everybody's LONELY...here's how not to be )

When I was like super, super isolated, I felt like I had no friends and I really wanted to start a YouTube channel, but I was like, oh, my friends will make fun of me. And then I was like, bitch, I ain't got no friends. What? What, is everybody still not gonna talk to you? I am not a therapist. I'm not a psychologist. I'm not nothing really. What I am is a sweet girl with overbearing eyebrows who has spent a lot of time feeling very lonely. So much so that I used to say that loneliness was like my most defining feature, but no longer. And I'll tell you what, the answer was not stuffing my life full of people or forcing myself to be extroverted when I'm not. In fact, it had almost nothing to do with that. I'm gonna talk about the mindset changes that were paramount to being able to enjoy time alone, the behavior changes that I did and the practices I adopted to foster healthier relationships in my life. I feel like it's taboo to say that you feel lonely, but if you have a heartbeat, you're familiar with the struggle of loneliness. It's the most relatable. And I wish it was like less weird to talk about it. My name is Caroline, and this is a bunch of reasons that you may be feeling lonely and a bunch of ways that you don't have to. I also wanna give a quick shout out to like all the early to mid 20 year olds out there. Congratulations, you're at the loneliest time in your life. There's so many things just like logistically built into what happens at that age in our life right now that makes it I think of super isolating and super high pressure time. But just know that if you're early to mid late 20s, I'm sorry and know that it's not just you, it's literally everybody. But whatever age you are, we're all gonna have to spend time alone in our lives. It's a fact. You can encounter being alone or feeling isolated because you're going through a breakup, because you moved to a new city, moved to new country, you don't speak the language, you're stuck in a job you hate, grieving a loss, working remotely, in a bad relationship, you're spending all day with children, or maybe you're doing too much in your life. All of these things can actually make you feel isolated. And I'll say them without judgment because I've done every single one of these things. Alone time and isolation does happen, but being alone is not the same as being lonely. Now I could just name a bunch of activities of stuff to do when you're alone to fill your alone time, but I bet you've tried that and I bet it hasn't worked that well for you. And it didn't work very well for me either until I did some other mindset shifts that changed the experience of loneliness for me. As a middle child, I always needed people around me, super codependent, was always getting into codependent relationships. I could not be left alone. And then something changed. And now, you know, I don't have life all figured out. I still struggle with plenty of things, but loneliness is no longer one of them. So number one, the most important step for me was detaching the experience of being alone, spending a time alone, from the idea of what it means about me, what it says about me, some negative judgment about what it means that I'm alone right now. You gotta detach those things. Meaning is all made up, right? It's all fabricated by us. And actually, if you're alone, congratulations. It means you're quite normal. You know how I know? Because I talk to people, first of all, and because social media is thriving. If we were all feeling super connected, social media wouldn't be a thriving industry. And I'm not saying that from a place of judgment. This is somebody who uses a lot of social media. Did I mention that I have a YouTube channel? So first of all, recognizing that your feeling of loneliness is not an embarrassing failure. It actually is quite banal, and it means you're human. Can you guys hear that bird? There's like a lot of nature happening very loudly right now. Being surrounded and padded by people doesn't always make you feel less isolated. Some of the loneliest times in my life have been from within a committed romantic relationship. The second biggest mindset shift for me was understanding that the opposite of loneliness is not company. The opposite of loneliness is connection. Because Lord knows you can be surrounded by people, and if you don't feel understood and known, it's the loneliness, loneliest feeling in the world. There's nothing worse than like going on a blind date and feeling so unknown by the person sitting across the table at me. You'll feel alone. You'll feel alone after that date. This is good news because by the same note, you can find connection in more than just people. And that's really good because you can't control other people, even our best friends, even our partner. We can't control how and when they're able to show up for us. And that's okay. For me, the antidote to loneliness is feeling understood. And I can feel understood by a project, by an activity, by something I'm learning, by my work. These are investments we're making. And if you're investing your financial portfolio, like you would never put all your eggs in one basket. That wouldn't, it wouldn't turn out well for you, most likely. And I don't want to do the same with my like connection points either, where I'm getting fulfillment. It can be from people. It can be from