Issue #28: 19 ways to feel more connected to others (without moving to a tiny village)

Inspired by positive psychology, urban design & religion, fresh approaches for dealing with the L-word.

Would I feel more connected to my community if I lived in a village?

Sometimes, I get lonely. Although, don’t we all? News headlines would suggest that loneliness is a feeling experienced predominantly by the elderly. I think that’s a lazy portrayal. Real world discourse – the work I do, my personal tendency to ask nosy questions – has convinced me otherwise. While it’s experienced differently, almost every age, life stage and relationship status holds the potential for a certain, specific flavour of loneliness.

• The overworked entrepreneurs at my workspace

• Those in the anxious early stages of a promising new relationship

• Expats

• The new starter at your office

• Married couples feeling isolated from their friends

• People who have recently become parents (especially when navigating parental leave, alone at home)

• The social butterfly unable to have a candid conversation with anyone

• The homebody who dreads parties, feeling alone in a room full of people

• The couple who moved to the really big house in the country

• … and many, many other examples

My own lifestyle is about to shift, as I return to London in a fortnight, after two months in Lisbon. In some ways, being here makes me feel more socially-connected. I’m a Big Fish in a small (expat, English-speaking, yoga-practising) community, rather than a tiny anchovy in the Big Smoke. Being unmarried and child-free in one’s early 30s is kind of the norm. There’s a natural place for me to be among others: my workspace Happy Hour every Friday; the yoga mat right of centre in the front row; the pink sofa of a close friend who lives a 10-minute walk away. But there’s definite potential for loneliness. I miss spending time with my friends & family. I miss being around to celebrate my friends’ milestones with them. I miss hosting people in my flat, a micro-community of my own making.

Back in London, my social schedule is a DIY situation. My close friends live a minimum of a half-hour walk away. I live alone, I’m freelance, and I prefer one-on-one interactions, or small groups, to the politics – cough, meme-heavy WhatsApp chat – of being part of a rigid circle. Which means lots of intimate dinners planned weeks in advance, zero forced interactions with colleagues or frenemies. I spend a lot of time thinking about connection: not just how often I see people, but how to do so in the most ‘connected’ feeling way. Considerations like, How many consecutive evenings in alone are too many? How to prioritise the Russian roulette of going on a (potentially soul-crushing) date versus the guaranteed warm glow of a dinner with friends? How many days should I spend co-working (with fellow freelancers, or in a dedicated space) compared to working from home? Am I living in an echo chamber of my own making? When that balance falls off-kilter, it feels lonely – and sometimes I wish I could out-source the management of the whole thing, feeling ‘held’ by a structure beyond myself.

‘But we’re not supposed to all live in a village anymore. The world has moved on, we’re not going backwards.’

The other night, after two – two and a half – glasses of Portuguese orange wine, I came up with a solution.

‘Things would be a lot easier if we lived in a village together,’ I announced to my friend Abby as we walked to UAO by Mú, a local gelato place. ‘Modern life is basically just finding solutions to replace the village we’re all supposed to live in.’ Abby is due to return to her native New York next week; I’m leaving for London the following one – rendering it considerably less easy for us to hang out. Both of us are from notoriously lonely cities, compared to our geographically-cosy expat community here in Lisbon. ‘But we’re not supposed to all live in a village anymore,’ she responded, pacing up the steep cobbled hill in short, purposeful Brooklynite strides. ‘The world has moved on, we’re not going backwards.’ She pointed to one of the beaten-up silver Peugeots – which might, actually, have been rolling slightly backwards due to a worn-out handbrake – that line Lisbon’s streets as ubiquitously as its slippery calçada floor tiles. ‘We have these now.’

She had a point. In the past decade, city-living has become the global norm. For the first time in history, 56% of us live in cities – it will be almost 70% in 2050. And while my village-living fantasy (constructed, I think, from a mixture of Fiddler on the Roof and The Vicar of Dibley) may well be less lonely – I’d be married to a high school sweetheart, with four kids and too few hours between cooking, cleaning and child-rearing to indulge in existential questioning – it would also involve a lot of things I struggle with. Gossip. Narrow-mindedness. Organised religion. Cafes that don’t offer oat milk.

And yet so much of societal loneliness seem to stem from not living in a village: the geographical fragmentation of cities; the likelihood of living far away from friends & family; not knowing your neighbours; the lack of a central hub like a church, a village hall, a library. Loneliness should be a ‘public priority’, argued a recent Guardian Opinion piece, imagining a world in which those spectral Loneliness Ministers actually did anything. While I agree that connected communities with lots of affordable public forums could be one solution to loneliness (my utopia would require little more than having my loved ones all live around the corner and be available to go for ice cream – vegan, pistachio – at 10 minutes notice, as Abby & I did that night), I’d rather focus on the here and now. To find better connection in the day-to-day; the set of circumstances and infrastructure I’m currently living in. That’s the priority for me, and – I suspect – for you, too.

I don’t have the answer; just a secular, 21st-century, Millennial tendency to shop around for solutions. To cherry-pick certain, shiny-sounding ideas from different disciplines, rather than accept a single, established dogma. Loneliness, my friend Tom likes to say, is mostly an urban design problem, while my friend Rachel has taught me about placemaking, a people-centred urban planning approach which involves ‘improving the quality of public spaces and the lives of the people who use them’. My rabbi would probably say it’s the decline of religion, which offers built-in solutions to loneliness (rituals, community, family values etc). Positive psychologists might offer research-backed solutions. Here are just a handful of ways to feel less lonely, and more connected, whatever your lifestyle.

