How to embrace being alone: Lonely vs Alone

I have been thinking a lot lately about being alone. Yes I am in a healthy relationship, but other than Mike and the kiddo. I spend most of my time alone. There are days where I only speak the few hours Mike is up before he leaves for work. Hours could go by in a day and I haven’t heard my own voice. It was so long sometimes it feels weird for me to talk. For the past 2 years, I was really desperate to make new friends. I wanted to find people with positive vibes and who were on the same path as me. It has been a long and what I thought was a lonely 2 years, but now looking back… it is safe to say that I embrace being alone.

I am sure if you are reading this post you came here because you are lonely and want to embrace being alone. You don’t know how much I understand this. One thing I did last year was googled this exact phrase because I was so freakin lonely. I needed to find a way to not be so desperate for friends, for adult interaction. Looking back over the past 2 years… almost 3 (WOW!) is that there is a difference between being lonely and being alone. That was something I had to learn the difference. So let’s talk about that for a bit…

Lonely and alone are 2 different things

I always talk about when I first started my personal growth journey, but honestly, it is where it all began. When I moved to Tampa with Mike and left all my old friends behind. I knew I was going to be lonely. I knew unlearning everything I had learned in my 33 years of life was going to be hard. There were times when I was going to be lonely. Only because Mike and I are 2 different people on 2 different journeys. He wasn’t into personal growth. He just knew he wanted to make more money and own his own home. Which is fine almost 3 years later we are finally coming together on this journey. He came to it on his own time.

So since Mike wasn’t into personal growth and I had no friends in Tampa… I was constantly telling myself I was lonely. I was lonely because I had no one to talk to… no one to hang out with. My life sucks because I have no one who understands what I am going through. Let’s look at the definitions of these 2 words.

They’re Related, but not the same

Lonely: sadness because one has no friends or company.

Alone: having no one else present.

Reading these definitions you would think they kinda mean the same thing, but they don’t. Being alone is the physical act of being in a place by yourself. Lonely is when you are in an emotional state of feeling disconnected from others.

Once you shift your mindset and know the difference between the two. Things become a little bit easier. You can be alone in solitude and not feel lonely. You can feel content with being by yourself doing your own thing.

Work through being lonely

Former Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy said it perfectly in this article on NPR. “There’s a tremendous sense of shame that people who are lonely feel. I say that as someone who felt ashamed of being lonely as a child and even at points during adulthood, I think part of the reason is that saying you’re lonely feels like saying you’re not likable, you’re not lovable — that somehow you’re socially deficient in some way. The reality is that loneliness is a natural signal that our body gives us, similar to hunger, thirst. And that’s how important human connection is.”

When you spend time alone you start telling yourself all these things that are so untrue. As Dr. Murthy said you are not likable, loveable… maybe you even tell yourself you are not a nice person. You start thinking the worse about yourself because you are lonely. But maybe… just maybe your mind needs that little switch to go off where you can differentiate if you are ACTUALLY lonely or you are just uncomfortable being alone with yourself.

How do you go about doing that? How do you embrace being alone? Well, I am so glad you asked because I am gonna share the things I did to help me get out of that funk.

How to embrace being alone

You know what I am going to say first if you have been reading my blog for a hot minute. If you haven’t the first thing I ALWAYS suggest is to

Journal it out

I know some of you may not be into journaling, but I tell you it is really therapeutic. You think all these thoughts in your and you repeat them enough to yourself but once you take the time to actually write them out and you read them back to yourself… Sometimes you can see how redonkulous those thoughts are.

When I have those intrusive thoughts I take 5-10 minutes to just write out what I am feeling. What started out as a rant on why I am a mean, horrible, selfish person turned into me realizing I was being gaslit and manipulated into thinking that. I figured out by who and recall every instance they made me feel that way. They didn’t directly come out and say those things but they implied it. Which now years later I realize that I am not a mean, horrible and selfish person. I was trying to set a boundary and they didn’t like it.

I am telling you, you will learn so much about yourself and others just by writing things out. In your head, everything sounds worse, but when you write it out what ends up happening is you find how stupid and ridiculous all that garbage sounds.

