Do You Feel Alone in a Crowd? The Truth About Male Loneliness No One Talks About #688

You could be surrounded by people at a work party, at home with your family, at a barbecue with your mates, and still feel completely alone. That's not a weakness. That's what loneliness actually looks like for most men. And 43% of us are living it right now.

In this episode, I break down why male loneliness is one of the most urgent conversations we aren't having, why the men most affected are 35–49 year olds, and, more importantly, exactly what you can do so you're never one of those statistics.

You'll learn:
- Why you can feel alone in a crowd, even with the people closest to you
- The alarming stat: 43% of men report feeling lonely (and middle-aged men are hit hardest)
- How loneliness is directly linked to depression, anxiety, and poor physical health
- The common causes most men never see coming: divorce, retirement, moving towns, solo parenting, and more
- The 3 loneliness traps for high-performing men, including the one where you confuse being busy with being connected
- The glass balls vs rubber balls framework, and how to know which relationships you can't afford to drop
- Why outgrowing old friendships doesn't mean you're done, it means you need a new skill set
- Three action steps you can take this week to start building genuine connection

If this hits a nerve, the next step is the Life Performance Scorecard. It's a free five-minute assessment that shows you exactly where you're winning, where you're leaking energy, and what to fix next across Strong Body, Calm Mind, Clear Purpose, and Confident Life.

Take the scorecard here → https://scorecard.lachlanstuart.com.au/

Transcript

Alone In A Crowd

Lachlan Stuart 0:00

Do you feel alone in a crowd? Picture this. You're at a work party and you look to the right, you look to the left, and all of the colleagues are cheersing, having conversations, smiling, laughing, but yet you still feel alone in that crowd. You don't feel valued, you don't feel seen, and you don't feel heard. Now, not only does this happen for many men in workplaces, but it happens in their life. You go home after a big day at work, you walk in the front door, your kids are playing on the ground, and your wife is looking after them and doing plenty of other things, and you just don't feel like you belong there. You've suddenly become a stranger in your own home. This is the reality for so many men. And maybe you see yourself in that situation, and it's something that I freaking dread. Like I am scared shitless of being in that position. And what I want to talk to you about in today's video is an alarming statistic that 43% of men report feeling lonely. Right. And the most scary part of this is the statistics for middle-aged men is that they're affected most. So we're looking at the 35 to 49 year olds. And from the data that I've got, majority of my listeners and viewers are imagined age demographic. And well, I've just turned 35. Well, not just, but no, actually I have. Shit. I have just turned 35. So I'm in that bracket now. So that scares me. And it should scare you as well because 43% is almost one in two people. So if it's not you, there's a high likelihood it's going to be your mate. The things that I want to run through in this video are going to be some common causes that this happens for blokes. And I'm also going to give you three really important ones for the high-performing men, you know, the men who have it all on paper but feel a little bit disconnected inside. But more importantly, I'm going to show you what you can do to make sure that you don't end up one of those statistics, one of those men who feel lonely, because it is so important that you don't end

Why Loneliness Hits So Hard

Lachlan Stuart 1:58

up there. Now, of the 43% of men, loneliness, you know, off the back of that statistic is strongly linked to depression, to anxiety, and to poor physical health. If you've watched any of my other videos, you know how important all of those are to me, right? Firstly, with our core four, we talk about having a strong body, a body that allows you to step up and live the quality of life that you want, right? Unique to you. And how we go about doing that is different. But if we know that loneliness is going to impact that, we then first need to look at the cause, not the outcome. So strong body is what we want to dive into. And I've got plenty of other videos that you can search through to find more about that. The second is we're looking at anxiety to me, and the definition that we're going to use just for the sake of this video, and you can agree, disagree, it doesn't matter. But anxiety to me stems down to one of two things. Firstly, it's a feeling of overwhelm. And if I look at my own life when I felt overwhelmed, it's generally because I have too much on my plate, right? I'm juggling too many balls and I don't know which ones I need to focus on. And what happens then? I then look and I go, I don't have enough time or I don't have enough bandwidth to be able to get this done. Therefore, I feel overwhelmed, which then leads to that anxious feeling. The second one is the fear of the future, right? I don't have a plan. I'm I'm living and look, I think fear is something that all of us experience, but I'm in fear about where my life's going to end up. Am I going to be good enough? Will I be able to put food on the table? Will my wife still love me in 10 years' time? Will I have a great relationship with my family? It's a real thing. And that fear turns into anxiety. And what the work that I do with a lot of the men that I work with is our calm mind module, where we help you understand those patterns and see how they're playing out in your life so you can have a sense of control by putting margins in, right? Margins are essentially like if you look at a book, this isn't going to be good, this is my journal, but let's picture it's a book and you have your text down the middle, but there's always a margin to separate the page. And what that does is allow you time to understand when one thing's starting and another one's ending. Because if we don't have a start and an end for tasks or moments in our day, for example, our work time, family time, health time, it just becomes one big blur and we don't get to really be intentional and focus on that time, which is why we developed that calm mind method. And so it will give you the power to start getting in control and being intentional with that anxious feeling. And finally, one of those other statistics is around being more depressed. And once again, my definition for that for this purpose of this video, there's obviously clinical, and then there's that feeling of sadness. And so we want to lean into that. But when we're looking at it being strongly linked, loneliness being strongly linked with depression, for me, that is looking back going, okay, well, whenever I feel sad, I'm looking back at chapters or experiences in my life. And they aren't good. I'm not looking at the good stuff, I'm looking at the bad stuff, maybe when I felt rejected, maybe when I failed. And the more I focus on that, the bigger and the louder that it gets. And the louder and bigger that it gets, the more it influences my state, which then influences my future behaviors. And if I'm wanting to, I guess, have a happier life, you know, the opposite of being sad is happy. If I want to have a happier life, I can't keep focusing on those things. And that is where we focus on a clear purpose, meaning giving you something so exciting and so grand to work towards that it pulls you forward. You need to look back at your past for one reason, not to beat yourself up, but to learn the lessons because those lessons allow you to become the version of yourself that you need to be to step towards that future. And that's where we create a compelling future. And if you haven't done it, it's definitely something that you should look at doing. And once again, there's videos on this page that can help you do that. Just comment below and I can share the links with you. Now, that once again is why we're looking at you don't want to be lonely for those things because of the strong link. So if that's not screaming at you now to go, man, I really need to start listening to what's about to come next and why I need to improve my relationships, then maybe this the rest of this video isn't going to be of any value to you. When we're moving forward here, the billows have just gone to the wrong page after showing you that example, but there's many common causes, and I found out this the hard way. I

