EMBRACING YOUR TRUE SELF AND YOUR ALONE TIME IS SO IMPORTANT

I vividly remember pouring over teen magazines as a kid and just longing to be categorised. Longing to have some sort of identity, to be told I was a blue type of person or maybe a red. To answer multiple choice questions in the naive hope that they would tell me exactly who I was, I really wanted to believe it was as easy as that. I was obsessed with the idea that one day it would reveal itself to me and I could sit back and enjoy existing within that category I’d been assigned to, without ever really having had to make much effort. That was very appealing to me.

As humans we’re really obsessed with being told who we are, it’s in our nature to seek that. We have an obsession with having an identity given to us or placed upon us. Or placing ourselves into a category of an identity and living our lives according to it. We’re conditioned into believing that once we belong to something, once we assign ourselves to an identity, life will be better or easier somehow? Maybe it’s a sexuality or a religion, but it’s an identifier, some sort of tag or descriptor that defines us that we can settle into comfortably. But to really know who you are, you can’t rely on external factors, other people or other things. They only divert you further away from yourself. To really know who you are, you need to look inwards and spend time getting to know yourself. And to really know ourselves, we need to be alone.

If you think about the kind of person you are when you’re alone, when you’re really alone. It’s different to the person you are around people, the person in a group of friends or at a family dinner. We all have an individual identity, one that exists regardless of anything or anyone else. A personality, a brain, tastes and opinions that exist without any external factors. When you’re alone in your room at night listening to music, that person is undoubtedly different to the person you are in a meeting or an interview. As human beings we have many different versions of ourselves. We all have a phone voice, a voice to a boss, a way of acting around grandparents and around children. So if you accept that there are multiple different versions of yourself, you can accept that one version of you is the true and only you. So why not harness that version? Why not let that version grow and develop and prosper?

And if that version of yourself exists when you’re alone, be alone. We all need time to be alone, to grow and to develop. To touch base with ourselves, to re-cooperate and relax. As an extrovert I get really socially exhausted sometimes, even if you aren’t extroverted social exhaustion is a real thing and it’s so draining. It can happen hanging out with people you really like, or at an event you’ve been wanting to go to for months. You just get that sinking feeling you no longer want to be there, you just want to be alone. To not have to talk to anyone or see anyone or have anyone seeing you, to just be alone. We have to start seeing ourselves as a phone battery, at some point we’re going to run out. We need to allow ourselves time to recharge or we’ll completely burn out. It’s tiring to constantly have to be acting a certain way, to play up to a pretence or a version of yourself you are expected to be. And once you’ve recharged it’s easier and better for others around you, you can spread positivity and love easier when you feel it yourself. So look after yourself to achieve that.

When you’re alone there are no expectations, no judgement, no shame. You can sit in your underwear eating cold pizza and tweezing hairs from your leg and no one is there to tell you any different. You don’t have to be clean or proper or anything, you can just exist in that moment and be the version of yourself you want to be. I think we should use who we are when we’re alone as a form of reference to who we think we are and who we want to be most of the time. Embrace that person you are when no one can see you, the sillyness, the ugliness, the bravery, the honesty that you know exists within you. And use that to better understand who you truly are. The more time you spend harnessing that individual identity, the better your life will be. When you understand deep down who you are and what you want, life is that much more rewarding.

Thanks, 

Molly 

xx