3 REAL Cures For Loneliness... (Matthew Hussey, Get The Guy)

Every once in a while, Jameson and I do a video where the reaction from the community absolutely blows us away. Last week was one of those times. And don't think that you're alone in feeling this because anyone can feel this. We did a video on loneliness and I sat there reading the comments as they were coming in and they were coming in thick and fast and they were stunning. I'm going to read you a couple. This is the top comment, the one that got the Most likes on YouTube from Gen Z 2017. Wow Matthew, I was feeling so alone right now in a coffee shop on Saturday night where everybody is partying and everybody is with someone at this specific moment. Your video notification just popped up through my phone writing feeling alone. Honestly, this end part makes me have tears in my eyes. I will be watching this again and again when I feel alone. Thank you so much Matthew. I think that comment encapsulates so much of the emotion behind this video. The idea that we are there doing something right now where life is going on around us and we don't feel necessarily part of it. We don't always feel like we belong to it and we don't always feel connected to it. Zoe on Facebook says always to the point. If you could just now record yourself reading the Harry Potter books, my evenings would be way better. Loneliness, I feel, is inevitable. As a single mom spending all my time in when I do go out, I go with the awful fear that I have nothing to bring to it really is another spot on video. Well, first things first. Tom Riddle was also a lonely child. You may not understand that, Harry, but I do. And I think Ginny does too.

You realize that cloak has nothing to do with Harry Potter?

I think I would know.

Jameson, you look like a Liberace. Ned Stark.

For the Watch. After reading over a third thousand comments on this video, we decided to continue the conversation on loneliness for another week. This week I asked you, our community, to send in videos of the moments where you feel the most lonely. They were beautiful, vulnerable videos and as I was watching them, I had three powerful insights that I want to share with you today.

The moment I feel most lonely is when I see people in the kind of love that I wish I was in.

When the kids leave with their dad and the house is really quiet and I kind of don't really know what to do.

I feel lonely on Sundays when I know that most of my friends are spending the day with their families.

I feel most lonely when I want to talk to my significant other about something serious and he's not in the.

Mood to do that in my own home sometimes, which people will find strange as I have five children and a wonderful husband. When you have such a big family or all of a sudden your life becomes about them and their needs and what they want, and you become a little bit invisible.

Now, here's what's fascinating about these videos you just saw. You have different people giving completely different circumstances who all feel lonely. You have Agatha, who on a Sunday feels lonely because her friends are all off in relationships spending time with their families. And you have Vicky, who feels like she's faded into the background with her family where she's looking after everyone else's needs, but she's no longer the star. You have Kathryn, who feels alone because sometimes when she has a serious issue, she doesn't feel like her significant other hears her. But the insight I take from this is that the common thread in all of these stories is a sense of worthlessness. Not feeling important can have a tremendous impact on how lonely we feel. So if we want to change how lonely we feel, one place we can start is changing our sense of worth. For Vicky, it might be the case that if she starts to redefine how important her role in her family is and see that through a different lens, she can immediately feel more important. Maybe they can rely on her and lean on her. Maybe she makes them feel special and maybe that's what makes her special. If she reconnects with what makes her important in her family, she can immediately feel more worthy and therefore less lonely. Or it may be that Vicky needs to find a worthiness in something else outside of her family so that she kind of diversifies where she gets her sense of self worth from. It can't just come from what her family makes her feel. It has to come from other areas of life too.

I feel the most lonely in crowds, at parties. I seem to have a lot of.

Friends, but I don't seem to connect.

With them on a regular basis. I have this feeling of being all alone, even though I have lots of friends and I have a really big social life.

Simply being around people doesn't necessarily cure our loneliness. We always think that if we just have more of a sense of community, that all of a sudden we won't feel alone anymore. Now I do believe community is really important. I think that community is an answer to a huge piece of the loneliness puzzle. If we can get ourselves around people that matter to us, people care about, people we connect with, that will change the way we feel. The problem is simply having Community. Simply having friends or family or people you spend time with doesn't automatically mean you have connection with those people. It's like Carol Ann said, she can walk into a party and feel really alone because in that moment she doesn't feel a sense of connection at that party. I believe there's a fine line between having a great time at a party and having a terrible time. And usually the difference is, is whether you have a meaningful conversation or a meaningful connection with somebody. So the question is, how do you get more connected to people? The answer, I believe, is vulnerability. I'm lonely in that moment where I.

Need a big hug.

If we can make ourselves more vulnerable, people will feel more connected to us because if we open up, we give them permission to do the same. Think about it. What resonated about last week's video? It was the vulnerability of it, which allowed people in the comments to open up and in turn be vulnerable back. Which then had me reading the comments and going, oh my God, I feel so connected to these people right now. I have to make another video on this. I want to talk with them more and dialogue about this. It's vulnerability that brings us together. That's the thing that connects us in life. The problem is we don't get vulnerable enough in our day to day lives. Why? Because we're afraid.

I feel very lonely when I'm sitting in the train and everybody's looking at their mobiles and nobody's talking.

We're afraid that if we bare our souls to somebody else, our weaknesses, our fears, our insecurities, or if we just give them some kindness and warmth for no good reason, that they won't accept it, that they'll shoot us down. So we close down. We don't show that soft side to ourselves. That is the most attractive side. And when we don't show that, we don't get accepted anyway because people don't really connect to us. So we perpetuate our own loneliness by shutting down around other people. We cannot in life wait for other people to make the first move to be vulnerable. We have to start and it can't be based on whether somebody's going to be vulnerable back or if I do an act of kindness for someone, I want them to do it for me back. If I smile at someone, I want them to do it for me back. We can't base it on that. That's a transaction. Vulnerability can't be a transaction. It has to be a standard. A standard is something you, no matter what and don't go around Thinking that because somebody didn't reciprocate in the moment, they didn't enjoy your vulnerability. Vulnerability has a way of sticking with someone after you've left their presence. And if you want to test for that, remember a time now where somebody smiled at you or gave you warmth, gave you affection, and you were caught like a rabbit in the headlights. You didn't know how to react. And you know that you reacted more coldly than you would have if you could go back and change it. You know, it stuck with you. Even they wouldn't have seen that it had a positive effect on you.

And the moment I feel most happy and connected is when I smile at someone and I get a really warm, genuine smile back.

I don't know, just people smiling. Life is always beautiful and I'm just happy to be part of it.

And one last thing, Emily commented on our last video saying, he makes me feel like my loneliness is a bad thing. Emily I don't think loneliness is a bad thing. I think solitude can be a beautiful experience and one of the most important experiences in our own personal growth. After all, we can't be great in a relationship until we feel great about ourselves and until we know ourselves. You can't get to know yourself unless you spend time with yourself. So loneliness is not an evil. But loneliness can lead to suffering. And what I wanted to establish in this video is that loneliness isn't simply about whether we're around other people or not. Loneliness is an emotion. We can use that emotion for good, or it can lead to real pain and suffering. What I want to make sure is that the next time your loneliness is leading to suffering, you have tools that can allow you to manipulate it because you have agency over this emotion, regardless of your external circumstances right now. Thank you so much for watching. Leave us a comment Today Say hi. You may always watch these videos and never leave a comment. And you know, I don't normally ask you to comment, but today let's show that we have a genuine community and let's show our standard for kindness and let's show our standard for vulnerability and let's just create a good feeling here. This is something you don't see enough of online. There's too much nastiness and outrage and just bullshit. I want us to actually have a community that thrives on great energy here. Not just positive energy, but just good energy where we're here to help each other. I will see you in next week's video. Thank you for watching. Sam.