Don’t be scared to walk alone, and don’t be scared to like it.
“Last night I was all dressed up and waiting on my blind date to arrive. He never showed up. It made me feel ugly and unworthy and abandoned. I thought he may have seen me from a distance and bailed. All sorts of negative thoughts were running through my mind. Then, as I left the restaurant alone, I heard a little girl ask her mom if I was a princess. It made me smile and changed my mindset. I decided to walk the long way home, and I truly took it in – the fresh air, the peaceful solitude, the moonlight glistening off the sidewalk. And I realized being alone right now was exactly what I needed.”
Those are lines right out of an email I received this morning from Diane, a new course student of ours (I’m sharing this with permission). Her feelings of loneliness, and then her willingness to embrace being alone, is both inspiring and a wonderful reminder for all of us. Because sometimes being alone is exactly what we need, whether we realize it or not.
The truth, however, is that an astounding number of people in this world hate being alone. Perhaps all of us do at some point or another.
We fear being without friends, family, or a partner. We get anxious about traveling alone to strange places, and being lost without anyone to hold our hand. We fear taking on life without a shoulder to lean on, for fear that we’re not strong enough or good enough to stand on our own two feet.
This is natural – this resistance to being alone. We’ve all felt it deep down in our own way, though we often try desperately to ignore and deny it. And this is one of the greatest causes of our stress…
To avoid being alone we’ll socialize endlessly, online and offline. We’ll date, and even marry, someone who isn’t right for us, just to have someone to cling to – someone to fill up the empty space in our lives. We’ll watch hours of TV, or stuff our faces with junk food, or buy toys we don’t need, because these things are replacements for love… especially self-love.
The secret to turning things around? Awareness and acceptance.
We have to open our minds to the empowering nature of being alone.
We tend to see solitude as grim and imprisoning. But in fact the exact opposite can be true. Solitude can be seen as freeing, as an opportunity for exploration and growth – an opportunity to get to know and love yourself, deeply.
Like most of us, though, this is something I’ve learned the hard way. For many years I feared being alone, but I gradually strengthened my emotional self-sufficiency, and now I love it. The more I’ve experienced and explored my own feelings of loneliness and uncertainty, the more I’ve realized how necessary these feelings are. It’s good for us to spend time exploring unknowns by ourselves. It gives us an opportunity to discover who we really are and what life is all about.
Being alone is nothing to fear. Solitude is beautiful.
Here are some things that happen when you embrace it:
1. You develop strengths you need, and didn’t know you had inside you.
Whenever I tell a coaching/course student that they need to embrace being alone, they usually say something like:
“But don’t you think the thought of being alone is [Read more…]
