What to Do When Starting Your Business is Lonely

I’m sure for every entrepreneur, there comes a moment, if not several, where you feel entirely alone in your business endeavor. 

If you have been in this position, you know exactly what I’m talking about: you finally had a small win, and excited, you go to share it with someone. Only for them to be nonplussed. Either they don’t understand, they don’t think it’s enough, or they have a criticism ready about how you could do better in their own opinion. 

It’s a gutting feeling. And it can lead to other negative feelings on your part. Most especially, it can make it feel like your business venture is extremely lonely. 

Conventional wisdom will tell you to network; I am going to tell you something a little different. 

There is good reason conventional wisdom will tell you that you need to network more and find people who have similar goals to you. This is good, solid advice for just about everyone (including myself) out there. 

You learn things around other people you do not learn when you are alone or around the same people repeatedly. If you’re only around the same people and you never vary your company, you risk the “echo chamber” effect. All you’ll hear is what you are already thinking. And that’s not healthy. 

Anyone who’s been in a closed social system of any kind, be it religious or otherwise, can tell you that. You don’t learn in a vacuum. 

That being said, if you are a lone wolf mentality, then networking, getting out there and meeting other peoples, and making connection can bring with it a host of other anxieties. I should know, many of those anxieties are ones I face daily. 

So, here’s how I deal with some of my own bouts of loneliness. I’m no authority, but these have worked for me, and I’m sure some of you out there may find them helpful, too. 

Write your emotions. 

No, I don’t mean journaling. Journaling can be good, but it can also have a spiraling, tail-biting effect. You end up going over the same hurts repeatedly with no resolution in sight. This may be helpful in the moment, but if you are just journaling to get out your feelings and not to actually do anything about them, then you aren’t actually helping yourself in the long run. 

No, I’m talking about two specific practices which I have done and have helped me deal not only with my loneliness as a business owner, but my own emotional state as I try to regulate my emotions. 

1. Turn your emotions into creative writing. 

When I’m working on Vindico, my novel, I will sometimes channel my feelings into my writing. This helps either create a new character that helps bridge a gap in the storyline, or it adds a new dimension to one of my existing characters. Vindico is not a simple book. It’s not meant to be. It requires layers of emotions, history, action, and villains to make it what I dream it to be. 

And channeling emotions I’m having trouble handling to a character actually helps make those characters more believable. For instance, my main female character (MFC) has a lot of drama in her family history that ties in with the main male character (MMC). Part of understanding that family drama is in understanding her emotions. When I feel emotions, I think she would also feel, then I channel those into characters sketches for her family. 

Same thing for my MMC. Unlike my MFC, his family is virtually non-existent. so for him. His family is primarily adoptive and very masculine. He doesn’t always understand the MFC’s point of view or why it matters for her to stay in a situation that makes her desperately unhappy because he never had those expectations put on him the way the MFC did. 

Emotions are powerful things for any reader. So, when you feel them yourself, pouring them into your creative writing is exceptionally helpful, and it’s constructive if your goal one day is to be a published author. 

2. Writing letters only you see to the people who have hurt or are hurting you. 

For those of you who are in situations where you can’t express your frustrations or emotions to the people who activate those frustrations, writing letters to them that explain why you are frustrated and feeling the way you feel without the confrontation. 

Confrontations are only good in a few situations. A different of opinion or when the person in question won’t understand is not one of them. For instance, if the person you feel you need to confront isn’t emotionally stable themselves, then don’t bother. Get your own emotions under control first. Another instance is if the disagreement is generational. 

Generational wars have been part of our larger narrative for decades by this point. But, if you are headed for a confrontation and the person in question falls back on their generation as an excuse or justification, then you might be better off leaving things as they are. Not every person in every generation is open-minded or willing to learn and change their attitude with the times. 

Some people might answer and say you should just cut that person out of your life. In extreme cases, this is exactly what you need to do, but it’s not that simple for everyone. 

