I'm craving connection: My experiments to overcome loneliness

I’m yearning for connection.

In this article, I share my personal experiments to overcome loneliness, showing how intentional habits and meaningful social interaction nourishes my wellbeing.

Follow along for ideas you can try yourself to build deeper connection with yourself, the people who matter most, and your community.

Yes, I'm craving more real connections

Hello my friend

You’re not alone. It’s the phrase plastered across social media whenever loneliness comes up.

My word, how I loathe that expression. It’s so trite, facile, vacuous and condescending.

I mean, no shit.

I know I'm not alone, but it feels like I am.

But here’s the thing: while I can’t stand the phrase, I know I’m not alone in wanting deeper connection in my life and wanting to overcome loneliness when it shows up.

And I’ve been wanting more and deeper connections in my life for a while now.

Being alone

This very much feels like a heal thyself situation. I know what to do to feed social connection, but it seems I’ve waded into loneliness yet again.

Here’s my situation: I am the founder of a very lean social enterprise devoted to destigmatising loneliness and helping humans get the connection that they need and deserve as the way to overcome their loneliness.

I spend my days alone standing at this same upcycled sit/stand desk in a corner of our kitchen in our three-bedroom townhouse in suburban Canberra that I’m typing out these words now.

I mean, there are many Zoom, Slack and WhatsApp interactions that put humans into my day. The conversations are almost always with others who work in the human connection sector. There are strategy sessions, venting sessions, raging against the machine sessions and plotting world domination sessions (benevolent world domination, of course).

There are occasional coffee catchups with others here in Canberra. The budget currently does not stretch to catching up over lunch or dinner out.  

While I always have things to do in running the social enterprise – and doing them gives me an enormous sense of purpose – I miss having colleagues close by.

For the most part, I spend my days alone.

Feeling lonely

Apart from being alone, I’ve been feeling lonely.

We’ve received some setbacks and disappointments in the past few months. People who asked me to trust them have proven unreliable to the point of professional ghosting. Opportunities have not gone our way. There have been a few ‘what you’re working on is so important, however…’ rejection messages.

Over time, it gets harder to brush them off.

It’s hard to not look at the body of evidence before me and deduce that I’m the common denominator for all these events.

Of course that’s not true. There are many factors beyond my control. But the stories I tell myself are one of the most powerful ways loneliness shows up for me: where I’m both the perpetrator and the victim.

The environment hasn’t helped. It’s been winter here and in Canberra that usually means people hibernate until it gets warmer (usually in October). I’ve not seen friends much over the past few months and time with them always nourishes me.

They’ve also been busy and have their own things going on in life. Busyness – theirs and mine – gets in the way of connection. Busyness kills connection.

If I’m being honest, even though they nourish me, sometimes I feel distant from them. This is not their fault, but something that I feel within myself. Most have jobs and spend their working days within offices and in bureaucracies. I love how supportive they are about what we’re doing here at HUMANS:CONNECTING and how they listen to me, but there’s not the kind of understanding from someone who knows what it’s like.

Social media is no help

It’s spectacularly crap.

Like you, I also find myself scrolling on social media looking for a quick connection-adjacent hit when bored. The promise of a quick dopamine hit to take me out of the temporary boredom or frustration of the moment has become a reflex.  

Instagram has become a succession of ads. It’s hard to find posts from people I know and want to hear from.

Image: canva.com

As I wrote in ‘Let’s be clear: social media is not social’, the images in my feed are supremely effective at reminding me at what I don’t have and how life could be made better. The images remind me that I haven’t been in Europe this past northern summer. They tell me that my life would be immeasurably better if I engaged their fitness program or social media marketing domination strategy. They tell me that my life would be eternal sunshine, cool sunglasses and I would look and feel amazing if I bought that brand’s sexy swimwear.

[Yes, I’ll own it. My feed is full of content created for gay men that I’ve taught the algorithm to put in front of me…]

LinkedIn feels like a constant stream of professional awesomeness being shouted at me. I’m aware of the irony: I contribute to the noise in trying to get attention and eyes on our work. Irony aside, it feels like everyone’s shouting their awesomeness and hot takes, and few people are listening.

I’m not on TikTok. I rarely use Facebook anymore (evidenced by me missing invitations to parties). I use X, but not for its lively and nuanced public discourse. Maybe I’m missing out. Maybe these platforms are great tools for social connective good. Maybe.

I doubt it. 

In any case, I'm finding social media exhausting, overwhelming and empty. It’s certainly not socially nourishing.

Something’s got to change

I’m yearning for – craving – meaningful social connection 

I’m thinking carefully about how to overcome loneliness in my own life.

