How to be Happy Alone? Building a Bond with yourself

How to be Happy alone: Building bond with yourself

The problem is not “How to be happy alone?”, the problem is “Why is your happiness dependent on something?”

When the world walks in pairs, walking alone feels like a misfortune.

You feel like a misfit because you are not having something that the World is relishing. And this gives you a sense of incompleteness and you feel like you are missing out on life.

Living alone is one such chapter which you never really wanted to be a part of but somehow fell prey to it.

Life can sometimes thrust you into unforeseen circumstances:

When you have to learn to live alone.
When you have no other character along.
Where the story circles only you.
When life looks biased.

But it becomes challenging when the World sympathizes with your situation. You are sympathized for doing something courageous.

Isn’t this ironic?

To dare to walk the lane that anyone rarely walks and still be looked down upon as someone who missed something huge.

Isn’t it funny, when you need power, you are sympathized?

You are told, it’s a weak chapter to be alone.

Aren’t they supposed to cheer you for climbing the ladder without someone holding you along the way?

Isn’t it an act of rebellion to build your own home of happiness without depending on anything on the outside?

But then, the reality is, the world will keep pulling you down until you prove that your happiness was never in the hands of others.

Now that you have been chosen for it, you don’t want to stop yourself from reading them because you know that is not the end of your story.

But …

It’s not about just flipping the pages or skipping a few of them to jump and reach the other side of the story.
It is not about forcing yourself to show the World that you are no longer a loner.

Instead,

It is about going inside into these chapters.

The chapters that very few get to read.

The chapters that introduce you to the main lead of the story “You”.

The chapters that make the backbone of your story.

The chapters that build the real strength and make the rest of them fun to read.

What does it mean to be happy alone?

It’s such an intriguing and mysterious thing to see a human being come to this place “World” all alone and go from this place the same way but find it hard to stay here alone.

A human being wants an association with another human being, no matter how fraught it gets and how complicated it turns.

Since, we are conditioned to stay connected to others, being alone does not come naturally, and happiness can seem elusive in these uncertain times.

But the truth is, no matter how much you associate with anyone in your lifetime, if you haven’t built an independent bond with yourself, you will never succeed at forging it with anyone else.

Being happy alone is not something about the physical plane only, it is a lot more about the inner dimension.

You can be around people and still not be happy.

The idea is to understand that you cannot be happy until you become the landlord of your happiness.

And oftentimes, we depend for our happiness on others.

Which means, it is always going to be at stake.

Because if something that gives you happiness is an outside body, it can never guarantee it.

But then, the alternative is not choosing isolation.

It’s rather about being mentally and emotionally self-sufficient while still being a part of the world.

To have needs but to not become needy is the Mantra to become your own reservoir of Happiness.

We consider the smallest unit as family and overlook the importance of the most important unit, “Individual”.

Being happy Alone is about nurturing this key element of your life, “YOU”.

Why is it a challenge to be happy alone?

There are times when you have to take a solo ride, and if you aren’t ready, you will fall flat on your face.

We have been accustomed to seeing a human being happy only when in association with another human being.

Even if it gets complicated, we normalize it.

We perceive these associations not always a choice but a necessity.

And if someone does not have them for any reason, it is declared a misfortune.

Something we look down upon.

We don’t even give it a chance to look from a different perspective.

And the person becomes a victim of sympathy.

Even if it has the best gold nuggets stored, even if being alone makes the person happiest, even if it helps one understand oneself more and make life-enriching, it is not celebrated.

Something that no one chooses to be a part of, becomes a challenge for the one who is chosen for it.

To be happy alone becomes a challenge not because it is hard, but because you see no one around living it out of choice.

The good side of being alone.

It does not matter whether something is good or bad for you, but if it is followed by the majority, it becomes an important thing to have.

Living in a social setting is one such thing that the human race embraces with open arms even if it derails them.

Just because you see the entire World follow something does not declare it to be the right thing for you and because you happen to not follow it does not make it any wrong or bad as well.

Life is unique and different for each one of us.

It comes with a different picture and the best way is to accept the colors we receive than looking for the ones that others are receiving.

When life puts you in a lane where you have to walk alone, it is undoubtedly hard but there isn’t any hard ride without a reason.

I was also chosen to walk alone.

Even when I desperately wanted someone to walk along.

Yes desperately!

So, I kept chasing to be a part of a different chapter.

But all was futile.

The more I ran after things, the farther things distanced from me.

At one point, I felt the need to make a halt.

Stopping and not chasing things.

