Humans are social creatures and enjoy socialising with other human beings. But many of us blindly assume that humans need to socialise all the time and therefore, being alone is often seen as being lonely. While being alone and being lonely can easily overlap, there’s a difference. 

This post may be useful to those who are alone and feeling lonely. It may also be useful to those who are lonely and battling with light depression and anxiety. If you have chronic depression/anxiety, consult professional help. I’m passionate about self improvement and coping mechanisms, and yes, you can talk to me about these, but I’m not a qualified therapist.

Being Alone Vs Being Lonely

Being alone refers to the physical state, which is being physically alone. For instance, you take a shower alone. You enjoy it. You don’t feel lonely at all. But if for some reason you have to take a shower with 10 other people altogether, you may feel unease, even upset, especially when you’re used to taking a shower by yourself. 

Being lonely refers to the emotional state. For instance, say, you’re at a party with 500 people in it. Physically, you’re with 500 people at that particular moment. If you enjoy the food and the surroundings (like some people I know) without needing to talk to anyone, no problem. The problem is when you want to talk to someone/some people and nobody seems to be available to talk to you, or you’re simply too shy to start a conversation, then despite being in the middle of 500 people, you’d inevitably feel lonely.

This post focuses on being alone and feeling lonely, and not focusing on being with other people and still feeling lonely. The latter needs a separate discussion.

Why Being Alone Can Feel Lonely

We need to acknowledge that our friends and families can heavily influence the way we think. If we are surrounded by people who are not used to being and doing things alone, we may think similarly, that being and doing things alone make us feel lonely. 

On the other hand, when we are currently surrounded by people who are used to being and doing things alone, we may want to be and do things alone as well, just like everyone else. However, if we are not used to being and doing things alone, we may feel left out. Fueled with our thoughts that there must be something wrong with us as everyone seems to enjoy their alone times, we may feel isolated and this is loneliness. 

What we need to do is being honest with ourselves about how we actually feel and not absorb people’s thoughts on how we should be feeling. 

After separating other’s thoughts from how we actually feel, if we still feel lonely we need to analyse this feeling more closely. 

Some of us, when we are alone and feeling bored, want to look for distraction to avoid feeling more bored and lonely. Myself included. I wrote about how to distract ourselves when we’re alone in this post.

While distractions may work temporarily, it’s important to see the root of the problem by asking ourselves a question: Why are we feeling lonely?

Why Are We Feeling Lonely?

Based on the examples in the previous section, that when we want someone to talk to but can’t find anyone, we’d inevitably feel lonely. Therefore, we may want to ask ourselves the next question: why do we want to talk to someone? Is it because we feel empty inside? Is it because we want to get feedback or validation from other people? Nothing’s wrong with any of those. After all, we’re humans. It’s natural to fill our emptiness by talking to someone. It’s natural to want feedback or validation from other people. 

But natural doesn’t necessarily mean we have to act on it without further questioning. Unlike animals that are driven by animal instinct, most humans are (all humans should be) driven by reasons.

I’m not suggesting that we should not talk to anyone. We should socialise. It’s good for our mental and emotional health. Numerous studies confirm this. Socialising with the right people of course. If we socialise with toxic people, they would only stress us out.

But we shouldn’t make socialising or depending on other people’s validation our primary focus in life. If we make it our primary focus in life, we’d inevitably dedicate more time to other people. This would mean less time for ourselves. We abandon ourselves. We forget how to be alone. Over time, we’d feel lost and empty, especially when some circumstance forces us to be alone due to whatever reasons (remember Covid isolation?). 

If we depend on other people to fill our emptiness, when these people betray or leave us, we’ll feel more empty. We’ll then look for more people to fill the emptiness. Rinse and repeat: they disappoint us, they leave (or we leave) and we keep looking for external sources to fill our internal emptiness.

From what I’ve observed so far, most lonely people are usually those who cannot obtain external sources to fill their emptiness. One may want to investigate why there’s emptiness. .

Richard Grannon in one of his videos points out that loneliness can be an emotion that masks a sense of purposelessness. 

When there’s purposelessness, there’s emptiness. 

What Is Your Life Purpose?

You must have the courage to ask yourself this big question: “What is the purpose of your life?”

If you say or think that the purpose of life is “to be happy”, then congratulations, you will often feel empty and miserable for the rest of your life. 

If you think that the purpose of life is to be happy, you’ll tend to avoid pain as much as possible, jumping from one high to another for the sake of being happy. And we all know that everything in life comes with a price, and that price is “pain”. Everything has pain in it. No matter how much you want to sugarcoat it. Read Mark Manson’s book “Everything is F*cked” to gain a better understanding of this. 

I wrote about “The Purpose of Life‘ a while ago here. I wholeheartedly believe that the purpose of life for all human beings is stated in Robert Greene’s book, Mastery, as follows:

“At your birth a seed is planted. That seed is your uniqueness. It wants to grow, transform itself, and flower to its full potential. It has a natural, assertive energy to it. Your Life’s Task is to bring that seed to flower, to express your uniqueness through your work. You have a destiny to fulfill. The stronger you feel and maintain it—as a force, a voice, or in whatever form—the greater your chance for fulfilling this Life’s Task and achieving mastery.”

Robert Greene, Mastery, page 40

Discovering the seed of our uniqueness is not an easy task. This is especially hard for those who have been forced to blindly obey their parents, school, religion, culture, and the so-called one-size-fits-all happiness. 

Most of these people end up working for something they dislike, forming a family with the wrong spouse and having children they later regret, abandon, or even abuse. Then in their spare time, they distract themselves with a lot of ‘wrong friends’ and pointless entertainment excessively. They never spend time alone to discover and develop their skills and talents.

Bringing our uniqueness to its full potential is even more challenging than discovering it. I highly recommend you all to read the book “Mastery” as it guides you to discover your calling, what to do after you discover it, how to learn and master it, what to do after you master it, and how to avoid the false path.

Conclusion

Being alone is not the same as being lonely, but the two can overlap easily. To answer the question “how to not feel lonely”, we must first recognise if our thoughts are heavily influenced by other people’s thoughts. If we still feel lonely, we must have the courage to ask ourselves the big question: what is our life purpose?