I want to talk to you all today about one of the biggest problems I see in the world loneliness this is a problem that I think is getting worse and worse and we're starting to see almost a silent epidemic of it the real challenge with loneliness is that a lot of people who are lonely will try really hard to no longer be lonely they'll do everything from watching like YouTube videos and stuff like that right to stuff like taking courses and they'll even try to do things like just go out there and meet people and
the real troubling thing is that the more people that we work with the more that we're actually learning that people are putting in a ton of effort but it doesn't seem to be yielding anything there are a lot of people out there who will give advice to lonely people like just go out there and meet people or why don't you do this or you would be less lonely if you did this and so we sort of put the burden of fixing loneliness on the person themselves because that's generally how we approach problems right because like
if something's broken with you let's say you're out of shape or you need to be healthier this is a problem that fundamentally like you need to fix the challenge is that when it comes to loan loneliness it's not a problem that you can fix on your own it requires another human being's effort and that's where we sort of see the Crux of the problem so let's start by understanding what are some of the macro level changes we're seeing in the world today the first thing is that we're a society that is increasingly becoming dependent on
Independence and we see especially in things like the anti-work movement that people can't rely on other groups of people anymore and that's the direction that our society is moving in and so if we really think about it what Society is sort of teaching us is to be independent and they're making it so easy to be independent that we've stopped learning how to function with other human beings and now it actually becomes difficult to be connected to another human being [Music] the next thing that I want to talk a little bit about is that the world
is fundamentally becoming a more stressful place and this is something that I don't hear acknowledged a whole lot now I'm not saying that the world is getting worse after all we can get groceries delivered to our house right but I think what people don't really acknowledge is that the world is objectively becoming more stressful so 30 years ago cardiovascular disease in cancer were the two biggest sources of suffering and mortality amongst the human race mental health is now number one so the world is objectively becoming a more stressful place and we're sort of seeing why
this is happening because as we can do more stuff at home people are demanding more stuff of us at home and so what is the natural response how are human beings adapting to the stress we tend to retreat to Safe spaces so we see that also that the internet is kind of encouraging toxicity what the internet relies on is emotional engagement a lot of the content that you click on on the internet makes you feel worse and so as these these platforms are emotionally engaging us and stressing us out we have to retreat to Safe
spaces and by the way since now we can talk to everyone from the internet I can find a thousand people who agree with me a hundred percent and I can talk to a new person every day for three years and I will only hear stuff that I already believe these are Echo Chambers and so what are we seeing as a consequence of the formation of these Echo Chambers and safe spaces on the internet which by the way I don't think are bad I'm just saying if we want to we need to understand as a society
like what impacts these are having what these essentially breed is intolerance right because that's the point of a safe space is that hey we're going to tolerate particular Behavior but we're not going to tolerate this other stuff that we disagree with and so this is a Croc the Crux of the problem with loneliness is there a lot of people out there and we as a human society have started to say hey we acknowledge that you have problems but it's not my responsibility to fix them it's someone else's responsibility to fix them I'm not responsible for
this other human being which is completely correct and this is the core problem is that loneliness is the only problem that an individual cannot fix but the responsibility is falling on everyone else when we have a problem in society we put the responsibility on the individual and we as individuals don't take responsibility for anyone else us and that works for a lot of problems and it has a ton of advantages because we have people who are learning how to change tires and learning how to eat healthy and learning how to do intermittent fasting and learning
how to bake bread and that's really cool but there's one problem that you can't solve by yourself on the internet and that is loneliness and this is why if we continue moving in this direction this is not going to get better because the fundamental issue here the fundamental thing that has changed is that human beings are no longer responsible for each other and how is someone who is lonely supposed to fix that it requires another human being [Music] so what do we do about this this is where we really need to decide as a society
like whether we're okay with the direction that things are going and I think that there are a couple of things we can absolutely do but they're things that we don't want to do and they're things that we're not going to like doing the first is we need to be more tolerant so the internet once again is breeding intolerance there's this principle called online drift which sort of clearly demonstrates that if you say something contrarian you are likely to get banned from all the spaces except the ones that agree with you and that's why we see
a polarization across Humanity so just because someone disagrees with you doesn't mean that you need to ostracize them try to like listen to other people the second thing that we need to do is recognize that another human being cannot fix loneliness like they can't do it on their own and as long as our problem solving strategy is completely independent loneliness will never get better and so what does that mean for you that means that you may have to think about other people you may have to invite other people who you may not think about inviting
or may not even want to invite you are entitled to invite whoever you want I'm not saying that you're you should be forced to but what I'm saying is understand the implication of going by what you're entitled to instead of what is like acting from compassion because the other thing is when we take what is rightfully ours it's usually from a selfish perspective and why have we become increasingly selfish is because we're going increasingly independent because we can't rely on anyone else to take care of us so we have to take care of ourselves but
