self-esteem in those days that I didn’t know he was a complete waste of time. He’s left me completely scarred inside.”
Just think: countless people all over the world never come out of these personal battles for one reason or another, and blindly live the rest of their lives that way. Count yourself among the lucky ones if you’re willing and able to buy self-help books like the one you’re reading now—it means that you not only recognize the need to improve yourself, but that you do have the power to improve yourself.
By improving yourself, every other aspect of your life will improve as well, including your dating life.
But first, self-improvement requires having knowledge of self that’s both realistic and self-affirming.
You’ll have to go through a process of self-reflection and self-evaluation to achieve this. Hundreds of teachers and authors have discussed and written about this subject alone, but what they say about these difficult processes can be summarized here.
(Note that I’ve described self-reflection and self- evaluation as difficult. It will be so, in varying degrees, depending on your situation and personality. I’m merely presenting a summarized look at the steps involved in these processes, but it is really an experience each of us must personally slog through, and in most cases, for several times in our lives, over a long period of time!)