my work. It can be from my free time. But I think it's important to have diversified fulfillment in your life, diversified points of connection, because these things are going to ebb and flow in your life. And that is kind of out of your control. So you don't want to be like, you don't want to be screwed over when work stops satisfying you, when your hobby dies out, when your interests change, when your friends move away, get married, whatever. You want to have some balance and stability. You kind of do need to have some backups. The next tip I want to give you is to do the embarrassing thing. Whatever that thing is that you're like, oh, people would make fun of me. Oh, what would people say? Do it, do it. You're going to like it. It's going to be good. And this is when you can actually like leverage and take advantage of your loneliness. Because for me, when I was like super, super isolated, I felt like I had no friends and I really wanted to start a YouTube channel, but I was like, oh, my friends will make fun of me. And then I was like, bitch, you ain't got no friends. What is everybody still not going to talk to you? And it ended up being the most fulfilling thing I've ever done in my life. Some other embarrassing stuff. I joined an adult kickball league. And guess what? I made like two of my best friends there. I feel like a lot of people on this kickball team had like a lot of hangups and embarrassment about it, but I was so beyond embarrassment at this point that I was like, whatever. This is what you have to remember. The things that people say about you or behind your back, they affect your life in no way. It just affects your life in no way. Do you think people aren't making fun of me for like making a video about feeling lonely? For sure they are. And so be it. It affects me in zero way. And in the meantime, I get to talk about a topic that I really care about and maybe even like help somebody. Once you realize that the things people say about you affect you in no way, you're going to live a liberated life. You know, two years ago, when I thought about starting a YouTube channel, if I had enough of a social circle to kind of support me in a healthy life, then I would never have started a YouTube channel. There was something to like hitting a rock bottom and having no other options that gave me the total freedom to do the scary thing that I really wanted to do, but was otherwise like I needed to be pushed to my wits end in order to do it. And it's the best thing I did. I don't know, start a YouTube channel, join adult kickball league, who cares? We're all going to die. On a quick side note, this YouTube channel is made possible today by Light and Easy. Even lonely people drink coffee. And that is about as much of a segue as I have in me today. A lot of my channel is a design channel and Light and Easy makes beautifully designed coffee. I'm pretty infatuated with this single cup coffee maker because it's freaking sexy and hot, look at it, with a simple streamlined design that's classic and chic. And because I'm just one person, every time I brew a giant pot of coffee, I waste half of it. So this has been an ideal coffee maker for me. Every single morning, I can brew a single cup under 13 ounces. It has a one press fast brew that preheats and brews automatically so you can walk away and do something else while it completes the whole process. It has different attachments so you can use a K cup or regular ground coffee. It also has an auto sleep function that triggers after nine minutes of inactivity. So it goes into power saving mode and it's specifically designed for small spaces like my kitchen with a tiny footprint, super lightweight and just over eight inches high, like four inches wide, nine inches deep or so. It's just adorable. And it makes my whole coffee setup so cute and sweet. And mostly it keeps me from wasting and over brewing every single day. I'm gonna include a discounted link in the video description if you wanna check it out. And thanks to Light and Easy for making this channel possible today. The third biggest mindset change is asking myself, what is this time good for? I've heard it said that stress is this tension when we believe that what's happening is not what ought to be happening, that it should be something different. But I find that the reality is that in almost every scenario, that bird is so loud, in almost every scenario, there's both usually positive and negative. I don't believe in toxic positivity. That kind of irks me because, you know, if your whole family is murdered and you're trying to be super positive about it, that's not healthy. You're not gonna heal. It's obviously not accurate. But I do think that there's something to like, there is an opportunity, even in the least desirable scenarios. What is this time good for? So I'm isolated. It's not ideal. It's not what I want. This isn't really the time I was looking for, but since it's here, what is this time good for? For example, recently I had knee surgery. I tore my meniscus. Shout out to all the menisci out there. And it was like right after COVID shut down stuff was opening up. And I was so excited to just like get out there and see people and like do the summer things. And then all of a sudden like I was on crutches and I couldn't get around very well. And it was just limiting everything. And it was really, really not what I wanted. And