I chose to not start the race that was signaling me: I wasn’t ready for it yet.

And I took the journey that the Universe was propelling me to take.

Now, when I stand on the other side of this journey, I am no longer the person who wants to walk with someone because I am needy but because I want to share my happiness, my world, my wisdom and someone I can grow with.

6 Gold nuggets I found in my journey:

I was introduced to my strengths and weaknesses which shaped me into a better person.
I needed to understand myself before I could better understand anyone else.
The space gave me a chance to find what I could fill it with.
I became authoritative of my happiness.
My restlessness and frustrations had no one to target so I dealt with them all by myself.
I discovered ways to resource myself with love and happiness.

If you learn to be happy alone, you will make the association that you become a part of, happy too.

How to be happy alone?

3 steps to build a strong bond with yourself.

Accept your situation.

When things don’t go as per your plans, they have a bigger plan. But it isn’t revealed until you allow the unwelcoming things.

So, the key is to first accept it.

You don’t accept the situation because you fear you’ll start dwelling in it and become habituated to something that you don’t want.

The truth is, once you accept, you allow yourself to enter into the problem and see it from a close view where things get more clarity.

You will never get closer to a solution if you keep going away from the problem as the solution does not lie outside the problem.

The more you allow yourself to gel with the uncomfortable situation, the more you explore and find what all is there stored for you in it.

I had been repelling being alone for the longest time. I kept anticipating it to be a trap.

It looked treacherous to me.

And I feared to even see how it feels to explore being in it. But when I had no choice than to explore the solo ride, I chanced upon so many discoveries about myself.

I found it was an opportunity to know myself deeply.

The complete isolation got me one step closer to my vulnerabilities where I had no one other than myself to take charge of them.

This acceptance gave me access to understand what hidden gems being alone comes with.

Shift your focus from the empty space onto yourself.

The struggle to be happy alone is not because there isn’t happiness, but because your attention is only on the empty space created in your life.

Unless the attention is diverted from the empty space onto yourself, happiness will not be found.

Because you don’t see this empty space in other’s pictures, it makes you feel bad when you look at your own picture.

But you have to change your perception.

Your life isn’t comparable. Expecting your picture to look like that of others is not going to make it a happy one.

Happiness isn’t about how the picture looks; it’s about how you make it look.

In this phase when you are commanded to walk alone, all you need is to stop looking for someone to fill the space and shift the attention solely onto yourself.

It isn’t a curse, it’s a chance for you to know yourself better and build yourself.

The more you start peeping into your very self, the more clarity you start getting about the purpose for which you have been placed here.

When you shift your attention from nothing to something, you meet the most important subject of your Life, “You”

The idea is to indulge with your soul so that you can fine-tune the delicate intricacies of life.

Deep dive and find what you can build in this time.

Now that you have shifted the focus onto yourself, look for what you can do with yourself.

It is only when you give yourself the prime attention, the prime things in your life come into action.

This time isn’t against you. It is in your favor rather.

It is given specially to explore what you can do with your unexplored potential and abilities.

Take the plunge and start the quest. It is somewhere in this time when you feel left alone that you are going to find yourself.

When you take up the ride alone, all your energy is drawn to a single point.

Self.

When you have accepted and embraced the situation, and found the purpose, you are no longer an unhappy soul.

Happiness is a struggle only until you expect it from the outside.

But when you have found something on the inside that creates happiness for you, you start relishing the state of being alone.

Happiness needs an object, and when you find a purpose that you can work upon, the journey that looked haunting to you starts looking adventurous.

You start creating a roadmap to escalate in this new journey.

The art of being alone is not about disconnecting from the world.

It isn’t about losing your basic need of being part of the social realm.

It is about discovering yourself.

It is about taking it as an opportunity to dive into your true self and find what all you can bring to the table.

We were never devoid of happiness; we just assumed it to be a foreign property.

The truth is, it is innate but because we kept it inactive, it dwindled with time.

And when we are put in a situation where we feel the need to excavate and find where exactly it is dug deep, we start restoring it.

That’s when we become the reservoirs of our happiness.

Once you become the owner of your happiness, no association can ever leave you feeling short of it.

Take it as a sign of fortune, if you are setting out on this journey alone, it is only to help you reinvent yourself so that you thrive and flourish in every association you ever have.

If you resonated with my advice and my words, I would love to see you receive my weekly Newsletter “Evolve and Elevate” where I share lessons from Bhagavad Gita, one inspiring story and one great idea that’ll make you pause and think.

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