4009: How to Embrace, Not Fear, Being Alone by Nir Eyal of Nir And Far on Embracing Solitude

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[00:01:00] [SPEAKER_04] This is Optimal Living Daily. How to embrace, not fear, being alone. By Nir Eyal of nearandfar.com. And I'm Justin Malik. Welcome back to our usual Sunday bonus episode. This is where I share an episode from a different podcast in our network where we optimize your life. And this episode is coming from Optimal Relationships Daily. You can find that show wherever you're listening to this. So without further ado, here's Greg with a bonus post as we optimize your life.

[00:01:31] [SPEAKER_01] How to embrace, not fear, being alone. By Nir Eyal of nearandfar.com. Are you afraid of being alone? Well, you're not alone in that. In a 2014 survey of 2,000 adults, 1 in 3 said that they fear being alone. 40% of women and 35% of men. The world is riddled with distractions that prevent us from having to feel alone,

[00:01:58] [SPEAKER_01] even when we aren't in the physical presence of another person. While no study pinpoints social media as a cause of depression and feelings of isolation, in fact, social media can be a tool for combating loneliness, it, along with texting, television, and video gaming, can distract us from embracing solitude. Ironically, the more we subvert quality alone time with distraction, the more we cripple our capacity for being alone and stoke our fear about it.

[00:02:27] [SPEAKER_01] Giving into fear of being alone perpetuates a cycle of loneliness. Fear of being alone Having a fear of being alone can be debilitating. It potentially influences our decisions for ourselves in negative ways. We do anything to escape the perceived pain of being alone. You might try to fill your loneliness by filling your time with people or activities that you don't truly enjoy, including maintaining fickle friendships, or diving headfirst into romantic relationships that aren't good for us.

[00:02:56] [SPEAKER_01] Some studies show that the fear of being alone pushes us to prioritize relationship status over relationship quality, leading to unhealthy partnerships. On the other hand, embracing quality solitude can enhance your relationships. In Michael Easter's The Comfort Crisis, a book about breaking out of your comfort zone in search of a more fulfilling life, Matthew Bowker, PhD, a professor of psychology at Medi College, says, Quote,

[00:03:24] [SPEAKER_01] Building the capacity to be alone probably makes your interactions with others richer because you're bringing to the relationship a person who's actually got stuff going on inside and isn't just a connector circuit that only thrives off of others. End quote. Remember, your thoughts are not your true self. Don't let fear of your own thoughts stop you from seeking alone time. Many people falsely believe the voice in their head is the most accurate depiction of themselves, but it's not.

[00:03:55] [SPEAKER_01] Don't give undue importance to the chatter in your head. You don't have to believe everything you think. Schedule time with yourself. Practice makes perfect. The only way to overcome a fear of being alone is to face being alone with a new mindset. You might decide that your anxiety about being alone is holding you back and that you want to become the type of person who is content on their own. Perhaps achieving that high level of independence or self-esteem is one of your top values.

[00:04:22] [SPEAKER_01] In that case, find and schedule space for it in your time-boxed calendar. Time-boxing, a technique I explore in my book Indistractable, is all about identifying your values, the attributes of the person you want to become, and ensuring that they are represented in your calendar. Decide how much time you want to spend on your own per week. Even scheduling 15 minutes of alone time is a step forward. Perhaps you'll use that time for a morning brain dump in a journal.

[00:04:50] [SPEAKER_01] Or maybe you'll take 30 minutes to an hour to go on a walk alone. And by the way, both of these qualify as good breaks that rejuvenate you during the workday. Or take a few hours to go out for a nice solo dinner or adventure. Look inward. Only by understanding our discomfort with being alone can we begin to control it and find better ways to deal with negative urges. If you're experiencing discomfort in being alone,

[00:05:16] [SPEAKER_01] don't let that internal trigger or negative feeling drive you to distractions like turning on the TV or opening TikTok. Instead, use these four steps to master internal triggers. First, zero in on that discomfort. Second, write down how it's making you feel. It's important to realize that discomfort isn't necessarily a bad thing. It doesn't always need to be relieved. It can be leveraged like rocket fuel to propel us forward.

[00:05:44] [SPEAKER_01] Instead of looking for the easiest way to rid ourselves of pain, we can look within to understand what's driving our desire to escape the way we feel. What are we avoiding when we don't spend time with ourselves, even if we know it's something we want to do? The third step is to get curious about your emotions. When you're uncomfortable about being alone, how does that affect you? Do you feel stomach butterflies? Are you wondering what everyone else is doing? Is your breathing steady or fast?

[00:06:14] [SPEAKER_01] The last step is to beware of liminal moments or transitions from one thing to another when we are particularly susceptible to distraction. A way to combat liminal moments is using the 10-minute rule, aka surfing the urge. If you're trying to spend some time alone but are really not enjoying it, tell yourself it's fine to give up, but not for another 10 minutes. And maybe by the time those 10 minutes are up, the discomfort won't seem so overwhelming.

[00:06:41] [SPEAKER_01] As Oliver Berkman wrote in The Guardian, quote, It's a curious truth that when you gently pay attention to negative emotions, they tend to dissipate. But positive ones expand. End quote. We all have the capacity to enjoy being alone. Don't let distractions derail you from looking inward. You just listened to the post titled, How to Embrace, Not Fear, Being Alone,

[00:07:10] [SPEAKER_01] by Nir Eyal of nearandfar.com.

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[00:08:13] [SPEAKER_01] And a really wonderful post from Near and Far helping us through this essential yet often avoided prerequisite of forming healthy relationships. I really like his assessment of distractions in this article. It is truly interesting how difficult it can be to figure out when any given distraction might be hurting or helping us, whether it comes to embracing loneliness or something else. But one thing to be certain of is that we will be tempted by and often engage in

[00:08:42] [SPEAKER_01] some type of distraction when we are in fear of loneliness. So, what might we do with that? Well, I really love Near's thought about putting timers on yourself, like 10 more minutes of being alone and then I can give way to distractions. That's a way of managing distractions and maintaining power over them, leveraging them, as he said. And another way of doing that would be to plan them in advance. For example, if your goal is to spend 15 minutes alone each day this week in an effort to get more comfortable with it,

[00:09:12] [SPEAKER_01] you might say, okay, on days 1, 3, and 5, I will soften the blow by having a distraction to keep me company. Day 1 will be video games, day 3 will be social media, and day 5 will be a book. And this allows you to maintain some control, give yourself some wiggle room, consider how smooth of a transition you want to allow yourself. And it even allows you to think critically about how certain distractions, again, might be more harmful than others or more helpful than others.

[00:09:42] [SPEAKER_01] So, maybe it sounds crazy to plan to this extent, but I would highly recommend giving it a chance for any goal you're trying to pursue that comes with some tough feelings along the way. How can you plan for those low moments in advance is what it boils down to. So, sit with that idea everyone, it's time to get going now. I thank you so much for being here today and helping to make another episode possible. Have a great rest of your Wednesday and be sure to come back tomorrow for a parenting article courtesy of psychalive.org. That's where your optimal life awaits.