We often associated being ‘alone’ with being harmful, damaging, and difficult to deal with.
And in a large-scale sense, there’s a lot of truth to this.
Humans evolved to be social, cooperative, community-based creatures.
Thus, we tend to thrive in social and cooperative environments.
With that being said, there’s also a bit of science to back up the idea that solitude comes with a few benefits of its own.
And in this post, we’re going to explore 4 ways in which being alone can actually be good for you.
These points all come from an excellent post on this topic that was published by Forbes.com.
Let’s dive into it.
1. Solitude Increases Empathy
Spending a lot of time around the same people can actually lead to a sort of ‘we vs. them’ mentality.
This is a pretty natural thing.
But as it turns out, spending more time alone helps to reverse this.
When you prioritize time by yourself, you actually tend to become more empathetic.
And quite ironically—this can actually lead to better relationships with others.
2. Solitude Helps You To Be More Productive
Anyone who has worked on their own probably understands that working close to other humans isn’t always conducive to getting more accomplished.
As it turns out, other humans can actually be pretty distracting.
And despite the fact that a lot of offices nowadays are featuring open floor plans to facilitate better cooperation and communication—there’s quite a bit of evidence supporting the fact that humans actually get a lot more done when they work alone and in private.
3. Solitude Can Make You Feel More Creative
When you spend time alone, your creativity tends to increase.
This seems pretty intuitive.
Once again, other humans tend to be distracting.
Plus, when you’re alone with your thoughts (and don’t have to use any mental bandwidth to communicate, negotiate, track other people’s feelings, etc.), it frees up your brain cells to think of new creative stuff instead.
It’s actually pretty nifty!
This would explain why it’s so common for writers to ‘disappear to a remote cabin’ to write novels and books, etc.
4. Solitude Can Help You To Build Mental Strength
Obviously, there’s a lot of value in learning to socialize with other humans.
But it’s also true that solitude can help you to learn some skills that may also contribute to better life and social experiences.
For example—spending time alone can actually help you to cultivate a stronger degree of mental toughness.
This can make you more resilient in life, but it can also help you to decrease the ‘fear’ aspect of being alone—which is definitely better for your emotional health and social life in the long run.
In Conclusion
Hopefully, this post has helped you to understand just a few of the ways in which being alone can actually be beneficial.
Obviously, spending time with other people is also beneficial.
But as it turns out—solitude isn’t all that bad for us—especially in short, controlled doses.