Spending alone time would be a hobby and the most awaited phase a few people would love surrendering to. Are you one of them? or do you belong to the category who feels sleepy and lonley to spend alone time?
Yes, it is depressing for a few people and they haven’t understood the deep meaning and positive aspect of spending time alone.
What’s your take on this? What do you know about spending time alone and if given a chance, would you be interested to understand and experience the art of just being by ‘you’ ?
If you give yourself foolish excuses for being busy and not having enough time to spend with yourself then you are missing out of real life and that’s living by yourself.
Let yourself free and read this article to know how healthy is it to spend time alone and everything you should know about how to spend time alone.
Is Spending Time Alone Healthy?
If you can spend alone time in a constructive way and not let the lonely side of it get to you then it is healthy and if you mix the two up, you are bound to feel miserable.
If you mistake alone time as loneliness then you can develop social anxieties and start to feel insecure for nothing.
There’s been a study (R) over the concept of alone time and it has a positive approach on your productivity and in boosting your sense of understanding, reasoning, and unfolding unanswered questions.
Studies say, the more you give time to yourself, the faster you find your way out.
Benefits Of Spending Time Alone
It is not just psychology, but, even science says that spending alone time is healthy for you. Here are good to know the benefits of spending time alone. Learn it all!
No 1 – Betters You
All the extroverts and introverts will come to an agreement that spending time alone betters you (R). Introverts will anyway find happiness in alone time, while it might not be similar for an extrovert. However, the introspection that happens while spending time alone helps everyone get better.
Read: 10 Significant Ways To Become An Extrovert
No 2 – Strengthens Your Memory
It has been studied and you can observe that spending time alone makes things remain better in your memory.
That being said, the way you think, your ability to be creative and analyse, the power to recall images is much better when you aren’t surrounded by noise, people and opinions.
No 3 – Betters Your Connection With People
You need to get immersed and understand this concept. When you are all alone, you just use your mind and think about the opposite person and the people around you, without being influenced by another mind.
This time period of self-introspection makes you smarter and helps you connect better with people.
Read: 30 of the Most Amazing Hobbies for Women
No 4 – Develop A High Sense Of Awareness
There is a scientific term to this high-sense of awareness, it is known as meta-cognition.
So your mindset changes when you sit by yourself. During this process, your mind wanders and gathers every possible thought, comes back to its place and you tend to develop a genius like a mindset.
This process of meta-cognition benefits you only when you have the habit of spending time alone.
No 5 – Makes You Mentally Stable
For the most part, we need to be around people and we need people around us so that we can talk our hearts out given that we are made in a way to socialize.
Having said, staying alone for a while to yourself is one way of building mental strength. Reason being, you learn how to deal with the complexities in your mind and at the same time, you feel happy from the inside out.
Read: Good Tips To Deal With Loneliness – Chase The Emotion!
No 6 – You Meet Your Inner-Self
At times it takes ages for a person to recognize and learn about himself/herself. Why this happens is because most people don’t understand the essence of spending time alone.
It is natural that the one who hasn’t spent enough time alone will never know oneself. No opinions, no comments, and no advice you will get when you are sitting alone. It is just your mind that will do the talking and in time you get to learn about yourself.
Well, you should just keep your eyes closed and meditate. It doesn’t particularly mean, following a meditative technique, you just need to shut yourself.
No 7 – Life Gets Systematic
The biggest benefit of spending time all by yourself is that of knowing who you are, planning things in your head, focusing on your aim, and motivating your own self to work hard.
When all of these tasks synchronize well you tend to get systematic in life. Who doesn’t want to be systematic?
No 8 – Refines Your Behaviour
Talking of behavior, if kids are taught to spend time alone at an early age, they grow up to be even more peaceful when compared to those who don’t focus on alone time.
Peace talks episodes about refined behaviour, will you agree to that? The logic here is when you have several noises shut and just your mind making the noise, over a period of time you learn how to tame your mind, and in the bargain you refine your behavior too.
No 9 – You Will Be A Great Problem Solver
Do you realize spending alone time helps you solve problems? The only explanation for this is that you understand what needs to be chalked out and what needs to be taken seriously.
You will develop a deep sense of understanding that everything will seem petty to you and you will always choose peace over a problem. When you choose peace, you will automatically make efforts to sort things out. Be it in your personal or professional life.
No 10 – Master The Art Of Detachment
Detachment is the most empowering emotion. If you can stay detached and lead a life, you will be the most peaceful and happiest.
Having said, this clearly happens when you practice spending time all by yourself. You start to enjoy your own company and don’t find the need to cling on to unecessary attachments. At the end of the day, you know that it is just you and yourself.
No 11 – You Forget Expecting
What will you expect from anyone when you go so deep with fulfilling and living upto only your expectations? This is the magic of spending time with yourself. You get totally engrossed in just your thoughts and plans that you don’t have time left to expect.
No 12 – You Connect With Your Soul
There is no end to knowing the depth of your soul. If you want a spiritual experience of going deep into yourself, you need to spend loads of time alone and doing so will fill up the spiritual thirst you are craving for.
Once you get spiritual, your outlook in life and the way you live completely changes. You live a healthier and compassionate life. What more could one ask for?
How To Spend Quality Time With Yourself
Learning to spend quality time with yourself is not a task that can be accomplished overnight unless you are an introvert and are used to the feeling an concept of self-alone-time.
At start you won’t understand if you are going about spending time by yourself the right way. It takes time and if you are determined to get there then you will need to follow a few tips that are listed below. Take a look!
