“All of humanity’s problems stem from one’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” – Blaise Pascal
I know what it’s like to feel lonely.
I was always the odd one out throughout my youth, and at times, I would question why it had to be this way.
I thought I was cursed for a while, as being an outlier made me insecure about myself growing up.
The more I matured, the more I began to accept myself for who I am. Maybe your situation isn’t as extreme as mine, but all of us feel lonely from time to time–and part of it isn’t our fault.
There’s a distinction between the lifestyles our early ancestors had and the lifestyles we have in modern society.
Although technological innovation came with many positives, like alleviating the quality of life for all people, it also came with negative aspects at the same time: the main one being our loneliness epidemic.
According to WebMD, it’s estimated that living alone with poor social connections is as bad for your health as smoking 15 cigarettes per day.
Yeah, you read that correctly.
Let that sink in for a bit.
According to a 2020 Cigna Loneliness Survey, over 70% of U.S. adults reported sometimes or always feeling alone, shy, or that nobody really understands them.
Factoring in the social distancing forced upon us, and this statistic has only been increasing this past year due to COVID-19.
Thanks to my past hardships and insecurities, I was eventually able to solve my personal loneliness epidemic— and hopefully — I can help you fight this battle in your life.
Let’s say that you’ve been feeling lonely recently.
What is making you feel this way?
Your mind.
There’s only one thing causing you to feel alone, and that thing is your internal world.
Your thought patterns.
Your monkey brain.
Yourself.
The reason we feel lonely is because we aren’t fully at peace with ourselves.
Thus, it’s paramount for you to first be comfortable being alone, isolated from all the noise we hear on a day-to-day basis.
We aren’t at peace with ourselves because we allow our self-hate to dominate our self-love. By training your cognition to replace every ounce of pessimism with optimism, you’ll begin to transform the way you perceive your circumstances in life.
You must realize that we enter and leave this world by ourselves and that life is a single player game. That the road to self-actualization is traveled alone, and after accepting this, you’ll begin to cherish your loneliness rather than dread it.
JL