The Beauty Of Spending Time Alone With Yourself

Solitude, or spending time alone with yourself, is not only for introverts or artists. It is an essential mental and spiritual need for everyone to achieve life balance and heightened awareness.

In my primary years, my cousins teased me for having ‘my own world’ because I’d rather be alone than hang out with them. One even said that people who love to be alone, like me, are crazy. Over two decades later, negative connotations on solitude or being alone still exist. I still get the same reactions as if I’m against the world.

According to a study published in EJSP, solitude is the time spent alone either without others physically present or without social interaction; and is often interchanged with loneliness and isolation. I also learned that many people fear solitude because they fear getting drowned in extreme loneliness.

Sometimes, a lack of understanding leads us to wrong perceptions. Solitude is an intentional way of pulling yourself from the crowd to hear less of what’s going on outside and to listen more from your soul. And we need to do this as a form of self-care due to overstimulation and stress everywhere.

Whether you naturally enjoy being alone or not, we all need to be with ourselves for mental, emotional, and spiritual sake. To give you more insight, here are 5 beautiful benefits of spending time alone with yourself.

5 Benefits of Spending Time Alone With Yourself

1. It allows your mind to slow down and breathe.

I always believe that life is never easy (not in a negative way, though) because we have to constantly work, learn, and get stretched by life challenges. Add to it the pressures we get from people and world standards to live in certain ways. Sometimes, it feels more like running race after race and not truly living a life.

Spending time alone with yourself reduces activities in your mind. It is like taking a break from daily responsibilities to slow down and breathe.

As a mother and homemaker, taking care of my children and keeping the entire household functional and peaceful tends to eat up my days, failing to keep up with my personal needs. Fortunately, solitude keeps me sane. At least four times a week, when my family is sleeping at night, I get up to capture life in its most quiet and relaxed state.

I would either write in my journal, watch a good movie, or work on my blog to make my alone time more meaningful. It feels great not to think of my responsibilities to people and work on my passions for at least an hour or two. It calms my mind and prevents me from having burnout and anxiety.

Having solitude or spending time with ourselves is like creating a resting place for the mind, body, and spirit amid our fast-moving lives.

2. It lets you enjoy and feel yourself.

When is the last time you enjoy and feel yourself? One truth about socializing and being with people all the time is that – we don’t get to entertain ourselves anymore. 

Our natural tendency when with other people is to attend to them and project certain behaviors needed in a situation. Our focus is to please them and forget about us. Even if you are with a friend you deeply trust, there is still a thin layer of mask that you cannot take off to maintain the image you showed at the beginning of the friendship.

And as long as there’s a mask, you cannot fully experience yourself. 

This is when the importance of spending time alone with yourself comes in. When you intentionally dedicate time to be in solitude, you are free to exist without having to wear a mask or act in certain roles people expect from you. You are free to be the person that only you know so well.

The no need to be with someone for someone allows us to feel more of who we are and be our own best friend.

3. It gives you space to really think and reflect.

Intentional thinking and reflecting on things going on in our lives are consequential to a clearer, organized, and efficient way of living – applicable to both personal and professional aspects.

When I was still working as a freelance engineer, a part of my schedule went to spending time alone with myself to evaluate what strategies worked for me and what didn’t. It helped me create a better system for how I execute my job.

When I got married and had children, this same old approach of getting into solitude was what helped me stay connected to my core and not lose myself despite the risk of it when one becomes a parent.

Spending time alone with yourself does wonders in whatever you do in life. The more responsibilities you have, the more you need to figure out ways to fulfill them.

4. It helps increase your spiritual awareness.

An important area of our life for healing and transformation is spirituality. It is not about religion, where one needs to comply with rituals and interpretations of faith and beliefs.

Spirituality, on the tip of an iceberg, is a journey of remembering our authentic nature anchored to the divine Creator or God. It is a lifelong process of self-discovery, living in purpose, and maturing in faith. All of these need silence to hear and discern where the universe is leading us.

If there is one ritual required on a spiritual journey to grow wide and deep, it is going on solitary mode. It is in silencing your physical realm that you will hear and feel more of what’s going on the spiritual side.

Dedicating alone time with yourself to host your inner self increases spiritual awareness, strengthens intuition, and guides you to connect the dots of your encounters.

At the beginning of my spiritual exploration, I didn’t know where and how to start. I had no books to read nor people to ask. But one thing was consistent with me – I always spent time alone with myself to wonder, stretch my imagination of the universe, and ask myself questions that I could not when my attention was busy entertaining the world.

Years later, I’ve already read many books, watched related videos, met people who also walk on the path, joined spiritual workshops, and yet – transformation happens when I take myself out on a date, in a peaceful place, to introspect and unite with the universal energy.

When you spend time alone with yourself, magic takes place. True magic lives not through miracles that the naked eye sees but inside an awakened soul.

5. It refreshes your creativity.

Whether a person is logical or inclined to arts, that person is creative. We are all creative because we move, do the work, and create something non-existent before.

If you are a technical person working at the office, your mind needs to think and produce an output – that is creativity. As a writer of both fiction and non-fiction, I need creativity, too. To access our creative side, we need to get out of the actual work of creating, replenish our brains, and get ready for more.

One of the most efficient ways to break from work is to spend time with yourself. It refreshes and boosts your creativity. It sets your brain to an alpha-wave state and heightens imagination, visualization, learning, and concentration.

Going out alone for a walk in nature is my go-to solitude mode whenever I am drowned in writing. My brain gets relaxed when I see greens and inhale fresh air, without anyone disturbing me.

All of us need to be alone regularly to become more creative and productive in life. Creating is what keeps us going, and intentional alone time recharges us.

Ways To Spend Time With Yourself

There are many ways to practice solitude, and it varies from person to person. The important thing is you practice what works for you and it serves the purpose. Here are some suggestions on how you can spend time alone with yourself.

• Spend time with nature
• Go to a peaceful and high-frequency place like churches and museums
• Practice yoga
• Meditate
• Journal your reflections
• Attend seminars and self-discovery classes (without tagging along friends)
• Go shopping and treat yourself
• Jog, run, or swim
• Travel solo
• Stay at home when others decide to go out

The list can be endless. As you go along and let your soul lead you, you will eventually find ways you are aligned with to serve you the best.