Why I never feel lonely or how I conquered loneliness.
According to psychology today, Loneliness is the state of distress or discomfort that results when one perceives a gap between one’s desires for social connection and actual experiences of it. Even some people who are surrounded by others throughout the day — or are in a long-lasting marriage — still experience a deep and pervasive loneliness.
But it is not the desire to have a social connection, it is a desire to have someone in our lives who you can share things with, things that are troubling us, things that are making us anxious, restless, that is why you make friends and that is why you have relationships and that is why you marry. you are lucky if you are able to make friends that you can share our lives with or partners/spouses that you can share our lives with.
The more you seek from yourself, from this world, the more lonely you will be. If you want something which the rest of the world does not want, the rest of the world will not understand you, no matter what you do. Then you have a choice: either you lower your expectations, lower your ambition or you move away from that crowd. If you move away you will be lonely and if you temper your expectations you will be frustrated with your life. Tough choice.
Even when I was a young boy in Dehradun I was lonely, because I wanted to build bridges and play in the sand and make things while boys my age wanted to play cricket. We never got along. In college I had a lot of friends, every semester a new friend, because people would get bored of my philosophy in life. They were 18 and acted like that and I was 18 acting like 100.
The primary reason I moved out of my marriage was an expectation that I would temper my ambition and live my life as someone I was not. So in reality I was lonely even when I was in a marriage, I could never share my deepest secrets with my wife, or my deep fears or my ambition, or my plan for the future, because her vision of the future did not match mine.
In my relationships thereafter no one understood the scale of my ambition and the sacrifices it would take to reach there and I have been branded stupid and crazy and lazy and relaxed because I don’t run around to reach my goals (which I am still not sure what they are.)
So loneliness has been a part of me forever. I always found someone for 6 months to talk to, drink beer with and go to pub and so on and so forth.
You feel lonely when you cannot actually communicate your feelings with someone, it is like you are looking for answers and solutions but not able to. Maybe you know the answer but you are looking for confirmation that this is the answer, kind of seeking validation that you are right and you are on the right path.
When you are able to convince yourself that what you are doing is right, you would have conquered your mind and nobody can defeat you. You would have also conquered loneliness. As you keep moving up or on a different path to others you will be lonely, it is unavoidable. When i was 19 and was dumped by a girl, I had no one to turn to for help, because none of my classmates had ever been in love or been dumped by a girl, when I was dating a 18 year old when I was 47, I had no one to turn to, when I am building Phnk at age 52, I have no one to turn to because no one is doing it.
In the past four years I have faced the toughest of my times mentally, something I have never been accused of or taunted for anything ever in my life. My parents called me a loser, my sister, my wife, my daughter, and my girlfriend called me a loser, only my psychic never called me a loser. I am sure my friends also thought the same but they were kind enough not to say that on my face.
I was saddened, I had let down so many people in my life, people who depended on me, people who believed in me, people who cared for me.
I tried making amends, I started making efforts to become more understanding towards everyone, and doing things that would make everyone secure about me, that one day I will make enough money and that would make everyone’s life easier and simpler. I would not retaliate and be nice to people and do and say things that people wanted me to say and do.
I cleaned by act, I started working on Phnk to show everyone that I was working and that I was going somewhere. That was more than two years ago. Initially I started doing it all by myself, I wrote the database design, the API design and even the screen design and then I hired developers and other people to scale it. It took about 15 months to do that.
The first version bombed. Even with best efforts we could get about 250 users.
My best efforts to be nice and kind and successful had failed.
I was trying to be a person that I was never and never could be. Like I was brutal with strangers I was not brutal with my family and friends and girlfriend.
It was time to choose between me and the world. I chose myself, and that was 7 months ago.
In the true sense, I was all alone 7 months ago, nobody believed in me and there was practically no one to socialize with, I had a tiff with my parents and my friends and my girlfriend because I told them exactly how I felt about them. They all abandoned me.
I was free at last. I could be myself all over again, the way I was when I was 12.
This is when things stopped bothering me. Being broke, being homeless, not having a car, not having food to eat, not having a future, did not matter any more.
I was no longer hurt about anything, because I realized that I was trying to fulfill the dreams and expectations and ambitions of other people and not really my own ambition. My ambition is to create something that is long lasting, and that attracts a lot of users, whether it makes money or makes me rich is secondary and not important.
My friends and family and by now ex-girlfriend wanted me to make tonnes of money and very fast so that their future could be secure and they could have whatever luxuries that they wanted.
I became detached from everyone and everything, from people and from things.
I am now building Phnk the way I want to and at the pace I want to with very meager resources and I don’t care what anyone thinks.
You are lonely because you don’t have anyone to share your lives with and there is no one who understands us. What if you don’t need anyone to understand you and you are enough to understand yourself! Then you will not be lonely, you would be in aloneness. Self sufficient.
To not be lonely you would have to master our thoughts and not be rattled by them, because it’s your thoughts which makes you lonely.
In Gita Krishna says:
बन्धुरात्माऽऽत्मनस्तस्य येनात्मैवात्मना जितः।
अनात्मनस्तु शत्रुत्वे वर्तेतात्मैव शत्रुवत्।।6.6।।
Roughly translated it means:
The one who has conquered his mind, he has conquered himself, and the one who has not done it his mind is his biggest enemy.
What are thoughts and how they hurt us and how do you overpower them?
The most common thoughts that worry us or agitates us are related to ego, money and relationships. Thoughts like am I doing okay, how dare he call me an idiot, how dare they call me a loser, how does he have more money than me, how come she is prettier than me, am I fine, am I on the right track, am I letting my parents down, does she/he loves me, is she/he cheating on me, do they respect me, am i going to die, are they going to die, what if I am caught, what if my lie is caught….so on and so forth. Thoughts like these scare us.
