When You Feel Lonely (Or, You are Not Alone)

What happens when you're lonely? You know, when you have this true feeling of aloneness, despite being all connected as we are these days, where there's social media everywhere, where you can follow all your friends or all your family or all the strangers or celebrities of the world, where you can keep connected to everything, but you're not feeling connected, where you feel truly apart from the world or apart from others, or you're in a place where you just feel so separate, or you feel depressed and truly alone, you feel and sense loneliness in your life. It's a big topic today because I think a lot of people feel more of it than they've probably ever felt before, partially because so much of what they're seeing and connecting with online isn't real, or it's trumped up as the best, perfect rendition of someone's life, and you feel like, well, my life isn't that good. Or you see all these shows on television where there's, you know, there's these friends and they have all these other friends, and there's all this adventure and amazingness and. And you think, wow, the whole world must be full of extroverts who have 50 different friends and are dating 12 different people every single month. That's just not real. And so we have these unreal expectations about our social world as well, and sometimes it can make us feel even more lonely. So what do you do when you're feeling alone or you feel a heavy sense of loneliness? I think it's a serious topic, so I won't make too many jokes, as I usually do in a lot of my YouTube shows. You know, this one is really about a genuine expression of it, because I've been there, too. I remember when I was younger, in my teenage years, I had broken up with my high school sweetheart, and I thought this was the person I was going to marry. And our relationship fell apart. And if you ever heard me talk about it, I fell apart with it. I became very alone, very sad, very depressed, and I ultimately became suicidal because of it. And I don't know if you've ever been there or known someone who's been there, but if you have, or you've been with someone who has fallen into depression, it's a serious topic. And it's a topic that requires some clinical support. It needs a therapist, it needs someone to talk through. It needs a counselor, it needs a confidant, because sometimes it's just too hard on your own to deal with that. So if you're at that level of heavy where your Loneliness or aloneness or separateness makes you feel really depressed or very detached, where it's taken away from your day to day connection or joy with life itself. Please seek help, because that's a serious topic. At a casual level, I can share some ideas that helped me and that's all I can really do. You know, I don't pretend to be a clinician, I don't pretend to be one on the Internet. And I just think that it's really important that we all find our own ways of, of connecting. I think the first way is if you do have family, if you do have friends, if you do interact with the grocer or the taxicab ride, or the person who's, you know, selling you a book at the bookstore, these are all moments that you have with humans that it's time to up your level of engagement and satisfaction with the interactions you do have. You know, some people say they're lonely and they're not truly alone. They do interact with people throughout the day, but at an internal sense because they're not drawing satisfaction from those interactions, that they never feel connected. Does that make sense? And so the job, all of our job is any human interaction that we have to amplify our presence in that moment, to be with the people that we are with. Not detached in our own fears, our own worries, our own insecurities, but to just, boom, get there and get interested in other people. See, our fear when we're lonely is that no one's gonna be interested in us. And maybe that will always be the truth. Our job is to amplify the interest and presence we have with other people, to ask them questions about how they're doing, to engage in their life, to see how they're doing. Doesn't mean that we don't share our own as well. But we gotta amplify our interest with other people, get present with them. And then when we depart from any interaction, and this is the hardest part, no matter what that interaction was, to draw satisfaction from it, to say, you know, that went pretty well. I know that's really hard because if you've ever been an introvert or you have that style that leans toward being introvert, it's hard to do that because you often leave social interactions and when you think about them, you don't really process them in a positive style or, or frankly, you don't process them at all because you just go back into yourself without really being with that interaction. What you need to do is walk away from interactions having brought your best Self to that interaction, no matter what is. I don't care if it's a family friend, someone who you just meet on the street, you bring your best self into that conversation. Afterwards you say, I did good there. I asked him some questions and I shared a little about myself. Sometimes that's step one with the people who are in your life, ask them some more questions about them, themselves, their lives, and then have a little satisfaction. Say, did a good job with that. You know, read Dale Carnegie's how to Win Friends and Influence People. And I'm not kidding, that book really helped me at a very critical time in my life when I was younger. So please check that out. I would say the second idea is with whoever is in your life, if there are people in your life, whoever it is, try the plus one strategy. You're gonna go out to, you know, dinner with a buddy. Maybe it's your only close friend in the world. Ask your close friend in the world, say, why don't you bring someone to eat to dinner who we can just have there, we'll make it. Instead of just the two of us, we'll have three at dinner, you know, and start introducing one more person into your social interactions, asking them questions, sharing a little about yourself. And as that happens, it's not about, you know, quantity, it's about quality. Which is why I started with that conversation. Engaging with real interest in others, sharing yourself with them, and being okay with that interaction. But now let's just start ampling it up. One plus, if you and your spouse are going out with somebody, then ask that couple to bring another couple. Just get used to enlarging your social sphere a little bit more because you know how it is. Sometimes you do have a social sphere, but you don't really connect with them. You know what I mean? Maybe you've got like three people in your life and you're like, you know, you like one of them. Well, ask