Tip No 1 – Avoid Giving Up
As mentioned earlier, you will not understand the depth of spending alone time at start and if you are an extrovert don’t be surprised if you find it boring.
No one is a master in the beginning and just bear in mind that you need to stay patient throughout. Don’t give up on your determination to get used to spending time alone.
Tip No 2 – Plan ‘Alone Time’
Just like that, you cannot get alone time, surprisingly, even your alone time needs to be planned given your schedule and activities lined up for the entire day.
Tips to follow
- The best time to spend time alone is early in the morning
- Look forward to the alone time so, this is one way of staying mentally prepared
- Calculate the time needed for necessary tasks vs the time you need for other activities
- Invest at least 10 minutes
- Keep aside distractions at that time
Tip No 3 – Organize Alone Dates
In the worst-case scenario, if you haven’t been able to make time for yourself, you will surely have one hour in the whole week to give yourself. Right?
When you get that one hour or 30 minutes just for yourself, go on a date for lunch or ice cream all alone.
Sit in peace, relax, enjoy the food and think about the best and worst that’s happening with you, talk to yourself, and just enjoy that alone fun-time.
Tip No 4 – Close Yourself
Closing yourself doesn’t imply suffocating yourself, it is taking privacy for the alone time you will spend with yourself. Makes sense?
Further, just relax, sit still, or if you won’t think about anything you want when you have shut the doors while taking time for yourself.
The idea behind closing yourself is to avoid hearing, watching or talking to anyone in your space for those few minutes that you dedicate just to yourself.
Tip No 5 – Mentally Disconnect
As you know that shutting doors and keeping yourself inside will help you stay disconnected, it is essential that you religiously follow the rule and even mentally disconnect from your work, relationships, desires, and accumulated thoughts.
It isn’t magic that your attachment and thoughts will just go away, you have to just tell yourself and prepare your mind to disconnect so that it gets easier for you to connect with yourself.
Tip No 6 – Travel To Your Favorite Place
If you want to take up an interesting task to spend alone time and you are passionate about traveling, nothing could beat a better plan than making a trip to the place you love the most. You will enjoy it as well as get all the fun time to be by yourself.
Tip No 7 – Divert Your Focus Onto Reading
If sitting in peace makes you super-bored and focusing your energy is the best way you think you can spend time with yourself then you should pick up a book to read that is compelling enough and pretty much connected to your area of interest.
Read: Happening Books Every Girl Should Read in Her Twenties
Tip No 8 – Sit At A Beach
Beaches are beautiful and sound of the water is a great way of boosting your mood and keeping you to yourself. That being said, sit in a safe place a a beach, keep all the technology and digital sources away from you and close your eyes. Keep it closed as much as you feel like, however, don’t fall asleep.
Read: Beautiful Beaches in USA From Coast To Coast
Tip No 9 – Learn From Videos
When the thought of sitting alone and doing nothing scares you, you can look up for inspirational, funny or creative videos and watch them while spending time with yourself.
This is an excellent idea to be engrossed in ‘alone-time’ and at the same time, every video will have a significant ‘take-away’.
Tip No 10 – Counsel Yourself
As all the ‘alone-time’ gives you the space to analyse and introspect yourself, it is the best way to get involved with counselling yourself.
When you look at yourself in the mirror and start talking, you will feel so good and experience a great self moral support. You should try it to understand how interesting it is.
Tip No 11 – Make Your Bucket-List
We all have bucket-lists of all our wishes, right? One of the best ways to spending time alone is by jotting down your bucket-list. It is a fun task and doing a fun-task in your alone time will keep you the happiest.
What will your wishes be like? Trekking? Dancing on stage? Sky diving and so on.
Tip No 12 – Get Into The Movie Mode
One of the entertaining task while staying alone is to watch your favorite movie and enjoy that time with yourself. If you look at it, there are so many things to do and if you love movies then you are going to enjoy this.
Read: 11 Inspiring Movies For Women – Absorb Inspiration
Tip No 13 – Pen Down Your Memories
Writing is an artistic form of expressing and putting your thoughts on paper.
That being said, when you are busy spending alone time and if you want to take a break from sitting quiet or meditating you should just keep a diary to write down about all your deepest to worst thoughts and noting down your memories could help you enjoy yourself as well.
Tip No 14 – Keep Alone Time For Relaxation
At times you can just spend all the alone time just to yourself by either sleeping, going for a massage or doing a little of self-grooming. Alone time can be kept aside only for relaxation as well, it doesn’t have to involve you doing a task.
Make the most of your alone time and relax well!
Tip No 15 – Give The ‘Good Lines’ Therapy To Yourself
Finally in the end you will want to validate if you are doing it right, the purpose of spending alone time and what’s been the outcome, won’t you have these thoughts toggling in your mind?
Having said, here are a few things to tell yourself about spending alone time.
‘I used my time well and it didn’t go in vain’
‘The time I used is for me to improve’
‘I am going to be a better person someday’
‘I have started to fall in love with myself even more’
Hence, this therapy of talking good things will convince you that you did it right.
Final Word
It is healthy to spend time alone, you will never feel lonely and if you look at how bright it is you get to meet a better version of yourself.
Spending alone time will teach you how to balance your emotions, stay mentally strong and know yourself better.
The ultimate tip for spending alone time is to just do what you love but all by yourself, could be pursuing a hobby or just staying isolated.
Get the knack of spending alone time and rise high to self-awareness!
