I wrote a guest post for Write To Done, which I would love to share with the rest of you! Before, I go into that, I would like to thank Mary for being so open to my ideas and accepting the article! I felt amazing after she said yes! After all, over 15,000 subscribers received my article. Talk about peer pressure :)

The article talks about the blogosphere as playground: a place where we can have fun and just play for the sake of playing. If you want to learn or remember how to play, then you might to check out the article.

Either way, here are some of the bits from the article:

“I have one question for you: “When did you grow up?”

OKAY, that is actually just the first question. Here’s the rest.

Do you remember that exact moment when you decided to stop having fun and start being serious? Do you know when your careless smile was replaced by a frown? Do you know when you stopped believing in your dreams and decided to become reasonable?

Maybe it was around the time when you stopped playing.
Until that point, the whole world seemed to be your playground!”

If you are curious as to what happens next, read on:

The Ultimate Playground: Blogosphere

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Image: soulholder

Loneliness

Everybody has been lonely at some point in their lives. Sometimes we feel lonely when we are in a huge crowd; sometimes we feel lonely when we are by ourselves. Loneliness seems to creep up on people without them knowing.

I have known people who had nothing  – no friends, no money, no careers, no motivation – who felt lonely. I have known successful people who had it all – careers, money and friends – who felt lonely. I have known people who went from being lonely while having nothing to being lonely while having everything.

Why do we get lonely? How do we deal it with loneliness? If we want to answer those questions, we have to first answer this question: “What is Loneliness”?

What Is Loneliness

Loneliness is the feeling of being disconnected from the rest of the people. It is the inability to relate to others on any level: physical, emotional, mental, spiritual. At least that is how I understand it. That would explain why very successful people and very unsuccessful people can feel lonely – most people find it hard to relate to them and vice versa.

It would also explain the expression: “It is lonely at the top”. It is true. Yet, we can take the above example and define it more broadly. It would be fair to say that people are going to feel lonely when they engage themselves in activities that most people cannot relate to. So if you find yourself feeling lonely, you are most likely on the very positive or the very negative end of the spectrum of human experiences.

How to Deal with Loneliness

Once we examined what loneliness is and why feel lonely, we can take the next step and examine how to deal with loneliness. The basic idea underlying all the below listed tools has something to do with reconnecting with other people.

1. Change your perspective. It might be all in your head. You might be just imagining that nobody can relate to you. Think of ways of how other people can be experiencing what you are this moment as well. It will help you feel more grounded and more human because of that shared experience.
2. Change the people you surround yourself with. If you discover that you truly cannot relate to the people around you, it might be time to change your environment and find some new friends to hang out with. It is possible that you could have outgrown your peers; it also possible that they have outgrown you.
3. Open up. Chances are that if you are feeling lonely it is because you cannot relate to others or they cannot relate to you. Either of those scenarios could be solved by simply talking to people around. Be vulnerable and tell them how you feel. More likely than not, you will discover that people will be able to relate to you more than you think. After all it has been said that the more personal the matter, the more universal it is.
4. Gain experience. It might be time to get out there and experience life to be able to connect with others better. Since people build friendships around the feeling commonality and shared experiences, it is important to create those experiences. Not being able to do so might cause you to feel lonely.

If I had to sum all the above, I would say the following: “If you want to stop feeling lonely, find or create an experience that you can share with others.” No matter how unique you think you are, chances are the everybody else has gone through what you are going through.

You will be able to lead a richer life because of ability to connect with others. You never know who is out there that needs your help or who out there is willing to help. So go out there, and experience and show everybody that you are a human being just like the rest of us. People will appreciate that.