How Spending Time Alone Can Make You a Better Version of Yourself
How regular self-maintenance can transform our social relationships.
Time spent by yourself doesn’t always have to have a purpose. Although not often specifically stated, this is one of the thought processes behind many methods of meditation, playing, and some spiritual practices: the act of doing something which takes you out of your normal mental rhythms and patterns. Any act which helps you to achieve this — whether for a desired outcome or not — gives your brain time to heal, breathe, and analyse it’s inner environment.
A session of meditation – time spent alone with the mind, listening, in silence – can lift you up from the train tracks that your conscious mind has sunk itself into day by day. By letting your thoughts drift without a purpose – letting them out, allowing them to float away in the air – you release a sort of mental pressure. You allow yourself to focus more easily – your mind, now free from some distractions, can heighten and concentrate its already acute senses.
Playing can help in similar ways. Instead of a competitive game, like Tennis, where your mind is fixated on both playing and beating an opponent – I am referring to play for the sake of play. In some Montessori schools, like the one that I went to, both group play and ‘separate play’ are encouraged equally. This involved some time where kids sat in groups or ran around playing sports and games, like musical chairs, and other times when kids were sat spaced apart from each other, in near-silence, and given time to simply do as they pleased. Some kids chose to write, doodle, paint, build, create — and others simply sat there, their little minds thinking away about the events of the day.
We still need to allow ourselves time by ourselves today – in fact, it’s more important than ever as you grow older. From when you leave the innocent world of pre-pubescence, through the slow transition to becoming an adult – with your mind and body seemingly near their final states – your growth is only just beginning.
Our mind becomes overwhelmed with potential subject matter for our thoughts once we grow older – as we have been exposed to an ever-greater variety of experiences, as well as an ever-greater quantity and depth of emotional, physical, mental and spiritual nodes in order to make connections between them with. Our mind can drift from an old memory from childhood, to a more recent, significant event – and draw limitless connections between then and now. Seeing not only our growth, and how we have changed – but how we may have remained the same. How certain aspects of our personality haven’t changed so much — even though we have been through so much more of our lives.
Time spent by ourselves can help free us from the social distractions which, although often very beneficial to our betterment and happiness as a human being, may not always allow us to simply sit in silence and allow our minds to take a breather. Literally – the mind rarely has time to breathe. It is in these moments of stillness and solitude where, if we choose to avoid and limit our energy expelled towards others and social comparison, our mind can think about ourselves.
A thought as simple as: How am I?, might rise to the surface. Questioning your environment and recent decisions. ‘Am I happy with how I’ve been acting? With my routines? With how I have been living my life?’. It is immeasurably more important that these questions be asked than answered – the key is taking the time to ask yourself the question.
If you go further, you may stay with the thought for a while. You may get stuck, and be confused as to why you’ve been acting in a certain way. You may search for where it may have began, or for instances and examples of it from the past. You may wonder why you’ve allowed yourself to be so easily defined by this one aspect of your self – how you have let certain experiences guide your behaviour so strongly.
You may even finally arrive at asking yourself some harder questions – life’s hardest questions, even. “Do I want to change myself? Am I brave enough to feel uncomfortable during the process of change? Is my routine optimal? Am I who I wanted to be? Am I behaving as I want to behave right now? How am I letting anything stop me from being who I think I ought to be?”.
These questions are the hardest to answer – sometimes the answers can feel dismissive, like false promises made to oneself in an effort to protect and satisfy the ego. “I am who I am – I can’t change that. I did what I did, but I’m not still like that now. I’ve changed – I’m different from how I used to be. I’m perfect. I don’t need to change my routine – it’s comfortable, it defines who I am. I’m perfectly happy with who I am”. Other times, the answers can cause long-term shifts in our attitudes and behaviours — helping us guide our future choices and decisions.
Becoming your ideal self is a process – it takes work. This is the message this article is trying to get across: spending more time alone gives one’s mind the room it takes to do some self-maintenance. The mind’s engine has been running non-stop – and sinking into the silence for a minute, and asking yourself these questions, alone — can do some crucial repair to this engine. Allowing it to run faster and stronger in the future – when making real-life decisions that impact not only your own life, but the lives of others.
Let’s face it. The way we measure success in our world is incredibly dependent on social interactions and relationships – and how we behave within them. Not only that, but how we feel about how we behave within them. “What is my relationship with this person? What is my role within it? Do I want this type of relationship with them? How would I go about changing it? Why have I decided to act this way with this person?”.
We often don’t act identically in each interaction – not only with others, but with ourselves. There are different types of alone times – and we must spend more of both of them. Ones where our mind is mentally working towards a desired goal — with a specific purpose, and ones where our mind isn’t working towards any goal at all — without a specific purpose.
Where our mind is drifting. Playing for the sake of play. Allowing the engine to cool down, and even stop running. Easing into the silence of the mind, and allowing thoughts to surface. Being kinder to oneself.
Taking a moment to let the mind be alone — so it can relax and breathe.
