There are many benefits of solitude, but you have to give yourself the chance to sit there.
It’s the tale as old as time: “I’m afraid I will die alone.”
While such a worry often comes to us in more dire moments, like when a relationship dissolves or family ties begin to come undone, the fear of being alone also creeps its way into our everyday activities: going to a wedding alone; traveling alone; living alone; even celebrating Valentine’s Day alone.
When we compare our inner circle to that of those around us, it can sometimes feel embarrassingly small by comparison. Then that familiar pang of loneliness creeps in, and we’re quick to fill it with scrolling, watching, or consuming—content or otherwise.
But there’s no reason to be afraid of being alone. If you step back from the screen, fake friends, and other mind-numbing distractions and learn how to truly enjoy your own company, you’ll uncover a new, calmer, more peaceful world, one where doing things alone feels comfortable instead of punishing.
Though the silence may at first exacerbate feelings of loneliness, if you learn to sit with it instead of running to distractions, you’ll find you already have everything you need to be happy within you.
Here are six reasons why being alone is good for you and how it helps you live a more creative, fulfilling, connected life:
Not comforting sitting alone with yourself?
Learn how to find confidence and comfort in your own company with A Merry Loner’s 7-Day Do Things Alone Challenge.
The shortlist: 6 benefits of solitude that help you think clearly, create freely, and build more meaningful relationships
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6 reasons why being alone is good for you
The benefits of spending time alone go beyond helping you decompress from a day of overstimulation.
Intentional solitude helps you think more clearly, live more creatively, and feel more confident. Over time, that confidence and comfort in your own company helps you build more meaningful relationships and make new friends more easily.
1. Think for yourself
It’s hard to know what you think when you’re constantly inundated with others’ opinions.
When you spend time alone, you give yourself the mental space to reflect on your life, the world, and what you truly believe without depending on or being influenced by the ideas of others.
And don’t beat yourself up for parroting your neighbor; it’s normal to do so.
In the 1950s, Polish-American social psychologist Solomon Asch conducted a series of conformity experiments where he examined people’s willingness to adopt an obviously incorrect belief due to social pressure. As summarized by EBSCO: “In the end, more than one-third of Asch’s test subjects conformed to the predominant, and incorrect, group answer.”
Over 70 years later, a 2023 replication and extension of the Asch experiment published by PLoS One confirmed the original findings.
Groupthink is a powerful force that few if any of us can evade entirely, but spending some time alone can help.
From menial decisions, like deciding what to wear or what we really think of that new film everyone is talking about, to more grave concerns, like choosing who to vote for or where you stand on the latest political polemic, taking time to separate from your pack, look away from your algorithm, and tune out the voices around you gives you room to ponder, puzzle, and come to your own conclusions based on none other than your moral compass.
Not really sure what you think about the world (or yourself)? Get to know yourself better with these 7 books on self-awareness.
2. Be creative and come up with new ideas
For the same reason I can’t write an original sentence while reading another, I can’t develop a new idea while consuming another.
What I consider one of the most important benefits of solitude is the space it affords you to daydream, experiment, and invent.
The neuroscientists are on my side.
In an interview for Stanford University’s Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute, cognitive scientist Vinod Menon explains default mode network (DMN) and what happens when we let our minds wander:
“The default mode network is a collection of brain areas that becomes active when we turn our attention inward. And it’s a network that generates your internal mental life, your memories, your sense of who you are, your plans and daydreams, and the ongoing inner narrative that reflects our own individual experiences.”
Importantly, Menon stresses that “one of the key aspects of this system is that it’s actually suppressed during externally focused tension demanding tasks.”
Essentially, when you give your brain a break from the constant stream of external stimuli our modern world subjects it to, it starts connecting ideas, memories, and experiences to lead you to original, creative insights.
Perhaps this is why some of time’s most prolific writers, artists, and other creative minds have been described as recluse or solitary. Their proclivity to spend time alone doesn’t necessarily mean they’re anti-social or introverted but that they recognize it takes pointed time and space alone to think, dream, and create.
