Introduction
You often feel that being alone means you are lonely. You look for validation from friends, family, and romantic partners to fill an internal void. This constant search drains your energy and leads you into toxic relationships where you compromise your standards just to feel accepted.
Chidera Eggerue offers a radical philosophy in What a Time to Be Alone. She argues that solitude is a powerful sanctuary rather than a punishment. You learn to secure your self-worth independently so you never depend on others for emotional survival.
The book explores four core areas to help you reclaim your power. You discover how to embrace solitude, stop fixing broken people, raise your standards, and trust your intuition.
- How do you stop relying on external validation?
- Why do you attract emotionally unavailable people?
- How do you set strict boundaries without guilt?
1. Self-Love and Solitude
Society paints confidence in a negative light because self-sufficiency threatens a multi-billion-dollar industry that profits from making people feel inadequate. No one can fill your you-shaped hole.
Securing safety and validation in solitude protects you from relying on others to fill your internal void.
Chidera Eggerue argues that combining boredom and insecurity creates an ideal breeding ground for bad decisions and self-destruction. By focusing on making your life interesting and fulfilling for yourself, you organically outgrow your old troubled self. Loving yourself leads to better decision-making and genuine security in solitude.
- Be nice to yourself
- Go to Nando's alone
- Take walks along the river on your own
- Have super-long baths and blast your favourite playlist
- Unfollow people who give you weird energy
- Mute and block people who make you feel uncomfortable
- Occupy yourself with your goals
- Teach yourself to feel secure in your solitude
Dealing with Others
How people treat you is a reflection of their own internal relationship with themselves, not a personal indictment of your worth. Human beings are designed to disappoint, and they treat others the way they feel about themselves. Recognizing that nothing is truly personal prevents unnecessary emotional turmoil and stops you from internalizing other people's negative behavior.
- Remind yourself that nobody who truly loves their self allows themselves to project negativity onto another human being
- Remind people you love them more often and try to remember their allergies
Online validation and follower counts are temporary, whereas offline character and energy leave a lasting legacy. Being idolized online can make people feel entitled, selfish, and above criticism, which negatively influences offline behavior. Talent online does not automatically make someone a kind person in real life. If platforms shut down, metrics like 80,000 followers will not matter.
- Focus on how other people feel while they are in your company
- Make the effort to be kind without expecting anything back
Growth and Mistakes
Outgrowing people and being outgrown by them is a natural part of life that requires learning to let go. You cannot expect the people we love to move at your pace as priorities and opinions change. Throwing a tantrum when a cherished friend no longer has time for you prevents you from moving forward.
- Learn to let go of what no longer serves you
Mistakes are essential because they reveal loopholes in your behavioral patterns and build character. What matters most is how much you learn about yourself from a mistake, not how quickly you bounce back. If a mistake harms someone else, you are not entitled to their forgiveness, but you can choose to treat the next person better.
- Treat the next person better if you cannot make direct amends
2. Boundaries and Fixers
Trying to fix other people stems from a saviour complex and abandonment issues, functioning as a control mechanism rather than true helpfulness.
Fixers attempt to make themselves indispensable by turning into an emotional toolbox because they wish they had more control over their own lives. However, you cannot make someone meet their self, and trying to fix them often causes damage.
- Hold your importance in other people's lives to a default setting of neutral
- Stop trying to fill empty people with you
- Redirect your energy to yourself when your kindness gets you in trouble
Mind Your Business
Learning to mind your business and embrace silence prevents unnecessary conflicts and preserves mental health. The author's mother teaches that silence can never be misquoted, and what can be seen sitting down cannot be seen standing up. Tuning out of situations that do not directly concern you prevents you from becoming the target when things go wrong.
- Shut your mouth if in doubt
- Tune out of situations that do not directly concern you
- Preserve your mental health by avoiding questions you know you will dislike the answer to
Controlling your expectations of others allows you to control your own reality and avoid unnecessary disappointment. When loving someone, you must detach yourself from expectations of how they should react to your affection and focus on what the feeling means to you. People will eventually disappoint us if we expect them to live up to unrealistic ideals.
- Lower your expectations of others
- Raise your expectations of yourself
True forgiveness requires sitting still with yourself, unpacking your own reasoning, and letting go of judgments placed on yourself and others. An apology accepted in the heat of the moment can be reconsidered once you return to your senses. It is entirely valid to forgive someone and still decide to remove them from your life.
