If you want to be happy alone, start doing these 10 things

Start doing these things to feel happy when you’re alone.

A young woman with long blonde hair sips from a white coffee cup while seated indoors near a large window with horizontal blinds. She is wearing a black and white striped shirt and looking pensively outside. The background shows a cafe interior with tables and chairs.

Do you feel as though you need to be around other people to be truly happy?

You’re not alone in feeling that way.

So many people think they need others to be truly happy, or they are afraid of what it means to be alone.

But, being alone doesn’t have to be a negative thing.

In fact, there are those who may spend their time alone, but don’t find themselves to be lonely.

Introverts recharge their social batteries and internal energy by spending time alone with themselves or their hobbies.

You, too, have the ability to have a good time, enjoy happiness, and find fulfillment whilst alone.

Here are 10 solid, actionable tips on how to do that!

1. Start reframing your alone time into something more positive.

A woman with wavy brown hair and green eyes smiles warmly at the camera. She is wearing an off-shoulder yellow top. The background is a blurred natural setting with greenery, suggesting she is outdoors.

Being around other people requires a personal sacrifice of your time and how you spend it.

You have to consider the needs of others when you spend time around family, friends, or with a partner.

When you’re alone, you have the freedom to dictate whatever it is you want to do, whenever you want to do it.

That freedom should be embraced while you have the opportunity.

Spend your time doing the things that you want to do in the ways that you want to do them.

Instead of focusing on loneliness, turn your alone time into a period of self-reflection and improvement.

It’s a time when you can put your sole focus on yourself, your self-improvement, and spend your time focused on those activities.

So change your thinking from, “Oh no, I’ve got a day by myself,” to, “Great, I’ve got a day for myself.”

2. Start granting yourself permission to be alone.

A man with short brown hair and a beard smiles at the camera. He is wearing a beige jacket and a thick, gray scarf. Behind him is a scenic outdoor background featuring a body of water, lush greenery, and distant hills under a clear blue sky.

The struggle with loneliness often includes guilt that we are somehow conducting our lives incorrectly.

It’s easy to look at other people in happy relationships or socializing with friends and think that we must be doing something wrong to not have a similar life.

But things don’t always run that smoothly.

Friends get busy, relationships can get strained or end, and sometimes life just pulls us away from our social groups.

But that’s okay!

It doesn’t need to be that way forever and you’re not in competition with everyone else.

It’s okay to be alone. Remind yourself of that permission if you find yourself dwelling on why you shouldn’t be.

Don’t waste your time comparing your life to others. Everyone has a different path.

3. Start spending your time on things that mean something to you.

A young woman with long dark hair and a striped sleeveless shirt smiles at the camera, taking a selfie in an open field with a body of water in the background. The sky is partly cloudy.

It’s tempting to sit down and binge watch a television show in your free time, but it won’t bring you any closer to being a happier person.

It may provide an endorphin boost of brief happiness in the moment, but your long-term feelings may differ as you look back on all of the time you wasted where you could have been doing something to improve yourself, learn something new, or build something.

Does that mean you should never engage in time-wasting activities?

Not at all!

We’re all human. Sometimes we just want to chill out and do nothing for a while.

And sometimes that period of doing nothing is just what we need to reboot and refresh ourselves.

Just don’t let time-wasting activities take up a significant amount of your alone time.

4. Start developing routines that will improve your health and happiness.

A person with curly hair, wearing white sunglasses, a denim jacket, and a striped shirt smiles at the camera. They are standing on a pathway by the sea at sunset, with a rocky shoreline and silhouettes of people in the background.

Routines often serve as a foundation for building better health and happiness.

Having time to yourself, where you don’t have the needs of others imposed on you, gives you an opportunity to start and develop new routines and habits that can boost your emotional state.

A regular exercise routine is a good place to start. Even a brief home workout or daily walk provides numerous physical and mental health benefits.

You can also use that time to start building on and improving your culinary skills. Home cooked meals are generally healthier than take out. Meal prepping for the week means you can avoid eating fast food or other junk that can harm your health.

5. Start planning more solo outings and travel.

A woman leans close to an airplane window, gazing outside with a serene expression. Sunlight streams through the window, creating a lens flare effect. The window shows a view of the blue sky and white clouds.

Traveling solo can be an invigorating experience because of the freedom it provides.

Traveling with a partner is fine and all, but you need to work around their needs and desires as well as your own.

They may not be interested in seeing the same sights or doing the types of activities that you want to do.

Take that opportunity to travel to a place you’ve always wanted to go, but haven’t been able to.

