At one point in your life, there is a time where feeling alone hits you. No matter how many friends you have, no matter how many people there are in the room with you, that feeling of being alone is something that hits you so hard that you cannot breathe. You sit there and contemplate whether what you are doing is right or not. You question if the job you have is going to get you where you want to be, if the friends you have support you the way they say they do. One feeling of being alone sends a spiral of topics and questions through your head that make you wonder if you’re even on this earth for a specific purpose. I caught myself asking these questions; Is my job going to give me the success that I want for my future? Are the friends I surround myself the type of people that are going to help me push forward and succeed in my life, or are they the type of people that are temporary just to keep me company? From these thoughts, I sent myself into a small form of depression. The questions that were brought on by one little feeling, sent my mind into an obsession of these questions. I began obsessing over the success of others. It became an obsession for me to concentrate on the success that others would portray through social media. Which then lead to comparing myself to these people. We tend to focus on the flashy amazing things that people show on social media, and hone in on everything that person has and focus even more on everything that we DO NOT have.
What also became a focus in my mind was that I am constantly getting older, not younger. Every day that I wake up and dwell on these irrelevant things happening in someone else’s life, I am losing another day to make myself successful and create a life that I want for myself. And what I noticed is that no matter how many friends I surrounded myself with, no matter what family members I surrounded myself with, my mind was still constantly thinking about these situations. Until I realized the only way that I can change these thoughts, and dwelling on everything except my own life, is to start with my own happiness.
Feeling alone was a feeling I experienced after moving twelve hundred miles away from home. I moved to a place where I had no friends, and no foundation. Getting myself out of the mindset of feeling and being alone, I forced myself to break out of the shell I had. I began going places alone, reaching out to people I normally would not reach out to. What we must do when moving away or even just experiencing that feeling of being alone in our lives, is learn how to love yourself first. Now I know it sounds cliché and it is such a repetitive thing to say, but I realized how true it was when I truly and honestly ended up being alone. I began giving myself a schedule for every day. I told myself that I would not go through my days lying in bed anymore. Every day I would give myself a schedule that kept me busy from the minute I opened my eyes until the minute I went to sleep. I began listening to motivational videos posted by Gary Vaynerchuk and picking up old hobbies that I stopped due to second guessing myself.
I can still say that once in a while, thoughts of feeling alone resurface back in my mind. Some days it is harder than others to kick the thoughts away but now, I am more prepared for how to combat these thoughts. Sometimes I just delete all social media accounts from my phone to keep me from going on them. Sometimes I just get up out of bed and go for super long walks with my dog without being my phone. We all have the power to combat our negative thoughts. If you are able to obsess over the negatives and obsess over the things you DO NOT have, than it is just as easy to become obsessed with the positives in your life and become just as obsessed with all the things that do exist in your life. You just have to start with a different mind set the minute you wake up; and I know you can do it.
