Make Yourself a Hobby: The Joy of Being Single

Speaker A: 00:00:02

When was the last time you enjoyed your own company, the way you enjoy your hobbies? Hi, I'm Wioleta. Welcome back to All About Being Single. If you're new here. Hi. If you've been around, you already know I keep it real.

I do want to preface this with the fact that I do have my cat here, and you might hear some purring in the background. He is a cat happy little guy. Hi. I love you, boo. I know. So a lot of us singles constantly feel like being single means needing to work on ourselves.

Like, to heal, to fix ourselves, to improve, to try not to be single, to figure out why somebody broke up with us, to figure out, you know, quote unquote, what's wrong with us, why are we still single?

We worry about going to the wedding that's next month solo, and if we can maybe try to bring somebody with us or what it's going to be like if we're there by ourselves.

We feel frustrated because maybe there's things that we want to do, like go see a concert and none of our friends want to go with us because they're coupled up or because they just don't like that band. And sometimes it is easier to convince a romantic partner, go do something with you that they don't actually want to do, unlike it is with a friend.

Sometimes we worry about people asking us if we're still single.

You know, sometimes feeling like we're less than because we're single, we might be constantly thinking about dating and relationships and when we're gonna meet somebody and if we're ready to meet somebody and if we need to do some more work before we meet somebody.

Maybe we're even thinking back to our prior relationships and wondering if our ex really was texting somebody else while they were sitting next to us because they got into a relationship right away. Oh, Trevil just moved the mic. He really does not like me filming this. No, buddy, never mind. He likes. Never mind. He likes the mic.

And then, of course, there is that pressure to use that single time wisely. But it can also become stressful. Oh, hi, Buddha. But so what ends up happening is many single people end up working on themselves like they're broken.

They forget to actually have fun being themselves. And not creating a better version of themselves can be fun.

You know, it's all about how we perceive it, all about how we attempt to make it happen and how we do make it happen again. If you've been listening, you know that I do believe being single is the only time in your life where you actually get to focus on yourself.

Only time in your life where you get to work on you. But I don't believe that it should just be a stressful thing. This time really is your superpower.

It is the time to create the most resilient, the most fun, the most funny, the most creative version of yourself, the most selfish version of yourself actually too. I just do believe that there is an opportunity here to do it with a smile on your face.

And treating yourself and treating your self improvement like a priority, but also treating it like a hobby. Basically treat yourself like a hobby. Not just frustration that you know you're not meeting any men or any women.

When you go out and try to have fun, if you're doing it for somebody else, maybe trying to get an ex back, it's gonna feel like a marathon. And you're like me, you don't like running. And you can tell that people who run do not look like they're having a good time.

But yeah, it can feel like something that's not fun instead of a nice leisurely 5k that you walk at your own pace. So you can choose to make this a nice leisurely 5k instead of making it this super produced and super stressful event.

So today we're talking about making yourself a hobby, not a project to just fix. Keep in mind, a hobby is an activity that's done in your leisurely time or for pleasure. Right?

So again, think of yourself and your self improvement and your life more of like a hobby, something fun that you get to decide to do. Because when you're thinking of yourself like a house that needs to be fixed, it might create burnout, not joy.

And you really should focus on the self improvement, the time that you've been given, you get to focus on, you get to choose to make it a fun time. And sorry if I keep saying should. I know I shouldn't be saying should.

And of course therapists will tell you that you shouldn't be saying should, even though they tell you the things that you should be doing. But also legit, I'm trying to use the word should a lot less. So I'm working on it.

So instead of again, kind of quote unquote, fixing yourself, what if you played with yourself, your interests, your quirks, your creativity. And I don't mean the sexual way. Although I guess that kind of works here too.

Really, being single is the best time to experiment, to see what's out there, to see what you actually like, not what an ex boyfriend or an ex girlfriend of yours liked you're not defined by a relationship, so you really get to define yourself for who you truly are on the inside. Not just, you know, keep going hiking because your ex liked hiking, and now you think that that's your hobby.

Now is the time to look at that activity, the hobbies that you do have, and be like, hey, do I even like this? Is this really me? Or have I just been doing this because other people in my life have done it? And so I kind of just get used to doing it.

Being single gives you the ability to also be in a flow state with yourself and your own thoughts and your feelings and anything that you want to do. And. And keep in mind, a flow state is the feeling when you, like, lose track of time doing something. So you're kind of fully immersed in an activity.

You're immersed in something that you love. And, you know, think of yourself as somebody that you love, so you can create that with yourself, a sense, a state of flow.

All decisions that you make in your day, in your week, in your month, in your year, when you're single, those are all choices that you get to make. They're made for you, by you.

