Weekly newsletter
I. Prompts for motivation
Do you like to spend time on your own, or do you prefer having company around you at all times? Is it easy for you to enjoy solitude wherever you are and not get fixated on looking like a “loner”?
How good are you at making sure you get enough alone time? What advantages do you think you could gain in multiple areas of your life by making sure you have regular moments for space and contemplation during the week?
II. Thoughts for intention
Everyone needs some amount of alone time because it’s essential to our overall energy and balance. While extroverts might argue that they get enough batteries from surrounding themselves with others, the truth is that we are all susceptible to social exhaustion and mental fatigue. Of course, the ratio of how much someone needs varies person to person. Only you can know when you need to step back and take a moment to process whatever is preoccupying your thoughts or even just get some fresh air outside. So for both introverts and extroverts alike, it’s about moderation, not isolation.
In this never-ending cycle of being and becoming, it’s important to rest and recharge, especially since we live in a world with an abundant supply of stimulation. This helps you protect your mindset and clarity, allowing you to hear your own insights and ideas without an excess of external influence. In doing so, the benefits are countless, including increased focus, enhanced creativity, and improved self-awareness, to name a few. It also supports emotional regulation because taking the time you need to reflect helps you manage emotions and lower stress levels, which can improve the quality of your relationship with others.
III. Ideas for preparation
If the idea sounds like something outside of your comfort zone, you can get better at enjoying your own company in a step-by-step manner. One way to do this is by starting off with only 5 to 15 minutes of quiet time each day. You can schedule this easily at the most ideal moment that fits well within your everyday rhythm. Over time, this should give you an idea of what works best for you and any changes you can make to adjust this ritual for your ideal lifestyle.
One of the hardest things about protecting solitude is having to figure out how to set boundaries with people in your life in a clear and effective way. But this gets easier with time, the more you continue to be direct and honest about your needs. What’s great is that with self-care remaining a relevant topic all around, pointing out that this is what this practice is about is not usually something difficult for others to understand. In the end, sticking to your commitments might even inspire those around you to do the same, helping them reorient their own state of mind back to a healthy sense of self-direction.
IV. Quotes for inspiration
“For now she need not think of anybody. She could be herself, by herself. And that was what now she often felt the need of – to think; well not even to think. To be silent; to be alone. All the being and the doing, expansive, glittering, vocal, evaporated; and one shrunk, with a sense of solemnity, to being oneself, a wedge-shaped core of darkness, something invisible to others… and this self having shed its attachments was free for the strangest adventures.”
― Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
“What I must do, is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance: An Excerpt from Collected Essays, First Series
