How to stop closing in yourself and become happy, how to get rid of loneliness and find yourself in life? Answers the blogger Gretchen Rubin.

“Loneliness is the most important enemy on the way to happiness. This is an obstacle that often seems to us insurmountable. The more I reflect on the topic of happiness, the more clearly I realize that you cannot underestimate and ignore the problem of loneliness. However, “be one” and “to be lonely” is not the same. Loneliness devastates and sucks strength, and solitude charges with energy and sets up in a creative way.

If I was asked to name the main key to a

happy life, I would have answered without hesitation – strong ties with people around. When they are absent, we feel lonely.

When I wrote the book “Better than before” about habits and their formation, I thought about whether they could help us cope with this problem? Here are a few habits that need to be developed in order to protect yourself from loneliness.

1. Help others

Sit friends with your child so that they can finally go to a romantic dinner. Join a charity trip to an orphanage, get a dog. Help and feel that someone needs you is very healing for ourselves. To achieve happiness, it is important not only to receive support, but also to provide it.

2. Communicate with people

Maintain contacts with colleagues – go for lunch together, invite coffee and do not refuse such invitations, do not miss corporate parties. Sign up for group training, go to cognitive seminars and trainings. There, in addition to gaining useful skills and knowledge, you can chat with like -minded people.

3. Sleep enough

Sleep disorders – a bodily symptom, which, oddly enough, also immerses us alone. You can’t fall asleep for a long time, often wake up at night, and during the day you cannot get rid of a sleepy state? Fuck out from this whirlpool. Chronic lack of sleep, not only prevents contact with other people, also becomes the cause of a bad mood that greatly undermines the immunity.

What to do? Here are a few of my favorite techniques: 30 minutes before going to bed, put aside the smartphone and laptop (the blue light from their screens breaks the dream), take a warm shower and smear the body cream. Completely, including heels. I found that as soon as I spend the extra couple of minutes to apply the cream on my feet and slightly massage them, then I completely relax. But most importantly – go to bed at the same time. This is the only habit of forming.

4. Stay open

Loneliness makes us secretive, suspicious and gloomy. Lonely people are more difficult than ordinary people to come into contact with a new person. If you notice such changes in yourself, and you take each new friend in advance negatively, then try to become more open. Make yourself the habit of starting a conversation first, smile a barista in coffee houses and sellers in stores.

5. Ask yourself the right questions

Do not ask yourself: “What is wrong with me?”Or” When it ends?”. The right question that is worth asking for himself: “What exactly I lack to stop being lonely?»Perhaps you just need a best friend. Or a romantic partner. Or do you want to be part of a large and friendly group. Or maybe you just don’t like living alone in an empty apartment?

There are many reasons and varieties of loneliness. Not all people want to have close friends if they have a husband or wife. Not all people like large companies, some prefer to while fit the time in the company of the closest. But as soon as you are honest with yourself and understand what you are missing for happiness, it will be very easy to overcome loneliness. With the help of these habits, for example “”.