it is to be in a relationship.

There are also reality TV shows like “Love Island”, “Too Hot To Handle”, “Love Is Blind”, and every show that also shoves in your face how single you are this moment.

Some people you personally know are even getting engaged and married, and some people you know are even starting their own families, having cute kids they post every day online.

You’re scrolling on Instagram, TikTok and Facebook and you end up seeing the posts on your feed of your friends posting their engagement pictures.

Loads of comments like “congratulations”, “you look like a cute couple”, and “true love is wonderful” are all flooding in. 

You’re happy for them. Of course you are, you want only the best for your friends, right?

But at the same time…

You feel some nasty emotions within yourself.

You’re now utterly depressed about being single.

You feel like you’re “falling behind” or struggling to find a partner, and it seems effortless for other people to find their own partners.

You’re putting yourself out there, you’re going on dates, and you think it’s going well only to find that you’re facing constant rejection after rejection. 

Being flaked on. Being lead on. Being ghosted by the other person. Always hearing the word “No”.

Sometimes it’s “you’re not my type”, “I’m already in a relationship”, “I see you just as a friend”, or even “You’re like my brother / sister” (Ouch on all of these).

You know deep down that your dates are basically leading to nowhere and you may even start to doubt yourself and feel like a “loser”.

“I must be an ugly or unattractive guy / girl” is a common thought for you.

Maybe you even feel like you’re falling behind in life because society has fed you the idea that “you should be married with kids by age 30 or else you’re a failure”.

Or you’re living in an Asian community like me, where you’re facing a lot of pressure from your family members to settle down and get married by age 30. (As if being pressured in school and career is not hard enough).

And the fact you’re not able to accomplish that milestone makes you feel even more guilt, shame and thinking “I’m not worthy enough” or “I’m not good enough”.

If you’ve experienced this pain and feel sick and tired of being single, please keep this in mind – you’re NOT alone.

Millions of people find the dating game almost impossible and finding a partner who’s compatible with you is certainly not a walk in the park.

But here’s the thing…

Rejection and failure are unfortunately part of the process. It’s a long and tough process to go through trying to find the right person.

These two will always hurt any human being… 

But it’s ultimately worth it if that means avoiding a toxic relationship and possibly ruining your whole life, as I’ve seen happen multiple times to people I know.

Yes, love can be a beautiful feeling but finding love is a game of chances. Everyone has a different timeline.

Sure some of your friends have found their soulmate during high school and others found their partners during their 30s and 40s…but that’s okay!

We should NEVER compare our lives to other people. 

After all, comparison is the thief of joy and everybody’s lives are ultimately different and unique to them. It’s like comparing a fish to a monkey or comparing apples to oranges.

Both animals have their own strengths and weaknesses, and both fruits have their own tastes and health benefits, so it’s silly to even compare two entirely different things!

We should also NEVER worry or stress about factors that are outside of our control. Like our crushes that didn’t like us back or other people putting us down for being single.

Everyone’s journey in life is different and it’s not fair to compare your love life (or non-existent love life) to someone else’s love life.

There are far too many factors and variables which determine someone’s success in romantic relationships.

All you can do is be the best version of yourself and focus on the things you can control.

I’ll be honest – I was always questioned by others whether I had a girlfriend or not, and the answer I gave to them was almost always an awkward… “no”.

I’m going to feel vulnerable for admitting this but there were times in my life where I even felt jealous of other couples holding hands and showing PDA in front of me or online.

“They have a lovely partner, why can’t I find my own?” I thought. I was experiencing one of the 7 deadly sins – The emotion of envy.

I felt jealous for a long time…

Until I realized this one thing.

Nobody owes you anything. Nothing. You cannot be entitled to anything. 

You have to put the effort in and you cannot force someone to like you or be with you. It has to be natural and mutual. It takes two to tango.

Not all relationships in real life have happy endings like the ones you see in those rom-com movies.

The grass always looks greener on the other side. Disney movies probably gave us false hope about how romance should be.

Some couples I knew where I thought they would be together for the rest of their lives, ended with a horrible breakup.

Some even ruined their lives by staying in toxic relationships that didn’t give them any benefit.

Relationships take up a lot of time and it makes it harder to focus on yourself and your goals since you have to make time for your partner.

What changed?

