Welcome to another illustrious edition of ‘Self-improvement Sunday.’ The only weekly newsletter that gives absolutely no fuck about your physical grades. Each week I send a bunch of ideas that can help all of us morph into a slightly less terrible human. This week we are talking about 1) Comfort Zone and its disaster, 2) Coping up with loneliness, and 3) The new features on the website and a new Podcast feature.

#1: Comfort Zone and its disaster

Comfort Zone is an awful place where our growth can get extremely stagnated. It could range from our regular and mundane patterns of living and behavior to extremely pivotal life-based decisions. For instance, the choice of food we mostly order, the kind of clothes we generally wear, the type of people we prefer to hang out with, even our way of keeping stuff around the house, all have inherent comfort associated with them.

Make no mistake. Comfort is lusciously sweet. It’s like buttery-sweet pasta in an infinitely more delectable mode. (You know that one meal where every bite is mouthwatering and totally dissolves on the taste buds while it feels like the Bahamas. Ahh… yess, the little pleasures of life.) Therefore, as humans, we all are greedy for comfort.

The most subtle identification of our comfort zone is reflected in our inclination to predict and control every circumstantial aspect of our life. We want every spin of coin and every roll of dice to cast according to our whims and fancies. We hope everyone would behave according to us. In a nutshell, we try to control our lives when we clearly can’t. And neither should we.

Last week, I wrote an incredibly profound article about Comfort Zone and the ways to break free from it. The article also includes an audio version of the text. Feel free to check it out!

Read Here: Breaking the Bubble of Comfort Zone around you

#2: Coping up with Loneliness

If you hit a Google search for what is loneliness, here is what you’ll get – “Loneliness is an unpleasant emotional response to perceived isolation. Loneliness is also described as social pain, a psychological mechanism that motivates individuals to seek social connections. It is often associated with an unwanted lack of connection and intimacy.”

I want you to pay attention to the words – “perceived isolation and an unwanted lack of connection and intimacy.”

We often confuse loneliness as an inability to connect socially. However, it’s clearly not the case. People suffering from the wrath of loneliness often do not actually develop the symptoms but perceive their presence in their own behavior.

As one begins to perceive isolation, he tends to identify a sort of psychological pain that usually amplifies itself over time. (Because as humans we are capable to think and feel about our thoughts and feelings. It’s like having feelings about feelings. We can feel good/bad about feeling good/bad.) The more one amplifies his pain, the more he feels isolated, and therefore, his emotional intelligence deteriorates at an accelerated pace.

Perhaps, we can attribute many factors to the cause of loneliness. Low self-esteem, lack of mental and emotional clarity, lack of awareness, toxic values, inability to accurately process things, and more.

As loneliness is a growing and dangerous concern prevalent in our society, I’ve decided to work at its core over the next few weeks. I will take up each of the aforementioned causes separately and discuss them in detail. Hopefully, by the end, you’ll end up accomplishing major changes in your lifestyle.

Till then you can check out an article I wrote last year to better understand your feelings.

Read Here: How to grow our Emotional Intelligence using 3 simple questions?

#3: The new Features on the Website

I have recently added several new features to the website for user-convenience. Now you can identify and read my footnotes to the articles more easily. You can listen to every article in an audio format right from the article page. There is also an option to read the current and previous editions of this newsletter on the website itself. (So, don’t worry about accidentally deleting one of my e-mails.)

Further, there is also a new podcast that I have launched. You can check it here. As of now, it is only available on YouTube but soon you’ll able to listen on all major streaming platforms such as Spotify, Apple, and Google Podcast. Now get your ass on YouTube and make sure to subscribe and I’ll see you next week!

Until then,

Aashish

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