Welcome to Episode 24 of ‘Tuesday Choose Day’, my inspirational weekly post.
My aim here is to inspire you to overcome anxiety and feel more positive and more confident within yourself so that you can create any change you may wish to see if you want your life to be different and better in some way. I’m sharing with you empowering strategies to help you to take control, feel better and feel good!
Today’s Inspiration To Brighten Your Day…
I wonder if you ever feel lonely or perhaps worry that you will. Maybe you do anything you can to keep yourself away from the possibility of that happening – you know what I mean? Staying in a relationship, in a job, in a lifestyle which deep down you know doesn’t really work for you, but it feels that you’ll put up with anything just because you don’t want to be alone?
So why might you fear being alone? If you are perhaps confusing the physical state of being alone with the emotional state of feeling lonely, then it’s time to get that straight.
Being alone can be a wonderful opportunity for you to enjoy some free time away from the distraction of your partner, your children, your work colleagues, even your friends; alone time allows you to choose to remove yourself from others and to just ‘be yourself’. When you embrace alone time you give yourself the chance to enjoy your own company and to take the time to get to know yourself more so that you no longer dwell on anxiety. Instead you grow to feel comfortable with yourself.
Alone time means you give yourself time to learn about yourself, what you really like to do and how you really like to be when you don’t follow the herd or settle for being defined by another person.
You can get away from other people, but you can never get away from yourself so it’s vital that you learn to get comfortable with yourself, to be your best friend. By that I mean that you learn to accept yourself and encourage and support yourself. This helps to ease anxiety, grow your self-esteem and boost your confidence. When you open your heart inwards to yourself, you can never feel totally lonely being alone, because you’ve always got ‘you’.
When take the negative emotion out of being ‘alone’, this special time can become a precious gift to yourself – some peace time, some thinking time, some action time, – alone time becomes something you can look forward to.
And what about loneliness? Are you lonely right now?
Loneliness isn’t just for the elderly who have perhaps lost their life partner or their families have moved away, but it also affects younger people. It isn’t just for the single either – many married people are lonely too. I wonder is this you?
Whether you are alone a lot of the time or if you are living or working among other people, you may experience feelings of loneliness when, it seems, there is no-one who truly cares or understands you. It’s like you are just missing connection to other human beings. This in turn may create an anxiety of what life will be like in the future, especially when we get old.
After all we are beings of love and light and it is through connection that we feel alive.
If you live a lot of your day with no touch and no eye contact, with no sincere or empathetic communication, I’m guessing you feel lonely. Loneliness can increase feelings of anxiety because it dampens your self-esteem and knocks your confidence. A client recently commented how the impact of loneliness becomes your ‘prison’ and how at the same time it feels like ‘safety,’ away from others.
Of course you don’t have to live or work alone to feel lonely. It can happen if you live, work or socialise with people who don’t ‘get you.’. Perhaps you long for friendly and meaningful connection? As the late Robbins Williams said “I used to think the worst thing in life was to end up alone. It’s not. The worst thing in life is to end up with people who make you feel alone.”
For myself, I’ve spent many days and nights in the past feeling very lonely being with other people. Yet as I have grown within myself now when I choose to be alone, I feel light and I feel free. For quite some time, I feared I would feel lonely being alone, but choosing to be alone now, means I am no longer lonely. I believe this is because I have grown into myself, and like you, I am still growing. Embracing ‘alone time’ is a good and strong validating feeling for me – one I really want you to find for yourself too…
You don’t need other people in your life to make you feel loved and whole… You just need you and you’re right here!
Find your way to connect with yourself FIRST and you’ll boost your self-esteem and your confidence to ‘put yourself out there’ and find connection with others.
Then… look at your habits in your life – your habit of thinking, your habits of doing or not doing. Ask yourself how you might start to create new habits to take some action to end your loneliness and go find new connections – and allow yourself to be open to new people and opportunities and welcome them into your life.
Until next time
With love and light x
Do you feel powerless, anxious and overwhelmed to make change happen in your life? I’d like to offer you an immediate opportunity to take a break from your stresses and anxieties. CLICK TO DOWNLOAD my FREE De-Stress Audio.
From the Wobbles and Worries Mailbox…
From the Wobbles and Worries Mailbox…
“I love my best friend dearly but I’m tired of her constantly complaining about her job. When we meet up if the conversation gets to the subject of work she takes over the whole evening moaning about her job and her colleagues.
I do listen and try to give her advice of what I would do but it never does any good. I’m tired of listening to it every time I see her – nothing ever changes. Do you have any advice on how to handle this so I don’t damage our friendship?
A summary of my advice…
It’s a good idea to generally assess your friendships and monitor how fulfilling and balanced they are. All sound friendship is pretty even in terms of ‘give and take’ and you need to be enjoying the benefit of your friend’s company also. You don’t want to damage your friendship and it sounds like you want to keep it, so you have to be firm here. Kindly suggest a ten or twenty minute time frame for her to offload about her job. When time is up, say so and change the subject, perhaps share some of your challenges and expect her to listen to you. Keep your meetings short for a while and once there has been a fair and even exchange of conversation, leave.
Sometimes people just get into the habit of complaining and doing nothing about it. You have allowed her to persist in this habit by listening. These are habits that need to change on both sides. You could perhaps talk to her as a trusty friend and point out that you notice that she has developed a habit of complaining about her work. She may not be so aware that she drones on about it as much as she does. You might like to introduce to her the principle of ACL – that is she can either ‘accept’ her situation, ‘change’ her situation or ‘leave’ her situation’ whichever way, there is no longer a valid excuse to moan. Instead it may encourage your friend to think more pragmatically about her situation rather than simply complaining with no action.
Good luck!
If you’d like my advice with your particular wobble or worry, simply click on the link here
https://lisaskeffington.com/fees-and-booking-2/wobbles-and-worries/
Tuesday Titter…
Top Ten Dad Saves Compilation 2015
We all agree that parenting is the hardest job in the world and some dads are just awesome at ‘being there’ as this short clip by FunnyPlox shows. If you are blessed to have an amazing man in your life who is a fantastic dad with great reflexes (!) or if you are yourself one, you’ll relate to this! Enjoy x
Lisa Skeffington, Anxiety Expert – Anxiety Help Bournemouth