10 Beautiful Reasons Why You Need Solitude! (A Core Fierce Kindness Practice)

We live in a busy world where our brains are constantly active, technology pervades everything and our lives are overflowing. It has never been more important to create solitude for ourselves.

I have come to cherish solitude over the years, whether it’s a 30 minute evening dog walk, an evening or longer if I’m lucky! I use this time to slow down and connect with me, and get over accumulated negativity!

Making time for solitude is a perfect example of being Fiercely Kind to yourself. And for some of us, it will take Fierce Kindness—just to make it happen.

Solitude, Loneliness and a Pandemic…

When that pandemic hit, for some of us solitude was enforced, and others were suddenly surrounded by people 24 x 7.

Now, things are back to normal. We’re seeing friends and family, getting out there and doing things—and people are everywhere!

But I still feel lonely sometimes and in need of deeper connection with others. So (it feels odd to say this), when this happens I crave solitude: quality time to connect with myself, figure things out and take care of me.

How about you? Where are you at?

Do you need some quiet time to reconnect with your self? Figure things out? Decide where to go next with your life or career? Align with what matters most? Ponder which friendships to focus on, and which to let go?

Solitude can help with all of these—and more! So, if you’re in need of some thinking or processing time to make sense of life, or to just be without interruption, why not schedule in some precious alone time?

Here are 10 Reasons You Need Solitude

1) Find CLARITY & Get the ANSWERS you need!

Being alone is when the muddy water of your busy life settles and you can get the clarity you need. Alone time gives us space to figure out our answers to life’s problems and difficulties and see the truth of things.

• Alone time is when I distance myself from the voices of the world so I can hear my own. Oprah
• Solitude is not the absence of company, but the moment when our soul is free to speak to us and help us decide what to do with our life. Paulo Coelho

2) Self-KNOWLEDGE

Solitude creates the space for us to get to know ourselves. It gives us the space to notice what is—and what is not—working for us in life. It helps you find your voice, and discover what you want to do with your one wild and precious life.

We can answer questions like: What really matters—and what does not? What do you need to double down on, and where can you let go? What are your strengths, passions, talents? What makes you unique?

• Being an individual requires having a room of one’s own, not because it is one’s possession, but because only there, in solitude, away from the pressure of others, can one develop the features and styles that differentiate one’s own being from others. Amelie Rorty

3) Get ENERGISED!

Alone time allows us to replenish. It’s when we can let go of all the complications of life—and others—and fall into the beauty of the present moment. Solitude allows us to slow down and simply be.

• Inside myself is a place where I live all alone, and that’s where you renew your springs that never dry up. Pearl S. Buck
• Solitude is like punctuation. A paragraph without periods and commas would be exhausting to read. Arnie Kozak
• I have to be alone very often. I’d be quite happy if I spent from Saturday night until Monday morning alone in my apartment. That’s how I refuel. Audrey Hepburn

4) Process FEELINGS

Solitude gives you space and privacy to process your feelings—especially the ‘difficult’ ones. You can explore and fully release your emotions, then move on with your life.

Because it’s only when we’re alone that we can face the whole of something. We can despair and wail, complain, whinge, experience our full embarrassment and shame, sob our hearts out if we need to—and hold nothing back.

• Solitude is the place of purification. Martin Buber
• I need to be alone. I need to ponder my shame and my despair in seclusion; I need the sunshine and the paving stones of the streets without companions, without conversation, face to face with myself, with only the music of my heart for company. Henry Miller

5) Completely and utterly PLEASE YOURSELF

All too often we have to take into consideration how others feel about what we’re doing (or not doing!); when we’re alone we can totally let go of what others think.

Solitude means we don’t need to worry about whether anyone else will like what we do, whether they’ll find it silly, meaningless, boring or annoying. We can do whatever we want, whenever, however, as often as we like: a freedom that’s impossible to experience when others are around.

• Women need real moments of solitude and self-reflection to balance out how much of ourselves we give away. Barbara de Angelis

6) Get INSPIRED & Connect with your CREATIVITY

In solitude, once the swirl of your usually busy life recedes around you, your ideas and inspirations will bubble up.

Have a problem? Ponder ideas as you stare out of the window without interruption! Slow down and free those creative parts of yourself usually buried under the weight of busyness and worrying about others.

