SOLO | Make Money by Solving Loneliness Through Solitude

0:00Zootopia 2 has come home to Disney Plus. Let's go! Get ready for a new case. We're the greatest partners of all time! New friends. Joey Desnick. And your last name? Desnick. Dream team. Big new habitats. Zootopia has a secret reptile population. You can watch the record breaking phenomenon at home. Zootopia 2, now available on Disney Plus rated PG. Here right now you can get Disney Plus and Hulu for just $4.99 a month for three months with a special limit to time off or ends March 24th. After three months playing auto renews at $12.99 a month, terms apply. You're listening to the Travis Makes Money podcast presented by GoHighLevel.com. For a free 30-day trial of the best all-in-one digital marketing software tool on the planet, just go to GoHighLevel.com slash Travis. What is the antidote to loneliness? Welcome back to the show. I'm Travis Chappell, your host, and on these episodes just me, you and the mic. These are basically just lessons that I've taken away from all of the work that I've done in the personal development space over the last almost decade

1:00of my life, all the interviews that I've conducted with some of the world's most successful people, but also the hundreds of books that I've consumed, and I don't even know, I mean hundreds, maybe probably thousands of hours of podcasts. And so these episodes are basically just, here's a bunch of stuff that I've learned, hopefully it's helpful to you. And today we're talking a little bit more about loneliness because that's what we talked about a lot here on the show, and then also on my other show, Travis Makes Friends. So far to pose the question to you, what is the antidote to loneliness? You probably assume something like community events, concerts, shows, something like that. And while some of that is actually really helpful, the problem is that we have not properly defined the terms. So if you have not listened to this on previous episode, there are two sort of definitions for this. One of them is loneliness, the other one is social isolation. The solutions that we just mentioned are more solutions to the social isolation piece, which is an objective measurement of how much time you're spending with other people. But it is not as much of a solution for the loneliness side, which is more of a subjective, internal feeling of not belonging to a community or group.

2:04So research for the loneliness side, because this is more a little bit more difficult to solve, because somebody could have all these feelings of loneliness, even though they seemingly are somebody who's really connected to a lot of people. They're seemingly ingratiated in a great friend group, and they have a wonderful support group. They have family and friends who love them, but they still on the inside feel lonely. So research actually shows that the true antidote loneliness, because it is this subjective internal state, is loneliness. So antidote loneliness being a loneliness. It's ironic that the cure to loneliness is actually being alone, but it seems to me that that's the case. And that's probably the biggest thing that I've realized that is escaping the majority of the solutions that people are offering, at least front facing. Most people are talking about like, oh, go make better friends, and it's about proximity, and it's about duration, and it's about all these, and it's like, look, all those things are great, and they are helpful, but not necessarily

3:04for this loneliness piece. And I think that the ultimate cure to loneliness is actually being alone, which sounds weird. When we know ourselves, we are better qualified to get to know others. Even Henry David Throes said, I never found the companion that was so companion. Let me say that again. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. And then more than a century later, Wendell Berry said, in the wild places, where one is without human obligation, one's inner voice has become audible. The more coherent one becomes with oneself as a creature, the more fully one enters into the communion of all creatures. So the first time someone suggested that I spent an entire evening alone, I thought they were crazy, I thought they were insane. You know, he may as well just told me to run of ultra marathon or watch all of Grey's Anatomy or something like that. I mean, there's just no way that was going to happen. Now, at this point in my life,

4:05I can't imagine never having any time alone. I actually find myself craving time alone. When I do get to spend time by myself, I find myself enjoying that time. And sometimes that means if I'm out traveling somewhere, I take myself to dinner. And before I always looked at it, I was like, look at those losers by themselves with nobody to hang out with, you know what I mean? But now it's like a, it's a very enjoyable experience to take myself out to dinner and grab some food and just sit there alone with my thoughts or put on a podcast and listen to something or write some notes or do some journaling or something like that. I actually enjoy spending time with myself. So here are my guidelines for a loneliness or solitude. All right, first off, this episode of the show is brought to you by Mars Men. So look, as I don't know if everybody listening knows this, but a couple of years ago, I was diagnosed with cancer. And around that time, I also noticed that my testosterone levels were dropping like crazy. And I know that some of it was due to the fact that my body was sort of in disarray. But then I also learned through this experience

