5 Reasons Why You Should Spend More Time With Yourself

Hey love,
I think that it’s not only important to spend time with other people, but also enough time with yourself. Our world has become so noisy and it can be hard to carve out time for yourself with social media and all the messages you receive. There are millions of ways to distract yourself from your own mind; for some it’s eating, for some it’s watching series, for some it’s video games, for others it’s alcohol. At the same time, it seems like more people than ever are struggling with self-awareness and it makes total sense. How can you know who you really are when you don’t take the time to get to know yourself?

Ask yourself the question “Who am I really? Who am I at my core despite all the social conditioning and external influence of the world around me?”

The people you surround yourself with also play a huge role! In my personal life, so much has changed since I found the “right” people who are like-minded and support me.

You have probably heard of the famous quote before that you are “the average of the five people you spend the most time with” (Jim Rohn). To me, it’s a powerful but also a bit of a scary thought. It means that you have to be really careful to find the right people to support you in that mission.

Here’s the research behind it:

In 1992, Guacomo Rizzolatti conducted a study and discovered that brain cells respond the same way when we witness someone else performing an action than when we perform an action ourselves. This means that if someone is happy, it could activate the same cells in our own brains and make us feel the same emotion.In Neuroscience, these cells are called “Mirror Neurons”.

And it actually makes a lot of sense. How often do we cry just by watching another person in a movie being sad? I certainly have cried a lot along with movie characters lol. If you’re constantly hearing the people around you making certain assumptions and having certain ideas and values, you’ll very likely end up agreeing on them. It’s just a part of human nature.

Even though I now have wonderful people in my life and have found my “soul tribe”, I still value my alone time. For me it’s self-care time and I love it. If I had to describe it in one sentence, I would say “Alone time is good for the soul.” Not to forget that finding the right balance matters too.

SO HERE ARE THE 5 REASONS WHY YOU SHOULD SPEND MORE TIME WITH YOURSELF

1. It increases self-awareness

When you’re surrounded 24/7 by other people, it’s really hard to know who you are and what you really want in life. When I was around 19 to 21, I was spending so much time with other people that there were hardly 10 minutes left during the day that I would spend alone. It’s quite eye-opening when I reflect on it now but it was also the time when I felt pretty “lost” in life and was doing things just to please others.

Once you make enough time to just be with yourself and your thoughts, you discover the deeper part of you, your essence. I now somehow relate more to my “child-self”, when I was between 0 and 5 years old. Back then, we all were our truest, most authentic self and luckily, my parents have some videos that they recorded. Now, that I’ve done the inner work, I can relate a lot to my child-self again.

2. It increases confidence

You know these couples or friends who only spend time together because they’re scared of being alone? That’s basically the opposite of being confident. I believe that confidence has a lot to do with what you think about yourself, when you’re by yourself. When you learn to be by yourself and enjoy your own company, you develop that confidence in yourself. I also know that the thought of sitting alone in a cafe or restaurant and reading a book is horrifying for some people. This is mostly due to the fear of other people’s judgement. Once you’re okay with that, it also helps you in other areas of life because honestly, constantly worrying about other people’s opinions really is a waste of time.

3.You develop more self-love

When you spend enough time with yourself, you’re very likely to realize what an amazing person you actually are. There are so many beautiful traits about yourself that you are yet to discover. I know that “self-love” has become such a popular term. For me, it’s just being happy with who you are and treating yourself like you would your best friend.

What about taking yourself out on a date or treating yourself from time to time? In the past, I often neglected this important part and was so busy helping other people around me that I totally forgot about myself. That’s when friendships ended up in an imbalance of “give” and “take”. When you only give and forget to take, your own cup will become empty and you’ll feel burned out and unfulfilled.

4. You become more independent

I’ve always been pretty independent. When we went on school trips, the other kids would call their parents all the time and would feel homesick. I was pretty much the opposite. Don’t get me wrong, I love my parents and I had a great childhood but still, I just wasn’t as attached and was just happy to enjoy the moment and explore new things. That’s also how I ended up flying to Spain alone at 16 and to Peru alone at 17. When you push yourself to get out of your comfort zone and do new things on your own, you’ll see how powerful you actually are and that you often just underestimate yourself and your abilities.

independence time with yourself girl in greenery

5. More time for self-reflection

I personally love reflecting about my goals, dreams and life in general. Being really present in the moment makes me feel so good; whether it’s through something like yoga nidra, meditation or sitting in nature. It makes you feel super refreshed and more connected with your true essence. I know that meditation can seem daunting in the beginning but it’s so worth it. How often do we almost run away from mindfulness? We are so good at distracting ourselves. For some it’s food, for some it’s alcohol and partying, for some smoking, for some Netflix, for others social media…there are so many ways to escape your own mind. Learn how to dance with it, instead of running from it. I really recommend taking your time to implement more mindfulness into your life and you will see what amazing benefits it has.

You might also like: Why You Should Trust Your Intuition// 5 Helpful Tips

Some videos if you want to give meditation and yoga nidra a try : Guided 10-Minute Mindfulness Meditation, Yoga Nidra

Final Note

I hope this post could inspire you to include more alone-time activities into your life and give yourself time to really explore yourself. These are some of my favorite ways to spend time alone and reflect: