Read this article to learn how to heal your relationship with loneliness, regardless if you are alone or in company.
This article will help you to be prepared for many life situations like embarking on an entrepreneurship or personal development journey, facing the death of a loved one, breaking up, or having a long-distance relationship.
All these scenarios have one thing in common – physical, mental, and emotional separation over time and space. And these separations (if not dealt with properly) can lead to periods of extended grief and loneliness, which negatively impacts all areas of life (ie. health, wealth, and relationships).
I’m sure you can find a period in life when loneliness took over and it was not a nice ride.
But have you ever mastered the skill of not being lonely?
Since there are proactive ways to not experience unnecessary suffering, I warm-heartedly recommend you take your time to read this article so you become aware of them and practice them in advance.
Fortunately, the methods described in this article are not limited to only overcoming loneliness; they have a myriad of positive side effects to keep you motivated to practice even if loneliness is something that does not scare you.
Personal note
For many years now I have been undergoing a personal development journey (coaching & entrepreneurship) by setting bold goals and achieving big dreams. Inevitably I out-grew my environment. And because of my large focus on growth, I did not notice the separation between me and my peers. To continue the growth I had to go of past relationships before I had established the new ones. This led to a period of being alone (physically, mentally, emotionally).
Initially, this led to suppressed loneliness, leading to overcompensating for my work on an intellectual level, which meant closing my heart to not feel my emotions, resulting in slowing down my growth.
I trust this article will help you to avoid this mistake, face your feelings early on, and keep your heart open and fulfilled.
What is loneliness
Loneliness is a very fascinating state.
To my unhealthy masculine mind, loneliness is a disease to be eradicated. The mind does not like it. The mind does not want it, so it must go. It can be pushed away, destroyed, or suppressed. It does not matter as long as it is out of sight.
To my unhealthy feminine mind, loneliness is something needing to be saved, rescued, taken care of, fed, nurtured, and kept alive.
To my healthy masculine mind, loneliness is an undesirable and temporary state, signifying a lack of love, to be replaced with a desirable and loving state by setting clear boundaries and applying certain strategies to replenish love.
To my healthy feminine mind, loneliness is a cry for help, to be loved so much that it transmutes into pure love, it is a desire expressed sideways to be discovered, a gift to be unwrapped.
Both healthy minds agree that loneliness is a lack of love to be fulfilled through finding love behind the current appearance of lack of love.
Let’s look at dictionary definitions of loneliness:
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sadness because one has no friends or company
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the quality of being unfrequented and remote; isolation
Turns out loneliness is a form of sadness. Let’s look at the definition of sadness:
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feeling or showing sorrow; unhappy
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causing or characterized by sorrow or regret; unfortunate and regrettable
When these definitions are put together, this I what I get.
Loneliness is a feeling of sadness caused by isolation from our natural state of love, frequently as a result of avoiding feelings and closing one’s heart to feeling emotions
An important aspect here to note is that loneliness is not a result of physical separation (ie break up or death). Loneliness has internal causes and therefore internal solutions.
Loneliness is a result of a perception of losing connection with love.
Paradox of loneliness
What comes to my mind is: how is this even possible? How does one lose a connection with love? It is impossible! Yet, loneliness exists.
First, I must share my beliefs for anything to make sense.
I believe in Divine Creation, that all comes from and is always connected to this Divine source which is LOVE. This means that I am love. You are love. Everyone is love. Love is our natural state. And we are always connected to it. And there is nothing that we can do to remove it. This also means that we are never alone.
Since love is always here, the only thing we can do is to create a perception where it is not present.
Here are some common strategies to lose love:
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ignore it,
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cover it up,
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pretend it’s not there,
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forget about it
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talk ourselves into believing that it does not exist, we lost it, or don’t deserve it
So loneliness, even though it feels real, it’s not true.
And since loneliness is not true, it’s temporary. In fact, it costs us energy to keep it alive. That’s why it feels so draining.
On the contrary, love fills us with energy, it does not cost us anything, because it’s natural and true.
Therefore loneliness is just a twisted perception of reality. Even if this is true, this is not the best thing to tell someone who is lonely. Try telling this to someone who is lonely and observe how they fight you back for their right to feel lonely and how real it is for them.
Instead what a person in a state of loneliness needs is more love. Their perception needs to be redirected back to love, not to more loneliness.
Unfortunately, most people have very specific preferences in how they want to experience and receive love. Therefore there is no “one universal strategy” ( one size fits all) that will work for everyone.
Alone and lonely & lonely, but not alone
The fact that you can experience loneliness regardless of whether you are physically alone or not proves that it’s not the physical separation that hurts.
It’s the emotional one – lack of love. Usually happens when we close our hearts.
Once we know it’s the love we want we can fulfill it!
Often closing of the hearts happens due to dependency, when we put the power to receive love on a particular person, object, or circumstance. All is well as long as love is delivered as expected. But once conditions change, love stops the flow, then a person is left without awareness that they have their own source of love.
And yes, even though we all can have love fulfilled within, it feels great to share love.
And when it comes to sharing love, it is useful to know that different people have different preferences on how they want to be loved. The best resource on this topic is “5 love languages”.
This is important to know, because if you love the person exactly how you want to be loved, then this might not meet their love needs, because their love language is different.
For example, if my love language is physical touch, then I can have all the gifts in the world to distract me, but they are not as valuable to me as a great hug when I feel a bit low.
Another thing that happens a lot is, when people learn to fulfill their need for touch through sex, but don’t realize that a long hug would also fulfill this specific need as well – at times even better (depending on the choice of partner).
Self-love
As much as I love sharing love, eventually, my desire is for everyone to be an “independent” source of love, connected with the Divine without needing anyone else to fill their cup. And since there is always this Divine connection available for us, we are truly never alone.
And Self-love is the best way to master the skill of loneliness.
What it means is, creating so strong and loving relationship with the Self, that when the loneliness comes, it gets welcomed, loved, and transmuted into love, without lingering in loneliness just for the sake of suffering.
This might sound a bit esoteric, but Self-love has its practical aspects as well.
Love for the body. Making sure it’s in good health, well rested, well moved, well nourished.
Love for mind. Making sure happy and loving thoughts get the most attention.
Love for emotions. Making sure love gets chosen and sought after regardless of appearances.
In essence, Self-love is part of one’s lifestyle. It’s not only “what I eat for breakfast?”, but also, checking in if I actually want to have it, and if I do, then “how do I want to experience it?”
Self-love is about being mindfully curious about all parts of the Self. And always finding love and Divine in everything.
Self-love is also being thankfully present to what is.
And if there is a universal formula for Self-love, then the closest thing I have wound is the Flow state (peak performance state, read more on this topic here: https://bit.ly/flow-book).
This goes in accordance with the teachings of Tony Robbins pointing out an important pattern of state rules stories and stories (thoughts) dictates strategy (actions).
So in conclusion, I welcome you to choose your state with love and in love.
Make sure you do what you love and definitely love what you do.
And have it magical.
🐝🙏💝