The Joy Of Solitude

• You get to know yourself

  

  When you're by yourself, you make choices without outside influences . Making choices on your own will help you develop better insight into who you are as a person. Being alone will help you grow more comfortable in your skin as well. 

  5 Ways Solitude Can Make You More Successful, Backed By Science

• Improve your relationships

  Spending time with friends, family and colleagues contributes to a "we vs. them" mentality.  Spending time alone breaks down those barriers. Studies show you'll develop more compassion for other people when you set aside time for solitude.

  5 Ways Solitude Can Make You More Successful, Backed By Science

• Solitude boosts creativity and productivity

  There's a reason artists, musicians, and authors seek solitude when they want to create something. Studies confirm that being alone often fosters creativity. In addition to boosting creativity, solitude also skyrockets productivity. 

  5 Ways Solitude Can Make You More Successful, Backed By Science

• Solitude improves psychological well-being

  Studies have found people who set aside time to alone tend to be happier . They report better life satisfaction and lower levels of stress . They're also less likely to have depression .  

  5 Ways Solitude Can Make You More Successful, Backed By Science

• Opportunity to plan your life

  Setting aside time to be alone can help you reflect on your goals, dreams, and aspirations.  Take a break from the hustle and bustle to think about whether you're living life according to your values and whether you might want to make some changes.

  5 Ways Solitude Can Make You More Successful, Backed By Science

• How to Set Aside Time

  The busier you are, the more likely you are to benefit from some quiet time. Just 10 minutes of alone time each day could be enough to help you rejuvenate from the daily grind. Silence your electronics and allow yourself to be alone with your thoughts.

  5 Ways Solitude Can Make You More Successful, Backed By Science

• Loneliness

  

  Loneliness can be defined as a complex and unpleasant emotional response to isolation or lack of companionship.  It can be either transient or chronic, and typically includes anxiety about a lack of connectedness or communality. 

  The Joy of Solitude

• Loneliness is damaging

  

  Lonely people eat and drink more, and exercise and sleep less. They are at higher risk of developing psychological problems such as alcoholism, depression, and psychosis, and physical problems such as infection, cancer, and cardiovascular disease.

  The Joy of Solitude

• Loneliness vs Solitude

  

  Loneliness is the pain of being alone and is damaging. Solitude is the joy of being alone and is empowering.

  The Joy of Solitude

• Solitude

  Solitude removes us from the mindless humdrum of everyday life into a higher consciousness which reconnects us with ourselves and our deepest humanity.By setting aside dependent emotions and constraining compromises, we free ourselves up for problem solving, creativity, and spirituality. 

  The Joy of Solitude

• Embracing solitude

  If we can embrace it, this opportunity to adjust and refine our perspectives creates the strength and security for still greater solitude and, in time, the substance and meaning that guards against loneliness .

  The Joy of Solitude

• 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 feeling. Solitude is being alone — and content. It’s a choice. If you can master solitude, you’ll never feel lonely again.

  How to be alone: the difference between loneliness and solitude | The JotForm Blog

• 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.

  How to be alone: the difference between loneliness and solitude | The JotForm Blog

• 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.

  How to be alone: the difference between loneliness and solitude | The JotForm Blog

• Fearing solitude

  Our fear of solitude is really fear of boredom. We want to be entertained, constantly. The alternative — introspection — intimidates us. And so, we drown out our discomfort with distractions. But that doesn’t mean the discomfort will go away.

  How to be alone: the difference between loneliness and solitude | The JotForm Blog

• Connected yet lonely

  

  We’re told happiness comes from within. And yet, we’re never taught how to be alone with ourselves.  We celebrate self-esteem. But we stigmatize spending time with ourselves.

  How to be alone: the difference between loneliness and solitude | The JotForm Blog

• The joy of being alone

  Real solitude is almost impossible to experience in the modern world. And for some, this makes it the ultimate privilege. Some people know they can harness times of stillness to find answers to questions, solutions to problems. Solitude deprives you. It stretches you. It illuminates. And this breeds  creativity.

  How to be alone: the difference between loneliness and solitude | The JotForm Blog

• How to utilize solitude

  

  The only way to overcome solitude is to face it. Ease yourself in, with 10 minutes, then 20, then 30, of solitude a day, or week, or month. There’s great power in doing nothing at all. But when you find strength — rather than fear — in solitude, you will live a far richer life: with others, and with ourselves.

  How to be alone: the difference between loneliness and solitude | The JotForm Blog

• 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.

  How Solitude Can Change Your Brain In Profound Ways

• 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.

  How Solitude Can Change Your Brain In Profound Ways

• 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.

  How Solitude Can Change Your Brain In Profound Ways

• 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.

  How Solitude Can Change Your Brain In Profound Ways

• 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.”

  How Solitude Can Change Your Brain In Profound Ways

• 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. 

  How Solitude Can Change Your Brain In Profound Ways

• 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.

  How Solitude Can Change Your Brain In Profound Ways

• Exploring solitude

  

  We tend to see solitude as grim and imprisoning.  But in fact, the exact opposite can be true.  Solitude can be seen as freeing, as an opportunity for exploration and growth. It’s good for us to spend time exploring unknowns by ourselves. It gives us an opportunity to discover who we really are and what life is all about.

  5 Things that Happen When You Embrace Being Alone

• You develop strengths you need

  It’s always better to learn to stand on your own two legs.  And once you are self-sufficient, then relying on someone else from time to time is an act of strength, not weakness. Take small, consistent steps in the right direction, day in and day out.

  5 Things that Happen When You Embrace Being Alone

• Your relationships grow stronger

  Learning to be comfortable with being alone does not mean you can’t be in a relationship. It means that you will not be codependent and entitled.   What we need is a healthy dose of self-sufficiency. The greatest gift you can give somebody is your own personal development.

  5 Things that Happen When You Embrace Being Alone

• Aloneness does not mean loneliness

  The trouble is not always in being alone – it’s being lonely in the presence of others. It’s always better to be alone than to be in bad company.  And when you do decide to come back for someone, do so because you’re truly better off with this person.  Don’t do it just for the sake of not being alone. 

  5 Things that Happen When You Embrace Being Alone

• Support your own decisions

  Everyone you care about does NOT need to support every decision you make.   Even if things don’t turn out as you anticipated, at least you will learn what you needed to learn, and you won’t have to spend the rest of your life wondering what could have been.

  5 Things that Happen When You Embrace Being Alone

• Experience more of YOUR life

  Many of us will go to great lengths to distract ourselves with anything and everything: food, booze, shopping, television, tabloid news, online social networks, video games, phones etc. Acknowledging this is the first step to healing it.   So begin right now by just breathing, alone, and noticing with curiosity, and without judgment, all of the little ways you can simply BE in your own skin, right here, right now, in this present moment we call life. 

  5 Things that Happen When You Embrace Being Alone