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7:10But it knows nothing about your work. Slackbot is different. It doesn't just know the facts. It knows your schedule. It can turn a brain store into a brief and it doesn't need to be taught. Because Slackbot isn't just another AI. It's AI that knows your work as well as you do. Visit slack.com forward slash meet Slackbot to learn more. Find what works for you. In the world we live in today, there are just way too many people who are concerned with having the sexiest hook on their content and not concerned with the false information that might be giving. So my advice, if someone is preaching one way like it's the gospel, it's probably not true and they're probably selling something. Nutrition's probably the biggest culprit here. Self-proclaimed experts will talk. Adnazium about keto or vegan or carnivore and how everybody should do this one thing. But the end of the day, the nutrition advice that I find that I follow is basically personalized because it has to be something that works for you,

8:11something that you can stick to that works. The best plan is the one that you'll actually follow long-term. And it's the same for solitude. So find what works for you. Some people is gonna tell you that it's all about meditation. Some people will tell you to go for a walk. Some people will tell you to write affirmations or to journal about gratitude. And any and all of those are fantastic potential tools for you. But if you try to force yourself to do something that doesn't feel natural to you, it doesn't feel like something that you're going to be able to continue to repeat over a long enough time frame, then you're probably less likely to continue doing that thing. And it's probably not going to work for you. So for me, I like solitude in movement and in nature. So going for a walk, a hike, going for a drive, something like that, it's the time where I enjoy being with myself and my thoughts. And for every reason, I really like the movement piece. In fact, I have a friend, his name is Sharon Svivatsa. He's the, actually, he's now the CEO. They just made him the CEO of accession.com, which is Alex and Leila Hermosi's company.

9:12I remember one time we were talking and he told me that sometimes he will buy a flight. So he's like in the LA area, he'll buy a flight, like a quick flight, like LA to Phoenix or LA to Vegas or something like that. And he just buys a round trip ticket for one day, has no intention of staying there. He'll just fly there in, you know, the morning, fly back in the afternoon, but it's literally only for the purpose of just getting by himself and being able to write and move at the same time. The movement of being in the plane and then the activity of writing is what allows him to be able to be alone with his thoughts and just think more clearly and spend time with himself. So whether it's buying a flight for yourself or it's going on a walk and dictating notes to your phones, you can remember stuff for later that you can digest and then write down a little bit more later, find what works for you. There's no one size fits all diet here. These are just the things that I've found that work for me and some things that have worked for people that I know. Number two, do not allow distractions.

10:14Okay, so you can't use this as an excuse to just like go get yourself a hotel room for the night and binge watch Netflix or something like that. Or even read a book, you know, like, and that might be a part of the overall experience of just something that you enjoy that's enriching to you. But you can't escape into distraction is the point. The point of this aloneness concept is to be alone with yourself, your thoughts in your mind and to not go crazy, you know, that was why I was so, I had such a big objection to it when it was first mentioned to me, it was a mentor of mine, it was a my early 20s and he was like, I was clearly struggling. I forget exactly the context, but I was clearly struggling with a big decision that I was coming to and he was like, do you ever just spend an entire evening alone with no distractions, no music, no podcasts, no books, no TV just you? And I was like, no, that's a behavior of a crazy person, bro. Like what are you talking about? No, I have not done that. But that is where the magic happens because chances are if you feel like you cannot allow yourself

11:17to be alone, then it means that there's probably something in your mind that you are subconsciously or consciously trying to avoid resolving. There's maybe a behavior that you're exhibiting, that you know is wrong, that you know is bad. And if you get alone with your thoughts, you start tearing yourself up about it and you start feeling guilt or you start feeling shame or you start feeling a way that you don't want to feel. So you introduce distractions into your life to avoid your own connection to your deeper, higher self, which is probably the thing that's causing you to feel those feelings of loneliness because you can be surrounded by people. But if you don't like you, if you don't like spending time with you, if you don't respect yourself, if you don't have self-esteem, then you're going to feel lonely regardless of how many people are surrounding you. And this is why we see so many, you know, I just watched that documentary inside the manosphere. I think this is why we see so many young men that are getting sucked into this red pill culture because they want the community and the connection

12:20that they don't have. And they view the cars, the girls, the watches, the money in their bank account. They view that as the method by which they're going to fill their lives with a bunch of other people. And it works, right? It works like you go make a bunch of money, you drive a nice car, you live in the penthouse and you have beautiful girls around you and your young man, like you will get surrounded by a bunch of people. However, the question becomes, are those the people that you really want to surround yourself with? Because as soon as you go through a hard time, as soon as you have your first big loss in business or you lose a bunch of money or your car gets reposed, those people are going to leave as fast as they came into your life because that's not built on anything real, which is only going to further drive you into more isolation and stir up those feelings of loneliness even more. So if you have anything with you when you're practicing this isolation, maybe it's just something to record your thoughts

