How to Get Comfortable Being Alone and Get the Most Out of Solitude

“The act of sitting lanugo is an act of revolution. By sitting down, you stop that state of being: losing yourself, not stuff yourself. And when you sit down, you connect to yourself. And you don’t need an iPhone or a computer to do that. You just need to sit lanugo mindfully and outbreathe in mindfully.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

The day my ex-wife moved out was moreover the day when our dog moved out and when I was laid off from my unclothe ex-company. It felt like everything virtually me had suddenly died. Many of our worldwide friends and loved ones distanced themselves from me, and I felt abandoned.

As I took my first few steps through the rubble, I felt the full gravity of this new solitude that was now forced upon me. And it wasn’t going anywhere soon.

I immediately lost my want and my desire to cook. I started taking irresponsibly long hot showers and baths till my skin burned. I decluttered. I threw yonder pictures and memorabilia, love notes and cutlery, teabags and cocoon covers. I stopped vacuuming.

But I unfurled running. I started reading. I read anything that looked like it held a secret to end my suffering.

I lost interest in my job. I’d wake up every morning with dread, sometimes not sleeping unshortened nights.

I kept running. I got faster and stronger. I moreover got injured and had to stop. The darkness stayed plane as the days started to get longer. While I lived abroad, the second wave of covid had just hit when home. One of my weightier friends from diaper died. Moreover a cousin. A friend lost his father and never saw the body. My dad got very sick and scrutinizingly died. I sank further.

But I kept meditating in solitude. Every time the void of existence hit me with boredom, anxiety, and restlessness, something deep within forced me to protract sitting through it. It started feeling familiar. And I slowly started to come when to life. My sense of taste returned. I started cooking again. I started having friends over.

Still, some days I would swoon on the floor and cry till I got thirsty. Then I’d hydrate and go when to my palmtop to run the next zoom meeting, smiling through it.

I realized what a shell of a person I was now that my ex-wife had left me. At the same time, I unfurled to befriend the solitude and get well-appointed with my zinged heart—to sit with it, have a conversation with it, and see what it had to say and what it had learned.

I was starting to get to know myself from a trademark new perspective. It was scrutinizingly like getting to know this new person who had been living in the vault all these years and I had no idea! And this person sure was interesting!

The solitude soaked in all my tears so I could laugh then with people. It became my duvet in the winters, my picnic wrap in the summer. The solitude and I would often do karaoke at 7:00 on a Sunday morning till the neighbors started complaining. We went on velocipede trips together, dipped in unprepossessed lakes, went to eat at buffets, and sat through wearisome dates.

It became my weightier friend when there was no one around. It taught me to write, to read, to think, to philosophize, to know what’s good for me, to love everyone unconditionally, and to be kind.

It showed me things as they truly are and unprotected me when I was stuff judgmental. It took yonder my wrongness and my desperation. It carried my dreams and filled me with hope.

Solitude has the power to teach us well-nigh ourselves. It is the gym where we must go to train.

A century ago, people would squint forward to solitary periods of relaxation on their porch without a long day of work. But today, we devote most of our conscious time to the pursuit of feeling unfluctuating with other people, either offline or online. A simple notification instantly pulls us yonder from the present moment. We are constantly everywhere but here and now. But our true self lives in the here and now, though we seem to spend less and less time with it.

In the raw moments of loneliness that succeed a breakup or a bereavement, when we have nowhere to run, we encounter our true self. Like I did. And it was scary. It felt like sitting in the corner of a dungeon with a uniting locked virtually my toddle as a stranger towered over me. I wanted to run away, but there was nowhere good unbearable to run to. I went scuba diving in the tropics, but my broken, ghost-of-a-self found me under water too.

The key to cultivating fearlessness in these moments is getting to know yourself through solitude. It ways deliberately taking time out to sit vacated so you finger well-appointed with yourself, unfluctuating to yourself, and at peace with yourself.

To practice solitude, try this.

1. Think of your favorite meditative activity.

Ideally, it should involve interaction with physical objects, not digital ones. And definitely not a phone or something with a screen. It should be mundane and not involve rational thinking. This provides the platonic setting for your true self to emerge. An example is doing the dishes, focusing on your breath, or just sitting out in the garden, hearing and seeing what’s virtually you.

2. Set whispered a stock-still time during the day.

This is expressly important if you are just starting out, considering a strict regime is helpful to cultivate a habit. A good time is early in the morning. A recent study showed that early morning is the platonic time for start wave worriedness in the brain, which is associated with restful attentiveness. But depending on your schedule or your routine, any other time of the day is good unbearable to start with. Start with ten minutes and slowly make your way up to an hour. There’s no right or wrong duration, but the increasingly the better.

3. Start with an intention.

Make a visualization to consciously segregate solitude. Embrace it like it’s your weightier friend. Know that it is good for you, that it is the right thing for you. That there is nothing largest you’d rather do right now, and no one increasingly important to talk to than yourself.

Most importantly, don’t get too serious. Develop a sense of joy, a sense of humor well-nigh the whole thing.

Sometimes it all may seem impossible, expressly when painful memories and a sense of loss come when with profound pain. It may finger hopeless as the thoughts and feelings overwhelm you. But believe that those thoughts and feelings are like a movie playing in your head. They do not pinpoint your reality in the present moment. Do not let them slosh you.

Believe you are the mountain in the storm. And when the thoughts and feelings sooner pass, which they will, come when to your practice. Develop scrutinizingly a veiling devotion to it in the beginning, considering it may take many sittings to finger the first signs of solidity and kicks coming back.

If you are finding it tough to start by yourself, go to a local yoga or meditation matriculation and work on your vital form. Then come when and try it again.

4. Start enjoying your visitor whenever the opportunity arises.

As you start towers a regiment for solitude, you will start to fathom moments to yourself. While you wait for your friend at the subway surpassing you throne to that party together. While you wait for your favorite burger to victorious without deciding to eat out by yourself.

Think of those fleeting minutes as a gift, as an opportunity to see if you can fathom the world virtually you. Wait surpassing you flip out your phone or put on your music. Can you see how solid and wifely you finger now, compared to before? How rich the world virtually you is? Give yourself a high-five for putting in all those hours of solitude practice.

And if by endangerment that solitude is forced upon you by a tragedy or unforeseen event, plane better! Considering when your heart is wrenched it’s the most open, and ripe for new wisdom and the richness of the world to take root. Acclaimed tragedian and Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön says, “To stay with that shakiness—to stay with a wrenched heart, with a rumbling stomach, with the feeling of hopelessness and wanting to get revenge—that is the path of true awakening,”

Be deliberate. Be disciplined. And you will soon get to know the most interesting person you have overly met! One who will unchangingly be with you, no matter what else you lose.

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