The Hustle That Cut Me Off

Lachlan Stuart 6:23

still remember back in 2014, 2015, I had just started my own business and I didn't have the skill set, right? I was shit. I didn't know how to market myself, I didn't know how to sell, I didn't have business structure. And when you suck at something so bad, you can either just not do it, or what you lack in skill, strategy, reputation, you make up for in effort. And I was doing that. So I would literally walk into my wife's studio, so a music studio, and to the left was this little cupboard. I would walk in the cupboard, I'd set up a little desk, I was surrounded by crap, and I would just do cold calls and sales calls and direct outreach all day from literally, no joke, 5 a.m. to about 10, or let's say 9 till 11 at night, every day. Because I believed where I sucked at in inspiring people and doing the selling and building leads list, I had to make up for with just like finding new people, building connections, and that was just time. Now, what I sacrificed in that I was watching sport and doing all the things that I actually love because I said, no, I need to bunker down to get the outcomes here. And maybe you can relate to that. I need to do that when I achieve this outcome, when I earn this much money, then I'll get back to doing the things I love. Fast forward, I was at a barbecue with my wife and some mates, and they were talking about the football, right? The rugby league. I'm a I love rugby league. I love sport in general. But I made a promise to myself, I'm not going to watch people who are living their dream while I should be out there creating my own. And so I stopped watching rugby, but I'm standing around this barbecue, looking to the left, looking to the right, listening. I'm like, I have absolutely no idea what everyone's talking about. I don't even know who these players are at the moment. And that was a big realization to me that I was isolating myself intentionally by chasing a career, chasing something that wasn't even guaranteed. And that could put me in a bad position. I didn't want to feel like I was alone in the crowd, alone in the crowd with my own mates. And that was a wake-up call where I realized I had to start doing things smarter. I had to look at my life holistically and understand what are the consequences of the decisions that I'm making, of the choices that I'm making, and which ones could I live with and which ones couldn't I live with. And that really, you know, yesterday I was actually told about this juggling, juggling the ball, and you may have heard of it, but essentially, and I'll paraphrase it, but essentially, as we get older in life, we start juggling more balls, which is responsibilities. Now, some of those balls are rubber, and some of those balls are glass. Now, obviously, we know a rubber ball, if we drop it, it's gonna bounce back. But if we drop a glass ball, it's probably gonna crack and shatter. And so, with that, we need to identify what our glass balls are. You know, the valuable ones that if we drop them, they aren't gonna come back. So for me, it could be my marriage, it could be my health, it could be time with family, you know, important conversations with family. Those things don't come back. You don't get another shot with that one. But rubber balls, well, they do. You might look at them as your career, your ability to earn money, the how you know, living in a nice home or what car you drive. If you make a mistake there, it'll bounce back and you can have another go. And when I was thinking about that, I'm like, oh, interesting. I don't want to lose my friendships that are so important to me. I don't want my wife to feel so distanced from me. I don't want to not actually enjoy the journey because all I'm doing is hustling. Don't get me wrong, I loved seeing the growth, but I also looked around and I didn't like where I was at. So I made a change, and that made me realize there are so many common causes for men like us. And I would say you're like me, otherwise you wouldn't be watching this video, that drag us into that experience of loneliness because we are the controller of our destiny. And a few of those common causes are divorces, right? You might have social circles with your partner and a divorce separates that. Retirement, you know, moving out of the workforce, moving towns. I moved to Nashville in 2023 with no support network, obviously my wife, but no support network outside of that, which meant I had to make new friends. That was tough. Solo parenting, the big one, which I mentioned, prioritizing work, then difficulties expressing emotions. So you could be, once again, alone in the crowd, but if you don't allow people to get to know you, don't expect to feel valued, seen, and heard. It's just not possible. You have to let the guard down. I want to share three big ones for the high-performing