13:22with one of the sponsors of the show in the past was a company called Plod AI. And it's like a little device that I can put on the back of my phone. You hit a little button on it. It records everything that you say and then you go into the app later and it transcribes everything using AI and basically gives you a synopsis of all of the thoughts that you had while you were dictating these things to this little device. But I like that little device because there's nothing, you know, if you just record on your phone, you could probably get distracted by all the potential things that you can do on your phone. But if you have something like this, like a recorder or a device like the Plod AI tool that I've used in the past, then that can be something that eliminates distraction but still allows you to get your thoughts out. So maybe bring something like that if you like to dictate but if you like to write, bring a journal and a pen, try not to bring a laptop or an iPad. Again, there's so many distractions that can be on there that will just pull you down, deep into a rabbit hole or you'd start going like. America leads the world in medicine development. It matters. We get new medicines first, nearly three years faster.

14:22Five million Americans go to work because we make medicines here at home and not relying on other countries keeps us safe. But China is racing to overtake us. Will we let them or will we choose to stay ahead? When America leads, America cures. Let's tell Washington to keep us in the lead. Learn how at AmericaCures.com, paid for by Pharma. This episode is brought to you by Indeed. Stop waiting around for the perfect candidate. Instead, use Indeed sponsor jobs to find the right people with the right skills fast. It's a simple way to make sure your listing is the first candidate to see. According to Indeed data, sponsor jobs have four times more applicants than non-sponsored jobs. So go build your dream team today with Indeed. Get a $75 sponsor job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast, Terms and conditions apply. Oh, I forgot to answer all my emails. Let me just do that real quick. And so you end up not spending any time alone. So if you bring anything, try to make it something physical, like a journal with like actual paper

15:23and a real pen to write down on or like a little device that records if you'd prefer to speak your thoughts rather than write your thoughts. So the rule, the hard and fast rule is no consumption allowed during this time. Only creation is allowed. Only ideation is allowed. Only thoughts are allowed during this time. No consumption of anything external. So that's secondly, do not allow distractions. So final works for you. Do not allow distractions. Third, engage in the discomfort. Engage in the discomfort. I mean, this is true across anything meaningful and anything meaningful in life is going to come with a level of discomfort. And probably the degree to which you are uncomfortable is also the degree to which it will be helpful in your life. Meaning the more uncomfortable it is, the more likely the result is going to be better in your life. So engage in the discomfort. If you've never done this before, you might feel really anxious. You might feel really uncomfortable. And that's okay, that's part of the process. So allow yourself to start where you are. If you've never done this before,

16:24it's probably a bad idea to just like, I've never spent an evening alone with myself, but I'm gonna go do this five-day darkness isolation retreat. Like this is something that people can actually do right now. I've had friends who've actually done this where you can go to a retreat center and basically get locked into a room for five days where the lights are completely dark. Like there's complete darkness, complete isolation for five full days. Some of them have the option to basically fast the whole time. Some of them have the option to have like a smoothie delivered to your door once a day or something. So it's like, if you've never done this before, maybe not a great idea to basically put yourself into this situation where you don't have any practice or any skill of being by yourself because it is a skill that you have to sharpen, which is why the solitary confinement exists as a punishment in the prison system because they punish people by making them be by themselves. And if you are not well practiced at this, then that can feel extremely overwhelming and very scary. And you could go to some really dark places really soon.

17:25So allow yourself to start where you are. Engage in the discomfort. If you're feeling anxious, if you're feeling uncomfortable, that's okay, it's all part of the process. It also means that you may have some things to work through, which are causing you to feel this loneliness or this anxiety or this stress when you get by yourself. And so that's an indicator that you're probably doing the right thing if this is something that makes you extremely uncomfortable. The loneliness existence you can have is to not have a good relationship with yourself because you're the only person who has to spend every second of every day for the rest of your life with you. The closest person to you in your life will spend a fraction of the time that you are going to spend with you. So you gotta get comfortable being by yourself. Engage in the discomfort. Number four, ask yourself questions. Examine your thoughts, examine your feelings, your emotions when you're alone and start to interrogate yourself. If this feeling of anxiety starts coming in,

18:27try as best as you can to pull yourself out of your body, like you're a floating spirit, a third party objective spirit scientist who is observing your emotional state in that moment and trying to reverse engineer with the root cause of that. Try your best to pull yourself out of that. And if you feel these feelings of anxiety, if you feel these feelings of discomfort or pain or struggle or stress or loneliness or whatever it is, try your best to not immediately try to escape it, right? So don't be drinking alcohol or smoking weed or any other drug of choice. Allow yourself to engage in that discomfort and then pull yourself out of your body as much as you can and try to ask yourself the questions that are gonna allow you to get to the root of this problem. Why am I feeling like this? Where is this feeling come from? Is there an emotional trigger that happened because I got by myself, because there's nobody else here, because there's no distractions, because there's no vices or there's no substances that I'm allowing myself to lean on in this moment?

