Many people are not emotionally healthy and mature. It stands to reason that many, if not most, relationships fail (although there are still quite a few healthy and happy relationships around). It might take a long time to learn partnership skills and to find somebody we are truly compatible with. Some people might not ever be so lucky. Still, holding on to an unhappy relationship is a certain way to waste many years in misery. It’s important to learn to let go and not to be dependent on finding the right relationship fast. Yet many people don’t even know how to be happy single.
Some people are afraid to be alone. Too many people are pressured into marriage while still way too young. We need to develop our personality and our communication skills before we can navigate the minefield of dating and relationships safely. It makes me happy to see that awareness of this is rising. If you are wondering how to be happy single, no matter at what point in life, here is everything you need to know.
Self-Love and Self-Acceptance
Most people know about the importance of self-acceptance by now. Few know how to work on self-love effectively. Self-love is not just a few affirmations in the morning. It’s not about showing off and seeking attention. It’s not proving anything to anybody, not even to yourself (or Duolingo). Self-love is not expressed through arrogance or irresponsibility. It doesn’t mean fighting to be right and attacking anybody who says something we disagree with.
When you are simply not interested in other people’s petty judgment and don’t feel the need to either respond with hostility or conform to expectations, that shows self-acceptance. When you don’t compare yourself to others and don’t need to be special, that’s self-love. Self-love is knowing how to comfort yourself whenever something bad happens. Self-love is feeling comfortable in your body and at peace with your emotions. Most importantly, self-love is ongoing work. It gets easier with time, but it never really stops.
Self-acceptance starts with getting in touch with your emotions. Learning about your emotions helps you understand yourself better and experience the richness of your inner world. It can make you realize that even the emotions you struggled with are trying to help you. Emotional awareness helps you recognize your childhood trauma triggers in time and deal with them in adult ways. Here is a guided exercise that can help you with emotional awareness: Make Friends With Yourself: A Guided Meditation
Positive Perspective
It’s important to learn about bad experiences other people have had, to know the dangers and how to protect yourself. It’s also important not to allow them to pull you down into dark thoughts and expectations. We are wired to focus more intensely on danger and pain, and to memorize them more easily. Healthy behavior is “normal,” and so it gets taken for granted.
Many people start asking, “How to be happy single?” after experiencing disappointment and pain, and sometimes after learning about other people’s disappointment and pain. If you sometimes feel the world is a bad place and most people are a threat, it’s important to recognize that nature makes you much more aware of danger than of good things. The danger is there, for sure. But there are also good people around.
Empathy, just like other human traits, is distributed differently among humans, no matter which group of humans we consider. Therefore, around 25% of people in any group will have below-average empathy, 25% above average, while around half are average. Those with average potential for empathy will more easily be influenced by their family and culture, for bad or for good. This is the reason why some cultures appear either more aggressive or more peaceful than others.
Generalization is easy. It is a consequence of our brains being lazy. Our brains don’t really want to work too hard to consider multiple possibilities and nuance. They just want to make simple conclusions and simple guidelines. But in reality, generalization makes things worse for everybody. It encourages random hostility. Not only can it make us treat other people badly, but it also makes us bitter inside.
It’s difficult to feel self-love if we feel we are part of a dark, hostile world. It’s difficult to be friendly and to connect with people. That might make your sense of loneliness much more profound than simply being single. It can make you afraid of life and even unmotivated to improve your life.
Therefore, pay attention to learn from the bad, but also consciously seek and appreciate the good. Subscribe to good news. Pay attention to wholesome stories. Appreciate small acts of kindness that you notice or read about. Some might say, why praise what should be normal? I’d say, we should praise even basic decency, not only to encourage people to act that way but also to encourage our own minds to focus on the good and memorize it.
Decenter Men, Decenter Women?
Men have been talking a lot online about decentering women. Women are also increasingly talking about decentering men. That’s a good idea in general, but the problem is that it’s often used with unhealthy motivation—hate and bitterness. While some people might have reason to be bitter about their experience, it would be much better to recognize that a healthy relationship with oneself is a prerequisite for a quality life in many ways.
