6 Incredible things that happen once you learn to enjoy being alone
Some people think of “being alone” as a bad thing. It either means you’re anti-social, or unwanted, neither of which are a good position to be in.
To get the most out of life, you must learn to enjoy spending time alone. The benefits that come once you learn to appreciate solitude are too numerous to catalog, but here are some of the best:
1. You’ll get to recharge: Often times when we’re surrounded by other people, we’re expending a lot of energy. Trying to keep others happy, make them laugh, soothe their egos, read their emotions, and all of the other rigors that come along with regular interaction. It can be mentally draining if you’re constantly connected to other people. A little alone time lets you recharge and take a break from the emotionally and mentally taxing job of constant interaction.
2. It increases your emotional intelligence: Emotional intelligence (EQ) is your ability to recognize and understand emotions in yourself and others and your ability to use this awareness to manage your behavior and relationships. Self-awareness is the foundation of emotional intelligence, and you can’t increase your EQ without it. Since self-awareness requires understanding your emotions and how you react to various people and situations, this necessitates careful self-reflection, and self-reflection happens best when you’re alone.
3. You’ll start doing things you actually enjoy: When you’re constantly in the company of other people, you’re always making compromises in order to find solutions that the entire group can enjoy. And unfortunately, the things you want most, may not always line up with what the group wants. So it’s easy to enjoy being alone once you realize that doing so gives you more freedom to do the things you actually want to do.
4. You won’t have to apologize for anything: When you start to enjoy being alone, you’ll quickly see that solitude means you don’t have to keep apologizing for what you’ve done. So often, we do things that end up upsetting other people, or hurting someone else’s feelings, and then have to quickly apologize for it. But when you’re alone, you don’t have to apologize for anything. And that takes a lot of pressure out of most situations. You get to stop second guessing everything you say, or every move you make because you’re afraid someone is going to be offended, or saddened, and angered.
5. You appreciate other people more: Absence really does make the heart grow fonder. Time alone lets you see people in a whole new light, and it helps you to develop a renewed sense of gratitude for who they are and what they do.
6. You’ll stop looking for validation: So often we feel we the need to get the “OK” from our friends and family before we take action. We constantly look to other people for advice on what we should do next. Of course, there are times where it’s not only perfectly acceptable to ask for advice, but downright necessary. But there are also times where we’re perfectly capable of acting on our own, be we instead of looking to others for an answer. When you start to spend more time alone, you’ll learn to trust your instincts and make decisions without any third party validation.
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