Taking advantage of being lonely can be the easiest way to get shit done. When no one’s watching, you stop waiting and start moving. Stop feeding loneliness the fake connection it wants with external fulfillment, and connect with yourself. Loneliness is supposed to fuel your goals, not lead you away from them.
In the past when I have felt lonely, I turned to external validations. In this season of loneliness I’ve been having, it’s been different than the times before. I reflected on ways I have dealt with loneliness in the past, and I knew this time I wanted to do it differently. Right now, I’m the most driven I think I’ve ever been just because I’ve forced myself to come inwards, instead of outward. This is why loneliness can be beautiful, and this healing phase can be aesthetic. From being single to feeling isolated socially, you can take advantage of this time period. This isn’t something that’s easy to do. It took me the same situation over and over again to finally digest the lesson. It comes to small details when we want to redirect our energy from going outwards to inward.
Something important to know: loneliness is information, not a problem. It shows you what actually matters when there’s no distraction. Just because you feel lonely, doesn’t mean you need to act on it. We do not need to act on our emotions. This is exactly how we end up with fake connections in our lives. Finding real connection should always come from a place of wholeness and calm. We’ve all had those moments where we want to text someone so badly because we’re desperate for the connection, but at the same time we need to know that those feelings are temporary. If we act on our emotions that are temporary, we end up prolonging some kind of situation or healing process. This goes for loneliness as a whole. Feeling lonely doesn’t mean you need to act externally on it, it actually means you need to sit with it and look inward. If we embrace our loneliness and work on ourselves instead of others, we will eventually attract real connection. Which also goes to say, loneliness can really just mean transitioning if it’s done correctly.
Embrace that not only is this a lonely period, but a growth period. Force yourself to be uncomfortable. Growth requires discomfort, if you’re comfortable you’re not growing. This can be physical, mental, or emotional. Do things that make you uncomfortable every single day. Volunteer to present first, start a conversation with a stranger, let yourself be bored. One thing I did to push myself towards discomfort is to sit in silence. Stare at a wall, walk in silence, drive in silence, work in silence. No entertainment. Your thoughts will entertain you and you might realize things and get creative with your future. This is also a good way to become comfortable with yourself, you don’t need anything else to satisfy you. Some people have never even experienced true loneliness, they stop it from happening at all costs because they can’t sit with themselves. Being productively lonely means that you have to accept yourself and be okay with what you are, then you get to grow and change. If this scares you, then that should push you to want to do it even more. Learning to show up for yourself and becoming the person that you want to be is the greatest gift you could ever give yourself and it fights insecurity.
To embrace loneliness, it’s really about facing yourself. People tend to run from facing who they are which is why they do everything but accept being alone. This is the thing people avoid: sitting in pain and sadness, in their own thoughts. Accept you’re alone, accept that relationship is over, accept that those friends aren’t there anymore. Lean on your family and things that make your inner child happy, the brain will release serotonin and dopamine through these and replace the heavy chemicals that were released when you had those old friends, old relationships. Remind yourself, happiness still exists, it’s just not in the same form. Let yourself process and grieve without unhealthy distraction, more pain now less later.
This is a good time to figure out what you want from life. Loneliness can be sad, but we can take it and use it to think about abstract plans for the future. Being lonely means that there isn’t anyone else having an influence on your decisions, opinions, or morals. Take advantage of this time to either feel more like yourself or bloom into a new person. Channel into your inner child here, what makes you happy? What does your soul crave? It’s only you, and you have all of the power to change how you want to live. There’s no one looking right now, there’s no one to influence your habits, there’s no one telling you what to do. Become the person that you want to be.
These are some small lessons I’ve learned in the past few weeks of me experiencing being lonely. So far, it’s been a beautiful experience and a period of self exploration. Embrace being alone, embrace being uncomfortable, and you will notice a difference in discipline and results. I challenge you after reading this, sit in silence for 10 minutes, think of the person you want to become, or make a plan. Loneliness asks: what will you do with it? Not because anyone is watching, because no one is.