Friendships are like this bowl of fruit 🍐🍊🍏; we all know that fruit are good for us but it’s easy to let things slip, or to get distracted by junk food 🍟, and the bowl becomes empty pretty quickly unless you refill it*
Ok, so the analogy might need some work 🤔, but that’s where my head went as I was filling my fruit bowl with newly purchased fruit just as a wave of loneliness hit me 🌊
Yep! I experienced a wave of loneliness!
What a strange time for it to have hit: I had just made it back to my flat after 4 magical days with my family celebrating Christmas🎄🎅.
On the one hand I was glad to have my space again but, on the flip side, I also missed having people around.
It was the sharp contrast; I’ve lived alone for years but it’s times like this that I realise how alone I can feel 😔.
Being single and a solo-founder of a small business compounds this problem as, my family aside, I don’t have that many consistent people in my life to be able to regularly share deeper emotions**
It’s one of the reasons behind my thirst to keep relationships going.
It is also invariably one of the drivers behind my LinkedIn usage and of my recent #1000postschallenge as I strive to drive more meaningful Relationships through social media.
Ironically loneliness is not a lone phenomenon
50- 60% of people have reported to feeling lonely at one time or another and whilst for many of us, like me, this is a temporary thing, for some people this is a constant state (according to the Office of National Statistics, 7% of people in the UK admit to chronic loneliness).
I’m not the only one that uses social media as a proxy for in-person relationship nowadays.
Maybe it’s my focus on EQ as part of my job 🤓, the fact that I am Palestinian 🇵🇸 or just one of the legacies of covid 🤧 and all the conflicts 🔫 that are going on in the world at the moment, but I certainly have noticed more and more people that are in need of someone to listen to them.
It’s why I constantly reach out and try to bring more joy to everyone’s life.
I get just as much out of it as they do 😁 and I like to inspire people with my work 😎.
That said there are definitely a lot of people that need more than just a friendly voice note to help them through the tough times 🤗.
What you do about loneliness is the key
As the post-Christmas wave of loneliness hit me I fell into all the things you shouldn’t do:
Ever find yourself doing any of those a bit too much?
For me, realising I’m doing it is the key and then tracing back:
“If this is the solution I am choosing to roll out then what is the problem that sits underneath?”
Throwing myself into work, as is many people’s solution, would have been the easy solution but that’s effectively trading one vice for another.
Turning the corner
Whilst this may be easier said than done, but once I’m aware of the slump I find I can do something about it.
And this time I leapt straight at it by:
Is that it? Am I now cured of my loneliness?
Of course not; it’s never that simple but being aware of it and managing it will make a massive difference to my life.
Longer term, my aim is to make some changes to my personal and professional life that will help alleviate the challenge so watch this space.
I appreciate that many others may not be quite as far along the change curve of this as I am and loneliness is a terrible thing.
So, if you think you may be lonely don’t be afraid to follow my approach above.
More than that I’d be delighted to be one of the people that you reach out to 😊
Faris
*as an aside, there’s also the case that if there is too much fruit then it’ll be hard to eat it all before it goes off which is an analogy connected to the Dunbar number, but that’s for another day
**the irony is not lost on me that I’m an EQ expert who doesn’t share his own emotions regularly enough
Faris is the CEO and Founder of Shiageto Consulting, an innovative consultancy that helps firms and individuals sharpen their effectiveness. Connect with him here
Success = IQ x EQ x FQ
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