Feeling Lonely xx

When I'm not writing I spend a lot of time doing my other job, which involves listening to people's problems and helping them to work things out. Over the past 15 years I've listened to literally thousands of people and discovered that all human beings share one fear in common and that's the fear of feeling...

If you've ever had it you'll know that the lonely feeling is like an empty room inside you, thickly painted with an ache that colours every wall. It feels like your soul has been ripped out of you, like you've given your heart away.

And that's the place that most people get stuck in, sometimes for years and years and years. They look out at the world and feel like everyone else is happier and more popular than them, everyone else has a friend, everyone else is loved.

But the reason they get stuck here for ever and ever is because they're constantly trying to distract themselves from the lonely feeling, they're constantly trying to run away from it, hide from it, cheer it up, get over it, think about it, feel positive, to look at it, analyse it and on and on it goes...

Another reason people get stuck in the loneliness is because they start believing that everyone else is better than them, more loveable somehow. So they start changing themselves in the hope that changing will get them more friends, more love. They work on being funnier, or kinder, or louder, or quieter, or cleverer or more beautiful, and they go on like this for years and years, pulling further and further away from the truth and beauty that they already are.

But the problem is NONE of this will work.

It will always lead to more loneliness, more hopelessness, more despair.

And the reason none of this will work is because what they've been trying to do forever is fix the problem from the outside. The focus has always been on the other people, the popular ones, the ones who they think have more love.

They've never thought of bringing the focus and attention back to them.

So if you ever find yourself feeling lonely here's what to do...

You bring your own heart back to you and you keep it close and treasure it above all else because it's the most precious thing you have. Then you let the waves of sadness that you've been avoiding for years crash through you like a tide, safe in the knowledge that your own beautiful heart will tenderly hold your feelings in its hands. Then you take hold of your own hand and hold it tight and reassure yourself that you love you. Then you spend time hanging out with yourself doing the things that you love the most, the things that make you feel warm and happy from the inside. And you keep doing this until one day you wake up and realise that you truly are your own best friend, that you're never lonely when you have yourself, that you're perfect just as you are and you're never not loved.

Then you take the overspill from that love out into the world to play. You share it with people you meet without needing to feel dependent on them to make you feel good - because you feel full of your own love, you feel good already, friendship is the icing on top of an already delicious cake.

Here's a favourite video of mine that describes this so beautifully, hope you like it...