Learn To Like The Company Of Yourself Or No One Else Will
Learning to enjoy your own company and stop fearing loneliness.
If you don’t like being with yourself, don’t expect other people to.
Identify your values
Values are the compass that guides decisions. They should be the most important thing to you. If you think of yourself as a hard-working person but choose to watch YouTube instead of writing a project, being a hard worker is not your value. Examples abound, but the bottom line is—you want to be a different person than you are now.
Set an anti-vision for yourself
Are you familiar with anti-vision exercise? We will do it now. Anti-vision is a negative vision of your life—what I absolutely don’t want my future to be? To make the exercise more tangible, let's define the future as 10 years from now.
Ask yourself:
What I don’t want to look like?
Where I don’t want to live?
Who I don’t want to stay in touch with?
Where I don’t want to work?
What I don’t want my morning to be like?
Similarly, you can do the same for the things you want.
Are you aligned with them?
Do you really live by those values or just want to have them? Let’s create 2 avatars—you, and a person you want to be. A person whose values you want, a person who is aligned and follows those values in decision-making 100% of the time. Try to answer the questions below as:
Yourself.
The avatar.
What about questions like “What are you most proud of in your life so far?” try to role-play!
Answer from those 2 perspectives:
What do you spend most of your time thinking about?
What are you most proud of in your life so far?
What really frustrates you?
If you could dedicate your life to one thing, what would it be?
Who do you admire, and why?
When do you feel most at peace or fulfilled?
What would you do daily if money wasn’t a factor?
Keeping your head occupied
I’m talking about playing music while showering, scrolling stuff while waiting for the water to boil, and playing podcasts to sleep. Basically—doing anything just not to leave your mind alone. That’s a sign that you don’t like being alone with your thoughts, that’s a sign you want to run from the consequences of your long-term actions and painful (but immensely important) realizations about your situation.
What to do? Meditation and reading. Meditate to clear the cache of your brain and read to fill it with good data. If you have no clue how, start here:
Solitude fuels growth
Don’t book a flight to Antarctica yet though, isolation is not the point. I like the quote from Ryan Holiday:
“The secret to success in almost all fields is large, uninterrupted blocks of focused time.”
Some people just hate being alone, they always seek company (the quality of this company is a secondary matter). And those people are the most ordinary ever. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, I'm saying that none of these people will be someone you read a book about. Socializing is important, but those people oversocialize leaving no time for themselves. If time is water and you use up all that water for other plants, you won't grow yourself.
Hanging out with the right people
The closest people you live with and spend the most time with have a huge impact on shaping your identity. It is said that anyone can become a millionaire if only they spend enough time among other millionaires.
I like the idea of a mastermind group from Napoleon Hill. It refers to a mutual support system or alliance where two or more people come together to collaborate, share ideas, and solve problems. The group leverages collective knowledge, individual specializations, and accountability. Members have similar (or exactly the same) goals and interests.
You don’t need to keep people in your life just because they somehow appeared in it. If you don't feel comfortable in your circle without alcohol or other stimulants —something is wrong here.
There is a Polish saying: “If you come among the crows, you must caw like them.” If you feel like a creative exercise—try assigning a bird to each of your friends.
How to build self-respect
Basically—that way:
Read this post as it covers the topic in detail:
Nobody likes people who complain
If you are aware of this, we have completed the first step (awareness). Now, how to change it? Habit. Read the following post through the lens of creating a habit of not complaining.
40 Days to Greatness - Forming and Sticking to New Habits
Habits are the building blocks of success. Starting a new good habit is easy, sticking to it is not. Starting a new bad habit is easy, dropping it is not. What if we could reverse it? Or at least minimalize friction for good habits and maximize for bad ones? What can change in the next 40 days of your life?