at the same time, okay, this is what we're dealing with. My moping over the amount that this is isolating me a bit, it's not gonna heal my knee any faster. What is this time good for? It's a great time to start scootering. I picked up a scootering hobby. I don't know. Organizing my home, doing like a home spring, summer clean out. I can get ahead on some projects. Getting in touch with friends I haven't talked to for a while. To me, it's kind of about where you put your attention. Trying to remind myself to put my attention more on like what's the positive opportunity helps me stay out of depression quite a bit. Okay, getting into the practices of what I actually do. As an antidote to loneliness, first practice, the most important is to get really honest about how you actually enjoy spending your time. I always think of something that like my, I had a teacher in New York who said that like, who's the most interesting person on the New York subway? It's the person who's sitting there knitting and they're totally absorbed in their knitting. Everyone on the subway train is like zeroed in on them. They can't look away because there's something so mesmerizing and so attractive about encountering people who are just really engaged in whatever dumb thing they're doing. It doesn't have to be something anybody else likes, but to be truly engaged in that, people smell it. You know, you can't fake this and people wanna be around it. Getting genuinely engaged in your life, getting like plugged into life, doing the things you really care about, whether it's a hobby, a side hustle, how you spend your downtime. This is a double whammy. This is gonna serve you in two ways. Number one, you're gonna feel that connection to your own life. You can get fulfillment from that when it's something you're genuinely energized by. And number two, it will attract more people into your life. And I don't like to get like hokey talking about energies and stuff, but this is just real. Like we all want to find that person or find that friend who is just lit up by life. They come offering so much energy and engagement. That's who we wanna be around, right? And so we also kind of wanna become that person. And like worst case scenario, people aren't attracted to you for it. Worst case scenario, you're doing something you love. So it's a win-win situation. There's like a super loud toad or something. Can you hear that? Like and subscribe. But that brings me to my next suggestion, which is if you don't know totally what makes you feel engaged in life, which like I didn't for a long time, here's a great hack to figure it out. When you're gonna go do a solo activity or do something, spend your time alone, you're taking yourself out to lunch, you're going on a hike or whatever, take the option of sharing it on social media, take that off the table. And if you then find that you're way less excited about that hike, it means you don't really like the intrinsic experience of it that much. And that's okay. Find a thing that you do like. I find that social media is very effective for forming connection when you're sharing ideas and it's a real conversation. And I find it's way less effective at building connection when you're just sharing an experience. It's very hard to export an experience. And it also comes at a cost. As soon as you export your experience to other people, you gotta keep a little bit less of it. So a tip for me of a way to give a love language to yourself when maybe you don't have a partner or a friend there who can do it at the moment is to just savor your experience for yourself. Just the act of being like, I did this beautiful, amazing thing and I kinda really wanna share it because I loved it, but I'm gonna keep it just for me. That feels like an act of self-love to me and it actually keeps more of the experience for yourself. Obviously, you can share your life, you can share your experience. I have a vlog channel. But this advice is really if you're like, the solo activities and you find you're not, it's not like energizing you that much, it's not filling your cup that much, this may be why. Another thing I still actively do is gratitude lists. It sounds a little hokey, but like it's such a good antidepressant. Wait, I don't wanna walk that way. The leaves are too loud. I'll do it laying in bed, like before I go to bed. And it just caps my day off in a totally different way. Beforehand, I'd moved to Ohio, I'd moved to a new state in COVID and I would have a social interaction maybe once every few months. It was severe. Moved to a new state in COVID, didn't know anybody, didn't have a job, then got a job working remotely, was in a relationship that got very isolating, had a really hard time making friends. It just got very extreme. When I moved back to DC, I started keeping a gratitude list of social interactions, which is like a crazy thing to say out loud, but it's what I did and it helped me a lot. And I literally wrote down every single social interaction I had. Even if it was dinner with my parents' friends, that's how meaningful it was to me. And that did a couple things. It, A, lets you track your progress and see how things are building. It also just solidifies the memory and the experience for me to revisit one more time so that I'm not just constantly glossing over the good things that are happening in my life so that I'm not always just looking for