If you are in between relationships, this is a great time to reflect on important pointers for getting ready for love.

1. Develop A Relationship With Yourself, First.

Here are seven steps to help hone your ability to truly receive love -- and deal with a relationship -- when Cupid's coveted arrow does find your heart!

2. Build Your Self Esteem.

3. Change Yourself.

The person you must fall in love with first is you. Too often people seek out others who will fill some inner need, as opposed to someone with whom you can truly share life. It's important to recognize the distinction between "neediness and having someone," and "love and sharing from the heart." Dysfunctional relationships are born out of unions between people who don't really know what it means to love, honor and cherish. People who love, honor and cherish themselves -- or at least strive for it -- are more capable of both giving and receiving that from a mate.

4. Learn to Accept Yourself, and You Will Know How to Accept Others.

Research has proven time and again that people who get trapped in bad or abusive relationships suffer from low self-esteem. Sometimes, because of background and personal history, the only model someone has for love is destructive behavior or pain; perhaps they lived in a household were "love" was expressed that way. It gets dramatized in every relationship they have. Utilize everything you can -- books, therapy, friends -- to enhance emotional health and self-esteem.

5. Learn How to "Surrender."

Don't expect others to change -- do expect miracles! Your personal power to change your own life is the greatest power of all. It is impossible to make another person change or offer help they have not asked for. But you can always strive to change yourself.

Self-acceptance is your model for accepting others. If you are critical, harsh and unforgiving of yourself -- so will you be to others.

Control is a touchy issue in relationships. Yet surrender has nothing to do with control. It has to do with letting down your defenses and letting go of fear, in order to surrender and truly merge with another person. There is an incorrect notion that surrender makes one vulnerable, and vulnerability equals powerlessness. Not for people who realize that, when they are healthy inside, it is a natural response to surrender. We may try to get at it through sex, but, when you surrender on more than just a sexual level, it allows you to really have that which you truly desire: True intimacy.

7. Learn to Receive Well.

6. Ask for What You Want.

Adapted from my online course, Find Your Spiritual Soulmate.

Women, more so than men, need coaching on this (that's my anecdotal experiences with it, anyway). This is not just for relationships but everything. While there is a line between nagging and making a request, there is a huge area of possibility in which magical things will happen if only you request them!

The best way to welcome your dreams as they manifest and continue getting what you want is to learn how to receive it well. The more you say thank you -- to yourself, your significant other, to God, Goddess, All there is -- the more good things that flow your way. The more good things that flow your way, the more experience you will have letting them in. Work on this and master it. In order to have your romantic dreams come true, you must be able to let Love in when it comes knocking at your door ... and you must also be willing to allow Love to stay!