No, it certainly wasn’t my relationship status.

It was my PERSPECTIVE towards relationships that changed.

I needed to change my MINDSET.

I tried to see the bigger picture.

I learned that just because someone is in a relationship, it doesn’t always mean that they are happy or experiencing freedom.

The “Single” status seems to be an insecurity of many people around the world. 

And I can see why many would feel this way given that the media and society likes to promote the idea that romantic love “completes” someone.

Because of what we witnessed in Disney movies during our childhood, we somehow believe that getting into a relationship would complete us and make us happy.

This couldn’t be further from the truth. 

Many couples are still staying together despite feeling unhappy and insecure in their relationship. 

You’ve seen it with Amber Heard and Johnny Depp. Or some couples who got together at 16 ended up raising a child in their 20’s and were unable to focus on their goals and happiness in life.

Knowing this critical piece of information helped me put everything into perspective. 

It was at that moment I decided to stop comparing my (lack of) love life to other people and I started focusing on my own personal development. 

I was lacking a bigger purpose in my life.

I came across Personal Development YouTubers like Jay Shetty in 2018 but I didn’t really begin my journey until 2020 when the coronavirus pandemic happened.

What’s your true purpose in life?

I had to find my calling in life. Why was I put on Planet Earth? What’s the reason for my existence? Surely romance can’t be the ONLY thing in my life.

A Purpose was what I needed to find within myself. This would also help me to stop worrying about the need to find a romantic partner. 

I shifted my focus to pursuing my goals and hobbies and focusing only on the things in my life that are within my control.

I had to find fulfillment outside of romantic relationships. I had to realize that finding a romantic partner wasn’t everything in my life.

I spent my free time outside of working hours improving my monetizable skills (Photo/Video Editing, Content Writing, Web Development etc.).

Sure you might see many of your peers in society enjoying romantic candlelight dates and posting their pictures with flowers and heart balloons online,  but you should never let that bring you down or make you feel like you’re “unworthy” or “unlovable”.

It’s also helpful to remember that it’s much better to be patient in finding someone who’s perfect FOR YOU than to rush into a relationship with the risk of having a partner who may not be good for you.

A relationship with the wrong person is detrimental to your future and WILL hold you back from optimizing other aspects of your life.

Society only talks about the benefits of relationships but rarely the consequences of getting into them.

If you ask me, it’s very important that you make yourself aware of the consequences to avoid making bad decisions in the future.

If you’re reading this and you’ve already found your “one”. Great! I’m happy for you and I wish you all the best in your love life. I only wish you and your partner joy and happiness.

If you haven’t had any luck in love, you’re NOT alone. (I can’t stress this enough).

MILLIONS of people across the world are struggling right now to find the right one. 

Just remember, everyone has their own timeline and there’s absolutely no need to rush into this part of your life.

Relationships are a huge responsibility and jumping into one before you’re truly ready can do more harm than good for your life. 

Don’t allow societal pressure to get to you!

At the same time…

DON’T GET JEALOUS if your friends are in happy and healthy relationships. 

Be happy for them, their happy relationship does not take away from your life in any way.

Remember, the people you are feeling jealous of will be happy for your success too when you eventually find the right person. 

You’re on your own timeline. Remember that.

Also, if you are experiencing feelings of jealousy or insecurity towards other people’s success, DO NOT try to sabotage them. 

This is a surefire way to push those people away from your life and you won’t achieve anything beneficial.

Instead, be grateful for them and see their success as an opportunity to feel inspired and work on yourself and make yourself the best person you can be on YOUR journey.

Finding the right person for your life takes time and is a process that should NOT be rushed. Just like the process of getting fit at the gym or learning a new skill.

You’ve read this far and you might be thinking what I’m telling you is cliche and probably useless advice. I understand your frustration. I’ve been there.

You’re frustrated and you just want to find a solution to solve your dating problems and finally stop being single.

I will give you the “ugly truth” answer to this.

There is NO magic fix for your lack of dating success. It is a process of slow improvement over time.

There are way too many factors and variables in play and it’s difficult to pinpoint why some people have better love lives than others.

All you can do is be happy for others’ success and don’t feel bad about yourself.