As long as you are “centering” anybody else, that implies you are putting yourself aside. Seeking and longing for other people’s attention and validation indicates something is missing on the inside—true self-esteem. If you need others to validate you, you are likely to try to adapt to what you think they want. By doing that, you might forget to connect to yourself. That can make you lose internal stability and a sense of boundaries.
After all, nobody else really knows what you want and need; you are the one that needs to pay attention to that. I’m not advocating selfishness—no need to go from one extreme to another—but as you build self-love, you’ll find it much easier to expect respect and to let go of whatever is not good for you.
While we are at it, we might as well consider decentering society. Again, I don’t mean selfishness, but to stop trying to prove yourself to others. No keeping up with the neighbors, no desire to show off expensive stuff, no need to follow the masses. If you can let all of that go, you might discover what truly makes your heart sing, rather than wasting time, money, and energy chasing illusions.
Take Initiative
Good things don’t fall from the sky. You need to create them. It’s easier when you first love yourself—then you also have the motivation to improve your life. Consistency is key. Set clear goals and work on them every day, step by step. Every little step you achieve will give you a boost in self-esteem and motivation.
Take time to let your mind, body, and feelings tell you what you truly desire. What do you want in terms of education? Career? Health? Fun and hobbies? Social life? Make a detailed plan and decide what you need to do every day to get a little closer to those goals. I know this might not be easy for everyone. But at least consider the small things you can do to make yourself a bit happier.
Although you can be happy single, you’ll still need human connection. It doesn’t have to be a romance; there are other ways to form close relationships. Introverts might find it easier to be alone, but most introverts are still not hermits. We need companionship, warmth, and people to share our thoughts and feelings with. It’s important to choose wisely and check compatibility, rather than spending time with just anyone who happens to be around.
Consider how to strengthen old connections. Rebuilding existing relationships might be easier than finding new ones. Make sure to reconnect only with people around whom you really feel good, not just anyone.
Make a list of ideas on how and where you could meet new people and spend enough time with them to explore whether you might be good friends. Maybe you can join a hiking club? A dance course? A book study group? Art therapy? If you don’t meet the right people in one group, don’t hesitate to switch to another.
Make sure to be approachable and show interest in others (but do not try to please them too much—you need friends who like the real you). Perhaps among your new friends, you can also find roommates who would bring companionship into your daily life.
Enjoy the Small Things
This is not only important when learning how to be happy alone but is also an essential life skill. The more we take what we already have for granted, the more we become frustrated and want more. Consider how much easier our lives are with such “basic” things like electricity, running water, the internet, phones, and cars. Yet these are relatively recent inventions.
It doesn’t take a lot of time to stop and smell the proverbial roses, admire a beautiful sunset, or put a pleasant scent into your aroma diffuser. It takes a bit more time to cook a gourmet meal, decorate your house, or read an inspiring book, but when you are single, you have the freedom to choose whatever makes you happy. Just make sure not to always leave it for later.
Resolve Past Trauma
When answering the question, “how to be happy alone?” it’s important to acknowledge childhood programming. Feeling alone may awaken past memories of feeling abandoned, rejected, or unimportant. If your parents were emotionally distant, worked long hours, or didn’t have long enough parental leave—all that and more can leave a child feeling abandoned and inadequate. If other kids rejected you, the consequences are similar (though perhaps milder than parental rejection).
If you spend too much time alone as an adult, you might start wondering what’s wrong with you. You might feel as though nobody cares. It’s often not easy to recognize that such feelings are usually from the past. If you are sometimes overwhelmed by the feeling that nobody loves you or that you don’t matter, ask yourself: how old is the part of me that feels this way? When did I feel like this as a child? Identifying the origins of such feelings is the first step to emotional healing.
We can help you work on resolving such trauma, and as „first aid”, you might want to check our guided exercise on Youtube:
Guided Meditation: Heal Childhood Programming for Empowerment And Self-love.
Related articles:
Falling In Love With “Bad Guys” (And Girls)
How To Overcome Breakup In 10 Steps