- Take your time to unpack your reasoning before deciding on forgiveness
3. Toxic Relationships and Standards
Raising your standards and recognizing emotionally unavailable behavior prevents unnecessary emotional turmoil and exploitation.
As standards rise, you relate less to people who do not demand better for their lives. Boredom and loneliness create breeding grounds for bad decisions. People with low standards will often call you demanding because your growth makes them question themselves.
- Stand firm in what you believe you deserve
- Keep an eye out for any behaviour that makes you double-take
- Do not let your boredom lower your standards
Emotionally Unavailable People
Emotionally unavailable people return after you cut them off solely to regain control and feed their egos. Because they associate loving with losing, emotionally unavailable individuals use silence, flaking, and mixed signals to keep you in a malleable position of dependency. Blocking them forces them out of their position of control because they no longer know what you are thinking.
- Cut them off and restrict them from access to your thoughts
- Block them on social media to switch the power dynamic
- Take indecisive behaviour as a no
4. Inner Guidance and Healing
Your intuition detects imbalances and toxicity long before your logical mind registers them, while healing requires honoring your own emotional timeline.
The Power of Intuition
Ignoring your intuition carries a high risk. Life slides back into alignment when you stop shouting over your inner voice and asking others for advice. The gut never lies, and feelings of being used are valid indicators of an actual violation.
Your gut never lies about imbalances, and ignoring it carries a high risk.
When facing environments that drain your self-esteem, picturing a four-year-old version of yourself helps you realize that current you is still that same fragile human being who deserves love, validation, and protection from verbal abuse. You can test the cruelty of your negative thoughts by visualizing yourself speaking them directly to that child. Do it for four-year-old you even if current you feels undeserving.
- Listen to your gut when evaluating relationships
- Stop asking people for advice and allow yourself to be guided by your intuition
- Picture four-year-old you anytime you enter an environment that dilutes your self-esteem
- Visualise yourself saying negative self-talk to four-year-old you to test its cruelty
- Do it for four-year-old you even if current you feels undeserving
Healing Timelines
Emotional healing has no expiry date. Comparing your healing timeline to others will only prolong your pain.
Social media creates an unspoken competition where whoever cares less wins. This dynamic pressures you to fake a quick recovery. Running away from feelings by pushing them into a mental attic ultimately leads you back in a circle to where you started.
- Ignore the pressure to look like you have moved on quickly
- Be as fragile as you need to be
- Block or mute profiles that tempt you to seek validation in the wrong place
Conclusion
Solitude, boundaries, and intuition combine to create a complete lifestyle of self-protection. When you master your solitude, you stop using other people as emotional crutches and secure your self-worth internally. When you enforce strict boundaries, you abandon the role of the fixer and refuse to accept toxic behaviors or low standards from anyone. When you trust your intuition, you recognize emotional unavailability and manipulation before they cause you harm. These ideas fit together to form a clear shield around your peace, ensuring that your energy remains entirely your own.
- Spend time alone to understand your internal value without needing external applause.
- Stop trying to fix broken people and let them take responsibility for their own healing.
- Raise your standards immediately and remove yourself from situations that compromise your peace.
- Listen to your gut feelings instantly when something feels wrong in a relationship.
- Protect your energy fiercely and treat your solitude as a sacred and necessary space.
10 Key Ideas
- Securing safety and validation in solitude protects you from relying on others to fill your internal void.
- Focusing on offline character and personal kindness matters far more than temporary online validation and follower counts.
- Combining boredom and insecurity creates an ideal breeding ground for bad decisions and self-destruction.
- Trying to fix other people stems from a saviour complex and abandonment issues, functioning as a control mechanism rather than true helpfulness.
- Controlling your expectations of others allows you to control your own reality and avoid unnecessary disappointment.
- It is entirely valid to forgive someone and still decide to remove them from your life.
- Raising your standards and recognizing emotionally unavailable behavior prevents unnecessary emotional turmoil and exploitation.
- Your gut never lies about imbalances, and ignoring it carries a high risk.
- Picturing a four-year-old version of yourself helps you realize that your current self deserves love, validation, and protection from verbal abuse.
- Comparing your emotional healing timeline to others will only prolong your pain because healing has no expiry date.