Does sitting in your own company feel more stifling than inspiring? You can shift it. Learn how to enjoy your own company (and why it’s so important).
3. Gain more confidence being yourself
Doing things alone has a hideous reputation. “Spend too much time alone,” people fearmonger, “and you’ll become a lonely, depressed, uncivilized hermit.”
A study published in Nature begs to disagree.
During a 21-day experiment, participants totaled how many hours they spent in solitude. The findings were thus:
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Solitude doesn’t always lead to loneliness: People were lonelier and less satisfied on days when they spent more time alone, but this effect was reduced or disappeared “when daily solitude was autonomous,” i.e., chosen rather than forced.
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It supports a sense of autonomy: On days when people spent more time alone, they reported feeling less stress and greater autonomy satisfaction, feeling “volitional, authentic, and free from pressure.”
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There are long-term benefits to spending time alone: The benefits of solitude snowballed over time: “…those who spent more time alone across the span of the study were less stressed and more autonomy satisfied overall”—not lonelier.
More alone time only translates to more loneliness when it’s unwanted. But when you choose to actively spend time alone with yourself, stress goes away and you feel more comfortable and confident being you.
When we’re alone, the default is often to fill that empty space with social media. But imagine the places your imagination could take if you listened to it instead of your algorithm. These are the strategies that helped me learn how to quit social media.
4. Experiment and try new things
No matter how brash or confident one claims to be, trying something new is always tough, especially if you have an audience.
What if you fail? What if you embarrass yourself? What if everyone remembers you for a buffoonish utterance you wish you could take back?
Counterintuitively, it can feel even more nerve-wracking to try new things in front of people we know as opposed to a room full of strangers. If we experiment with reinventing ourselves, be it through new wardrobe choices, a change in social circles, or the simple trying on of a new habit, our inner circle is often the first the notice and interject unwelcome commentary:
“Oh, you’ve changed your hair?” “Is that how you’re dressing now?” “Since when do you read and quote Kerouac?”
Known social circles come with expectations and voices ready to question you if you deviate from the person they know you as.
Another one of the main benefits of solitude is the freedom and nonjudgmental comfort it provides to experiment and try new things. When you’re alone, there’s no audience (or judgment) to trail every experiment. You can try something new, fail, change your mind, and start over without anyone watching.
Research published in Metodo International backs up why being alone is good sometimes:
“Solitude can minimize forms of intrusive self-consciousness by reducing the immediate demands of experiencing oneself as the object of another person’s thoughts and actions. Other studies have shown that people have decreased self-awareness when they are alone.”
In other words, solitude removes the social pressure and fear of public failure that often holds us back from trying new things, giving us the comfort to experiment and reinvent ourselves, sans external noise.
If you’re simply at a loss of how to spend time alone without feeling anxious, lonely, or strange, just take baby steps. Read 5 simple ways to get better at doing things alone so you can start feeling confident and comfortable in your own company.
5. Build more intentional relationships
Ironically, another reason why being alone is good for you is that it helps you develop more intentional, genuine relationships.
When you’re lonely, uncomfortable in your own company, and desperate for companionship, you’re more likely to strike up a relationship with someone just because they’re available.
This goes for both platonic and romantic relationships.
When you don’t have anything to do on Friday night but you feel anxious about staying home alone, you jump at the first invitation that comes along. You go to restaurants you don’t like; you spend money on drinks that don’t fill your cup; and you wake up the next morning feeling tired, like you wasted the evening, and lonelier than ever as you look back on last night’s sour memories.
Chasing romance from a place of loneliness leads to similar if not more disastrous aftereffects.
When you’re not comfortable being single, you jump from partner to partner—not because you’re having fun meeting new people and learning about yourself along the way but because you feel incapable of living alone, making your own decisions, and spending time with just yourself. You prefer to default to someone else and absorb their friends, routines, and habits so you don’t have to sit with yourself, explore what really makes you happy, or put the effort in to build a life of your own choosing. You may have developed a fondness for your partner over time, but it’s based on proximity and convenience, not real connection.
