Before you start reading, start the music:

Here are five positive quotes about being alone:

1. “Remember: the time you feel lonely is the time you most need to be by yourself. Life’s cruelest irony.”

~ Douglas Coupland, Shampoo Planet

2. “Aloneness is the joy of being just yourself. It is being joyous with yourself, it is enjoying your own company. There are very few people who enjoy their own company. And it is a very strange world: nobody enjoys his company and everybody wants others to enjoy his company! If they don’t enjoy he feels insulted—and alone he feels disgusted with himself. In fact, if you cannot enjoy your own company, who else is going to enjoy it?”

~ Osho

3. “I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.”

~ Henry David Thoreau

4. “In order to be open to creativity, one must have the capacity for constructive use of solitude. One must overcome the fear of being alone.”

~ Rollo May

5. “And you should not let yourself be confused in your solitude by the fact that there is something in you that wants to move out of it.”

~ Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

It’s easy to feel lonely during this time when everyone around us seems to be with others.

Loneliness is the most normal feeling in the world and yet, there seems to be a lot of shame around it. If you’re alone for the holidays, so what? You have the power to translate every experience you have. There’s no need to judge your solitude. That’s when it becomes loneliness. Instead, enjoy it. Surrender to it. Do something positive with it.

Consider this a time to learn something new about yourself.

Get out your art supplies.

Meditate.

Get lost in a novel.

Don’t allow wallowing.

Set new goals.

Contemplate those who are lonelier than you.

Reach out to others.

Volunteer for those in need.

Write a letter to an old friend.

Learn how to be your own friend and do something special for yourself.

Take a bubble bath.

Cook a healthy meal.

Get a massage.

Take a walk and notice nature.

Move:

Wake up your senses with plenty of exercise.

Remember, nothing lasts forever.