19:27What are the things that are causing this? Ask those questions, ask why you're feeling that way. If you've been acting in accordance with your internal identity that could be a source of the anxiousness that you're feeling or the loneliness that you're feeling, maybe there's something that you're doing that you perceive as against how you've normally identified, so you identify as a good person and you're doing something consistently that you know in your mind is combative to the nature of what you believe a good person to be. That could be the source of that thing, so allow yourself to go there. Am I trying to avoid this because I know it's wrong and I know it's bad, but I don't wanna stop doing it. Am I trying to avoid the reality of that? I am not doing something that I think I should be doing because all of those things go into the way that you're going to view yourself and your subconscious mind is a supercomputer, man. It can process 40, 50,000 thoughts at one time. Your conscious mind only one. So try to locate the files that exist in the subconscious

20:30and bring them to the conscious mind so you can help try to tackle some of the reasons for why you're feeling the way that you're feeling. These are some of the questions to work through, but if you never face them head on, then you're going to need distraction to pull you away from yourself, which is where addiction, alcohol, depression, laziness, loneliness, all those things stem from this desire to not allow yourself to be alone and work through the things that you know that you probably should be working through. So ask yourself questions and allow yourself to go there. Lastly, take action. So here's where the river meets the road. You gotta be willing to do something about the answers that you come up with. You have to be honest with yourself so that you can be honest with those closest to you. You have to accept yourself first if you want those closest to you to accept you. You have to act differently if your actions are causing you to not like yourself or to not respect yourself. So ultimately, how you view yourself will determine how others view you.

21:32It rubs off, people are intuitive. Again, we have that supercomputer subconscious mind. So if you can't trust you, then why should anybody else trust you? If you don't like you, then why should other people like you? If you don't respect you, how can you expect that others are going to teach you how to respect yourself? You must engage with this internal conflict and meet these realities head on because nobody's gonna step in and do it for you. You must engage and you must act. But the good news is that if we do these things, then you will be able to experience what true connection and true meaning is. You can, once you've connected with yourself, and by the way, if you're a religious, I would put this into the category of connecting with yourself. Like to me, this is sort of one and the same. If you're not religious, it might just be connecting to you and your inner child or your experience with the world. If you are religious, it might be you connecting to yourself and then you connecting with your creator.

22:32It might be you connecting with the universe. It might be you connecting with this higher power that as you see the way that it works through you, this is one and the same. So the challenge for anybody listening is to schedule at least 30 minutes of alone time this week. Especially if you've never done it, like 30 minutes can feel like a long time to just sit there, like just with nothing else going on or to go for a walk by yourself with no distractions, go for a drive without turning on music, it can feel sort of daunting at first. So if you're starting from scratch, 30 minutes, do not skip, allow yourself to just be with you, allow yourself to go to the places that you normally try to avoid, allow yourself to engage with the things that you're normally trying to distract yourself from. And if you do this over a long enough period of time, you'll find that not only will your internal feelings of subjective loneliness start to subside, at least this is my anecdotal experience, but also your ability to connect with other people

23:33will increase dramatically because the more in tune you are with you, the more in tune your relationships with other people can be. So do not skip this, spend some time alone and dig in, dig in, that is it for this episode of the show. Again, at Travis Chappell on Instagram, shoot me a DM, ask me a question, we'll talk about a tackle it in a future episode of the show where you can email me Travis at Travis Chappell doc. Thanks so much again for taking the time to tune into this episode and we'll catch you guys in the next one, peace. Do you love romcoms? Do you wish you could talk about Christmas movies year round? Then we have the perfect podcast for you, Holmarke's podcast. Throughout the year, we cover all things, romance, holiday and Holmarke, including recaps of every Holmarke show, like when calls the heart and the way home. You can also get loads of bonus content covering shows like Bridgerton, Sweet Magnolia's, and just like that. We are an all female group of friends who are passionate for these shows and movies and give our honest opinions

24:33as well as gosh over what we love so much. But that's not all. Every Monday there are interviews with all your favorite actors, writers, directors, and more. Check out Holmarke's podcasts on all your podcast providers and on YouTube. That's Holmarke's podcast wherever you listen to podcasts.