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results” – Albert Einstein

Now you’ve probably heard many people tell you the following advice:

• “Just be yourself!”
• “You’ll find someone”
• “Just wait till the right person comes along”
• “It’ll happen when it happens”
• “Don’t worry about it, focus on yourself”
• “You’re perfect the way you are”

Don’t get me wrong, they all mean well and there are some truth to their statements. They do genuinely want to see you happy and win in life.

But be honest with yourself, has their advice ever helped change the trajectory of your life or helped you see ANY change in your life?

If you’re being completely honest with yourself, chances are your life hasn’t changed THAT much from following the typical advice you’ve been told all throughout your life.

Someone probably told you this even 5 years ago and you’re still probably stuck in the same place now as you were back then…

If their advice truly did help change your life, you probably wouldn’t need to read this article, to begin with.

In fact, chances are you probably felt good for a moment or so and then immediately afterward, you found yourself stuck in EXACTLY the same place.

You’re still feeling unhappy and depressed and clinging onto false hope that things will “just work itself out”. 

You’re relying on “hope” or “luck” for things to change. 

If you know something isn’t working or feels quite right, it’s time to do things differently to expect different results.

I’m going to keep it real with you – Things won’t just magically change for you overnight. You have to go out there and make that change yourself.

I’m not going to tell you that “your love life will magically work itself out” because it won’t magically just happen. 

Everything worthwhile in life takes time and effort and intention.

Me simply telling you “don’t worry, you’ll find someone!” Isn’t going to help at all. I know that.

What I will tell you is to be proactive and intentional about what you want in your life.

Anything that’s outside of your control, I wouldn’t waste a second of time or energy on that.

You should definitely try to be proactive in your search for a partner and continually put yourself out there to meet as many new people as you can, preferably people who share similar interests and values to you.

You’ve got work to do. 

So, what exactly do I mean when I tell you to “work on yourself”?

This means optimizing the following aspects of your life:

1. Improving your mental health (This is the most important!)
2. Improving your social skills
3. Working hard in your career/business
4. Increasing your monthly income
5. Building positive habits
6. Learning monetizable skills (Coding, Copywriting, Video Editing, Graphic Design, Digital Marketing, etc.)
7. Improving your fitness (Cardio, Weightlifting, Calisthenics, Martial Arts, etc.)
8. Working on your hobbies or developing new hobbies
9. Improving your personality
10. Improving your lifestyle
11. Improving your appearance (fashion, fitness, grooming, and general “looksmaxxing”).

Results or progress on all of the above won’t happen overnight. It takes time (sometimes months or even years) to see some progress.

For example, let’s say you want to improve your mental health. For this, you will need to practice meditation and gratitude journalling on a daily basis. It takes at least 21 days or more to see any visible progress.

For this, you should check out the book ‘Atomic Habits by James Clear’ for learning how to develop and maintain good habits that will help improve your mental health.

If you show up daily and put the effort in consistently, even if it’s just a little bit every day, this will compound over time like a snowball effect. 

Trust the process and visualize where you want to be in 6 months’ time.

The advice “just be yourself” has truth to it…

But what it really means is to “be your best self” and that includes optimizing your appearance whilst also having an authentic, real, and genuine personality.

Remember that Drake & Josh episode ‘First Crush’ where Josh liked Kathy but lied to her about playing the guitar because he wanted to impress her? 

Yeah, don’t do what Josh did in that episode. As you saw, it ultimately ended in disaster for him. (Shoutout to all Drake and Josh fans out there).

Do your best to make your life a darn good one that’s worth remembering.

Say “yes” to any opportunities for socializing, and do the hard work even when you don’t feel like doing it.

Any social experience whether good or bad is better than no social experience.

If you were like me, I was someone who played a lot of video games back in my younger days.

A Not So Secret Hack to this is – Treat your Life like a Video Game!

Imagine yourself as the main player in the game when it comes to real life.

Especially video games like Pokémon, if you wanted to level up your Charmander into a Charizard, you had to grind on Pokémon battles and gain EXP to evolve and become stronger. 

You can’t expect to take on the Elite Four if you’re still a level 5 Charmander.

See social skills as stats you level up, with real-world experience points.

The more you put yourself out there and practice your social skills, the higher your ranking will be. 

Be open-minded when it comes to meeting strangers, new people, and new experiences. You just never know where that may lead to. (I will write a separate article on how to get your social life handled after college.)

