Apr 19, 2021
Spend Time with Yourself
Your power is within you.
Just because we don’t see a solution right in front of us doesn’t mean there isn’t one right inside of us. However, as human beings, we only believe in what we see. And because of that, we’re afraid of staring defenseless in the face of the world — standing alone, without anyone right beside us.
Evolutionarily, the group offers protection and survival, and that mechanism is still within us. We don’t like walking alone or standing alone with our opinion, as if our opinion is only valid when others support it. It’s more than a handed-down mechanism of our ancestors; nowadays, we have forgotten how to be alone.
Surrounded by dating apps and dating shows, being single seems to be something that needs to be eradicated. After a breakup, we’re almost forced to go ahead, find someone new, fill that new gap in our life with someone else. As if being single was some kind of disease.
When we’re not hunting for a new partner, we spend our time on social media or distract ourselves with streaming movies. We don’t spend time with ourselves, our thoughts, dreams, hopes, and fears. We see what is missing and call it the reason for our unhappiness.
However, we need to be alone to hear and strengthen our own voice. Our own voice is the first thing that is muted when we get the opinions and advice of our friends and family, which are always colored by their experiences and by how they see the world.
Of course, there’s nothing wrong with discussing life and whatever decision we need to make with our friends and family; after all, they often give us helpful food for thought.
However, we should know our own perspective on the world and all the things in front of us. We should know who we are first and we should have internalized that only we can truly know what is best for us. That’s why we need to be alone sometimes.
No one is going to come — no spouse, friend, relative, or boss — who is going to solve our problems, grab the wheel of our life and turn everything around.
Our life is our responsibility, our job.
No one, regardless of how much he or she loves us, can or should take that from us. By demanding this of someone else, we tend to push them away.
To really internalize this, we need to start by taking responsibility for our flaws and mistakes, instead of blaming other people or the world.
Whatever happens to us may not be our fault, but it’s our responsibility what we do with it. How we rise. It’s our decision alone what we make out of everything that has been thrown our way.
And to do that, we need to know ourselves, we need to develop our own value system. If we don’t do this, we lose ourselves in the opinions of others, in social media, and we tend to see the world through their filter.
The phrase, “You need to love yourself before loving someone else” may seem hackneyed, but it’s true. There’s a big difference between loving someone and needing someone to get rid of emptiness.
Being alone is sometimes necessary to recognize that a lot of solutions and answers are already within us. We only need the courage to finally spend time with ourselves. We shouldn’t be deceived by our eyes. Being temporarily alone doesn't mean being lonely. There is always someone going through the same struggles and fighting the same battles. Just because we don’t see it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