Either way, when you avoid spending time alone with yourself and rush to fill every moment with a social engagement, you rob yourself of the chance to develop more meaningful relationships founded on a true desire to be with that person. Instead, you live your life with people who are simply there.
Do you still feel lonely, even though you’re in a relationship? It’s not necessarily your partner’s fault. Read guest writer Janine Canillas’s personal story on why so many of us feel alone in our relationships (and how to fix it).
6. Make new friends more easily
Everyone wants to make more friends, no matter how grouchy you may pretend to be.
But it’s getting harder.
Our individualist societies are becoming more and more pod-like. A 2025 survey from Pew Research Center shows 16% of all adults “feel lonely or isolated from those around them all or most of the time.” Worryingly, “adults under 50 are more likely than older adults to feel lonely”—not a good sign for the young’uns.
While making friends in school may seem easy, the years following graduation often spell isolation, loneliness, and eventual bitterness for many. If you didn’t find your crew and/or significant other in college, destined are you to search soullessly for your soulmates on an app, it seems.
But there are other ways to make new friends as an adult. You can go to in-real-life meetup events or join local clubs, for example.
The catch is, to turn random people you meet at events into friends, you need the confidence to approach strangers, be the one to text first, and initiate plans—again and again. These steps are much harder to take if you don’t have the ease and self-assurance to go to social events alone and strike up conversations with people you don’t know.
Practicing doing things alone can give you that confidence to make new friends.
Sign up for A Merry Loner’s 7-Day Do Things Alone Challenge to learn how to do things alone without feeling lonely so you can make life richer and more connected.
Why intentional solitude is getting harder to come by
In the midst of a global loneliness epidemic, it sounds counterintuitive to champion alone time. But spending time alone with yourself is when we can explore new ideas, fail without judgment, learn about ourselves, and build the confidence to create the life we want for ourselves.
That alone time, however, must be actively chosen and intentionally filled, i.e., no doomscrolling, binge-watching, or otherwise dulling ourselves with external stimulants.
Unfortunately, intentional solitude is getting harder and harder to come by:
The world is always on—and demands we are, too. Notifications are ever present. Work and friends alike pressure us to respond to all communications immediately. Almost no place of business operates without music playing in the background. Seeking silence and solitude is now considered a radical act (if not a selfish one) in a world that is constantly churning, shrieking, and vying for our attention.
Social media is considered a given, not an option. Strangers becoming friends at parties ask for my Instagram instead of my phone number; for many, the idea of existing offline is simply inconceivable. We must engage; we must perform; and we must be public. Otherwise, there’s something off about you.
Being alone is considered something to be feared instead of something to appreciate. You should get on an app and meet a partner; pull out your phone at the bus stop, instead of standing quietly with your thoughts; optimize your free time instead of sitting in boredom. There is so much pressure to constantly move, make, and monetize. Simply existing (and existing just for ourselves) is considered lazy or lame.
We are all alone—and that’s not necessarily a bad thing, so we should stop running from it.
For a philosophical mood lift, explore these quotes about feeling alone to remind yourself that we’re each steering our own ship and are responsible for our own happiness.
Conclusion: the benefits of solitude compound over time
Spending time alone is not an act of isolation or even overt individualism. It is a conscious effort to think for yourself, be more creative, gain more confidence, and try new things.
With the space to think without influence, daydream, experiment, and get to know yourself, you can start becoming the person you want to be. Along the way, building that confidence and comfort in your own company enables you to make friends more easily, build more meaningful relationships, and have an overall more creative, fulfilling, and connected life.
There are many benefits of solitude, but you have to give yourself the chance to sit there.
Next Steps:
Start getting over the embarrassment, anxiety, or self-consciousness of doing things alone. Learn 5 simple ways to get better at doing things alone.
Consider if you even like being with yourself—and why you should. Read 5 reasons why it’s important to learn to enjoy your own company and how to get started.