What is the way to fix these thoughts, the most obvious answer is make money, do what everyone says, say things which everyone wants to hear, lie, not have a relationship or accept someone who is cheating on you. This way you would have avoided everything and not have these thoughts but then you will be faced with another set of thoughts — I am not true to myself, what am I doing with my life, what is this shit. It is these set of thoughts that will make you lose sleep, go insane and become infinitely sad.
So clearly the obvious answer is not the answer. The answer is to become empty, where nothing moves you and you do things the right way, the way you think is the way it should be done.
Past hurts us and the future scares us.
To reach a state of emptiness you have to reach a point where the past cannot hurt you any more and the future cannot scare you. Emptiness means you have control over your mind means no event no information no person no action rattles your core. Your core remains unaffected, unmoved, disconnected, unbiased. If someone abuses you, cheats on you, lies to you, spreads lies about you, says ugly things about you, hurts you emotionally or in your career, it does not rattle you or move you.
Which essentially means that you can live in the present, you can focus on the present and you can see the eye of the bird as Arjuna saw it. Make no mistake, living in the present does not mean ignoring the past or not planning for the future, it just means focusing on the present, the matter at hand, the job at hand and the issue at hand. If you don’t remember the past you will make the same mistake again and again and if you don’t know where you are going or what your goal is you will be forever be unsatisfied.
How to do it:
Let go of your ego
It is our ego that hurts us, not the people. If you reach a stage where you have let go of the ego, no one can hurt you. Ego is the emotions or thoughts you experience when you believe in your own importance. When someone says something or does something that questions this you feel a sense of negative emotions and that affects your actions and if someone validates this you have another set of emotions and that triggers a different train of actions.
Like some people believe that they are doing something, without knowing that actually they are being “made” to or are chosen to do something great.
There is a thin line between ego and self-worth, having self-worth is knowing what you are and being okay with it. So if you are a rose, you know that you are a rose and it does not matter whether you are the most beautiful flower or not, you are okay being a rose. Or if you are a frog and you still keep jumping here and there whether someone likes it or not.
Simplify: There is this advice by Sun Tzu in the Art of War
“Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win”
It means you have to win in your head first and have a full on strategy ready to win the war if you want to win the war, and if you go into the war without being fully prepared you are likely to lose — that is hustling.
You can win only if you have nothing else going on in your head but the thing that you want to win at.
To do that means you have to simplify your life, which means doing a bunch of things and when you do these things, your mind becomes empty and it just focuses on what it wants to focus on.
Accept others: If you accept people as they are and ignore what they say or do to us and let them do what they want you cannot be hurt and you can do whatever you want. My daughter taught me this, she wants to pursue her career on her own terms and no matter what I say to her based on my experience and knowledge she will not listen. I have to let her do what she wants to do and just be there for her in case she fails. I have accepted.
Accept yourself: The most difficult part of simplifying your life is to accept yourself, to accept that you are different, you are not like others. Even if you are weird, accept that, don’t try to fit into the mold of the world and try to be like others. Be yourself.
Don’t lie: Lies hurt us more than they hurt others. Others will make allowance for your lies because they know you lie so they will make alternate arrangements. Lies keep you on the edge; it makes you sleepless, as you think of various scenarios in which your lies would be caught and worry about consequences of that. If you tell the truth the onus of accepting the truth lies with someone else and not you.
Have no expectations: Don’t have expectations from others, don’t think if you are nice and kind to others they will be nice and kind to you, that is now how people are. Don’t think if you did something good for someone they will reciprocate. They may or they may not, don’t expect. Don’t expect that what you are doing will one day bring spectacular results, it may or it may not, do it still if that is what you want to do and if that is what makes you happy.
Do things for yourself not others: Do things for yourself not because someone wants you to. I cleared JEE because I wanted to do it not because my parents wanted me to do it. They want me to get a job and I don’t want to because I just don’t. It may be the safest thing to do but I don’t want to do it. If you start doing things for others there will never be a time when others will not want you to do something or the other.
Sacrifice/Prioritze future over present: Good is the enemy of great, Always prioritze future over the present. If you continue doing things for immediate gains you will never create something big or humungous because you are forever caught in the cycle of present, of eating out, of drinking expensive coffee, of taking luxury vacations. This is painful, letting go of luxuries in the present to focus on the future. You will suffer in more ways than you can imagine, but the day you succeed it will be spectacular and will make up for every suffering that you ever experienced. Believe in delayed gratification.
Believe in god/universe/destiny: Even if you have the perfect plan and you do everything right, things may still not work out for you, because you are not destined for it. Sometimes even if your actions are stupid and your plan is flawed things work out because the universe intended it to. Leave it to the Gods to do the right thing for you. Don’t judge or question God on why it is doing what it is doing. This is called belief and it is very very difficult to attain, to leave every fruit/outcome to the best judgment of an entity whose existence is questionable.
Simplifying your life and letting go of ego, would lead you to be detached to everything, even to the extent of being detached to yourself and your own actions. You would act based on what you believe in and be ready for any outcome. If you are able to do this no thought would trouble you, and you would not be lonely ever and the most unexpected outcome — you will be happy. I am the happiest when I am alone and lonely, I don’t have to react to people, manage their expectations or manage their insecurities, and I don’t think I will ever reach that stage being attached to anyone.
Recently my parents went on a vacation to Bali/Singapore, my wife went on a vacation to Mumbai and no one invited me. Earlier this would have hurt me and made me angry and do this and do that and say this and say that. But now it is just meh. It is how it is, and it does not make me angry. I am happy that my parents took a vacation after a long time and my dad was very happy and my mom was happy and that’s that.
This is how I used to look in 2021
And this is how I look now
