A boy goes to his mom and says, “I’m bored.” The mom replies, “Then you should stop being boring.”

This lesson applies in different variations. If I’m lonely, then I stop being alone.

In my early 20′s, I thought loneliness stemmed from feeling disconnected, and that disconnection was caused by having no people in my life who really understood me. So fixing my loneliness was about fixing the disconnection. I spent years finding people who understood me. However, when I did find a handful of people who I felt really got me, I still felt lonely.

It took me a decade before I realized that we don’t feel lonely because we’re disconnected. We feel lonely because we’ve made a habit of being alone. We can stand alone amongst other people. However, standing alone keeps us from connecting to those around us.

I was trying to fix the wrong problem. I was working on the disconnection when I should have been working on what kept me alone. Continue Reading…

Throughout our lives, we have periods when we don’t know where we’re going with our lives or what we should be doing. A bad breakup, loss of job or loved one or a change of heart can make once immutable goals seem no longer relevant.

We become a bit lost but that lost feeling seems oddly right for the moment. We’re in downtime. Downtime is a period where we regroup, conserve energy and figure things out. If downtime extends too long we get antsy and feel that we should be doing something more.

However, after having no direction for so long, it’s hard to figure out what we should be moving towards. The more we try to get ourselves moving, the less appealing our choices become. Nothing we do feels right. Continue Reading…