PSYCHOLOGY
The Art of Being Alone, But Never Lonely
Are you comfortable being alone? What is causing you to feel lonely? Learn to turn isolation into a pleasurable experience.
Prefer listening to reading? Here’s the voiceover, recorded by yours truly.
There will be times when we have to spend extended periods alone. You might have gotten a taste of that during the recent pandemic. It’s no fun. If you work from home, as I do, it can get pretty lonely. I spend a lot of time alone, and for the most part, I prefer it that way. I didn’t always, though.
Reach out
Before we go any further, I would encourage you to seek company. Go among people. Don’t lock yourself in a room, hoping someone will come to you. Reach out. Most of us feel lonely and want to be contacted, but we lack confidence, so we pretend to be strong and self-sufficient. It’s an act.
Even the most introverted among us still appreciate it when someone occasionally drags us out of our caves. Chances are the one whose company you seek also seeks yours. One of you will have to reach out — it might as well be you.
Trust me, picking up the phone and asking someone for a coffee or a walk is a hell of a lot easier than what I’m about to suggest. Take the risk! Make the first move.
Have you ever wondered what makes you feel lonely?
- Is it the simple fact of being physically isolated and alone, without family and friends?
- Is it a mental thing — thoughts causing feelings, regardless of outside circumstances? (I’m giving away the plot here)
- Have you ever been lonely among people and felt completely fine when alone?
The fact is, you can be surrounded by people and still feel lonely. You can also be completely alone and feel connected, content, and blissful. How you feel will always depend, first and foremost, on your mind and the thoughts you entertain. This is a crucial understanding!
While having people who love you and accept you for who you are is one of the most valuable things in this life, one relationship is even more important — the one you nurture with yourself.
When you’re alone, your thoughts begin their little dance of madness. The result of that inner party can be quite literally heaven or hell, depending on the content of those thoughts.
Thoughts produce feelings
If your mind is a vicious dick and keeps yelling at you, showing you negative images, screaming how nobody loves you, you’re not good enough, and you’ll never be happy because you don’t deserve it, being alone will entail suffering.
You’ll then desperately seek to break the madness of your mind’s inner voice by any means possible. Alcohol, drugs, sex, TV, scrolling, sports, adrenaline, you name it. All to get out of your head!
However, if your mind is trained to be still and silent, imagine positive things, and show you love in the absence of outside stimuli, being alone will be an enjoyable experience.
I hated this inner roommate of mine (my mind), but now, we’re besties.
I love being alone. I love closing my eyes and controlling my thoughts. I feel best when I detach from my mind and observe the infinite emptiness and silence within. I know that’s probably not your experience, but it is possible! Yes, even for you. With some practice, you can learn to enjoy your own company alone.
Essential wisdom — detachment from your mind
Start by learning to detach from your mind, realizing you are not your mind but the one observing it. You must become the witnessing awareness behind the mind, unaffected by whatever thoughts flash in your mind’s eye.
This is the key to emotional freedom, freedom from the oppression of your mind. I know of nothing more important. Do you?
I describe the process in this post.
Read and practice it. It will be one of the most important things you will ever learn, helping you minimize suffering and achieve lasting inner peace and happiness.
The opposite feeling of loneliness
I have felt the most connected, accepted, and loved in two opposite situations:
- When embraced by my loved ones, feeling their warmth and love up close, listening to their heartbeat, and enjoying their hands combing through my hair (or simply cuddling with the family on the sofa).
- When completely alone, meditating, bursting with a sense of connectedness to the whole universe and an embrace of infinite, indiscriminate love that is impossible to describe.
How is this possible?
Some people assign this effect to connectedness with the universe, God (depending on your beliefs), the embodiment of infinite love, the one mind to which we are all connected.
I wouldn’t go that far, but it does feel like a connection with everything and everyone — a perfect oneness. Distant yet intimate, it feels like contentment, enoughness, and love without attachments and conditions. Silence is indeed bliss.
“The time you feel lonely is the time you most need to be by yourself.” — Douglas Coupland
Here’s a simpler explanation
As your mind causes your loneliness by pushing forward thoughts that emphasize your aloneness, so does the absence of those thoughts achieve the opposite effect. Nothing is as pleasant, fulfilling, blissful, and filled with happiness, contentment, and perfection as a truly empty mind! It is heaven on earth — a nirvana.
