When in doubt, choose connection. Choosing connection starves loneliness
Hello you wonderful human.
This is the final article for a few weeks as we take a break until February, and I want to leave you with some wisdom that I feel will support you through this time.
Indeed, not just through the next few weeks, but for the rest of your life.
The advice is simple and clear:
At every opportunity, choose connection.
Let’s explore this further
You only have so much energy – or food – to expend at any one time. You can only ever focus on one thing at a time (multitasking is nonsense, it simply means you’re doing two or more things poorly than doing thing one at a time).
The same principle applies when it comes to loneliness and our need to feel connected. We only ever have enough energy to feed one.
The rut of loneliness
I’ve used the following analogy of being in a rut within our work for several years now. It’s an empowering visual that puts you in control of your response to a loneliness experience.
We experience loneliness for many different reasons. Generally, we can expect to experience loneliness during times of change: like the death of a loved one, or the end of a relationship or moving house or starting at a new school or a new job.
Sometimes the loneliness we experience is more existential and not something that we can attribute to our response to a specific event.
Such loneliness can be the unintended consequence of decisions we’ve made in our past. Often, it’s to ensure our safety. We withdraw into ourselves to spare the hurt of judgement. We project images of ourselves into the world to spare us the hurt of judgement. What was once a source of safety becomes our prison over time.
Whatever led us to experiencing loneliness, the longer we stay there, the harder it is to emerge.
We can find ourselves hating our loneliness and hating that we feel lonely, but we can be more terrified of connection than we are of our loneliness.
In a way, loneliness is familiar. It’s safe. We know what we’re going to get. We’re going to feel some terrible feelings and possibly think some horrible thoughts, but it’s safe.
Here's a truth:
We choose the comfortable misery of our loneliness over the uncertainty and the risk of connection.
We stay in the rut. We sleep with the wet blanket. We convince ourselves that this is what we deserve.
How I can experience loneliness
I can still find myself choosing the comfortable misery of my loneliness over the uncertainty and the risk of connection.
I stay in the rut. I sleep with the wet blanket. I convince myself that this is what I deserve.
A loneliness experience makes me so incredibly tired. The prospect of connecting seems so exhausting and adds to the tiredness. It’s less exhausting to stay at home, lie on the couch and watch something on TV than it does to get ready to get out of the house. Hell, not even to get out of the house, but even to pick up the phone that’s usually mere centimetres away from my hand at any given time and using it to connect with someone.
The exhaustion is real, isn’t it?
This is one of the reasons why it can be so tough to get out of the rut we’re in. We’re exhausted in the rut and the thought of summoning the energy needed to get out of the rut is simply too much. It may be a bit easier if connection was promised if we got out of the rut, but it’s not. We can have gone to the effort of getting out of the rut only to be met with a ‘meh’ from someone or something else.
We fall back into the rut and tell ourselves that trying to connect is a big, fat waste of time.
And the cycle begins anew. We stay in the rut for a while longer, get frustrated and summon the energy to get out of the rut.
I know that you know exactly what I’m talking about.
What we end up doing is feeding our loneliness another meal.
Your choices matter: choose connection
Once you realise that you’re in the middle of a loneliness experience – which you may be right now if you chose to read these words – you get to choose how much energy you give it.
You can’t starve your loneliness completely. Loneliness plays an important role in telling you that you’re not getting the connection you need. But you can stop feeding it.
You can choose to feed connection.
The food you give connection may be a sliver of something at first. Connection may be weak and feeble, after all, so feeding it small amounts may be better for it.
But over time, you choosing to feed it regularly makes connection stronger.
In knowing this,
Let’s end your loneliness
Loneliness ends when you choose to feed connection.
You do that by choosing connection.
I understand that statement may be frustrating to receive. My advice is simple:
Start small. Set the intention. Celebrate the win. Repeat.
For example, your connection intention may be to say hello to five people you encounter on a walk. Just a hello, not a full-blown conversation.
You notice someone walking towards you. As they get closer, you look at them, you smile and say hello. They may or may not respond. It doesn’t matter. Either way, you fed connection.
Now repeat that four more times. Connection goal achieved.
After you’ve done what you set out to achieve, it’s time to celebrate. Celebrate the bravery and courage it took you to engage with another human.
Other suggestions are:
choose the checkout staffed by a human at the supermarket, rather than the self-checkout.
go into the bank rather than using the ATM or online banking.
Yes, it seems retro and you may even be discouraged by the supermarket or bank to choose a human, but you’re choosing to feed connection. The investment of time and effort is worth it, because you’re worth it. Run an experiment today. Like, start right now.
The team and I would love to know how you go and to celebrate with you!
That’s it for this post and for 2024
We’ve got some great content coming next year to help you become a more connected human. But for now, it’s time to enjoy a break over the festive season and the Australian summer.
We’ll be back in 2025 with a whole lot more content on the blog and our podcast that designed to help you become a connected human.
Subscribing to our mailing list means that you won’t miss any content in 2025. You’ll get an email from me each week or when there’s something new for you. And you can unsubscribe any time if you’re not feeling it anymore: we’ll still think you’re amazing.
The team and I hope that our work has served, supported, challenged and inspired you throughout 2024. We can’t wait to do more of it in 2025, but we need a little rest first.
Until next time, be awesomely you.
~ Phil
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.
Wow. It's like you saw straight into my brain.