The Path Out of LonelinessSýnishorn

So up until this point, I’ve asked you to spend some time re-evaluating, being vulnerable, and sitting with this idea of loneliness and maybe some of the detours that it’s taken in our lives because we’ve listened to the lies.

What does a path out of loneliness look like?

First, and I’m sorry that I have to say this, but it’s not a 2 + 2 = 4 formula. I wish it was. I wish it was something simple that you could do. Do this and do this and do this and you’ll be done with loneliness for the rest of your life. Unfortunately, that’s not true.

Rather, it is an intentional journey. Something that you have to take a couple steps down this path and re-evaluate. And if you need to go back and start over or adjust, you can. It’s an intentional journey.

Before we can be a support to others, before we can walk alongside our brother or sister, we must take an honest look at ourselves and our own placement in this journey. Where are we? We cannot effectively walk with somebody on this path if we’ve not been their first.

Now listen, I’m not saying you have to have it all figured out, but you must be farther down the path than the person you’re trying to help. I love this Paul Bunyan quote, if you’ve ever read Paul Bunyan and The Pilgrim’s Progress, I think it captures this concept of the journey and our work on this journey quite well. Close your eyes and listen as I read this excerpt from The Pilgrim’s Progress:

“The hill, though high, I covet to ascent, the difficulty will not me offend; for I perceive the way to life lies here. Come, pluck up heart, let’s neither faint nor fear; better, though difficult, the right way to go, than wrong, though easy where the end is woe.”

If you think about that picture for a moment, choosing the difficult path in the moment is going to be easier in the long run than choosing the easy path now, which will lay more difficult roadblocks in your life down the road.

The path out of loneliness is both an individual and a collective one. First you must make this journey yourself and then you can go back and help others.

I spent some time in Nepal when I was in my junior year of college, and we went trekking through the Himalayas passing out tracks and sharing the Gospel. I had no idea where I was going, but I had Sherpas, I had guides, I had individuals that knew the paths well. It was a well-worn path for them, and they were able to walk with me through that in a place that I’d never been before. That’s what I’m talking about. You must know the path out of loneliness well enough for yourself and you can come back and walk with people on their own journey.

Here are some practical steps and questions to help evaluate where you are on this journey. Again, it doesn’t matter where you are. You just need to know where you are before you begin to help others.

1. Do you recognize the importance of growth? Meaning are you willing to challenge yourself as you walk along the path? Are you willing to grow and to expand your thoughts and your emotions and sit with that tension as we talked about earlier on?
2. Do you have a reflective honesty? Meaning are you willing to take a look inside of yourself and ask the tough questions?
3. Do you back down when things get hard or do you push through? Now I know all of us have different answers to that based on where we are in life, but overall, are you one that pushes through when things get hard?
4. Are you teachable?

If you can answer and wrestle with those four questions in a way that is honest, you are ready to begin to help others. These four questions are reflective in nature, and so, you must be honest with these answers. Again, like I said at the beginning of day one, no one else is looking at what you write down except for you unless you invite somebody else into this journey with you. Once these questions have been answered, then I want you to consider these next steps:

1. Acknowledge the loneliness you are facing. We talked about this earlier in day two.
2. Take ownership of what needs to change in your life.
3. Actively use the tools necessary to enact this change:
   
   • Focus on a growth mindset. What can you learn? What can you do to grow?
   • Lean into this reflective honesty that you’ve been working on. Again, it doesn’t have to be perfection. It can be a process.
   • Utilize or develop grit. What do I mean by that? Well, when you push through difficult things, you begin to develop this toughness that allows you to sit longer with difficult emotions, to sit longer with things that are more uncomfortable, and you begin to learn more as you develop grit.
   • Develop or utilize resilience. Resiliency is the ability to bounce back. Now some of us might be better at it than others and that’s okay. It’s your ability to bounce back. It’s your ability to pick yourself up after a stumble or a fall and say you know what, I’m okay. Let’s move forward. And it utilizes the grit that you’ve developed, the toughness as you move forward.
   • Move forward with a teachable humility. Meaning if somebody is farther along on the journey than you and has come back to walk with you, they may know things that you have not experienced yet, and they may have words of wisdom or advice that they want to give you. Are you able to sit with that in a teachable way? Do you have humility to sit with that person in that moment?
   • Embrace change. I think a lot of times for those of us walking on this path out of loneliness the familiar feels safe, there’s a false sense of safety because it’s familiar. The unknown, even if it’s going to be healthy, even if it’s going to be good, can be scary, and what you need to do is really lean into that grit and that resilience and that teachable heart and that humility and embrace the change that is coming because it’s going to be good.

I want you to understand that this is going to look different for everyone. Like I said earlier, I wish it was a 2 + 2 = 4 formula; it’s not. This is going to look different for everyone, so I want you to take some time and to explore what it might look like for you as you continue, begin, wherever you are on this journey, on this path out of loneliness. Don’t be afraid to take the first step.