the next thing. It's like, wait, what did we just do? What was nice about this? Let's hold onto that and make it a little more concrete. And then I'll also do it just in my head, like laying in bed some days if I had a bad day. You know, laying there and just being grateful for all the good things that did happen or all the moments where I avoided something really terrible happening and noting it all. It just ended the day on a way better note. I still do that. My next tip is to do your solo date. Do it, like live it up. I love a solo date. Just because I would prefer to do an activity with people doesn't mean I can't also do it alone. Even earlier in the summer, where I felt like so many people were out of town and I was like, well, that's such a bummer. I wanna go to this cool bar. And then I was like, well, why do I wanna go to that bar? Because it looks like they have really good drinks. I could wear a cute outfit and there's a nice view. Like, bitch, you can enjoy all of those sensory experiences on your own as well. I would prefer for someone else to be there, but if it's not an option, go to the bar. And then the experience of sharing it with someone, like that's another experience to be enjoyed. But if it's not an option, don't say you can't go to that restaurant, you can't go to that bar. I love it, yo. And again, I do think the extra self-love language there is like not posting about it on social media. I always have the impulse to post my solo dates on social media. Yeah, look what I'm doing. But then it's for them and it's not for me. I want it to be for me. One of the best pieces of advice I ever got, my friend Tessa gave me this great advice. When you are like working on building new connections in your life, you kind of have to treat it like a job. Like it won't always feel energizing. Sometimes on a Friday night, you don't want to go talk to someone new. You want to stare at the wall and talk to yourself. Yes. But when you are working on making those new connections, it's helped me to be like, okay, this is a job. I'm investing in this. And like the payoff kind of comes later. And that's okay that it feels like work for a little while. Cause you have to earn that connection. It's not going to feel instantly energizing. It takes that time. That was just really helpful advice from a girl, Tessa. Another quick hot tip. One of the easiest ways to feel engaged with life when you maybe don't have the option for like social engagement, to just be learning whatever that learning is for you. Any way you can be learning and evolving, learning about design, learning about, this is a trampoline by the way. This is not a pool. People ask what that is. It's trampoline. Pause for airplane. This is Coda. Coda, Coda, what the hell? But yeah, learning, whatever that looks like for you. So just be like progressing and evolving is a great way to feel like plugged into life. Keep in mind that you're not for everyone. Not everyone is for you and you're not for everyone either. And it's just not a personal insult. You might invest the time in some people or like hope for a connection somewhere and it doesn't pan out and that's okay. Don't lose sleep over it. Don't beat yourself up over it. We can't all be for everybody. You know, the TV show, The Office, great show, almost universally beloved by all, but actually not by all. There's a good handful of people who do not like The Office and that's cool. But if The Office were to go and change their formula just to appease like the people who didn't like them, they'd probably be changing everything that like I love about that show and that most people love about that show. Yeah, I think it's really important to always work on yourself and acknowledge your flaws and like work on your shortcomings, but don't change the things that people love about you just to please the people that don't love you. That's crazy talk, okay? You're not for everyone and that's okay. At the end of the day, these are not hard and fast rules. This is just what worked for me. I'm not a fixed person. I'm not an expert. I'm just an ex-lonely person who has come a long way, I think, good for me, right? Most importantly, the thing I try to keep in mind I don't feel loneliness in my life now, but I'm bound to end up in an isolated place again in the future. It just happens sometimes. It's kind of a feeling, the way that anger is a feeling, like if I was hoping to never feel angry again, I'm in for a world of hurt. This is gonna happen. It comes and goes. And it is also important to recognize if that feeling of loneliness or isolation, is it temporary, is it situational, or is it chronic? I also did a lot of therapy and saw medical professionals to make sure I was getting the professional support I needed, and that was really, really important. So you do also wanna seek out the professional help if it's a chronic feeling. And then for me, I keep returning to these practices. If different stuff worked for you, or you have different hacks or mantras, I would absolutely love to hear it. A lot of these practices made my life a lot better, and I hope so much that something helps someone else out there too. Okay, that's pretty much it. I'll see you guys around the channel soon. Bye. ♪ Focus just like a single Gemini ♪ ♪ And she's so pure, look that close to mine ♪ ♪ Swear we on the cardio, but you ain't ♪ Lol. Hmm. Why are you so tall?