So from the day you wake up, you can make your day as pleasurable as possible because you get to make all the choices about how your day is gonna go and how you're gonna feel.

And if you're gonna choose to let people get in your way or if you're gonna keep pushing through it, you make all the choices about how you treat yourself, how you spend your time, the thoughts you hold, the activities you partake in, the people you spend time around or don't. You don't spend time around the places you spend time at or the places you avoid.

So a Hillel, Diane, is that personal growth doesn't have to feel like a chore. It can feel fun. It can be an integration. It can just be part of your everyday life.

And it can include things like going and doing fun things, whether it be with your friends, because then you're connecting with people, or even by yourself, because then you're connecting with yourself and hopefully meeting other people, maybe even trying to put yourself out there in a sense, and talking to others and trying to connect with strangers and laughing, you know, going to comedy shows, going to concerts, doing DIY stuff that you want to do, engaging in more hobbies.

But basically, you can make yourself your main hobby and then have all these, like, little subsets of other hobbies that you do that overall feed into your personal growth, because all of it is personal growth. There's so much to enjoy about working on yourself and making yourself improve and making yourself a better person, making yourself feel better.

They call it working on yourself, but really they should call it making yourself a hobby. And that's what I'm going to be calling it, moving forward, making yourself a hobby. So again, get yourself in a state of flow.

Be totally absorbed in yourself, in your own likes, in your own person.

When you're doing things for yourself, you can make it more of a state of flow where time passes unnoticed and distractions fade away and you're just all about you. And it's okay. It's okay to be selfish and make things all about you.

If your personal growth development doesn't feel like it more often, make it a point to make it. So be curious about who you are and what you really like now that you're not coupled up. Make this time work for you, for example.

And again, there's so many fun things you can be doing. So, you know, it's not all about just like reading self help books. It's not all about just doing therapy. It's all about a lot of personal growth.

And where you actually grow is dancing randomly, right? It's doing things that bring you joy. If you have an animal, it's playing with them or cuddling with them.

Personal growth is basically living your life.

Like if you're not just sitting around and scrolling on social media or watching movies all day long or playing video games all day long, you're not letting life pass you by. That's personal growth. If you're doing things that help to improve you, but you're enjoying doing those things.

I literally have been experimenting and trying out new hobbies and sometimes putting makeup on when I feel like it, sometimes not putting makeup on when I don't feel like it. Again, randomly will dance. I dance in my car. I sing to my music in my car as loud as I want to. And that's healing to me. And that's fun.

And it's also personal growth. It helps me keep growing as a person, helps me feel better. I invest in myself like I would any other hobby because I myself make myself a hobby.

I pour into myself like I do any other hobby. So I know I spend money on, for example, creating this podcast and that's pouring myself into the podcast, into that hobby.

But I also pour my own life into creating the podcast and that's how I make myself a hobby, because I'm allowing myself to talk about these things that a lot of people don't talk about and bring to light some of the negative stuff about being single, but also talk about all the positive things about being single. Because again, it's a little bit of both. Sometimes it's worse, sometimes it's better, but it's a little bit of both.

And you can also pour into yourself the way that you do a hobby. And I know times are difficult right now, money wise, I know the economy is bad, so this might not apply to everybody.

But if you're able to, and you want to, to go get Botox, go get a new haircut, dye your hair, you can do that obviously also by yourself at home or have a friend help you out. But basically get new gear for yourself the way you get new gear for a hobby, right?

For like my hobby, I have a microphone for myself, I have new makeup that I just purchased when Ulta had a sale. Everything you do in this era is for you.

And the more things you do for you, only for you, because they make you feel better or sometimes they make you feel worse, but you know, in the long term they're going to make you feel better. That's making yourself a hobby, that's making your self improvement a hobby. I make myself a hobby.

And it's not just about like the outward appearance or you know, again getting new gear for yourself, but it's also about getting lost in a great conversation with yourself in your head the way you would maybe with somebody as you're doing a social hobby or journaling the things that are in your head, getting them out, journaling conversation between yourself and your future self. I love spending time by myself, but it took me a very long time to get here.

It took me a very long time to change self improvement from, from it just being something that I wanted to do to get one of my exes back and you know, feel a little bit more worthy of getting them back or somehow showing them in a sense that they would benefit if they took me back or if they decided to text me. It took me so long before I made personal growth just something that's so innate because I enjoy doing it just for me.

I know it makes me feel better and I hope that you get there as well.

And I also hope that you get to make that decision a lot sooner than I did because I wasted so much precious time and energy focusing on again trying to like almost fix stuff within myself for other people to where now my personal growth is just things that make me feel better, that validate me, that make me a better person for me so that I know that I have some more self trust in myself. And so never again now will I make being single something that needs to be fixed. That that's like a problem, because it's not.