Understand that you are good enough all by yourself

Bouncing off of journaling I think when you take the time to journal and really answer the questions you should be asking yourself but don’t… You may finally understand that you are good enough all by yourself. And what I mean by that is… Y’all know that saying “no one knows you better than you know yourself”? Innocently enough… it seems like it is a true statement but also sounds stupid and cliché. How could anyone know me better than myself? I am me. You would think I would know me. I DO KNOW ME. Weeeeelllllllll… Just hear me out…

Sometimes that isn’t true. We try to convince ourselves that we do know ourselves but when you spend your entire life around people who gaslight and manipulate you into thinking a certain way. You just automatically end up thinking that way about yourself when in all actuality you are not like that at all. So it could be safe to say you REALLY don’t know yourself as well as you think you do. You are a product of your environment. You were conditioned, maybe even groomed to think that way.

Learn how to talk to yourself

Anytime something doesn’t go our way we ALWAYS… I mean ALWAYS think the worse of ourselves and our situation. We just attack everything about us. One way to embrace being alone is to learn how to talk to ourselves. I mean internally and externally.

We all know that people say it is okay to talk to yourself, but it makes you crazy if you reply back. I say fuck it. Reply back, have a full fuckin conversation with yourself. How can you get to know yourself if all this “talking” goes on in your brain? It seems a little one-sided. I mean it is, but we know sometimes we can’t trust our brain. It makes irrational decisions and makes absolutely no fucking sense sometimes.

When you talk out loud to yourself it gives you time to actually think about what you are saying. It brings a different context to what type of conversation you want to have with yourself. For me, I know in my mind I say things a little bit harsher to myself than I would if I was talking to a friend.

And that is what we need to start doing is talking to ourselves like we are our own best friend.

Take a break from mindless consumption

Mindless consumption… I mean social media, TV, maybe even magazines (if people still buy them). Society pushes this certain type of lifestyle on us mere peasants. They are the biggest gaslighters and manipulators. I may post on Instagram every day, but I am not on Instagram every day. (scheduler baby!) There are days when I just sit at home in my nightmare before Christmas PJs read, journal, or work on changing up my routine or living space.

Step away from all the mindless consumption that may make you feel bad about yourself or your current situation. Just say not today, Satan… and move on for a day or 2.

Start Living for yourself

I wrote a post on how to start living for yourself that I think really helped me embrace being alone. I stopped being a people pleaser, a yes woman, and a doormat to those in my life. A lot of my life was spent worrying about what others thought of me. Once you start to embrace being alone you realize what you want and what you need are the most important things. It is not selfish if you put yourself and your comfort before others. If they get mad that you said no and didn’t drop everything for them then you don’t need them in your life.

Take yourself out

This sounds corny as fuck, but it’s true. I haven’t worked my way up to eating in a restaurant alone, but I am working towards it. I take myself to my favorite thrift stores find things that bring me joy. Things that will again REFRESH my living space or daily routine. I will pick myself up some lunch and just do the things that I enjoy doing. This is the time I really embrace being alone. Go to your local park walk around to become an observer of people. Watch the joy it brings them when playing with their animals or children. Watch the children (not creepily. I feel like I have to say that.) But observe their childlike wonder. How the most mundane things to us are a joy for them.

Make plans for your future

We’re back full circle to journaling. Write down what you want for your future. How you want your life to be. Then work your way backward from there to find out what you need to do now to get to where you want. Nothing is off the table. You want every room in your house painted a different color figure out what you need to do to make that happen.

You want to make enough money to buy a new car. Figure out what you need to do now to make that happen. You can plan for as much or as little as you want in your future. If it makes you uncomfortable that is okay. Start small but know if it is okay to want things for yourself and it is okay to let yourself want them. Just make plans.

A quote that really made me think

I read this quote and I think it’s worth sharing because it is something that everyone needs to hear. And everyone needs to understand. When you start a personal growth journey the people around you won’t understand nor care to understand So you kind of tend to keep it yourself and that ends up being this lonely feeling.

At times it may feel like people don’t care about you and sometimes that is the truth. You spent so many years surrounding yourself with all the wrong people. That once you make the conscious choice to better yourself, your mindset your situation.

You will feel completely alone. And sometimes you will be alone. And that is the part of the growth that you need to experience. You need to be okay with being by yourself.

When you start spending so much time alone with yourself you will start trying new things and pushing yourself to do things you never thought you would be able to do. And in doing those things by yourself and slowly becoming okay being alone you become your own cheerleader, you become your own biggest fan, and you become your own hero.

And at first, it will feel awkward it will feel so lonely and you need to fight that you need to fight falling down that rabbit hole of depression and questioning yourself. When you are feeling those things you need to document it all. You need to write everything down because that is the time you will learn so much about yourself. When you learn more about yourself it becomes easier to embrace being alone.

Until next time, have a great day! Remember you are a badass!