How to Master the Art of Being Alone | Thuy-vy Nguyen | TEDxSUNYGeneseo

good afternoon everyone to begin I would like to ask you to close your eyes and think about the last time you were

alone

where you were what you were doing how you were doing now that we have all done that open your eyes and I would like to see a show of hands. For how many of you was the experience particularly pleasant? For how many of you was the experience particularly unpleasant? Okay, what's up with this? For how many of you was it the ordinary experience? You didn't care either, thanks, so if I didn't ask you about the last time you were

alone

, you'd probably never think about how you felt during that, that's because Solitude generally isn't interesting or exciting.

Research has shown that Solitude is generally not a very positive experience, it is often associated with the misfits and the outcasts, so if I am alone there must be something wrong with me because if I am healthy and well, other people would want to be with me, which creates an even more depressing image. is when solitary is used in our society, it is often used as a form of punishment for prisoners, solitary confinement for children is downtime and for some of us it is staying home on a Friday night watching Netflix when people are alone, the most common experience is loneliness loneliness is the most common experience during loneliness among adolescents and young adults;

In fact, we don't like

being

alone so much that the new phenomenon of the 21st century, Alone Together, constantly connects us with each other through our devices, even when we are alone. When I first studied Solitude in graduate school, my motivation was to look for a positive effect because many academics have talked about how Solitude can help us rewind the offering. Serenity and calm, so I want it to be good. I think it may be good, so I started with a simple experiment. I had participants come in and asked some of them to engage in an informal conversation for 15 minutes.

For the other group, I had them sit alone, away from the devices, doing nothing for 15 minutes and, as it could be. I've guessed that the Solitude group didn't do very well compared to the social interaction group. The Soledad group reports a significant drop in elements like energy, enthusiasm and happiness and then I thought maybe if I give them something to do because, after all, when we talk about ourselves. We don't usually sit there doing nothing, so I ran this study again and gave some participants a reading task, since reading is one of the common activities we usually do when we are alone, but again, both groups reported feeling significantly less happy, less excited, and less energized, but I also began to notice a trend in my data for both studies that at the same time the participant was feeling less happy, less excited, and less energized, they also he felt less angry, less anxious, less scared, so these There are high activation emotions but we also have other low activation emotions and these are calm, relaxed, but on the negative side, of course, we also have sadness and loneliness, so now we know one more thing about loneliness.

Loneliness disables us in a American society in general values ​​stimulation, excitement, and energy. I can see how that might be a bad thing, but you have to ask yourself what kind of experience I want to have right now. Of course, we all want positive emotions, but do we always want to have them? be excited and full of energy or maybe at some point we also want to calm down, tune in and relax a little. How many of you have had that experience where you simply want to get away from your social stimulation to find some relaxation and calm?

We know that yoga and meditation can help us achieve it and we know that it takes a lot of practice to achieve it through yoga and meditation, but Loneliness is something you have done your whole life but of course with Loneliness there is always the risk of feeling alone and sad, so how do we do it? we get rid of that, so that's another question I want to address for the rest of my talk, how to

master

the art of

being

alone, how can we get the benefit that Loneliness can offer without feeling lonely and sad, that's when I break this down. . autonomy factor Agreement according to self-determination Autonomy theory is the experience when your motivation for an activity is to choose it and desire it instead of seeing it as something that is imposed on us so let me show you that with another study I had The participant participated in a solitude of 15 minutes, so again they will be alone, away from their devices and doing nothing for 15 minutes every day for seven days.

In addition, I also asked them why what was the motivation for doing the activities. about the last time you were alone because you generally enjoy Solitude, you see Solitude as an important and valuable part of your day, or you were alone because you felt you had to due to some external circumstances with it. that you can't control, like your night shift studying late at the library or because your friend left you behind, so I asked meta the same questions and of course, again people report feeling significantly less happy, less excited , but also less angry and less. anxious, but those who said they were doing it because they had to, were forced to do it, felt significantly lonelier and sadder at the end of the day than did it alone, but those who reported they did it because they wanted to.

They felt calmer and more relaxed at the end of the day, so now we know that autonomy plays some role in this experience, but how can we want something that is not conventionally a very positive experience in the first place? Place, how can we want solitude? There is one thing that can help us love Solitude and that is to create options in it, so I am going to demonstrate it with another study. When I ask the participants to come into the lab, I have them sit alone again for 15 minutes and I offer them both The choice is very simple, they can sit during this time and think about positive or neutral thoughts and whatever they choose will be what they will think about. the next 15 minutes for the other group.

I didn't give them the option for the group. Those who didn't have the option again felt lonelier and sadder, while the group who had the option they formed felt calmer and more relaxed after 15 minutes of being with themselves, so maybe we can start thinking about next time. once it's close. Myself, what do I want to do now? How long do I want to be alone? Where do I want to be when I'm alone? What is another way we can achieve wanting solitude more in our lives? It's having an environment. that support our autonomy to be alone, what can the world and the people around us do to support our autonomy to be alone and what can we do to support theirs again?

There is another study that I did when I had a participant who came and I told them that they should do these activities because it is part of the experiment. I try to imitate the experience when we are forced to be alone against our choice, such as when children are forced to sit alone because they misbehave or when our friends left us behind. For the other group I support a persistent autonomy to be in this experience by simply saying that this is an experience that some people can enjoy and others can't, but the point is that there is no right or wrong way to do it, so it is an experience staff to Just try it and see how it feels.

For the second group, they reported that they wanted Solitude more, therefore they enjoyed it more and also reported a greater desire to be in it again, so it seems that the motivation for Solitude can be changed and is malleable in a society. . who value constant social stimulation, this constant stimulation and the desire to be stimulated takes us away from valuing the most basic human experience that can offer us calm and relaxation, but by changing our perspective towards valuing Solitude we can begin to obtain the effect of the benefits that this has on us, so originally some of us might have thought that loneliness is bad, it is not a positive experience and then some of us included the attempt to find out if this can be good, but to

master

the art If I were alone I would like to do it. offer you a different perspective that loneliness is neither good nor bad, but loneliness is okay, it's okay to be alone sometime, it's okay to find yourself alone in the middle of the day, so instead of picking up our devices, find someone with whom to interact or talk.

So that we can take the opportunity to explore Solitude to embrace it, create elegance in it and create that experience for you, so my suggestion to you is that the next time you find yourself alone, know that there is no right or wrong way to do it, so just try it and see how it feels thanks