How to feel more connected

Inspired by positive psychology 🧑‍⚕️

📖 Read a book (or listen to an audiobook): Both have the same effect of reducing feelings of social isolation. I see a lot of lists of ‘books for loneliness’, which personally feels a bit too meta – I prefer something heart-warming for this purpose.

📱 Call, don’t text. When it comes to feeling connected, the former is by far superior, says research (also, while we may feel awkward doing it, people appreciate it far more than we think when we reach out to them, according to a large-scale study).

👯‍♂️ Go to a group fitness class. It might sound tribal (because, well, it is) but performing an exercise routine in sync with others is a failsafe way to feel more connected. Plus, it keeps you fit, which is a nice side effect.

💤 Get an early night. Sleep deprivation makes you feel more socially-rejected, which sounds about right.

🎧 Listen to your favourite podcast. A uniquely intimate medium, podcast listening can satisfy our need for social connection. Ideally, according this study, this would be with a host that you have developed a parasocial relationship with – which means you feel like you know them.

🎾 Watch live sport, apparently (literally, any – your nephew’s football league, going to Wimbledon) will increase your sense that ‘life is worthwhile’. You go ahead – I’m still scared of the ball.

🤳 Swap your Sunday night dating app scroll for… A positive psychology app. Try the Happify app’s Defeat Loneliness track (free), which is based around CBT principles – a research-backed discipline to mitigate loneliness. Plus, it’s free.

🙏 Inspired by religion & spirituality

🎶 Join a choir. As per The School of Life’s A Replacement for Religion, religious worship inspired practices, like singing in a choir, can provide a comparable feeling of connection in a secular way (many of the suggestions below will continue in the same vein. Sorry, God).

☕️ Introducing daily rituals into your life. This can be as simple as having a morning coffee ritual, or doing a hair mask on a certain day of the week. This one’s inspired by religious practise – but it’s scientifically-proven, too.

🫶 Find a community. Being part of a wider community is one of the best things that organised religion can offer, from a mental health perspective. However, this doesn’t have to revolve around a shared commitment to a certain kind of theistic belief or dietary requirement. In the 21st century, community can be based around hobbies, volunteering, shared interests… the list goes on (this article provides some useful ideas). For instance, an important fixture in my life is the online community of London Writer’s Salon, which offers daily shared writing sessions.

👍 Practise gratitude. A no-brainer practice in the positive psychology space, gratitude has been practised in the major religions since forever – and is one of the key factors that links wellbeing with religious practice. As gratitude is so often linked to the actions of others, it can also be a powerful tool for connection, too, e.g. to our partners. You can do this through prayer, saying grace, gratitude journaling, meditation, expressing what you’re thankful for aloud to others – whatever you like (some tips). Whether you’re thanking God or otherwise, gratitude works.

🧘‍♀️ Meditate. Not another smug twat telling you to meditate but… it works. For loneliness (and so much more).

⛪️ Actually be more religious. Obviously, religion isn’t the only answer (and studies have found that socially-disconnected people are no more likely to be drawn to religion if they weren’t already). However, if you were brought up in a religion and this held a positive status in your life, as well as forming part of your identity, reconnecting with it can provide a powerful sense of belonging.

🏙 Inspired by urban design

🏢 Join a co-working space: 83% of freelancers reported this made them feel less lonely.(Hubble is a useful resource to compare your local options)

👤 Be ‘alone together’ in public. According to urbanists Next City, one of the limitations with city design is the lack of ‘visibility of aloneness’. When you don’t feel like socialising specifically, sometimes being out in a park, or a coffee shop, can be a visual reminder that solitude is OK – because lots of other people are doing it around you, too.

🛍 Shop local. I write this to hold myself accountable; I still have yet to visit the butcher on my high street (do any other live-aloners lead a basically vegetarian diet at home, out of a fear of poisoning oneself?!). But, as well as being a great thing to brag to your friends about (I brought this sourdough from a nice little place near me, etc), shopping local is highlighted by the ACS Wellbeing Guide as a way of creating a ‘social hub’ in communities. In practical terms, it’s a means of getting to know your neighbours, or at whoever works there – and tots up a few more friendly faces in your daily lifestyle.

🙋 Volunteer to help in local spaces. If you’ve helped build something, you’ll feel a greater sense of belonging there, according to urban planning & consultancy firm Happy Cities. This could be an allotment, a gardening project, mural painting. It could even be litter-picking, a la US humour writer David Sedaris.

🏘 Live within a mile’s distance of your friends… can make you 25% happier. Is this always practical? No – but if you’re looking to move, it’s worth making this a prime factor.

🌳 Get out in nature. Connection isn’t just about being around people. Sometimes, it’s remembering you’re part of a wider world of birds, trees and ocean (it’s hard to feel lonely when you’re surrounded by these). Both green space (forest, parks) and blue space can reduce the negative feelings associated with loneliness.

My questions for you:

• What would you add to this list?

• When do you feel most connected to others?

• How do you get the right balance of social connection in your life?

• If you could have more social connection, what would that look like (e.g. a book club, seeing your close friends more often, living near family)?

• Is loneliness still a dirty word, or has the narrative moved on now?

Let me know in the comments section below!