You may not have the luxury because of other mitigating factors, such as you are the only child or might as well be. This situation is more common than you think too. There are many reasons you can’t just burn your bridges. 

So, what should you do? Well, I do a type of journaling where I write secret letters that no one else by myself gets to see. And I write them to the people I can’t confront. Passive aggressive? Perhaps, but I have found that once I do so, I can work through my own thoughts, emotions, and reasons on my issues with that person in a much clearer frame of mind. 

And what usually happens is that I become more confident in who I am as a person so that when I have to deal with them, I can ask for my needs to be met in a calmer, more polite way. 

So, those are my two methods of writing out my emotions that constructively deal not only with my loneliness, but with the other negative emotions that come with it. 

Allow yourself the feeling, then do one thing that gives you control. 

Part of the issue with any negative emotion is the sense that you’ve lost control of something. This is especially true with loneliness because you then go on a downward spiral of all the times you’ve failed to keep friends and contacts in the past and keep dredging up old sorrows that really don’t have a place in your life anymore. 

It’s ok to feel those feelings. I’m all in favor of allowing yourself to take the time and space to acknowledge what you feel. However, what you also need to do is take control. 

Easier said than done, right? 

Oh, most definitely. So do one small thing that gives you control. This can be something mundane like picking up one small corner of your space, taking a bag of trash out, doing a load of laundry, or yes, even just throwing away old papers you don’t need anymore. 

Make it small, make it quick. Make it satisfying. I spend one weekend painting a wall. Just one wall. It then turned into one and a half before I quit. I felt much better afterwards and more in control. Another time, I just scrubbed a section of tile in my bathroom. Not the whole bathroom. Just one little section. 

Cleaning your space is taking ownership back in one small area of your life. When you’ve done that, then you find you can actually go on to the next thing. And the next. Until one day, you don’t notice you’re lonely, or you have found your network of people. 

Don’t fall down the rabbit hole of doom scrolling. 

Instead, try a brain game. I’ve used a company called Lumosity on and off for a few years. It’s incredibly helpful because it refocuses your brain when you’re distracted by your emotions. Unlike most app-based games, you can’t be mindless when you play games on Lumosity’s app. You actually have to put in some work to win the game. 

If you’re looking for types of games outside of Lumosity, I’ve found memory and logic games are especially helpful. I’ve found because they are very specific skills that require you to concentrate. You can’t blank out, you can’t check out, you have to be there in the moment and solve the puzzle. 

Which means you can’t focus on your trigger for a moment, and you have to pay attention to what’s in front of you. Do that for a couple of minutes and the thing that upset you is suddenly no longer there. 

It’s more productive than doom scrolling, and you are actually helping your brain function at its best capacity. Oh, and if you use Lumosity, then you have a timer in each game, so you have a very specific start and end time. 

Which means you don’t lose the entire day playing a game to make you forget. 

Lumosity didn’t sponsor this post, by the way, I just mentioned it because I actually use it and have noticed a difference. 

Keep to the vision you have for your business. 

Remember why you started down the path you did in the first place. 

After I calm down from whatever emotional reaction I’ve just had, I remember I am doing what I am doing because I wanted a greater sense of personal freedom and I didn’t want to be tied to someone else’s idea of success. I wanted my own, and I wanted my own terms. 

And, ultimately, I wanted my dream for my life. Not someone else’s. 

Is my dream worth someone else’s opinion or criticism? Ultimately, the answer is a resounding NO. 

Those are also powerful emotions and when you can remember the why to your business, whatever negative emotion you are having, whatever loneliness you feel, will suddenly seem like a small price to pay for what you ultimately want. Even the snide comments some relative or acquaintance makes don’t seem to matter that much.

Because, in the end, it is a matter of you changing the narrative to the tale of your life. But it starts when you take control of the emotion, do something productive with it, and don’t allow yourself to wallow. You may be alone, but you don’t have to be lonely. 

If this has been helpful, please let me know in the comments, or visit me on social media and let me know what some of your coping mechanisms are!

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