Being single is a time to invest in oneself. A critical aspect of focusing on oneself is self-development. Here is a look at the connection between single life and self-development.
Connection Between The Single Life And Self-Development
The single is a time to work on oneself. It is a time to become the best version of yourself. It does not matter why you may be single or if you want to date or marry eventually. Self-work allows you to reach your goals or prepare for a relationship later. There are three critical areas that singles can focus on.
Personal Finance
Money management is critical. Money is used every day. Even if you do not spend money, it could be compounding to earn interest or increase the debt owed. It is critical to get one’s finances in order. Many Americans are in debt. This is because many were never taught the basics of personal finance. I had to learn personal finance on my own. It was never taught to me in school. The three basics of personal finance are:
• Stay out of debt
• Save money
• Invest money
Debt
If you have debt, there are two main strategies to pay it off: snowball or avalanche. With the snowball method, pay off the smallest debt first. In contrast, with the avalanche method, you pay the debt with the highest interest rates. The advantage of the avalanche strategy is that the debts with the highest interest rates will compound the fastest, which means you will have to pay more later. By tackling them first, they get paid off first. With both methods, you will pay the minimum each month unless you have an extra month to pay off the debt.
Savings Account
Work to save money. Two ways to grow savings is to put a portion of each paycheck into a high-yield savings account or a money market account. The initial first goal is to build an emergency fund. $10,000 is the first goal to create a rainy day fund in a money market or high-yield savings account. Aim to continue to build up your savings. After enough money is saved, begin to invest money.
Investments
Investing is finding ways to make your money work for you. Ways to invest include starting an online business, the stock market, and real estate. Once you have income from one investment, reinvest it into another asset class. This will allow you to be diversified among many types of financial assets. Some may do poorly during times that others do well.
Relationships
Relationships are vital to one’s health. Relationships do not have to be romantic. A variety of relationships can help you grow as an individual.
Friendship
Friends can help in your self-development. The people you surround yourself with will often have similar interests and be like-minded. To be successful, you must surround yourself with other successful people.
Family
Spend time with your family. Not everyone gets along with their family, including estranged families, but you are connected by blood and genealogy.
Community
Community Find a community that you enjoy spending time with where you live. A community is built around you. You are the one who chooses who is in your network. It could include casual acquaintances from church, a bar, or a monthly event in your area.
Self-Development
Self-Discipline
Self-discipline plays a critical role in one’s success. Time management connects with self-discipline. Without discipline, you will be distracted by many things that prevent you from reaching your goals.
A time management strategy I use is to do the tasks I do not enjoy in the morning: emails, phone calls, and running errands. Those are smaller tasks. I then work on busy tasks: writing a blog post, writing a Substack post, or posting a video on YouTube. The busy work helps me to reach a larger goal. A bigger goal could be working to self-publish another book, create a digital course, or find some way to increase income.
Self-Responsibility
Self-responsibility, along with discipline, is foundational to success. By accepting responsibility, you recognize that you are responsible for your choices and the consequences of your decisions. Good and bad.
Goal-Setting
Set goals. Without something to aim for, it is easy to waste time. It is easy to make excuses. An objective gives you something to aim for. When you complete a small, medium, or large goal, celebrate!
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Summary
These are three core ways that singles can focus on personal development. There is nothing wrong with being single. Use your time being single to become the best version of yourself!
Views expressed in this article are the author’s opinions and do not necessarily reflect the views of Secure Single. It is intended for informational and educational purposes only. It is not investment or financial advice. James Bollen is the author of Thriving Solo: How to Flourish and Live Your Perfect Life (Without A Soulmate). Now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon. Subscribe to Secure Single’s Substack for free!
There are many people who are single who may want to date, but they do not date people who want to have kids. Many millennials are already faced with student loan debt and are working to pay it off while getting their careers on track. It’s distracting thinking about dating, and even about starting a family. We all want what we want, but we must first be willing to work hard for it. Some people were lucky to be born with a silver spoon in their hand, or to have had their college paid for by their parents. When you have both emotions and have student loans to pay of, you have got to work hard and can’t; deal with any distractions. Every minute matters. Here’s the breakdown in three steps:
Student Loans
They really suck. Trade schools are smart to get into because you can instantly go to work with real skills that are marketable to the world. When You get a general degree, making yourself marketable is tougher. Picking up a side hustle, getting into sales, and starting your own company are great ways to begin to pay off your student loans. You want to work to pay off all your loans and get into a financial position where you can breathe.College is expensive, and not really worth it. Ugh!
