320. Is loneliness a choice?

36% of Americans feel lonely when they were surveyed. That’s a lot of people. Why do you think that is? Maybe you’ve experienced being with a group of friends you love, but you still feel lonely…. It’s the way you’re thinking about it. Maybe you’ve just had a breakup and that is where your head is. Our thoughts actually cause us to feel lonely even though we are surrounded by friends that are having a good time. Now there are other times where you are all alone and you are completely happy with that, like me when I got home from my client meeting to a perfectly quiet beautiful home. I could have had the thought, “Here I am again, at this house where I spend a lot of time just by myself”. But instead my thoughts were “ahhh I love my house and I love this quiet time where I can just think and create and enjoy my surroundings”. I view that alone time as solitude, not loneliness. If your solitude starts feeling like loneliness, ask yourself why, do you need more connection or are you thinking about it in a way that causes you to feel lonely, is there a way you can reframe it. We make choices every day of whether or not to be social. Sometimes we think we are connecting by scrolling on our phone watching what our friends are doing but studies have shown that’s not enough for connection. Now it’s better if you truly are engaging with people online but it still doesn’t come near the benefits of human to human interaction. I’m going to lunch today with a friend. I reached out last week and she wasn’t available so she reached out this week and we set a lunch date. You see in order to have a lunch date I had to reach out. And in order for her to have a lunch date, she had to reach out in return. I forget that sometimes. We all want and need connection. That’s part of the human experience. We are social creatures. So why then, don’t we reach out? For me, I used to say “ I’m not a connector”. I will say yes if someone reaches out because I love being social. But now I realize that me not reaching out could be laziness on my part but also a little deeper down if I’m being honest a bit of fear of rejection which I want to write off as silly but it’s not. It’s real.  Check out the entire episode to hear the rest.. Love you guys!