You will make mistakes along the way, but that’s fine, it’s part of the process of improving yourself. Give yourself permission to make mistakes and learn from them.

The point of this post is to help you only focus on the things that are within your control.

There’s still a chance that you can follow every self-improvement tip you can possibly research, and STILL end up alone. And yes, that is a small possibility.

However, nothing in life is guaranteed anyway. That’s just the way life is. Sometimes you’ll get what you want, other times you will not.

Either way, you must keep going, and play to win and not to avoid losing.

Constantly bet on yourself and learn from your experiences. Failure is inevitable in life. There’s no escaping it.

Embrace it. Keep going even when you feel like giving up. 

You have your family members, close friends and online communities to support you during the tough times.

There are plenty of free and paid resources out there to provide you with the help you need. No excuses.

As long as you did your best, learn from your mistakes and continue to improve yourself. Treat everything as feedback.

Even if you do end up forever alone in life despite your best efforts at improving, you can at least look back and say to yourself “I tried to be my best self and that’s all I can do” with no regrets.

All you can do is your best, I won’t judge.

The point of this is – Being single DOES NOT automatically mean there’s something wrong with you.

Being single is an opportunity to build the life you dream about and for your future partner to enjoy the benefits of the world you created for them starting TODAY. (If you want to get married in the future.)

To be honest, I wish we could adopt superpowers and control the uncontrollable…

But sadly, we don’t live in the Marvel Cinematic Universe where we can develop superpowers that can defy the laws of logic.

Welcome to the real world.

It’s time to re-frame what “success” actually means in the context of being single. 

You don’t need anyone or anything to complete you, you’re MORE than enough as you are. 

A romantic partner is just a supplement to your already amazing lifestyle.

Having said that, if you took the steps and implemented the actions to living an awesome lifestyle for yourself, it’s highly likely others cannot help but to gravitate towards that high-value lifestyle. Who doesn’t want to be around someone who’s winning in life?

As I mentioned previously, the best thing you can do TODAY is to only focus on the variables that you are in complete control of and become happy for yourself and not for others, as counter-intuitive as it sounds.

Sometimes it can be as simple as being patient enough to trust that you will find the right one in good time.

Or it can be simple as making small improvements to yourself and taking a real honest look at yourself in the mirror.

You are who you meet. If you want to meet the right person, become the right person that others dream about.

If you want others to love you, you have to start loving yourself first. You cannot expect others to like you if you don’t even like yourself. Start taking steps to improve your self-image.

There are plenty of books, resources, and YouTube videos out there to learn from and point you in the right direction.

All you have to do is go through their material and apply the principles into practice to see a transformation in your life.

Always remember to quickly apply what you’ve learned.

All of that being said – I don’t worry about my single status anymore. I embrace it. Heck, I even used the free time I have as motivation to write this very article you’re reading!

If you are feeling depressed or unhappy about your single status, chances are it’s because you’re worrying about things that are completely OUTSIDE of your control. The main takeaway from this article is for you to only focus on factors that are WITHIN YOUR CONTROL.

If you just focus on the variables within your control, you’ll find that your mental health will improve significantly once you stop worrying about the things that are outside of your control.

Prioritize taking care of your mental health first. Eliminate anything that’s damaging to your mental health and self-esteem.

You no longer have to be depressed about being single!

Here’s an ACTIONABLE STEP you can take right now: Grab a pen and a piece of paper and answer the following in as much detail as you can.

List at least 5 reasons why you’re grateful that you aren’t in a committed romantic relationship yet. The more reasons you can write down, the better. Start out with at least 5 reasons.

I am GRATEFUL for being single because… [FILL IN THE BLANK]

Once you have completed the actionable step. Let me know in the comments below.

Which one of these points are you going to try next?

Will you use free and / or paid resources online to find and develop new hobbies?

Will you use your time as a single person to focus on learning a monetizable skill?

Will you use your single status as an opportunity to go after the lifestyle you dream of?

I hope this post has helped you in any way shape or form. If there’s anything in this article which you need me to elaborate on, let me know!

If you would also like me to send you some book or course recommendations, I’m happy to help you with your self-development journey.

May the best be with you.

Written by Baz Kannan. Edited by Kevin Pinili.