Give yourself permission to rest:
Being alone means that you probably have more space than other people. And even if you find yourself in a situation where you’re not physically alone (and are instead around many others), that internal aloneness can enable you to tune into yourself and your body and mind’s needs.
Rest allows you to calm your vagus nerve/nervous system, regain vitality and creativity, and feel contained in your body again. Rest is the prerequisite to all following points below because, without rest, we don’t have the energy, imagination, or impulse to make the most of our solitude.
Give yourself permission to play:
Learning how to play and have fun by yourself is tremendously healing. When it comes to learning how to be happy alone, play is at the very heart of what makes solitude so enjoyable.
What does play look like for you? What do you feel excited about creating? What do you feel joyful doing?
Take your inner child by the hand, step into the role of the loving inner parent, and go wild! That might mean learning how to bake something delicious, honing the art of gardening, learning an artistic skill, embarking on a crafty project, traveling to a new and mysterious place, playing with your furry family members, or star gazing – there are so many opportunities to play!
Give yourself permission to pursue a project of unbearable passion:
Play (the previous point I just wrote about), is what enables you to find what you love occupying your time with and what your ikigai (a Japanese word meaning ‘reason for being’) is.
If your passion also helps humanity in some way, extra brownie points to you because not only will that make being alone worthwhile, but also deeply meaningful.
Give yourself permission to rewrite the internal narrative:
Often, being alone is coupled with feelings of guilt, toxic shame, self-blame, self-loathing, and a whole load of other painful emotions. It’s not uncommon to fall into a kind of victim mentality where we feel like tiny little islands in the vast ocean of life.Giving yourself permission to rewrite your inner narrative means being willing to step out of the role of being a victim, or being a weirdo, or being a [fill in negative self-judgment here], to simply being a person who happens to be alone.
Give yourself permission to heal, grow, and be gentle:
Learning how to be happy alone and being OK with it is 100% an inner job – it’s a mentality that we carry, not something we can ever find on the outside.
Being alone opens the doorways to deeper healing, mental/emotional/spiritual growth, and the ability to find out who we are and what we want. It gives us the space to process old traumas, heal old wounds, and begin anew.
Ever wonder why many monks, nuns, sages, mystics, and spiritual figures through the ages spent prolonged periods alone? It’s because aloneness can be tremendously healing if you allow it to be.
Sure, the mind might jump in and start parroting judgments based on societal conditioning, but solitude has always been a gateway to not just joy, but also fulfillment.