practically this is a this is a recipe for disaster especially when it comes to loneliness so the second thing that you really have to think a little bit about is that you may not be able to fix your own loneliness but you can absolutely help someone else's and loneliness is the one problem you cannot expect someone to fix on their own and the third thing is that even if you are lonely there's one major thing that you can try to do differently which is reach out to someone else for their sake instead of your own
so if we look at the psychology of loneliness there's a huge problem where usually these people have some kind of internal War I'm alone I don't want to be alone therefore I'm going to reach out to someone else and when I reach out to someone else I'm also met with all kinds of emotional resistance sometimes we'll even like over analyze what people do or think or say which is part of the reason we're lonely in the first place but even when we're lonely we try to reach out to other people for our benefit and so
in a weird way you're making the same mistake that the people who aren't lonely are making which is that you're thinking about yourself and when you're thinking about your own best interest that's when the anxiety becomes a real problem because if we're thinking about your best interest sure you're lonely but if you go reach out to someone like they're gonna dislike you or you'll be anxious so if you're protecting yourself what are you gonna do it's easier to avoid the anxiety and Be Lonely by myself and this is the tug of war that people who
are lonely fall into right one day I'm lonely once that loneliness Rises to a level that becomes intolerant I'm going to overcome my social anxiety and reach out to another human being but the second that that social anxiety Rises beyond my loneliness I will slip back and I will be by myself and so if the goal is to make yourself feel better when you reach out to another human being you are ultimately not going to be in control as the loneliness starts to decrease because you're spending time with people the anxiety starts to increase the
we've tipped Beyond and now we switch right and then when I'm alone my anxiety is zero my loneliness starts to climb oh I'm going to reach out to people as I reach out to people now I'm sitting with people at a restaurant this starts to happen and the second I get here where my anxiety is now higher than my loneliness I Retreat yeah I'm out guys I'll see y'all later and then you never respond to any texts again so as long as you are trying to solve loneliness for your own sake you will always be
the victim of your own internal anxieties or intolerant emotional state so how do you get over this this is where when you reach out to someone else even if you yourself are lonely think about the other person think about trying to alleviate their loneliness think about enriching their life think about other human beings and the beautiful thing is that if you take people who have a lot of internal negative emotion doing something in service to others actually helps you conquer that emotion this is something you learn a lot if you practice Psychiatry or you've worked
with a psychiatrist you're going to know that you can experience all kinds of negative emotions but you've got to have a good enough reason to tolerate those negative emotions and if the good enough reason is I want to make my life better and you're engaging in a situation that makes you feel worse what are you gonna do you're going to retreat from the situation so if you want to solve your own loneliness I know it sounds bizarre but stop thinking about yourself which is so damn hard because all of society is telling us only think
about yourself we've become so hell-bent on Independence and we become so responsible for our own problems and more importantly we've absolved ourselves of responsibility for other people's problems obviously right you're correct I'm not saying you're wrong but then whose problem is it who's actually going to fix it well it's their problem well fair enough except there's one problem that they can't fix on their own which is loneliness and so as a whole we need to start being more tolerant of each other try to be tolerant of other people's views try to think about someone else
try to really consider that hey loneliness is the one problem this person cannot fix and if you yourself struggle with loneliness chances are the reason you're lonely is because you ping pong between negative emotions and one negative emotion is controlling you at any given time because you are out there trying to fix your own problems because that's what everyone does and this is the one situation where fixing your own problems doesn't work and so even if you are struggling with this reach out to three people irrespective of whether you're lonely or not reach out to
three people and engage them in conversation invite them to something and this is where your mind may say a host of all other things like your mind may say but like what if they don't like me that's okay we're not saying you have to pick the worst people on the list right so pick like people in The Gray Zone and say hey like hey how are you doing nowadays like you want to hang out sometime and this is where your mind may say all kinds of things to stop you but just notice those for a
second don't give in to them right away I'm not saying open the door to unending toxicity seriously I'm not but there's a decent chance that you know your mind will say all kinds of things like oh like but I haven't talked to this person in a long time that's okay if you're lonely how does it feel if someone you haven't heard from in a year reaches out to you says hey what's up you want to hang out sometime feels amazing right so our watch out for the things that your mind tells you to do but
seriously just reach out to three people because this is the one problem that like I hate to break it to y'all I can't fix this I can do a lot of things healthy gamer HG we can do a lot of things and we do help a lot of people with a lot of things but I can't be everyone's friend right and I'm gonna need y'all's help this is why we started this because like we can't do it on our own that's the whole idea behind HG and we've come an incredibly long way we have over
a hundred people who've decided hey you know what I want to help other people they're dedicated individuals and they've helped now 12 000 people in 119 countries and there's a lot that we can do but there are some problems that I hate to break it to you all the only person who can tackle it is you and loneliness is the top of that list so reach out to someone else and try to make someone else's life better
