A life hack that I’ve grown fond of over the past couple years, yet suffer over too, is the choice to remain alone.
From time to time, I’ll desire love, intimacy and connection but I always arrive at the same conclusion—that remaining alone is best for me.
Despite a deep attraction to someone and the initial love, lust and overall potential, I remind myself that it is not for me. For many, however, the opposite seems to prevail more often. As wonderful and joyous as relationships can be, my journey beckons me to explore new avenues of thriving.
Too much emphasis is placed on modern relationship ideals, from my perspective.
The idea that we have to be with someone to make our lives complete is a misnomer that should be re-examined thoroughly. My personal experience embracing aloneness has taught me the immense value of self-love. Liberating myself from the belief that someone else will be the solution to my happiness is not an easy solution in and of itself, but necessary if we’re truly dedicated to a path of personal growth and spiritual evolution.
In the past, relationships have provided the kind of lessons I needed at the time, such as working through familial issues. Eventually, I realized that I was fully capable of hacking into my own thought processes and began organizing new affirmations that supported being alone as a healthy avenue of fulfillment.
There appears to be an emerging culture of independent thinkers and lovers—people who are capable of enlightening themselves through personal development while learning to love themselves more unconditionally.
My own path has shown me the value of platonic love, which I cannot overstate enough. Despite the many long and despairing struggles associated with loneliness and love lost, we have an opportunity to dig deeper into our own subconscious where we might discover newfound senses of worth and purpose in our lives that no other person could ever possibly fill.
Being alone has helped me steer away from entering into more of the torment-laden relationships of my past. I’ve coaxed myself into states of acceptance, along with ridding beliefs associated with comparisons to others or feeling like I need to be further along in my development. Remaining alone has instilled the appreciation of presence and freedom to lead my life, absent compromise or consent of others.
Two pieces of advice to anyone seeking new pathways of learning to embrace loneliness:
Learn to assert your values and commitments that promote self care.
I enjoy going on long walks or spending time in nature to ascertain my values and commitments that lead to healing old wounds and overcoming toxic patterns or behaviors.
Cultivate space for healthy friendships.
Rather than trying to date or get involved, I’ve simply let these old ideals go to the wayside and am learning to remain open for incredible friendships to develop naturally over time.
Nothing is forced in life, although we sure try to. If we learn to settle into loneliness, we might actually discover what we’ve been seeking all along.
I feel your pain. You can fix it and be part of the world, if you care to. I spent 5 years thinking the way you do, so glad I found the truth.
See, society programming is pretty bad. The food supply is also contaminated with a lot of mind altering and addictive chemicals. The combination produces people that I really don't care to be around.
My wife and I removed ourselves from society for nearly a decade, as we worked on ourselves and our relationship. During that time we found a number of things that were highly beneficial to us, yet were lacking in the social data stream.
#1 A lot of the feelings you have are due to misprogramming/imprinting you received when you were young. I highly recommend looking in to the tech at emofree.com and doing a lot of self exploration and reprogramming.
#2 Check out a book/audio by Earl Nightengale called "Lead the Field," because it's great stuff that every kid should be aware of, I found it later in life and it's still been immensely beneficial.
#3 Clean all the chems from your diet. I'm not kidding when I say there are addictive and mind altering drugs in the food supply. Look up "Blood Type Food List" and cut out all the 'Avoids" for your blood type and secreter status. Unless you've cleaned out your body, you really have no idea what you're missing.
#4 Set positive and constructive, worthwhile goals and work toward achieving them. This will bring you great happiness.
#5 When you're doing all of this, chances are good you'll meet someone moving in the same direction you are and life will become even better.
Society sucks for creating self-esteem and well adjusted folks. Take some time to work on yourself, because you deserve it. :)
Be good to yourself!
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on loneliness and being alone!
I'm an introvert, so it's always been difficult for me to engage in social situations. As a result I spend a lot of time alone as well, as I just didn't really know how to socialize effectively. This led me to having a rather small circle of friends and family, as I just didn't know - or didn't have the energy - to widen my circle very much.
As I grew older and (somewhat) wiser, I realized that spending time by yourself isn't all bad. Loneliness and being alone are two very different things, and one doesn't necessarily lead to the other. In the super-connected world we live in right now, a little solitude now and again can help keep us centered instead of overwhelmed, so I absolutely understand your point!
I don't live "alone" however life circumstances made Me a Widower at age 43 raising a 12 year old son and 11 year daughter. My Son is now 19 which leaves Me with My daughter. If alone can be defined as living life without your best friend, lover, Wife, and Mother of Your children then yes I have been living alone for the past 7 years. It's lonely. Knowing the fact Our children lost Their Mother I am of the belief and have come to know that the pain and grief They suffered is completely different than that which I did. So, yes, notwithstanding minimal interaction in a teenager's life I guess I am living alone.