Three Traps For High Performers

Lachlan Stuart 10:40

men, right? The men who are getting at it, who are developing high-value skills, who are working at becoming the best version of themselves. Here's three that you need to be mindful of is one, you confuse being busy with being connected. I'm on the phone all day, every day, right? With clients, with potential, you know, all of the things that I got going on. And sometimes I can trick myself by going, yeah, I'm super connected. I know what Timmy's doing, Johnny's doing, Benny's doing, but then I go, well, do they know what I'm up to? Do they know what I'm excited about? Do I actually feel valued, seen, and heard? And quite often I don't. I just go, well, a lot of these relationships, even though they're work relationships, they're still transactional. So I don't really feel connected. So if that one lands with you, just be mindful of that. And I'm going to show you with you how we can solve those in a moment. The second one is we stop being vulnerable. You might be looking for that promotion. You might be in a tough work environment where it's hard to let the guard down. You don't want to get picked on. You don't want to let someone get that edge over you. They're all real things. But if you start isolating yourself and not allowing people to understand how you're feeling, what's going on in your life, you will slowly become one of the statistics where you go, man, I actually do feel lonely. And the third one, this one's really important. You outgrow old friendships and you don't build new ones. I'm a big believer that we go through seasons in life and not everyone's going to come on the same journey with you. You'll either grow together, meaning you'll head in the same direction, you want the same things, or you'll grow apart and that is okay. You want different things and you want to head in a different direction. If you're growing apart from people, you need to make sure that you still have the skill set because I do believe building and creating friendships is a skill set, developing the skill set of friends. So if I look at it, which like, well, how do I introduce myself to new people? How do I find the people that, you know, my tribe? How do I continue to invest in relationships? What does being a good friend look like? What do I want from a friendship? All questions that you should be able to answer and continue to put the reps in. When I moved from Toomba to Brisbane, there was about a two-year period. And this is what people don't talk about too much, the lonely period. But there's a period in which you're transitioning from the social circle that you or the friendship group that you surrounded yourself with to a new social circle, the social circle that's more aligned with where you're at and where you're going in this period of your life. But that doesn't just happen instantly. There's always going to be a period where you're by yourself, that lonely period. And in that, that's the most challenging part. That's the time where you go, Can I do this by myself? Will I find more like-minded people? Is it worth it? And quite often people go back to where they were, where they weren't necessarily happy, and they live in that whole what if. And those people as well, trust me, feel lonely because they're in a crowd, but they feel alone. They don't feel connected, they don't have common interests, and they don't feel like they're getting the best out of themselves. And so that can be a trap as well. So make sure that you continue, if you are outgrowing old friendships or you're just moving in a different direction, you continue to build new ones. And one last kicker on that one. So many of us don't think about this, but let's say you have three friends in your life, three to five, like good friends. The law of attrition is as we get older, people are gonna die off. And that sucks, but that's the reality. And if you don't go, man, I should probably build some new friends because what if my two of my mates die before me? Do I want to be alone? Because that's gonna lead to those other factors that we said earlier: anxiety, depression, poor health. We don't want those things. So therefore, we need to prepare

How To Build Connection Again

Lachlan Stuart 14:14

for it. And that is why I have created in the program the things that I've mentioned, but also the experience banks where it's like, let's get out and get to know ourselves and make new experiences and relationships and put ourselves in front of new people so that we're continuing to develop and strengthen the relationship muscle. We can be the best version of ourself, we can bring more people into our life. And I'm very excited to know that in the next three weeks, we're going to launch the alive and in control community. And I won't touch on too much of that now because we're just finalizing what that looks like. But it is going to allow men like you who want to continue experiencing new things, developing life-minded relationships with high-performing men, a place to connect and things to get involved with. That's what we'll be sharing with you. So just to recap, you don't want to be a statistics where you're feeling lonely and isolated because it does lead to the bad things, right? You don't want to feel shit. You're here for a short time, so you want to feel as good as you possibly can. The common causes to be aware of are the things that I've already shared, and there's also some dangerous ones for the high-performing men who trick themselves into thinking that they're connected when really they're not. And there are some solutions, right? You can develop the skill set to continue building friends, but ultimately you need to try new experiences and reflect on the impact of it and get in front of new people. That is what is going to be key. So a few takeaways or three action items.

Three Actions To Start Today

Lachlan Stuart 15:36

One, catch up with a mate, but ask them to bring a friend of theirs that you don't know. So that way you're going to get connected with a new person. If you hit it off with that person, some of them you're like, fuck no, go away. But if you do hit it off with that person, start developing and flexing that relationship muscle where it's like you check in, hey mate, do you want to go for a coffee? Do you want to go for a run? Whatever your interests are, continue doing that. The second thing is look at the experience bank. And I've got a free PDF which you can download and it's in the show notes, but it's essentially lochalandstewart.com.au forward slash experience bank. And you can check out some of those activities and exercises and give them a crack. Give me some feedback. Once again, thank you guys for listening. I will see you next week.