How things are for me at the time of writing this are not working for me. It’s time to shake shit up.

What I’m going to do: connection experiments to overcome loneliness

I’m going to take the advice provided by HUMANS:CONNECTING’s own business manager, Moana Potaka, in our podcast conversation about how connection experiments can help you overcome loneliness. (episode #5 here).

I’m going to run my connection experiments. I’ll run them according to the three pillars of connection: connection to self, connection to those most important to me and to my community.

I’ll declare the connection experiment here on the blog and then run the experiment over the proceeding weeks (or months). I’ll then report back to you so you can see what I learned.

The aim is twofold:

1. This will hold me to account (I’m less likely to want to disappoint you then I would myself); and

2. To hopefully serve, support, challenge and inspire you to run your own connection experiments and find ways to overcome loneliness, too.

While the aim is twofold, the purpose is singular: this is for me.

I can’t do this with one eye on the experiments and another on how this may play for an audience. The connection experiments aren’t performative. The experiments are for me and for my own social wellbeing. Making connection performative risks undermining the very purpose of the experiments.

First experiment: living intentionally to overcome loneliness 

I feel like I’ve been giving a lot of my focus and energy – my power – to things I can’t control.

It’s time to bring that into where it belongs: within me, fuelling how I show up in the world.

I’m fuelling my physical, mental, emotional and social needs and keeping track of it.

The problem is that I know what I need to do to help feed my connection, but I often don’t if I’m not prioritising meeting my connection needs.

I can spend a lot of my day living in my head, consumed with what needs doing, that I can forget to attend to my own physical, mental, emotional and social needs. This is key to understanding how to overcome loneliness.

What it involves

This is all about executing the plan.

It’s tempting to plan and prepare and then leave it there.

The only thing that will help me feel connected is to connect, not plan or prepare for it.

I’m using my diary to detail and track my progress. I find it very satisfying to cross something off when done.

This set up helps me follow through on the intentions. I can see what will support me and I can see progress happening. It’s about building the connection habit – which is key to overcoming loneliness.

What I’m tracking

• Time asleep (aim: 7 hours’ sleep nightly)

• Energy burned during exercise (aim: 800 Kcals/day

• Number of steps per day (aim: 10,000)  

• Stretching

• Water intake (2,250ml per day – 3x 750ml water bottles)

• Connect with a friend daily

• 1 hour of writing (5 days weekly)

• 10-minute exercise breaks twice daily (push-ups, sit-ups and weights)

• Lunch (actually eating it)

• Reducing coffee (from three cups to two)

• The number of times I pick up my phone each week (daily average + total)

• Limiting Instagram (max 1 hour daily)

My phone and watch will track what I can’t, like steps and sleep.

There’s a lot on this list, and I feel that they all help keep me feeling centred and that I’m taking care of my mental, emotional, physical and social needs as I work through the day.

You may have read this and found good ideas for yourself. Some won’t mean much to you. Either way is okay. They’re shorthand for me to stay well.

Want to join in?

If, like me, you’re yearning for deeper connections in your life, would you like to join me in running a connection experiment over a month to find ways to overcome your loneliness when it shows up?

Image: canva.com

Your experiment is yours. Make it whatever you like. The only requirement: it must be challenging. It must stretch you out of your routine.

You may want to start like I am:  setting intentions for how you want to live each day according to that which is important to you, then making a plan to make it happen and then executing that plan.

Whatever you do, start today. It’s tempting to say, ‘Oh, I’ll start at the beginning of next month.’ Don’t do that.

Start today. Do one thing that feeds your connection to your authentic self, to those most important to you, and to your community.

Write it down. Track it. Do it. Celebrate the win and do it again tomorrow. If you don’t get it done, don’t attack yourself. Review with kindness and honesty, adjust, and try again tomorrow.

I hope you join me.

I’d love to hear what your connection experiment was and what you learned.

Share this article

If this article resonated with you, share it with someone who might need to hear it. Send it directly, post it on your socials, or pass it along in your networks.

It’s a simple way that we can work together to shift the wider conversation about loneliness and our need for meaningful connection.

That’s it for this article

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~ Phil   

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Important:

All views expressed above are the author’s and are intended to inform, support, challenge and inspire you to consider the issue of loneliness and increase awareness of the need for authentic connection with your self, with those most important to you and your communities as an antidote to loneliness. Unless otherwise declared, the author is not a licensed mental health professional and these words are not intended to be crisis support. If you’re in crisis, this page has some links for immediate support for where you may be in the world.

If you’re in crisis, please don’t wait. Get support now.