Practice spending time with just yourself. Sign up for A Merry Loner’s 7-Day Do Things Alone Challenge so you can own the power of being alone.
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Why Being Alone Is Good for You: Common FAQs
Is spending time alone good for you?
Yes, spending time alone can be very beneficial—if you do it intentionally. That means actively choosing to spend quality time with yourself rather than filling the silence with scrolling or binge-watching. The benefits of “me time” include learning how to think for yourself, developing a stronger sense of self, and then using that newfound self-confidence to make new friends and build deeper, more meaningful relationships.
Does it seem counterintuitive? Learn why being happy alone can actually help you make new friends.
Why spending time alone is important
Spending time alone is important because it gives you the space to think for yourself, experiment without judgement, and make decisions without outside pressure. Several studies on the psychology of being alone have actually shown that solitude can reduce self-consciousness and help you be more creative.
If you’re not comfortable sitting in solitude, see 5 reasons why it’s important to learn how to enjoy your own company—and how to get started.
Why is being alone good for your mental health?
Being alone can improve your mental health by reducing stress, lowering self-consciousness, and giving you space to feel free from outside pressure.
It’s easier to be happy being alone the more you work at it. When you sign up for A Merry Loner’s 7-Day Do Things Alone Challenge, you get one week of bite-sized daily challenges to help you practice spending intentional time alone so you can build self confidence, reduce social anxiety, and stop waiting on others to enjoy your life.
Is it healthy to be alone all the time?
Being alone all the time isn’t a good idea. Humans are social creatures, and we need friends, family, and community to feel our best. That said, adding in intentional alone time can help us better understand ourselves and our own needs, values, and patterns of behavior, which actually helps us strengthen our relationships and even make new friends more easily.
Learn why being a loner helps you make new friends, whether you’re moving to a new city or just facing a social dry spell.
Is it bad to prefer to be alone?
No, it’s not bad to prefer solitude. Many people genuinely feel happy being alone and use that time to recharge, reflect, or otherwise recreate. But you want to make sure you’re not isolating yourself or avoiding connection out of fear or anxiety.
If you want to learn how to spend time being alone but not lonely, check out 5 simple strategies to get better at doing things alone.
Can being alone be good for you?
Yes, being alone can be really good for you—when that alone time is intentional and balanced with healthy social interaction. Several studies on the psychology of being alone show that intentional (i.e., chosen) solitude can reduce feelings of stress and pressure and help you be more authentically you.
But fighting distraction, saying no to overstimulation, and truly enjoying spending time alone with yourself isn’t intuitive for everyone. See 5 reasons why it’s important to enjoy your own company—and how to get started.
Why being alone is powerful?
Being alone is very powerful because it forces you to think for yourself, get creative, and make your own decisions without any outside influence. Over time, this intentional solitude helps you become more confident, self-assured, and less likely to be influenced or controlled by others. That’s why people who master being alone and happy can often build stronger relationships.
Do you think you’re running into a relationship because you’re afraid of being alone? It’s a common pattern. This personal essay provides insight on why so many people feel alone in a relationship—and how to course-correct.
Merry
Merry is the blogger behind A Merry Loner, a full-time freelance writer, and a lifelong bookworm. Since kindergarten, it was her dream to become a novelist. (She likes to think she's headed in the right direction.) Born and raised in Rhode Island, where she earned a triple-major BA in writing, communication, and French from the University of Rhode Island, she moved to Toulouse, France after the pandemic to complete a master's in creative writing at Univeristé Toulouse Jean — Jaurès. She now lives in Paris with husband.
Discover how the merry loner lifestyle makes life more enjoyable:
LONER MINDSET: fresh perspectives on learning to genuinely enjoy your own company
BOOKS: reading lists for people who love being alone with a good story
ANALOG LIVING: inspiration to step back from the screen and live a life offline
SOLO TRAVEL: guides on where to go and how to enjoy it alone
MINDFUL CONSUMPTION: vetted recommendations for a simpler, less wasteful life
LONER Q&As: interviews from global voices on how to live a meaningful, enjoyable life
