There’s a feeling that has your body feeling hollow and burns your brain.
You try to numb it away and say you’re OK. Fine.
I mean, you should technically be more than OK. You’ve got the exact job or position you wanted to land, significant comforts and don’t have to worry about the money coming in.
Regardless of your internal state, every morning you wake up and pull all your shit together so that no one can see the cracks. When you’re a leader, you’re meant to have your shit together in every definition of the word. It's expected.
You’re meant to be strong and you’re meant to be decisive. Yet you notice that’s getting harder as the hollow feeling grows.
You keep trying to fill up by immersing yourself in your work but you know work will never be a true friend or confidante to you.
Everyone knows that you’re successful.
What they don't know is you know something no one else even realises.
Your big, deep dark secret is that even though you're surrounded by people, you're lonely.
And it’s a pain no amount of money or status can take away from you.
The following are 5 truths about your loneliness as a successful leader and what you can do to overcome it.
#1 Your loneliness wants your attention…surrender to it
The more you ignore loneliness and try to push through, the more likely you are to irreparably crack that solid veneer you’ve been working on for years.
Not giving your loneliness attention is gambling in a way that you never have before. You have no guarantees what will come of suppressing it instead of expressing it.
Sounds counter-intuitive, right?
Here's how you can give your loneliness attention...
Start by acknowledging and talking to yourself. Release the pressure valve and cry with your loneliness. Say the words, think the words, write the words: I’m so fucking lonely.
Why? Saying, thinking and writing the thing is one way of quelling the fear that you’re trying to escape.
You’re lonely. It’s a fact. You’ve acknowledged it. You’ve said the thing that you feel out loud and spoken your truth. Now you can move through to being an active participant that incrementally exchanges her loneliness for high caliber connection.
One of your very valid options is to ignore your loneliness and keep trying to push it down - I'll mention a few of these behaviours in the next point.
And as a woman who leads in business and the boardroom, people aren’t always forward with you. They skirt around the real issues when they’re intimidated by you and your power.
I won’t do that with you. If you’re going to find your truth, you need a truth teller.
The secret is: the up-level within yourself and your personal growth will happen when you stop starving your loneliness of attention and start paying attention to it.
When you pay attention and go into acknowledgment, you're serving your power and pleasure with an opportunity to go deeper. To give yourself all the gifts that you wish other people would give to you.
The simplest place to start is, whenever you want something from someone else, you need to look in the mirror and ask: have I given that thing to myself yet?
Give it to yourself and you may start to notice that other people feel drawn to give it to you as well.
#2 Your loneliness is expensive...but it doesn’t have to be
Your loneliness is a costly exercise. It’s costing you money and time and precious energy. Ultimately, what it’s costing you is your health and sense of self.
When you feel disconnected to yourself and out of touch with being self-intimate you over-compensate with other space fillers to rid yourself of the feeling of being lonely. Whether it’s more work, social media, internet shopping or drinking to re-spark your personality and vigour for life, none of these solves the problem at hand.
Let me save you a significant amount of money and tell you what you need to do.
The only cure to loneliness is connection.
But I’m not suggesting outward connection with others just yet.
The connection you need to make is with yourself. Deep reverence, high quality solo time in your version of luxury and spaciousness. More occasions of being in flow state – that lush place that we go to in the height of creativity and in intimacy, where we lose track of time and are in a fully immersive state with what lights us up.
I personally go into flow state when I swim, write, dance, do ice baths, speak publicly and climax in the bedroom. For you it might be other ways of self-intimacy and expression.
Notice how none of those things are expensive or completely inaccessible for most people? That’s the point. You don’t need to buy something else, you only have to hold an intention to do this for yourself and show up to it.
My Private Intensives for leaders do just that. Learn more about them here.
#3 Your loneliness isn’t desperation – they are two different things.
Loneliness is the intense feeling of isolation regardless of context or circumstances. It’s the absence of connection to other people AND to yourself.
You know how they say: you can be alone but not lonely? That's your cue that the feeling of loneliness isn’t dependent on the people that are around you. The feeling of loneliness is personal. Subjective.
As lonely as you might be, it isn’t synonymous with the feeling of desperation. Although loneliness can have us feeling desperate, you can be lonely and still selective. That’s what changes when desperation steps in.
Desperation is a low vibration that says: I don’t care anymore and I’m not discerning – I’ll take whatever comes my way because I'm in a state of wanting anything that's different to what I am now. Whatever attention, whatever gifts, whatever touch or quality time. Anything is better than nothing.
The anything hits our pleasure receptors in the moment for sure. What we don’t realise and aren’t cognisant of in the moment is how much we’re going to have to pay for that short-term hit of recognition or acknowledgment that comes from the anything.
What comes after the action that desperation wanted you take is uncertain. It could be shame. It could be guilt. It could be betrayal of the self – where you’ve disregarded your own values and standards in favour of whatever you misconstrued as pleasure and connection.
