I’m an introvert.
I regularly spend most of my time alone. For the past year, I’ve come to enjoy being the only person in the room, but it wasn’t always like that.
Before the pandemic, I wasn’t someone that you would call that had social anxiety, but I had some complications to maintain a conversation flowing. And due to my ‘people-pleaser’ personality, I had a lot of friends and I never struggled with not having company wherever I went.
Until the Coronavirus arrived.
The first months were somewhat strange for me because I had to spend full-time with nobody else but myself. Not being able to hang out with my friends and spend time with them forced me to get to know myself.
And that was when the magic happened.
I didn’t have a personality defined.
As I said before, I had a ‘people-pleaser’ personality, so every single little thing about myself was constantly adapting depending on the people I was with.
Spending almost a year alone made me figure out that I didn’t have any characteristics that would make me different from anyone really, I just was a combination of everything my friends were. But spending time alone made me want to change that. I started picking up hobbies I had when I was a kid, like drawing and writing fiction. I started exploring and listening to new music to see which music for sure I liked (Jazz is so good man). And a lot more different aspects that I started to forge on my own, made me a person with a unique personality.
I also started not giving a fuck about what people were saying of me.
Since I build myself literally from nothing, I just didn’t care anymore what anyone was saying about me. I had my whole life basing and judging myself from what the external was thinking of me. But when I started getting to know my true self, it was such a beautiful experience that I would not let anyone change that perspective of me. Spending time alone really made me that strong-minded.
And the mentality of not giving a fuck about anyone’s opinion gave me that liberty of doing whatever I wanted. I could decide consciously how to spend my time and energy. I could understand that for me to feel happy I need no one but myself.
Spending your time alone and making good use of it makes you a more independent individual.
Don’t you want that?
Enjoy your time by taking care of yourself.
So exactly how can you make good use of your alone time?
Taking care of yourself is perhaps one of the best ways that you can tell your body “Hey, you deserve to feel good, that’s why I’m going to treat you well”.
By cooking healthy food, exercising regularly, doing that hobby you like. All of these are great examples of how you can treat yourself well, or putting it in simpler words: do the activity that brings you peace and fulfillment.
In case you don’t know what activities bring you joy, great! Now it’s a great time to dig deep into you and get to know what makes you happy.
For me, reading is a great way to bring fulfillment into my life. With every word I read, I can expand my knowledge or analyze new perspectives I never thought of before, or I can immerse myself into a fantasy world where I can disconnect from reality for a few minutes.
At the end of each day, you will go to bed and think to yourself: “Oh hell yeah. I did all that just by myself? And it brought me joy by doing them? This feels so good”.
Quick note: this doesn’t mean that you should stay away from everyone and not talk to anyone again ever. This means that alone time is very powerful for your personal growth and getting to know yourself. You must still have some sort of human interaction with someone or a group of people (otherwise you might become crazy).
In fact, spending your time alone will benefit your social interactions even more, since you’ll give the impression that you have your shit together, and your friends will feel a different vibration emitting from you, and they’ll be interested in what have you done to achieve that.
In the end, spending your time alone is so powerful because it’s a wonderful opportunity to invest in yourself, which is going to bring you amazing experiences in the future. Don’t be afraid to do it, I can assure you that it will bring a lot of benefits to your life.
So tell me, what did you learn today?