How to Be Alone: The Subtle Art of Learning to Love Yourself

Until you do, you can never fully love others.

Im in a little village today in Hungary, called Vajat. I’m working with families from the Ukraine who are refugees here. When I’m not with the refugees, I am by myself in a country and place where very few speak my language. I noticed something different today. After I got done with one of the families I had a few hours to kill so I went on a long walk. I mentioned in a previous blog that walking is one of the ways I have learned to manage my mental health. It leaves with your own thoughts or time to just meditate. When I started intentionally walking as an exercise for my mental health it was difficult. The first 5 minutes or so were tough as I would have this overwhelming feeling of loneliness that would overcome me. But, today I noticed something different. That feeling isn’t there. I enjoy my walks alone, with my thoughts now.

April two years ago I had a plan to kill myself.

They say that emotional pain registers in the same part of your brain as physical pain. An emotional trauma, say, massive rejection, feels like you’re literally breaking your leg. Well, in this season of my life, it felt like I was being repeatedly stabbed by a rusty syphilis-infested dagger forged from the flames of hell by Satan himself.

My marriage was ending. I took it hard. Before your read on, just know that you can get over a situation like this, too, if you just give it a little bit of time.

I still remember the crippling loneliness. I don’t actually remember any time in my life where I’ve felt worse, totally broken. I would visit with friends, post pictures on social media, pretending like I was having a good time, but the pain I felt was so palpable I literally had trouble writing or reading the captions I would write for my posts. My loneliness consumed 100 percent of my thoughts. For a few weeks after my separation, I knew what it meant to be a shell of one’s self.

The Mirage of Identity Many of Us Build

Before this, my life was great, or so I thought. I thought I was “personally developed,” but until my marriage and family disappeared, I didn’t realize how much of my identity and development had nothing to do with … me. Instead of a self-image, I had a mosaic of codependencies I didn’t know existed until they were gone.

I’m safe now, but I can now see why someone would commit suicide after finding themselves in loneliness for too long. It’s, perhaps, the most debilitating state one can find oneself in.

Loneliness can only occur when you don’t know how to be alone, though. Loneliness presupposes that you need the company, attention, validation, acceptance, and love of anyone other than yourself.

Is it okay to want these things? Sure. I want them. We all do. But to need them and make them a core pillar of your existence sets you up for a huge fall. It certainly did for me. So the goal isn’t to be alone but to learn how to be alone. I didn’t want to have zero social life forever, and I made some poor decisions relationally trying to navigate my season of loneliness that not only exaggerated my own pain but hurt some others along the way. Some of the most valuable lessons are the most painful.

Im rebuilding my life to an even better position, like those broken vases that are stronger than the original when glued back together. Being alone forced me to look at my life clearly, be honest with myself, and create an identity that fully belonged to me.

Here’s what I have done and what I subsequently learned.

The first day I moved into my new apartment, I cried. Hard. I don’t cry. I’d love to say it was cathartic. Nah, it was just sad. To dig myself out of sadness and apathy, I tried anger. I tried becoming my own drill sergeant, and literally yelled at myself out loud.

“This is your fucking apartment now! Deal with it.”

I tried to maintain the sergeant’s tone but my voice cracked with sadness and my lip quivered when I said it, tears dribbling out. Shaking. Imploding. Immolating. That was maybe the second saddest moment to date, after the one where I was about to leave my former home and I had to close the door with my old life behind it.

Anyway, the first few days and weeks were spent in a sort of malaise, really. The pain didn’t fully subside until I reached the point of acceptance.

The first step of learning how to be alone is finally accepting it without fighting it. You spend too much of your life imagining your life differently than the way it currently is. In one form, visualization is fine, but in the form of hiding, it only compounds the problem.

Some of the steps Ive taken were:

Health

I lost 25 pounds. I figured I could still move my body even if I didn’t really feel like it. Lesson in there. At first, I definitely did it because I wanted to boost my confidence, but it’s since turned into a real exercise in spirituality and wellness.

Connections

I slowly started connecting with people. And then I just started chatting people up and meeting others like a normal human being.

Purpose

Ive been on an tear with my writing. Blogging almost everyday and two books. I poured my energy and spare time via that solitude into my craft.

My first instinct was to rush and fill the void, and I did, and it backfired just making that season last longer than necessary. But now, Ive chosen to work on myself. It’s not as if I’m “cured” or anything like that, but now I’m focusing on becoming a whole person, irrespective of how many people are in my life — both in-person and digital.

Do You Know Yourself, Really?

Often, you’re a mystery to yourself. You don’t really know what you like, what you want, who you are, where you want to be, etc because you don’t know how to be alone and create a life of your own first.

You can’t know what you want until it’s independent of what other people want. This doesn’t mean you don’t take others into consideration, but rather that you don’t depend on others for your thinking.

Had I built an independent identity of my own, then got into a relationship, then built a family, I’d have boundaries, healthy expectations, and real bonds. Instead, I rested a pillar of my ego on the idea of being “a family man” ….not a man who has a family. Did you catch that?

Think of how many of your beliefs, tastes, desires, goals, and dreams have almost everything to do with what other people want and almost nothing to do with what you want.

When you learn how to be alone, you become the center of your universe. People can orbit around you if they want, but if they don’t it’s fine. This, again, doesn’t mean becoming egotistical and having unrealistic standards, but when you figure out who you actually are, you’ll know who vibes with you and who doesn’t. They’ll know, too. And if they don’t, you’ll make it clear to them.

I took this time to…don’t barf… “find myself.”

Through alone time, research, failure, experience, etc, I developed some new values, core beliefs, and things I’d be willing to accept in my life going forward. I’m okay on my own. Because I can not only tolerate being alone but thrive doing so. I can now have a real relationship without those insidious mental strings of codependency.

When you’re uncompromising about the principles you live by, that’s when you’ll attract everything you want into your life, including the right people.

The Law of Attraction: People Edition

I’ve connected with tons of people over the years, both on and offline. Now, I interact with people in a more sincere way. Since I want people to be in my life, but don’t need them to be (as much, again I’m not cured) I feel like I can actually see and accept people for who they really are.

See, when you need people to be in your life, you distort who they are in your mind. You idealize them, put them on a pedestal, and ignore flaws and red flags — both in yourself and other people. That’s important. Maybe they’re not the right person to be in your life, but also maybe you’re the one who isn’t right on their own yet. It’s okay to admit that and work on it.

When you come from a core of being okay with yourself, people not only notice it, but they treat you better. People don’t want to be put on a pedestal. So when you do it, you’re making them do something that’s incongruent with what they want, they resent you for it, and either unconsciously or consciously punish you for it.

Learn how to be alone. Learn how to understand that you’re good enough just as you are. Spend time alone.

All of this…this personal journey thing. It all leads back to the self. Everything does. We chase what’s out there, not realizing we already have everything we need.

Your default state is joy with yourself at all times, like a child lost in the moment, unaware that there even is a world beyond their own perception. It’s no coincidence that kids are magnets. They’re going to play with that little piece of string whether you like it or not, whether you care or not, whether you approve or not.

Maybe try being like this on for size. See what happens.