Nothing really prepares you to the fact that when you start choosing yourself and putting yourself first,
It gets a little lonelier than usual.
And that's a tough decision to make and a tough moment to go through.
That silence and that loneliness can give us sometimes this idea of failure.
That we've been failing.
That we've been failing ourselves.
What am I supposed to do?
I'm supposed to put myself out there and here I am on my own.
I'm choosing me and it's more lonely than ever.
What seems at first like failure is actually creating space.
Creating space and the right environment for you to welcome the right people into your life.
That loneliness isn't a sign that you've made a mistake.
To choose yourself,
Pick yourself first instead of waiting for anyone else to pick you.
That loneliness has actually a completely different role in your journey.
Being alone is not the same as being abandoned.
That void was constantly there.
It was just being filled,
Not necessarily with the right people to fill it with or the right things to fill it with.
This constant chasing for external validations and other things to make you complete.
It doesn't mean that you were actually full.
It's just that the void was very difficult to see because it was covered up with all these things that didn't belong there.
With these people that didn't belong by your side.
That feeling of being abandoned is a wound from your past.
And it's not something that you can heal by simply clinging onto someone and counting on somebody else to fill it and make you feel better.
It's kind of like a short term relief,
Postponing and pushing away that longing.
You start healing when you stop running away from that pain,
From that wound,
From that loneliness,
From that void.
You actually stop running and finally sit with it.
I have here one exercise that can help you deal with that.
So whenever you get that angst again,
Feeling so lonely,
Craving that attention again,
Being so tempted to go and like text back that person that left your life a long time ago and that you shouldn't be bringing back in,
This is the perfect exercise for you.
First of all,
It's about talking to yourself with kindness and admitting it out loud.
Whether you want to sit back,
Relax,
Close your eyes and take a few deep breaths to focus in words or whether you prefer to be walking,
Looking at yourself in the mirror,
Anything like that is absolutely fine.
But the point is when you go inward to meet with your feelings and acknowledge them,
To be able to breathe in deeply and breathe out and acknowledge,
I am feeling lonely and it's okay,
It's not something I need to fix right now.
And the idea is to give yourself some time to sit with that feeling and reflect a little bit on it.
Just carve that space.
Do I really want to call back that person into my life?
Do I really want to go and do that activity?
The second thing that you can do is actually an activity that fills you up.
Not scrolling endlessly or swiping endlessly,
Trying to get that dopamine hit but really finding that moment with yourself where you can be fulfilled with that moment,
With that activity.
It may be reading,
Watching a documentary,
Learning about something new.
Perhaps it is dancing and moving your body,
Going to the gym or exercising at home,
Going for a walk.
Perhaps it is writing,
Just taking a moment to write down how it feels and get it into a flow.
Write for one page,
Two pages,
Three pages,
Four pages.
Get into that moment where you can just express.
Perhaps for you it's going to be drawing,
Perhaps it's any other artistic thing.
Perhaps you're going to want to record a video just for yourself or sing or dance in the middle of your living room.
Just one activity that only serves you and that doesn't need to be in front of anybody else.
The final point on what you could do is actually to try and remember that moment as a child when you were alone in the middle of a playroom.
What would you do?
And if you don't have the memory,
Try to put yourself in the shoes of actual children who are left alone.
You look around,
You pick up sticks from the floor,
You occupy yourself and you do so with such a grace,
That's what a child does,
Right?
And you enjoy that present moment.
So the final point is to try to be playful and imagine yourself not sitting alone in this loneliness with anxiety and agile things,
But what if I was a child in this moment?
What if that was my opportunity to be childish again?
What would I do?
What can I do?
And look around and be present and start enjoying that present moment.
Loneliness is not a punishment.
We can really enjoy that time and really need that time alone sometimes.
And the more we learn to appreciate it,
The more we gift ourselves with that incredible superpower to,
Even when you're alone,
Never actually feel lonely.