Funny enough, most of the things you enjoy the most are so enjoyable because you don’t have time to think when you do them. You’re so immersed in what you’re doing that the mind is still, and that feels amazing. We have limitless tools, substances, and distractions that get us there, but the end goal is always the same — a quiet mind (even if we aren’t aware of it).
Empty mind over positive thinking
Contrary to popular belief, you don’t have to force some positive thoughts to defeat the negative ones in an epic battle within your mind.
That is often impossible, even counterproductive, especially at the extremes. All you have to do is mentally step away and stop engaging with the thoughts that bother you. I promise you this is much easier than overwriting “hellish” thoughts with “heavenly” ones. First, you make space by achieving silence and emptiness, then you can fill it with more pleasant thoughts and images.
No mind (no thoughts) = no story = no identity = no time (present, not past or future) = no problems = neutral emotions.
The last part isn’t true. For some reason, a state of no mind and no thoughts elevates your emotions. You don’t feel just “meh, okay-ish, neutral.” You feel incredibly calm, peaceful, and whole.
It can’t be that simple, can it?
It may be simple, but it’s not easy. We’re used to being the emotional victims of our minds. Calming an out-of-control, raging monkey mind is no easy task — at first.
With practice, it becomes easier. These days, I close my eyes, effortlessly observe the emptiness, and after a few minutes, I either enjoy the inner silence or fall asleep. If my mind has other ideas, I stop it in its tracks and refocus back on the emptiness within.
I was the direct opposite in the past
I had an overactive mind that would never shut up. I couldn’t sleep unless utterly distracted. Emotionally over the place, I was constantly escaping into adrenaline sports to find at least a few moments of peace from my thoughts. When one is sliding on the edge of death, the mind is still, as you’re fighting for your survival. You feel alive, and you’re grounded in the present moment.
It works temporarily, but I wouldn’t recommend it. It tends not to end well. Go to the source and learn to control your mind without outside help.
“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Blaise Pascal
Love is love, regardless of the source and form
In the beginning, I mentioned that your relationship with yourself is more important than your relationships with others. It’s perfectly natural to rely on others to make us feel good, but it’s not practical, sustainable, or rational.
You’re giving other people and circumstances control over your emotions, and that is never a good idea.
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but they’re not all that reliable. You’re in for a wild ride or infinite emotional ups and downs! If you’ve followed along, you now understand that your mind causes your feelings. Here’s a question for you:
Do you believe it makes a difference to your mind where the love comes from?
I’m serious! Do you? Do you feel any less loved if your parents show you love? Your friends? A lover? Your child? A grateful stranger? They all feel good, don’t they? You can feel that love resonates in your body somewhere, right? To varying degrees, for sure, but you feel loved either way. Here’s a secret for you.
- Your mind is clueless and can’t distinguish between others and yourself.
- It also doesn’t see any difference between you imagining that someone is showing you love and a person standing next to you doing the same!
Zip, zero, nada — no difference whatsoever. You already know where this is going, don’t you? Close your eyes, slide your hands south, and make love to yourself, baby! Alright, maybe not like that. Seriously, this is not the time. Do this instead:
Give yourself love
Close your eyes and visualize yourself (in the third person) talking to yourself (in the first person). Stick with me! Now tell yourself that you love yourself, but in the second person, like you would be telling someone else.
In fact, you can also imagine telling it to someone else. Ironically, giving love feels even better than receiving it.
See yourself saying all those nice things, hear the words, and feel the love being exchanged. The emphasis is to FEEL it! Make it feel real. Tell yourself everything you would want to hear or tell someone else.
Let’s say your name is Jane:
“I love you, Jane. Jane, I accept you for who you are. You deserve to be happy, Jane. Jane, you are worthy of love. Jane darling, I forgive you. Jane, you are good enough. I know you’re doing the best you can, Jane. It’s okay. I love you, Jane.” (something along those lines)
Hug yourself. Kiss yourself on the forehead. In your mind, don’t break your back with some acrobatics!
I know it’s unnatural and more than a little awkward but bear with me.
