Every situation has a silver lining – discover a mindset that heals and enlightens.
September 14, 2021 · 7 min read
Remember: the time you feel lonely is the time you most need to be by yourself. Life's cruelest irony. - Douglas Coupland
Feeling lonely is a natural state to be at sometimes. I have experienced this myself too like everyone else in this world.
The only difference between us is the level of loneliness that we feel and how we can cope with it. Some people fall to depression, anxiety and might start adopting bad habits like doing drugs.
Also, loneliness is correlated with other health problems, such as to 32% increase of having a heart stroke and 29% to acquire a heart disease.
Therefore, it’s very important to cope with loneliness for your both mental and physical health.
12 Actions to take to Feel less lonely
1. Thrive For Comfort In The Future Instead Of In The Present
If you’ll keep living in the present, you’ll always feel unhappy and unsatisfied the way you feel. You’ll always keep looking for things that will make you happier and brighten up your day.
Temporarily comforting yourself in the present leads to the feeling that you might feel right now – emptiness. To simply put, you sabotage your future-self by fulfilling your short-term desires at the very moment.
Instead, you should consider your future needs instead of present needs. To achieve it, you have to find your fixed values and work on them. If you feel lonely, you might want to consider accepting and learning being alone, which leads to the next point.
2. Learn to be alone
Being alone at some points in your life is unavoidable. Even when you have your significant other by your side, he or she might not fully comprehend the situation and how you feel. Your friends might not be available at the time when you need. Heck, even if they are, they might still not comfort you as much as you’d like to.
Therefore, learning how to be alone is crucial to our well-being. Ask yourself: “Why do I thrive for other people?”, “What do they have that I don’t? Do I seek for comfort, communication, empathy?”
Life is an irony – people that are constantly surrounded by other people want space and get out from other people. On the other coin side, people that are lonely thrive for other people and want to interact with them.
Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness. - Maya Angelou
The point is, you should look for long-term solutions, which are learning to be alone with yourself. To learn it, you’ll have to answer the questions above and analyze what makes you lonely. Perhaps you are too attached to people? Or are you just a very outgoing person and always were like that?
In that case, you have to find something that you can’t find in other people. You must learn to enjoy yourself.
Most certainly, learning to be alone doesn’t mean that you should shut the doors for everyone for the upcoming month, year or even a decade. Learning to be alone is simply a self-improvement tool which helps you to control your well-being in a positive way. It’s a utility that can help you feel better in hard times.
3. Be less responsive
If you feel lonely or any other feeling that upsets you, simply stop for a few seconds and try to be neutral and unresponsive to the situation.
The secret magic to this tip is that whenever you give your emotional energy to your feeling, you stop thinking and questioning it.
Accordingly, you should question the situation: “Why did this happen?”, “What can I do to prevent this?”, “How should I act instead to be happy or at least not to take this into my mind?”
When you feel lonely, you might start giving yourself into depression, stress, anxiety and other negative feelings. It’s natural to start thinking about the worst outcomes and how the world is unfair.
If you can learn to be less responsive, you will be able to look at life from a whole different lens.
4. Maintain yourself
If you are feeling lonely, you might forget things that make you happy. Some simple things, like skipping a workout, missing a meal, not having a treat can have a big impact on your mental health.
Notice how some people feel irritated or sad when their biological clock ticks in and they are thriving for food. This is a natural human instinct that signals to look for food and maintain the basic needs.
Similarly, have a quick thought if you’ve recently just missed something that you’d normally do. The sadness might’ve suppressed your basic needs. A few ordinary things can help you feel a lot better.
5. Redesign your living atmosphere
You might have already noticed what impact some people have in your life. Whether they are your parents, friends, social media influencers – all of them have smaller or bigger impact.
The main focus element here is social media influencers. A lot of people unconsciously don’t notice how much impact does it have on their view of life. They are travelling, experiencing new things, interacting with other people… As a result, followers usually fall into a depression as why their lives can’t be like that.
A recent study has confirmed this claim that social media might be the cause for increased depression and anxiety.
In fact, social media can be an unconscious passive-aggressive atmosphere for your well-being. You should really take a look what people you follow. In most cases, their lifestyle is not sustainable. Everything looks beautiful on the surface, but in the inside they might feel insecure and at the same time getting a lot of hatred. Therefore, like George Eliot has said: “Don’t judge a book by its cover”.
Another focus is your work environment. Your working atmosphere could make you feel lonely. It could be due to the co-workers that are very formal and not willing to have a fun chat. This, however, is a very common problem in corporation world. The only way to switch this is either to:
- Live with it and have a compromised life (good salary, bad co-workers, worsened mental health)
- Change your work environment and embrace a new one
Often, the latter option is something that most people should seek for. Life is too short to be unhappy. You have to make changes and live a better life.
Lastly, don’t neglect your home environment. Have you just had a party and now everyone’s gone? Or maybe it’s the coronavirus pandemic that makes you feel this way? What was the last time you’ve tidied your house up?
Some depression and anxiety symptoms like feeling alone might occur due to your home environment. Try to make it better: change the places of your furniture, clean your place up from the dust. Some very quick changes can feel you better. Also, physical activity will help you to forget about feeling lonely.
6. Look for patterns
Observe yourself as you were a third party.
Look for patterns when you are the happiest and the least happy. Look for patterns when you feel most inspired. Finding your source of strength and source of weakness can help you a lot to cope with loneliness.