Career Focused
Yes, it’s true that millennials are the largest age demographic to be single, unwed, and childless, but it is also true that due to the student loan debt we have we are geared towards making a living and paying it all off. It’s time to be responsible. It’s time to get focused in our careers. Kids and marriage can come later in life, but in your 20’s you have so much energy to make things happen. What you do NOW will affect the rest of your future. You Have to be so careful how you spend your time, and you have to work towards generating GOOD cash flow to set up your future to be bright.
Be Free From Kids
Why bring children into the world when the divorce rate is at 50% and growing, and we live in a world where people are afraid of commitment. Relationships are messy. We need to set things up to counterbalance these events from happening. Use birth control and don’t get emotionally involved. People don’t commit, so why have children with them, especially out of wedlock? Be smart, and be safe.
In order to love better and have a more liberated life, you have got to work hard for what you want. It may require more hours but hey it’s your life and you need to find a way to make it worth something. Get out of debt, focus on your career, and don’t mess around with non-committal people because relationships are messy as it is. When You focus on you, and are bettering your life, you are truly living and being in alignment with your true self and making every second count. There is not a minute to lose, so focus on your goals, write them down, take steps towards them every day, and make what you do count. You can do it, and you are worth it to make your dreams and goals happen! Go get it!
Cheers,
Danielle
Views expressed in this article are the author’s opinions and do not necessarily reflect the views of Secure Single. It is intended for informational and educational purposes only. It is not investment or financial advice. James Bollen is the author of Thriving Solo: How to Flourish and Live Your Perfect Life (Without A Soulmate). Now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon. Subscribe to Secure Single’s Substack for free!
This holiday season we come together and realize just how fast the year has gone. Not only is it the end of the year, but this holiday season things are much more fast paced with meetings, family visits, vacations, trips, quarterly end reviews, and quotas. All tie into what is necessary and urgent. We can feel stressed and out of control. In order to get back control over our lives, we need to meditate. Meditation can calm a stressful mind and will help you center yourself before you go back out onto the battlefield of life. Here are the five benefits of meditation that you can integrate into your schedule that singles can implement today.
Meditation Helps You Get Organized
Ever heard the term scatterbrained? Too often we are so busy micromanaging things in our lives that we forget about rest and recovery. Life is simple, and far too simple for most people. To make things work better in your life, give meditation a try to organize your thoughts and get going on what is most important. An organized mind makes better decisions.
Meditation Reduces Stress
Our lives are far more fast-paced than our parents, and it is up to us to keep up with the current times or we will surely get swept under. To reduce stress in your life and be sharper and more effective in our super-sonic speed lives, meditate to reduce stress to be best prepared to handle all obstacles that arise in a calm and controlled mind. Reduce your stress today.
Meditation Improves Your Immune System
Counter-intuitive, but true. Meditating has multiple health benefits which includes improving your immune system. Tied into the stress factor, when we are stressed our immune system isn’t at it’s strongest, and times like these are when we can get an illness. To make matters better, meditating will improve your immune system by lowering rushing thoughts and pressures. You will feel more calm and collected, and healthier.
Meditation Improves Relationships
When you are more centered, you are able to be present for most, if not all, situations. Our minds constantly wander from past to future, but are rarely in the present. When we are with friends, family, and loved ones, we often are elsewhere in our minds thinking about rushing deadlines and things out of our control.
Meditation Improves Self-Knowledge
You can learn a lot about yourself when you sit with yourself and take the time to actually be with yourself. Meditation is a form of self-love, and can help you reach a better understanding of yourself as you listen to the flying thoughts in your mind. Take a pen and paper and write down everything that comes to you. There are no right or wrong answers, just pure consciousness. All the answers you need are within you, so if there is an issue in your life, meditate about it. You know what to do, so trust yourself and improve the relationship you have with yourself.