Experiment with this exercise for a few minutes at a time. More if you enjoy it. I suspect you’ll have a rough start. I sure did. Stick with it. After a few minutes and different perspectives (move between the person giving love and the one receiving it), you’ll notice a strange sensation of love and acceptance.
It will feel exactly the same as if you heard someone outside you say these words to you over and over again.
Persist! The mind doesn’t know the difference, and neither do you. The right hormones will fire off. You’ll feel all the sensations you would otherwise. There will be very little difference, if any at all, depending on how much you internally resist loving yourself.
Yeah, we’re not too good at being kind to ourselves, are we? Some of you will struggle with this exercise the first few times. Dare I say — if you’re in this group, you need to do it the most!
Alternatively, you can begin writing letters to yourself, like you would to someone you love, or the kind you’d want to receive from others. It’s a start, but it doesn’t pack the same punch if you know what I mean.
“The capacity for solitude is a prerequisite for intimacy with others.” — Esther Perel
Visualize other people showing you love
I’m assuming this one will be easier for most. The principle is the same: Your mind doesn’t know what is real and what isn’t, what is made up, and what is actually happening. Use this to your advantage.
If you have to put up with being afraid when watching a scary movie or angry when watching the news, you might as well reap the benefits of the same mechanism, only to make yourself feel good.
So visualize away. Hang out with your friends, cuddle with your lover, and receive endless hugs from your parents (living or deceased). Go nuts and have fun. You can start slow or jump right in. Bathe in the feeling that those loving visualizations bring about.
Your mind will react precisely the same as if you had those interactions “for real.”
Visualize giving love to others
To give is to receive, as I’ve already mentioned. You’ll feel phenomenal after telling dozens of people how good they look, how happy you are for them, how much you love and like them — in your imagination. Start with the ones you like, and work your way down to complete strangers.
I would also suggest doing it to people you don’t like, but I’d have to explain the rationale, and this is not the article for that. After hugging these imaginary recipients of your love, you will feel like you’re on cloud number nine.
Once upon a time, at my lowest, I used to walk down the street and imagine just hugging random people on the street and seeing them happy. It made my day, and I didn’t get stabbed or shot because I was doing it all in my head. Win-win if you ask me!
“Loneliness is designed to help you discover who you are and stop looking outside yourself for your worth.” — Mandy Hale
But what is the purpose of all this?
“I’m feeling lonely, not insane.” Let’s do this in bullet points for brevity’s sake:
- It’s essential to understand the “mind-emotions” relationship and realize that the cause is always in the mind. Change your mind, change your feelings, change your life. You’re not lonely because you’re alone. It’s possible to be happy alone and lonely in a crowd. You’re lonely because you think of thoughts of loneliness. There is a big difference!
- Once you see that you can control your mind and learn to observe it without engaging with your thoughts, you will have achieved more for your inner peace and happiness than anything else you could have done, this side of getting happily married and having a bunch of kids and winning the Lottery at the same time. Inner stillness and associated feelings of contentment and bliss will be available to you anywhere, at any time. That is priceless!
- When you learn to control your mind and use it to manipulate your emotions purposefully, you’re the one in control of how you feel! Can you see the power and value in that? You will no longer be thrown around emotionally by other people and circumstances. You’ll no longer need other people, substances, or distractions to manage your emotions, as you now have direct access to the source.
- Learning to love yourself and reprograming your mind to be kind instead of an abusive roommate will make everything much better. Being alone will no longer be suffering but pleasure. One, you might even seek on purpose. You’ll no longer have to run away from your thoughts. There will be nothing to run away from.
- There is an added bonus. You can’t expect other people to love and accept you unless you love and accept yourself first (and them). Take this literally! Once you are perfectly content and happy being by yourself, others will flock to you like bees on honey. When you’re lonely, you repel people. When you’re happy, you attract them. It’s math and one of life’s greatest ironies! Once you’re happy being alone, you won’t be anymore.
In conclusion, you will never be lonely if you become your own best friend and a pleasant company. When your mind is at peace, you will be as well. The principles and exercises I’ve mentioned, once implemented and practiced, can change your life. You owe it to yourself to become the master of your mind and your own best friend.
“It is better to be alone than in bad company.” — George Washington
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