If you're lonely when you're alone, you're in bad company. - Jean-Paul Sartre
In fact, try grabbing a piece of paper and set it horizontally. Then, draw a X axis (horizontal line) which represents your years. On the Y axis, there are your happiness levels. The higher it is, the happier you are. Think of memories that made you happiest and draw your curve accordingly. You should also write in a few words what made you so happy.
This can be done not only for your lifetime timelapse, but also for your day timelapse. Notice how you feel in the morning, afternoon and in the evening. Indicate the things that make you feel that way. Mark whatever makes you feel lonely or unhappy. In this way, you’ll be able to set a plan and avoid negative feelings and embrace happier feelings even with more joy.
7. Become more available to other people
My personal mistake in my young adulthood and teenage years was that I was unavailable for everyone. When I got invited to do activities with other people, I usually turned them down, because I wanted to relax and do the things I enjoy.
It eventually came to a point where I got very little to no invitations. When I embraced to become more available to people, it was too late – I lost my relationships.
The only time we waste is the time we spend thinking we are alone. - Mitch Albom
To combat with this, I started inviting people on my own. I started rebuilding these relationships. I organized events and that’s how I rebuilt and built new relationships.
Therefore, if you feel lonely, you should start initiating activities and inviting people. Be more open, embrace communication and interaction.
8. Less thinking, more acting
A scarcity mindset doesn’t let us live a fulfilling life. Such mindset destroys us from the inside and every activity becomes a burden. Negative thoughts start collapsing in our mind and the positive thoughts start drowning to depths of darkness.
Instead of thinking “Okay, it’s Thursday, just one more day to push and It’s finally going to be Friday” or “I don’t have anyone to speak with, I feel so lonely and forgotten. I’ll never find friends”, think “What can I do better today to not feel that sluggish feeling?”.
If you feel lonely, take actions instead of drowning in negative thoughts. The difference between successful people and unsuccessful people is that successful people adopt the theory to practical situations instantly. As the theory can improve your mindset, it will not solve all your problems.
Rich people don’t become rich because of thinking in their head. Successful relationships are not born because of only making up scenarios in head.
Every great thing is born out of action.
Therefore, don’t look for easy answers which would require you only to think and would solve all your problems. Instead, use your inner will power (if needed) to embrace changes and start adopting the tips that are mentioned in this article.
9. Adopt an abundance mindset
Contrary to previous statement to start taking actions, this tip offers you to think in a different way. While acting is really important, you have to also accept the benefits of positive thoughts.
There are already a lot of negativities in this world and we must combat with this problem. Newsfeed is flooded with negative reports and it unconsciously plants a seed of negativity within us.
Instead, we must look to the world with a positive mindset. Abundance mindset allows us to understand that we will always find a way and solutions to our problems. There are plenty of opportunities for us to improve on ourselves. We must be grateful for what already we have because we don’t know what’ll happen tomorrow.
Loneliness adds beauty to life. It puts a special burn on sunsets and makes night air smell better. - Henry Rollins
Therefore, if you feel lonely, think what the positives are of being alone. I’ll give you some hints:
- You don’t have to adapt to someone else
- Your interests are your priority
- You are more productive
- You build mental strength
These are so many opportunities when you are alone – start developing new skills, building businesses, spending more time for your hobby, etc.
Being alone can be very beneficial, but it’s up to you to notice that.
10. Take self-care
If you feel unhappy with yourself and you feel lonely, you can’t rely always on someone else to make you happy. Instead, you should take care of yourself and start accepting yourself first.
You should try practicing breathing. Yes, simply breathing. This activity is often underrated and people that didn’t experience it just can’t believe and perceive the effectiveness of it. A study has illustrated the rhythm-specific breathing exercises benefits for mental health.
There is so called “Sudarshan Kriya yoga”, which has very huge benefits for well-being. It can help you to reduce depression and anxiety levels. In fact, it can be so effective, that it can even outweigh the impact of antidepressants. In other words, it can be more fruitful than medicaments.
Here is a practical video on how to perform it:
Don’t neglect the power of journals. Try writing down your feelings, emotions and everything else that you feel. It can have a therapeutic effect which can heal you and make you feel less lonely or completely erase this feeling.
SPA, massages might be activities that you need to unwind. Sometimes we just feel overwhelmed and we need some relaxation for ourselves. Therefore, seek for something that you enjoy, like having a SPA or a massage session.
11. Connect with people online
Get in touch with people that have common interests like you in Internet. You can share your experiences, thoughts and even feelings.
In fact, it’s not a very rare occasion when people find real life friends there. In other words, online forums, games, speaking platforms, are modern portals to connect people with common interests and problems. It can help you greatly to solve your loneliness and help you feel better.
Not only that, but you can also build knowledge and expertise in a particular forum. It’s a superb way to broaden your comprehension on a particular topic.
12. Find a therapist
If you are facing a severe depression and anxiety, finding professional help will be the best option to do. Therapists have years of experience and they deal with people daily.
Their knowledge and expertise are what make them so helpful and fruitful in finding solutions to individual problems. Their strategies focus on a long-term solution for your better well-being.
Final Words From Delightful Mindset
Loneliness feeling might occur due a lot of reasons which some of them we can’t control. However, we can always control our mental well-being and use it to combat with loneliness.
If you adopt the right strategies, you’ll certainly be able to overcome the feeling of loneliness. Therefore, start acting and take your well-being into your own hands. You deserve to be happy.