I say misconstrued because looking back, was it really pleasure? Was it really connection and intimacy? If it’s caused you this much grief and had your loneliness echoing back to you even louder than before…
Was it worth it?
My best advice: wait. Stay in alignment. Recharge your batteries with quality forms of connection that play the long game and that you already know instead. Don’t get desperate, it's anti-seductive. Your ability to seduce what you want is there and waiting for you and it’s the opposite of desperate.
#4 Your loneliness craves company – be prepared to pay for it
When you crave company, have a secret that needs release or need personalised support, it can feel like the easiest option is to let alcohol (or insert other drug/pattern/habit here) do the hard work for you. Problem is, you are less selective when your inhibitions are low.
Less selective about your precious quality time.
Less selective about the company you keep.
Less selective about what you say.
What feels good in the moment might create ramifications for you that are beyond your control. And you know you relish control.
There's one way around this.
Be selective about the company you keep be prepared to pay for it.
Let’s take a closer look at that. Say, you’re at the top of your game and killing it. You need to stay strong and resilient. You need to stay on the ball – you can’t show that you’ve dropped that ball at any time (and if you do, that requires some serious damage control).
My question today and every day is: Who holds the person who does the holding?
It can’t be just anyone that holds you lest you risk your confidentiality, reputation and integrity.
You need to be able to control what you disclose and where it does and more importantly, doesn’t go.
That’s where a professional steps in.
Safe spaces created by a professional are your training ground for combatting loneliness. You receive a rare opportunity to purge everything that’s holding you back on a personal level. Do that and you're able to keep showing up in your work life without the loneliness spilling over and affecting your decision making process.
In my work as a confidante, I help you establish your most sovereign self first - igniting you to establish your personal boundaries and set new standards for interactions in and out of your business, brand and the boardroom.
Being seen, heard and on the receptive end of expert feedback is an investment in yourself that ensures you stay in your power and pleasure in all areas of your life. Professional support is the key to quick and effective access without the risk of ‘where will this information go’?
Pay for support first and then you can go out into the world as the authority of your life and energy. You'll trust what you reveal to other people because you're clear on what is in alignment for you to express and what you want to keep private.
#5 Your loneliness isn’t permanent – as long as you don’t let it be
In the throes of loneliness, it’s easy to believe that it’s forever. Permanent. Never going anywhere. That’s the shadow of loneliness at play – it convinces you that you are not only alone but stranded indefinitely.
Loneliness, like any feeling, is fleeting. You might feel it a lot or often. But it’s not the only feeling you’re feeling all day, every day.
When loneliness has a long streak, we need to look at your level of interaction with it.
Are you sabotaging potential connections by attaching yourself to loneliness?
Is there some deep seated belief inside of you that tells you that you deserve to be lonely?
Or that you should be lonely because you made a series of decisions?
Are you deciding that you want to stay in it? Put more bluntly as Carolyn Elliot does in Existential Kink, are you getting off on your loneliness? Are you getting rewarded from it?
Do you believe you can’t have everything so loneliness is your punishment for everything else that you’ve achieved and received?
In these moments, resist following these false stories into the abyss of despair.
Use the feeling of loneliness for what it is: a cue that your needs for connection aren’t being fully met…yet. It’s not to say you aren’t trying or that you aren’t good enough or that it will always be this way.
The emphasis is on the yet because connection is not only possible but inevitable if you break up with the stale stories and submit to vulnerability with a trusted source.
We're about to reach the end of our time together (in this format).
Here's a recap. When you feel lonely, move through these 5 truths…
1) Your loneliness wants your attention…surrender to it. Don’t ignore it. Shower it with attention. Say the scary thing out loud “I feel lonely” and then you have created space to make a more responsive, less reactive decision.
2) Your loneliness is expensive...but it doesn’t have to be. Loneliness needs self-intimacy and that is freely available to you whenever you need it. Quit the flashy quick fixes and go deep into yourself and you may just solve your own problem.
3) Your loneliness isn’t the same as desperation. Nothing good comes out of desperation. Nothing. Work on your energy before you put yourself out there in desperation.
4) Your loneliness craves company – pay for it. Paying for a professional to help you get clear on yourself is the best investment you’ll ever make and will save you a world of pain. It also has the bonus of having connection as a foundation to growth.
5) Your loneliness isn’t permanent – as long as you don’t let it be. There comes a point where wallowing in loneliness is you choosing to stay in that feeling when you have other options. Take the power back, take an action and step out of loneliness and into connection – first with yourself, then with other people.
Leaders, it's on you to end the epidemic of loneliness at the top by prioritising high caliber connection and role modelling the value of this to those who look to you. Your personal and professional life can't afford the risky judgment calls you make when you make decisions from a place of your needs and desires not being met.
You're above all that. To enlist the support of the world's foremost confidante to female founders and leaders and be ignited to connected to the new femme waves of leadership, take the first step here.
Lauren xo