Summary
Now you’re aware of how you can calm down your mind and get organized. Meditation brings us to the present, and is a daily habit we need to embody, like showering, which improves our lives. Get better today, one step at a time. Practice meditation multiple times a day and keep a journal to note the benefits you get from your practice. It may be difficult at first, but keep going. Get better today, and become the best version of yourself that you can be. Get bigger, better, faster, and stronger!
Cheers,
Danielle
Views expressed in this article are the author’s opinions and do not necessarily reflect the views of Secure Single. It is intended for informational and educational purposes only. It is not investment or financial advice. James Bollen is the author of Thriving Solo: How to Flourish and Live Your Perfect Life (Without A Soulmate). Now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon. Subscribe to Secure Single’s Substack for free!
Being Single Can Improve Your Life
It has been said that being single as an adult can be quite a stigma. How do you combat a statement that the majority of the population notes? The answer is simple: find data and statements that back up why being single can actually be a positive way to live your life. I feel deep down that the majority of many single people are influenced by the media that some fairy-tale relationship exists and that because we are single we are missing out. Apparently, this isn’t the trend:
“In 1962, half of the 21-year-olds and 90% of 30-year-olds had been married at least once.
In 2014, only 8% of 21-year-olds and 55% of 30-year-olds had been married.”
From time to time, I feel the same. How do you combat those lonely nights, or not having a welcoming and sweet voice to greet you at the door when you come home from a long day? Be compassionate with yourself, and understand that it is all in mindset. Organize your life in such a way that you become to fulfill all of your life’s desires with rich friendships, extraordinary moments and experiences, and attain the feeling of fulfillment when you accomplish life’s goals.
After scouring the internet, I found many positive examples of why being single can actually be a good thing. For one, you have a lot more time to be with yourself and meditate. You have more time to Know Thyself, which is one of the fundamental principals to understand the meaning of life.
Single people tend to be more social. Singles are more likely to stay in touch with family and friends, as well as keep be sociable with their neighbors. Socialization is key, it’s part of being human.
Without the responsibilities of tending to a family you’ve created, you can invest that time in relaxing and doing leisurely activities. Have you heard about the importance of rest and recovery? It goes a long way to ‘sharpen the saw’ by occasionally participating in activities that promote your well-being. Relaxation is key for survival in our current fast paced world. The BLS found that single people spend on average 5.6 hours a day on overall leisure activities, in comparison to married people who spend about 4.8 hours a day on leisure.
Exercise. Single people have more time to work out in comparison to their married counterparts who tend to get fat after marriage.
A recent study by W. Bradford Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, and Robert Lerman, an economics professor at American University found that single women professionals earn more money than married women.
Just because you are single does not mean you have some sort of social status stigma, it means you have more time to do the things you enjoy without having strings holding you back. If you really want a relationship, then you will find one — and no matter how hard it is, you will find a way to make it work. If you are single and in a stage of uncertainty (this feeling will come and go), you can find the silver lining. Good luck out there Secure Singles, find a way to see the bright side of life. Live it up!
Views expressed in this article are the author’s opinions and do not necessarily reflect the views of Secure Single. It is intended for informational and educational purposes only. It is not investment or financial advice. James Bollen is the author of Thriving Solo: How to Flourish and Live Your Perfect Life (Without A Soulmate). Now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon. Subscribe to Secure Single’s Substack for free!
Spring is a time of rebirth. Plants begin to sprout and birth new life as the season begins from what were once dead shrubs. Being single can also be a start of a new beginning. A relationship may have just ended and you are now on break. The single life is a time to grow and mature as an individual before entering a relationship or to just work on yourself. As the first day of Spring brings a new season, here are five ways to spring into the single life.
Bloom
All flowers start as a seed before sprouting and finally blooming into a beautiful flower. The single life is no different. It is a time to grow and to get to know yourself better. It is also a time to prepare yourself for your potential mate. Just as the plant grew from a seedling, being single can be a time to grow as an adult and learn how to do life’s basic skills before starting to date or getting married.