Being single is actually one of the best gifts you could have been ever given because you get to make yourself a hobby, you get to make yourself a priority. I used to think something was wrong with me because I was perpetually single and I couldn't keep a relationship.

And now I know there's nothing wrong with me, but there's so much wrong with people who can never be single, who need that validation from external sources, who need other people to make them happy. Because I make myself happy. I make myself a hobby. And I love my hobbies.

And for my event I want to talk about the marrieds and the advice they give around this topic. And it's always like, oh my God, you should just love yourself, you know, so that you can get your person.

And they never actually give you any advice on how to do that or what that even means.

And most of them honestly, if you ask me, don't even know what that means because they've never loved themselves, because they've never even gotten a chance to get to know themselves. Cuz they've never gotten a chance to make themselves a hobby. They've always made other people a hobby or they don't.

A lot of them honestly don't even have hobbies, which is wild. And that's getting better now with millennials and, well, some of us millennials and Gen Z's, thankfully. But yeah, it always feels hollow.

And you're like, well, you should just love yourself. How. How about you telling me how like they don't actually have any advice because most of them have not loved themselves, so they're just projecting.

Most of them are preaching this advice that they've never had to use themselves because they found their person in high school. And it's just these are very dismissive and unhelpful lines. But I don't even listen to the marrieds anymore about their advice.

I listen to other single people who are in the trenches out here with me, who can actually help me because they know what it's like. And a lot of times, like, we, again, we do love ourselves. And if you're making yourself a hobby, you also love yourself.

So you're already at that point, you don't need the cliche advice from somebody who doesn't even know what that means themselves. If this episode is already speaking to you, please take a minute and just share it with a friend that you think might also benefit from this episode.

I appreciate that you're here and I also would appreciate if you could forward it to somebody just so I can keep doing this as long as I can. Also, if you could leave a quick rating or review, it helps more single people find this space and feel seen and heard.

As always, I thank you for listening and being here with me. Okay, so the question for today is for a note to self.

What will not would what will it look like when you treat yourself like a favorite hobby instead of a self improvement project? Please pause and journal on it. Write it. Write an answer down in your phone app notes. Maybe send a voice note to yourself or send a voice note to me.

I would love to hear your thoughts and I would love to be able to share them on future episodes. And we're going to shake that off now. I know we just vented about all the married so we're going to shake that off. Feel free to dance with me.

Feel free to pause the episode and you know, write down an answer to your note to self or feel free to just come back to that question later on and just dance with me now because we all deserve a n dance break. Get us some more energy, but also help us shake off the negative juju of the marrieds. Okay, now we're back.

So the answer for me to my our note to self is that the more joy I allow in my life, the faster I actually heal, the faster I work through my issues.

Because if I'm just treating self improvement as like a project and I'm treating myself like I'm faulty, then it takes me longer to accept sometimes like me not even allowing myself to accept myself. And and I think that holds me back from moving forward and improving myself.

So I think adding times of joy and just laughing with my friends or watching some comedy stuff and just laughing through podcasts and again doing random things throughout the day that just give enjoy.

They help propel me forward faster and they make my self improvement journey fun instead of again, just something that like I feel like I need to do because I have this extra time because I'm single and it helps me enjoy my time with just me and makes me know that I don't have to spend time with other people to enjoy my life, that I myself can make myself a hobby so that I can go out and do things by myself because I am in a flow state all the time with myself because I deserve to feel great and I deserve to pour into myself like I do with any other hobby, whether it involves other people or just hobbies that are by myself. But anyhow, again, share this episode with somebody else. Let's make. Let's make being your own hobby a thing.

And for a weekly glow up, which again, always my most exciting part. So every day this week, just do one thing that brings you joy. No purpose, no like actual goal, just joy.

Just do something in the moment that makes you feel great. Could be painting something and then laughing at yourself at how bad it was. It could be watching some cat videos online.

It could be dancing to a song that you like. Or maybe while you're in a parking lot in your car, start a little dance party and don't care about other people seeing you do that either.

My car is always a dance party. Just whatever makes you lose track of time and makes you just joyful, just happy in that moment.

And then if you do post any of this on social media, use our hashtag All About Being Single or DM me at my All About Being Single account and I'll be very happy to share your stories on my stories. Okay, that's it for today. Thank you so much for listening to All About Being Single. I am so grateful that you're tuning in every week.

If this is stuff that's brand new to you, I want you to know that even if we're late, we're right on time. And this is your space, your era, and your community. I will talk to you next week. Make a life. Make a life. Make a life.