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How Solitude Can Change Your Brain In Profound Ways
Self-imposed solitude
Solitude can be invaluable and rewarding.
Moments of solitude – even small ones – when self-imposed, intentional, and fully appreciated, can have profound effects on our productivity and creative thinking.
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Undercover Introverts
One in every two or three people is an introvert – preferring quiet alone time to stimulation and large groups of people.
Stepping away from the routine and rowdiness of our daily lives allows us to connect ideas in new ways, follow creative impulses, and simply think about one thing at a time.
Creativity And Efficiency Need Solitude
Being alone is uncomfortable at times. But when it comes to creative work and thinking, it’s important to take a long-term view on those moments of discomfort.
Being alone has a kind of a rebound effect. It’s like bitter medicine, creating more positive emotions and less self-reported depression down the line.
Giving Your Mind What It Needs
Time alone allows us to order our priorities according to what we need, rather than the needs of others.
When you’re able to disengage from the demands of other people, you’ve suddenly freed up the mental space to focus on longer-term, bigger-picture projects and needs.
Solitude Feeds Our Relationships
Sherry Turkle, author of the book Alone Together:
“You end up isolated if you don’t cultivate the capacity for solitude, the ability to be separate, to gather yourself. Solitude is where you find yourself so that you can reach out to other people and form real attachments. When we don’t have the capacity for solitude, we turn to other people in order to feel less anxious or in order to feel alive. When this happens, we’re not able to appreciate who they are. It’s as though we’re using them as spare parts to support our fragile sense of self.”
Make A Weekly Date With Yourself
Make time once a week and do something inspiring and creative by yourself.
Take a long walk alone, watch a sunrise, go to an unfamiliar church to hear gospel music, visit a museum or neighborhood you haven’t been to, just to experience something new and unfamiliar.
Embrace The Space
Solitude is a description of a fact: You are on your own. Loneliness is a negative emotional response to it. People think they will be lonely, and that is the problem – the expectation is also now a cultural assumption.
But make the assumption that you’ll be finding the time and space to reconnect with yourself and your ideas, and suddenly the sound of solitude has a delicious ring to it.
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Loneliness
It can be either transient or chronic, and typically includes
Loneliness is damaging
Loneliness vs Solitude
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Being a Loner can be good
- Emerging research suggests there are upsides to being reclusive, all by ourselves, minding our own business – for both our work lives and our emotional well-being.
- Prolonged solitude ...
Improved creativity
- Being a loner boosts the creative space.
- Creativity has two key elements: originality and usefulness.
- Personality traits commonly associated with creativity are openness (or receptiveness), self-efficacy (confidence), and autonomy (independence).
Types of Social Withdrawal
Social withdrawal is categorized into three types:
- Shyness caused by fear or anxiety
- Avoidance, caused by a dislike of socializing
- Unsociability, caused by a preference for being alone.
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Difference between solitude and loneliness
We use the two terms interchangeably because we’ve been conditioned to think of them as the same state.
Loneliness is being alone — and not liking it. It’s a feeli...
Connected but alone
From the telegram to the phone to the mobile to the internet, all major cultural inventions have served the same purpose: to bring us closer together.
Today, we’ve reached peak hyper-connectivity. We can cross oceans at the touch of the button, speak to someone, anywhere, 24/7. And yet, statistics report that we’ve never felt so lonely. The technologies connecting us are isolating us.
The truth about loneliness
You can be surrounded by people, at a party, or in the office, and still feel lonely to your core.
And you can be alone, millions of miles away from any human contact, and still feel joyfully connected to the world.
It’s less about our circumstances, more about how we react to them.
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