That doesn’t need to be far from home. There’s nothing wrong with treating yourself to a dinner or a movie you want to see.

There may be other tourist type sites that you could go to locally for a bit of a breather, like a bed and breakfast or a resort.

You could also take up a new hobby or activity with your free time. Sign up for an art course, music or dance lessons. Pick up a physical activity like hiking or camping that will get you out in nature.

6. Start focusing on gratitude and what you do have.

A man with short gray hair and a slight smile stands outdoors in a field at sunset. He is wearing a blue and black checkered shirt and touches his chin with his left hand. The sun is behind him, casting a warm glow. Trees and a grassy field are visible in the background.

Gratitude is a powerful tool to cultivate happiness.

A person who is sad because they are lonely may feel that negativity creeping into other areas of their life.

By focusing on the loneliness, it gives more emotional energy to those feelings, which push out other happier aspects of life that may be going well.

Gratitude is the solution to that problem.

By focusing on what’s good in our life, we can keep the negativity from overwhelming our minds.

That doesn’t mean that it will disappear altogether. You shouldn’t expect it to.

Gratitude can help bring your attention back to the things that are going well, which gives you something more positive to focus on while you are trying to ride out a spell of loneliness.

7. Start cultivating your passions.

A woman with a red headband and hoop earrings is focused on painting. She is seated in a studio with various art supplies and furniture in the background. She wears a green shirt and holds a brush, working on a canvas. The environment is cozy and artistic.

What are you passionate about?

Art? Reading? Gardening?

It’s difficult to keep up with those things when you are trying to work your schedule around others.

Maybe you’re not passionate about anything at all.

Maybe it’s been a long time since you’ve felt in touch with your passions.

It’s easy to lose touch when you’re inundated with the responsibilities of life and a busy schedule.

Solitude is a great time to get back in touch with your passions or cultivate new ones.

Touching on passions that bring you joy can help you fill your mind with positive thoughts and push out the negative.

8. Start working on your own emotional landscape.

A young woman with short dark hair, wearing large round glasses, a yellow beanie, and a dark green polka dot shirt, smiles while looking off to the side. The background is blurred cityscape.

There are some people who are uncomfortable with being alone because they feel as though they may not be good enough on their own.

People who have been through abusive relationships or had rough childhoods may have been made to feel as though they were incompetent.

This is a common technique among abusers to keep the abused dependent on them and fearful of being without.

But that is a lie and a tool of abuse.

For those who feel they must be in a relationship or must be in a group, solitude is the opportune time to break those feelings apart and prove to themselves that they are capable of standing on their own two feet.

That alone time can instead be used as a period of refreshment, rejuvenation, and healing before moving forward and getting involved in other relationships.

9. Start reminding yourself that the grass isn’t necessarily greener.

A man with a beard and a top knot hairstyle wearing a blue t-shirt smiles while looking to his right. The background features a blurred building facade with stone walls and arched windows.

It can be really frustrating when you’ve paired your life with another person.

Yes, it’s absolutely wonderful to have a good partner who has your back.

On the other hand, a partner is their own person with their own problems, difficulties, and challenges.

Being lonely without anyone else isn’t a good feeling, but it’s a worse feeling to be with someone who makes you feel lonely.

Sometimes, the people we choose to surround ourselves with aren’t the most positive or greatest people to be around.

Sometimes their problems or flaws rub off on us, negatively affect our lives, and cause more stress.

So much advice focuses around surrounding oneself with healthy, positive people… but pretty much everyone has some kind of dirt or grime to them.

Life is hard for a lot of people and leaves scars that don’t necessarily heal all that well or all the way.

Meeting new people or getting involved in another relationship means getting exposed to their wounds too.

10. Start learning to relax in the present.

A woman with light brown hair and blue eyes smiles warmly at the camera. She is wearing a white shirt and gold earrings, sitting outdoors with a blurred green background of foliage and yellow flowers.

The largest obstacle to finding happiness while being alone is in our perspective.

We have the ability to choose whether or not we want to look at being alone as a positive or negative event.

Yes, it can feel negative, but we can try to guide those feelings into a more positive place by reminding ourselves that the loneliness will not last forever.

There are plenty of other people out there who are looking for connection, for friends, for relationships.

Allow yourself to relax in your solitude and use it as a time for self-improvement and for fulfilling the goals you have that are harder to accomplish in a relationship.

Let life run its course and keep looking for new activities and opportunities to connect with others.

Sooner or later, you’ll find them.