My Take on Lonliness and How I am Fighting Back

What Exactly is Loneliness?

We have all heard it before; a person who is completely isolated can feel unfazed and a person who is constantly surrounded by people can feel lonely. Due to this fact, loneliness is definitely a state of mind and not just the simple state of being surrounded or not surrounded by people. In this article, I will argue that loneliness is either confused with or intertwined with the related feeling of boredom. In other words, people who are bored, are more likely to feel lonely. The main issue is that people may have one activity that they commit to every day that they like to do, but the problem with this is that you cannot do the same thing all day, so you end up aimlessly wandering off to meaningless activities with no gain involved. You will see what I mean after. So, without further a-due let's step on loneliness' throat, shall we?

The Same Old Same Old

The earth shattering thing I have noticed is that on the days where you do not feel lonely, you were probably out doing things that you do not do very often that get you excited. You were probably out with friends, family or even by yourself, and not even having time to think about being lonely. That is because you are experiencing feelings of optimism and freshness. On the other hand, the days in which you feel lonely are most likely those days that I like to call "in between days," where not much is going on, you're at home and feeling completely uninspired. These days are those that are in between those "fun" days that I just finished referring to. What happens on these days is that you become so bored of the same old things that your mind starts to wander off and think about the fact that you are not having a blast with your friends, family or a partner. You start to do two things. First, you start to label these days as a waiting room in which you are waiting for the next fun filled day to come around. This is toxic because by doing this, you suck all of the potential and possible progress out of those days, and end up writing them off. You tell yourself that the day would be better if you were out and about, and you end up comparing these days to the "fun" days, which obviously results in these in between days appearing that much more boring. That's the problem though, because in between days are fundamentally different from fun days, so they cannot be compared. In between days should be dedicated to beating on your craft, making progress or making gains in any part of your life, whereas fun days are about enjoying the company of people and taking a break from the grind.

Book Yourself Solid

A good thing to ask yourself at the end of any day is "what did I gain from today?" By doing this, you will force yourself to be a little bit more productive and not take life for granted. Now, I know you will not be productive all day long and you want to have some down time, but during this so called down time, people often experience boredom which fades into loneliness. Why? Probably because people resort to the same old activities such as going on their phone, watching Netflix or other repetitive activities. In order to combat this, you have to book yourself solid. What I mean by this, is that you have to write down an hourly schedule the day before with actual times listed that you will be doing certain activities. Think about old folks homes; the majority of those seniors are having a blast because they have itineraries written out for them with activities every hour! So, make your own itinerary. There are three benefits to this. The first, is that by planning out a schedule for yourself and actually writing it down, you are less likely to write down meaningless and boring activities for yourself that you know will contribute to your loneliness. Imagine writing on your schedule; "11:00AM-12:00PM: browse instagram while waiting for people to reply to my snapchats." Now that sounds like a whole lot of brouhaha, right? The next benefit of this is that you can exercise your creative mind and actually do some thinking, while deciding what you want to do the next day. You are the author of your own story, so you can do whatever you want, as long as it gives you purpose and helps keep you happy and thankful to be alive. Lastly, it gives you one extra thing to do during the day. You can sit down, get out some paper, a writing utensil and just brainstorm! People go through days too often where they are just in auto pilot and not exercising their creativity and thinking skills. Practice being innovative and coming up with solutions to your problems instead of not fighting back and allowing loneliness and boredom to consume you.

Come up with Weekly Rituals

Another item you can add to your life to make it more enjoyable is having weekly rituals to look forward to. For example: "every Thursday, I am going to go and try a new restaurant or a new item on a menu," or "every Monday after work I will go downtown and play pickup basketball with random people." You get the point now. You can be creative here too. If you get stuck, you can use the internet to help you find stuff to do or places to go!

The Main Takeaway

So remember, loneliness stems from being unproductive, and doing the same old things that require little to no thinking ability. Fill your day with as many activities as possible that involve creativity, skill and innovation. Why do you think people get good careers and advance to higher positions? It's because they put their creative minds to use and try to create change and be leaders. So, by creating a schedule for yourself every night, you are practicing problem solving and hammering away at your own creative thinking skills, which will contribute to your eventual success one day.

Think about those days where you have a long shift at work, get home, eat and then go to the gym and come home and just like that, it is already time for you to go to sleep. It all happened in the blink of an eye. On those days, you feel less lonely and bored because you are kept busy and are following a schedule. Your schedule is so tight and demanding that you don't even have time to ponder your supposed loneliness and boredom. That is where the power of making a schedule for yourself comes into play, you keep yourself busy and you gain something from each day.

So, stop relying on pre planned events and dates with friends to make you happy, because they do not happen every day. If you rely on other people, you will be stuck in a state of loneliness and boredom. Learn to be graceful on your own. Make it your mission and commit your very being to it. Every day has potential to be great and result in progress. Challenge yourself! Aren't you even a little bit curious to see what your creative mind can come up with? Believe that you can improve your life and it will happen.