• Without great solitude, no serious work is possible. Pablo Picasso
• One can be instructed in society, one is inspired only in solitude. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

7) Build a Deep, LOVING RELATIONSHIP with you!

The only person we spend our entire life with is our self, and yet so many of us have no idea who we are! All too often we feel lonely—not because we don’t have friends but because we’re disconnected from ourselves.

Growing up, every one of us learned to cut off from parts of ourselves that got us into ‘trouble’. And these parts of you are crying out to be seen, loved and allowed expression. Your soul wants to be whole.

Are you willing to accept and love all of yourself, instead of just the parts of you that society and our loved ones want to see?

Well, solitude gives us precious space to gather our strength and build that loving relationship with ALL of who we are.

• You cannot be lonely if you like the person you’re alone with. Wayne Dyer
• The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself. Michel de Montaigne

8) True GRATITUDE

When we can truly appreciate and be thankful for what we already have, life gets infinitely easier. Instead of wishing life were different, we can relax and enjoy what we have.

With a gratitude practice we create the habits and thought processes that make true gratitude possible. But whilst we can logically tick off the things we’re grateful for, true gratitude is like joy—it arises from within and can’t be forced.

With solitude we get away from the deluge of everyday life. As the dust settles, we get a helicopter view of our lives and can see all the things we have to be grateful for. It’s so much easier to appreciate life in all its glory.

• Solitude gives us precious space and time to slow down, see—and appreciate—all the things in our lives that we have to be thankful for. Emma-Louise
  

9) Build CONFIDENCE and be your BEST Self!

Solitude is literally honouring our ‘self’—the basis of self-esteem.

Just the act of making time for ourselves is incredibly powerful: we’re saying, “I am worth it”.

• When we cannot bear to be alone, it means we do not properly value the only companion we will have from birth to death—ourselves. Eda LeShan

And without others around us, we can also be our best self! No-one to trigger us, no distractions, just you being you.

Over time we can learn to cultivate this best self and try to be it in the rest of our lives too…

• I myself am best when least in company. William Shakespeare

10) Connect with SOMETHING GREATER than you!

We all need awe and wonder in our lives. It reminds of how insignificant we are—in a good way! Why am I worrying about that when it’s so insignificant in the grand scheme of things?

We all feel better knowing there is something bigger than us out there whether you call it god/dess, universal consciousness, (mother) nature or something else.

• Be a loner. That gives you time to wonder, to search for the truth. Have holy curiosity. Make your life worth living. Albert Einstein
• If you want to find God, hang out in the space between your thoughts. Alan Cohen

Plus one more:

11) Make sense of our World

Do you ever feel that the world is sometimes a bit much? I know I do.

The last few years have seen an explosion of exposés around deeply embedded sexism and misogyny, racism and prejudice against the LBTQ+2 community and more. Then there’s climate change, conspiracy theories, “fake news”, wars, famines, both natural and man-made disasters and more.

Solitude gives our minds the chance to settle and make peace with how things are. It gives us precious time to re-connect with what’s ‘good’ in the world, and make sense of the ‘bad’ (or realise it can’t be made sense of!).

• In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion. Albert Camus
• Solitude is at the heart of all self-knowledge, because it is when we are alone that we learn to distinguish between the false and the true, the trivial and the important. Unknown

Wrap-up

Solitude is a core Fierce Kindness practice, to learn to be comfortable with—all of—ourselves and our world. It’s a spiritual practice, and the ultimate in self-care. It energises us, offering us our own inspiration and building our confidence.

Yet in this busy world, it can be hard to carve out the time and space for solitude. And then even when we’ve done it, it’s not necessarily easy to be alone with ourselves! It takes courage!

But solitude boosts our wellbeing on so many levels. And as you learn to be comfortable—and even relish—bring alone, you need never feel lonely again because you always have YOU!

Solitude isn’t loneliness. Solitude is when the entire serene universe seems to surround and hold you quietly. Victoria Erickson

Change the world—but it starts with you!

If you enjoyed this article with reasons you need solitude, you may also like:

• The 5 Finger Gratitude Tool (plus what to do if you’re feeling down or upset)
• Connect With Your Kind, Wise Self: A Surprisingly Powerful Practice to Manage Feelings!
• What I Learned from Time Alone & How to Create Your Own Beautiful Solitude!