all three to bring somebody to the next thing that you do. And now the odds are increasing that you're going to find somebody to connect with. Because one new person to connect with can change your outlook, your mood, your life forever. One new person can bring in a whole new quality of energy into your life. Just one. But you got to be proactive. You can't wait and sit there and go, I hope, I hope, I hope. You gotta invite people to stuff. You know, that's the key. You gotta start inviting people to stuff. And so that plus one strategy, if you're gonna do anything with another person, invite Another person along with that, you're gonna start to see that your social sphere grows. And the odds are you'll find somebody in there to connect with. Next piece, which is so vitally important, is to learn to be more explicit about what you need, about what you want, about what you dream of, to actually share that of yourself. A lot of us feel lonely because we don't feel like people understand. And the truth is they probably don't understand. And a lot of people understand because we've never explicitly communicated. We hope that they picked up on our hints. We hope that they would give us time and patience to come out of our shell. But that's not a good strategy. Just hoping a good strategy is expressing, communicating honestly, sharing with people who you are, what you desire, what you need, what you dream of, to learn to verbalize that. And if you're somebody saying, well, you don't understand, I'm an introvert, I can't do that. No, no, no, no, Believe me, introverts can do that. I mean, look at Susan Cain, who wrote the book Quiet, which was a real manifesto for introverts. She was an introvert. And she learned that in order to serve others, she had to come out of her shell. She had to learn public speaking. She had to learn to do interviews. It doesn't mean that those were always natural to her or easy to her, but sometimes the next level of getting out of our own shell is to realize that by learning to share your own voice with others, you make an impact. That it's not about you, that it's about service to others that requires it. For me, I'm here to tell you I learned to communicate because this was not natural to me. My first videos were horrible. I was awfully awkward and embarrassed by them, and it was not easy, easy for me, but I just stayed with it because I knew it could make a difference. I became more of a person who communicated to people about my voice, about what I thought and felt and believed in the world. And, you know, what happened in reciprocation. People shared more with me, and I started feeling a different level of satisfaction, engagement with the conversations because people were now interested in me, and I was interested in them because we were actually having authentic communication, which is sharing with. Which is vulnerability, which is consistent, explicit communication. Not hoping people understand, helping them understand. Last piece to this one, which is really important, really important, that if you do have people around you, let's say you're married, but you feel lonely in your marriage, or you have a good friend but you can go out and hang out, have a really great time, and everything looks good on the surface, but inside you're struggling and you don't feel like that you're enjoying it or you're connecting. Then that last piece is to get honest with yourself and then honest with them, honest with yourself. Why are you dissatisfied? Why, given all these things, all these reasons that you have to do feel connected, don't you? Like, what is it? And if you don't know the answer to that, let me loop back to the beginning. It's time to get counselor or a therapist. Go talk to somebody who can help you draw that out. It could be a life coach, a business coach, an introvert coach. Whatever it is that you need, it's okay. Ask for that support. Say like, I don't know why I don't connect with people that they're around me, you know, but it's just, I don't know why it happens. And sometimes it's just not the right peer group, you know? So you need to find that right peer group that could be, you know what? If you have a hobby, go join the local hobby club for that thing. As dorky as that sounds, go do it. If there's an online forum discussing topics that you're passionate about, go in that forum, contribute and share. If you can get around people who are passionate about the same things you are, you'll start to see, like, oh, you're not so different. And you start to see, oh, maybe I do have some connection points. And often real connection doesn't come from these singular interactions we have on the Internet. One post here, one comment there. Real interaction, the kind that makes us feel satisfied and engaged, are typically enduring interactions, meaning friendships, meaning loving relationships, where we communicate more often and more authentically with the people around us. Now, this video has all been about putting a little bit of that responsibility back on your shoulders. The world's not going to show up and see a lonely person say, let me help you. A lonely person has to go, I want to engage again. It has to be your desire, it has to be your drive. It has to be a challenge. You issue yourself to serve more, to share your voice with the world, to get out there and to allow yourself to really connect, to allow yourself to be satisfied. To ask, what did I like about that interaction? Why did that go well? Gosh, I'm doing a good job to cheer yourself on. Even in the times of darkness, you don't have to be alone. You can start getting around more people, sharing more of who you are. Will it be a challenge? Yes. But I know you're up for it because challenge is so much everything that drives us as human beings. And just push yourself a little bit more. You deserve to have an incredibly connected, meaningful, fulfilling life. You deserve to have what we call the charged life. Hey guys, it's Brendan. Thank you. Did you like this episode? If you did, you can do three things right now to continue your journey. First, you can subscribe right here to my channel, which I hope you will, so I can keep sending you videos on a weekly basis to change your life. Second, you can get my brand new book for free by clicking the link right here. And third, you can also go to my website, sign up for my newsletter so I can send you free offers, free products, free programs, updates on my events, new podcasts, and everything else that we don't do on this channel here. If you like to do that, just go ahead and click any of these buttons you see right here. Look forward to seeing you on the next video. Until then, go out there every single day of your life. Live fully, love openly, and make your difference today.