Shine as a Single
The single life is often thought of as being lesser than the married life. It is not. The single time of your life is the time to shine as an individual and to enjoy all that the single life offers. It is also a time to think for yourself before a significant other enters the picture. Learn to view yourself positively and from this point forward reinforce that concept each day by telling yourself positive self-talk, a positive phrase that resonates with you. A plant needs sun to grow and the single life has its challenges so people need affirmative thoughts to live a better daily life.
Relax
Take some time off from your job and travel to a new destination this Spring. Can’t travel? Take time out of your day to do your favorite activity, take a nap at the park, or read a book by the lake. Make it a point to spend some much needed alone time to just relax to escape the business of life and any current problems that you may be experiencing in your life. Relax. Breathe. De-stress.
Grow as a Person
Life is meant to be enjoyed and the best way to enjoy life is to grow as a person. As a single, you have time to develop as a person that would be given to another person if you were in a relationship. Use your time as a single to grow intellectually, physically, and get to know yourself better as a person. The best way to grow is to challenge yourself by doing what is uncomfortable. Get out of your comfort zone and go to places alone as a single and do not worry about what others may think of you going out by yourself. Take risks in life instead of playing it safe.
Temperate
Spring is temperate season that follows the cold and harsh season of Winter. This season is characterized by mild temperatures. Similarly, as the season becomes more moderate, singles can work on self-control and discipline in different areas of life. Want to lose some weight to look great in a bikini this summer? Stick to a diet and exercise plan. Have problems connecting with people and making friends? Learn how to read body language and ask people questions when you talk to them and best sure to listen to their answers. Been meaning to clean up your apartment or fix that maintenance issue? Stop procrastinating and prepare a time during the week where you will do what you have been putting off. Take the time to control yourself and to monitor your time better as a single this Spring.
Views expressed in this article are the author’s opinions and do not necessarily reflect the views of Secure Single. It is intended for informational and educational purposes only. It is not investment or financial advice. James Bollen is the author of Thriving Solo: How to Flourish and Live Your Perfect Life (Without A Soulmate). Now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon. Subscribe to Secure Single’s Substack for free!
Friendship is the state of forming a bond with another person to get to know them better and to enjoy spending time with them. The Greek word for the love between friends is philia. Friendship often neglected and placed behind sexual and romantic relationships. Despite the age of social media where people can have hundreds of friends, most people do not know how to be a good friend. Society also emphasizes that people should pursue sexual and romantic relationships; despite that once they end, the people in those relationships go there different ways because it did not last and lose contact with each other. Friendship, if done well, should last since the goal is to build and continually improve the human connection with another person who you want to know more by spending time with that person. Here are five steps to be a better friend.
1) Loyalty
Friendship is about making time to support your friends when they are going through a hard time or they just want to get together over coffee or drinks to talk. This also means that you are willing to hear your friends concerns and always be honest with your friends. This is especially true when disagreements arise between friends. Loyalty means that you make time for your friends out of your busy life to stay connected, or to reconnect with old friends.
2) Accept Your Friend Unconditionally
To unconditionally accept anyone is difficult. It requires that you accept your friends for their problems and all. This also means that you are willing to accept them when they expose their vulnerabilities and expose some of their hidden problems or secrets that you were not aware of until having a real conversation with your friend.
3) Stay Friends Regardless of Your Friend’s Choices
People can make their own choices and to decide how they want to live their life. Regardless if you agree with your friend’s choices, stick by your friend. This means that even when you disagree with the choices your friend is deciding to make, or made, that you will not leave them just because you don’t support their choice. It is easy to leave, bail on a friend, and to lose a friendship. It is hard to stay friends and to stand by your friend’s choices. Do the hard choice and stay friends regardless of your friend’s decisions.
4) Work to Improve Their Life
As a friend, you should genuinely want to help and want to improve your friend’s life. This requires that your friendship is a vehicle to benefit them in the different areas of their life. Listen to them. Talk to them. Help them as needed. Be there when they are having a difficult time in life. As a friend, you want to see their life improve and watch them become a better person.
5) Show Up
Take time out of your busy life and show up when your friend wants to do something. This reveals to your friend that you care enough about them by taking time out of your day to meet up with them. Showing up proves to your friend that you actually care and that you are a loyal friend.