How Not To Fall Down The Rabbit Hole: 5 Ways to Beat Loneliness When You Work For Yourself

My speciality is resilience and confidence. I was good at instilling these things in others well before I even considered becoming a coach, so with a bit of training, a fair amount of research and a whole lot of experience, I can safely say I am a dab-hand at bringing my clients to these places.

 Usually, it comes back to the same few, very simple questions:

“What does confidence look like to you?”

“What’s the difference between someone who has resilience and someone who doesn’t?”

And probably the biggest eye-opener when you really think about it “how will you know when you have these things, can you measure them?”

Excellent, I hear you say. But what’s your point?

My *personal* understanding of confidence is trusting that it’s ok not to have the answers, that I will either learn them when I’m ready or I will find someone else who does.  This allows me to take leaps of faith into areas that I am drawn to without feeling like I need to have all my ducks in a row, without needing to have all the knowledge before I start, by being happy to be a ‘beginner’ or noob and trust the process.

This attitude is what allowed me to leave my excellent job in commercial property to start up my coaching business. I knew I loved it, I had enough experience to know I was good at it and I had done enough research to understand what it was to run a business in service. So I set myself up as best I could and I jumped.

Now, everything they tell you about working for yourself is by and large true. It is exhilarating, it’s fulfilling, it’s tough and empowering.  It really, really is.  I can understand all those people who say, ‘I’ll never work for another person ever again’. I mean, you must understand tax and make sure you consider you’ll never have a pension, but this is 2021 and I am 35 – honestly, how many of us will actually have a pension by the time we get there?! I have always been cynical.

They also tell you that despite all the exciting stories you hear of people who throw a laptop in the back of a campervan and live happily ever after, you need to make provisions. Ensure you have some savings, because you’re not going to be raking it in for years… in fact, you’ll be lucky if you cover your bills in 6-12 months. And this is not because you’re not good enough, but because a) you have things you need to figure out first, which means making mistakes – some quite costly, and b) you need a name for yourself, and reputation is a slow grower. You can’t plant tomato seeds at 10am and sit there with your cheese sandwich open at 3pm.

Mindset is everything here. I have had other coaches and solotrepreneurs ask me how long I was prepared to give myself before I returned to my old life… most of them said 6 months. And I replied ‘urm, I’m not’ (queue blank faces). I am not going back to my old life. This is me, this is what I do and I shall not be giving up on it. I may have to adapt the plan, I may change my mind, I may have to make sacrifices, but let me tell you right now – if you are starting a major change with a ‘I’ll give it X to work’ mentality, you’ve already lost.

I was armed with all this knowledge. I was ready. But what they don’t warn you about is the loneliness.

This isn’t entirely true because I was warned about the loneliness. I was warned by another coach who was a few months ahead of me. I thought I understood what she meant because of COVID and living alone. I would sometimes have weekends where, other than to call the cat in (yep, I am one of those), I could feasibly not say a word out loud from Friday 5pm to Monday 9am.

But this is not the loneliness she meant.

Picture this. You are on a journey… those cringy words that you see on Instagram posts and don’t take seriously till BAM you’re in the middle of one.

No one else is on it with you. Your friends and family will eventually stop asking you about your day because it’s the norm. There’s no one at the tea point to chat about Sharon’s terrible blouse with and no one in IT who you can bribe to sort your laptop with a coffee and brownie from the ridiculously expensive hipster joint down the road.

If your work is mostly pc based, or you’re in service (like coaching) where the relationship tends to be quite one way, you’re probably not going to get much beyond discussing the weather or that banging curry you made last night.

It’s a lonely place. And I was there. Loving my job, feeling like I was winning at business but feeling like Tom Hanks in Cast Away once he’d lost his volleyball (“WWWwwiiillllsooonnnnn!!!!).

So, with my resilience hat on, what did I need to do?

1.      First thing is to connect. You know the saying, ‘we’re all in the same storm but we’re in different boats’? This is true of working for yourself. Other people who work for themselves will know how you feel, and they will feel it (/ have felt it) too. Connect with them. Build your network. Better still, get yourself a little clique of people doing the same as you so you can swap ideas and get inspiration.  I promise you, no one will think you’re sad – in fact, usually people assume your speaking out means you’ve got your shit together and they’re grateful.

2.      Learn to self-sooth. Play around with different things here, this is the ‘tool kit’ that many of us coaches and mindfulness consultants tell you about.  What makes you feel better when you’re lost in your own head? Is it meditation, knitting, cooking, playing Candy Crush? Build your tool kit and write it down because you can’t trust your memory when you’re in a funk.

3.      Move your body. Don’t underestimate the difference not commuting or stomping round an office makes. It’s no secret that exercise is good for mental health, but even if you weren’t hitting the gym, walking the dog or playing ping pong in the garden with the kids before, you were getting up, dressed and to work whereas now I bet you’re sitting at your desk in your spare room for hours on end.  Get out, go for a walk, get some fresh air, do some yoga, dance round the kitchen… anything. Just move.

4.      Take opportunities.  You were brave enough to make this leap, so know you can do anything. If an opportunity comes up, take it. New business, new ideas and new relationships hide in the most bizarre and unpredictable of places.

5.      Be open. Tell people. You’d think being a coach who fully understands the power of discussing thoughts in a safe and non-judgemental space that I would be all over that, wouldn’t you? It took for me to be in tears on zoom to a coach-friend who let me speak solidly for 30 mins without so much as an ‘ah huh’ to realise how lonely I was, and what I needed to do about it.  A problem shared is a problem halved, right? Well depends on who you shared it with and how, but there’s something to be said for getting it out in the open. It also gives the people who love you a chance to support you.

I remind myself of these 5 things regularly, because we all feel lost sometimes.

What is resilience if it’s not the ability to see that and make changes?

What is confidence if it’s not the ability to trust the process?

And how do I measure when I have these things? Good question. You tell me.