It Takes 90 Days of Loneliness to Rediscover Who You Are
"Time alone isn’t lonely, it’s freedom"
I’m a loner. Some say that makes me a loser.
I’ve always been that way and thought it was a bad thing. In my 20s everyone wanted to go out and party. I just wanted to sit in my bedroom and make electronic music. When I tried to take that music out to nightclubs as a DJ, I crashed and burned.
I now see loneliness differently, and you will too (shortly).
The discomfort of isolation
Loneliness is uncomfortable.
When I worked in banking I had to say no a lot. No to after-work drinks. No to weekends away with other bankers. No to going to the AFL football (our bank was the major sponsor).
Each no made me feel like crap. Like I was letting people down or something was wrong with me. But if I didn’t, then I would never have had the headspace to be a writer.
Modern life is slowly making us go insane.
We can’t switch off. We can’t escape. We live in constant FOMO. We have headphones on 24/7 that destroy our hearing and leave us with a high-pitched ringing in our ears, that contributes to the insanity. It’s why modern life is a horror film.
When you always have other people’s voices playing in your headphones, you drown out your own voice. You forget who you are. You can’t hear yourself think. Therefore, you can’t be creative or solve big problems.
So what are you left with? Crippling boredom that requires endless entertainment to numb the pain.
Loneliness starts out as uncomfortable because most of us don’t do it. Even when we are alone we have Netflix or our phone to talk with us. We’re truly never alone.
To unlock your inner genius you must embrace isolation for a long enough time.
“He moves fastest who moves alone.” ― Milton Friedman
Lean into your dark side
All of us have a dark side.
We unlock it when we’re alone. A recent example is Ben Affleck. He married Jennifer Lopez who he thought was the love of his life after decades of wanting one another.
Within two years they’re getting a divorce. This love affair started almost 20 years ago. Sources close to Ben say he has a dark side. He can never be fully present because he needs extended periods of solitude.
It’s this alone time that has made him one of the greatest actors of our time.But his ex-wife JLO didn’t understand it. She wanted him to always be present. To always want to go away or be in the spotlight. On their honeymoon Ben and JLO had paparazzi around them all the time.
It led Ben to madness. So their marriage ended.
I can relate to this. Thankfully my wife knows I need solitude. She also likes the same alone time, so it works well for us.
In my banking days, I remember working out of a bank branch. All the other bankers would go home at 5 PM. I’d stay back. I’d finish my banking work at 5 PM and stick around to record podcasts with successful people. Or I’d stay there and write.
Most nights I wouldn’t leave before 9 or 10 PM. I stayed so late one night that I slept in my car. I was obsessed with this new life I’d found. I wanted to exit banking as quickly as possible, but knew only loneliness would get me there.
The other bankers used to make fun of me. They said I lived at the office. Bosses thought it was awesome. But no one knew I lived at the office to build my own thing, not do useless banking work like open bank accounts for customers.
Your dark side is where hidden potential is found. It comes out to play after hours.
“Being alone is a power very few can handle” – Aaron Will
Success isn’t complicated (but everyone thinks it is)
When I see complicated paths to success, I see bullsh*t.
Loneliness is a powerful tool to get anything you want in life. If you do it for 90 days everything will change in your life. Here’s the thing: I can’t promise you what will change because it’s different for everyone.
What I know is loneliness forces you to rediscover who you are.
You won’t come out the other side of 90 days of deep solitude the same person. It’s exciting. It’s breathtaking. But it takes a level of discomfort most can’t handle.
The first few days are like being 48 hours into a water fast. This memory stands out as I’m 8 weeks away from another stint in hospital. Before I go under the knife, I’ll have to fast beforehand so it’s safe for the anesthetic.
As the hunger sets in so too will the darkness.
I’ve been down this road since 2015. First, I’ll wonder whether the cancer comes back. Then I’ll stress about the hospital because I hate needles and blood. This time I’ll stress harder because I have a 1 year old daughter. What if the hospital goes wrong?
But as wild as it sounds, I look forward to this darkness.
It’s deeply motivating. It interrupts my thought patterns and I come out the other side 10x more grateful than the average person who takes everything for granted.
The fasting will require solitude. The recovery in the hospital will require solitude, too. I wonder what the loneliness will teach me this time?
“Time alone isn’t lonely, it’s freedom” – OrangeBook
90 days is all it takes to rediscover who you are
My challenge to you is to embrace 90 days of loneliness.
Here’s what to do in the 90 days:
Delete all your goals. Start again.
Start writing daily online so you can use it to think deeply.
Create a new vision for your life. Dream big. Remove the limiting valves on your consciousness.
Think of one way to build a new network of people from scratch.
Read more autobiographies than you ever read before – Steve Jobs, Winston Churchill, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Andre Agassi, and Alexander Hamilton.
Take some new risks.
During this time get your phone out of your life.
Buy an Apple Watch if you must to escape the phone. Turn off social media. Quit all the networking events. Stop trying to be a socialite with your neighbors, The Joneses (who don’t give a f*ck about you), and just work on yourself.
90 days.
3 months.
A quarter of a year.
It’s no time at all, yet it’s a decent chunk of your life. I promise you, if you do this, your life will never be the same again. Most won’t. But the few of you who do are why I’ve written this.
Tell me if this big idea resonates with you and why in the comments.
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Hey Tim, last time I felt lonely (it's kind of embarrassing to admit this) was in 2007. That summer, I turned my life around even though I didn't know that yet. I went to work in academia doing what I love - research. It wasn't easy.
I spent the summer reading research papers in a foreign language and figuring out solid state physics. Looking back now, I couldn't be more grateful to my then-girlfriend for dumping me. She created an opportunity that changed my life.
The word loneliness implies sadness, but I think that being alone (different to loneliness in my view) is what sparks creativity. Any activity really that brings joy, relaxes you, and gives you time to think can spark creativity. You're right about us being constantly on the go and needing to find our alone time.