What can be the hardest part of being alone? Is it the thought of sleeping alone every night, the reality that people around you are all in relationships, or the feeling of an empty hole in your heart? The emptiness is often loud, especially when you meet couples everywhere you go, holding hands, kissing, making customized jokes, whispering sweet nothings to each other, and any other public display of affection they feel comfortable, without minding if there is any single person around.

Just witnessing all of these can make your life feel empty, insecure, and incomplete. It can make you feel that there is an empty hole in your heart that is yearning for filling. But, there is more to this feeling of unwholesomeness than just filling it.

You are working hard, doing everything you possibly can to make life just a little bit rosier. You are trying to figure it out and keep life all balanced, though. You don’t want to be one of those people who commit every waking second to work and the pursuit of a career.

Yet, you know somehow that something is missing in your life, isn’t it?

A whole lot of people find themselves in this spot, especially when they have passed the age of 40, they think that they are willing to give up things just to have this empty hole in their heart filled up. They want to deal with this loneliness any way they can. They think that this loneliness is taking over their identity.

This is a very wrong approach to dealing with this. Yes, it can feel draining and tiring sometimes, but there is something you should know.

A lot of those married women or just couples that you see and remember your single status would love to be in your shoes. They wouldn’t mind exchanging their relationship status to your freedom; the freedom to be accountable to only you, freedom to know ‘you’, freedom to build yourself and dream, and work out your dreams.

You can help yourself if you follow these 7 steps to feeling that empty hole in your heart.

1. Deal with the false beliefs

Many people, who feel empty inside, feel empty because they have some deep-rooted false beliefs regarding why they feel empty. They think they have this empty hole in their heart because of the following reasons;

I don't have a partner.

My work is unsatisfying.

I have a partner but my partner is not giving me enough love and attention.

I don't have enough money.

I have no one to hang out with on weekends.

Nothing excites me. Life is boring.

I don't get enough love, attention, and approval from friends and relatives.

All of these reasons are nothing but excuses; they are all fake things appearing real. When you have false beliefs about why you have an empty hole in your heart; a vacuum that needs filling, you will try to take care of this the wrong ways.

There are many substances, processes, behaviors, and activities that people use consistently to try to fill the emptiness. These may work for the moment, but not for long. Soon, the emptiness is back and you are looking for someone or something to temporarily fill up the emptiness.

Deal with the root cause of this emptiness. This is caused by self-abandonment; by not loving yourself. Start by loving yourself again

2. Self-love

When you abandon yourself by judging yourself, ignoring your feelings, staying in your head, numbing your feelings through substance and process addictions, and making others responsible for your feelings and for loving you, you will feel empty.

You have successfully filled yourself with false beliefs regarding who you are. Your wounded self may see you as inadequate, unlovable, not good enough, not important, selfish, bad, always wrong.

You have conditioned yourself to see yourself as a big shame, and have accepted that you are intrinsically flawed.

These beliefs may be wrong, but you have given them the capacity to run your life. When you believe that you are not good enough, you resort to using others or things to make yourself feel worthy; to fill the emptiness that you are causing with your self-judgment.

It is time to kick down the wall of self –judgment and abandonment, pull down the programs running in your head and fill it with positive affirmations of yourself. Grow the love of self again.

3. Rediscover you

After a relationship ends, you feel like the love part of you is gone. You miss some of the things that represent love in your life. This is not how it is supposed to be. You are feeling this way because you are looking outside yourself to find love again.

You are first your ‘own’ lover before any other person. You may be thinking all you need is a new guy to call your man, but unfortunately, you will still not fill this emptiness with a new guy, if you don’t find love yourself first, especially at the stage of your life.

So, what do you do?

When you are in a relationship, it is easy to forget yourself, to lose your identity. You are so preoccupied with fulfilling the wants and desires of your partners that in reality, you lose touch of what you love doing, what makes you happy, what makes you unique from others.

Having your singleness back means redirecting the focus to yourself, finding yourself and a great time to rediscover what excites you.

Start by making a list of all the things you love to do in life and start doing them one after another.

This may be hard at first. But of course, if it is what excites you, you will soon find fulfillment doing them again. You can do it for yourself this time.

You may want to keep adding to your list of discoveries and identifications as you rediscover this part of yourself again.

4. Find your loved ones

This is not about looking for people who love you or will love you. This is about people you love, people that make you happy. Start making a list of all the people in your life you love.

Remember that focus now is to find love right inside you, so make this about you. The people you love not the people that love you. This will help you not to fall back to square one; looking for love outside you again.

This list can be; your children, grandchildren, orphanage homes, patients at the hospital, people who need help and a smiling face to smile at them and more.

5. Give a lift

We are constantly presented with things that we believe will make us happy, things that we believe once we have them that we can be sure that the empty hole in our hearts will be filled. We wouldn’t feel the empty vacuum again. These things can be new cars, smart televisions, relationships (an intimate partner), houses, more money, exotic vacations, and other flashy things that go along with it.

Suddenly, we get all of these things and we realize that the empty hole is still there.

The simple truth is we are often so focused on getting what we want that we forget about everyone else in the world around us. We forget that humanity needs us. And therein lays the key to that empty feeling inside.

We probably had thought of doing this once or twice, but we had the needs of our relationships, our partners and self to deal with at the moment. But right now, we are single and we have all the time to fulfill this desire in us.

Right now, some people are hungry. Not people in far distance places like India and Africa, If you look around you, you will see them. You don’t need to look too far; they might be within a square mile of you. Some kids don’t have a decent place to sleep or clothes to wear

And there it is; the empty hole in your heart, does not necessarily mean loneliness, unhappiness, having or haven’t, it may not even be filled by entering a new relationship. We have been so focused on getting what we want in this world that we forget that there are people who have desperate needs. You don’t have to look far to find them either.

The bottom line is, helping others energizes you, fulfills you and gives your life a better meaning than any relationship can offer.

6. Embrace the emptiness

You have to decide to stand and face the emptiness, deal with it now to regain your happy healthy person.

If you feel there is an empty hole in your heart, there is a vacuum to be filled or something is missing, broken or just empty inside of you, there is no person or thing that will fill it. Only you can heal yourself and close the emptiness.

The empty hole can be lonely feelings that stem from pains in our hearts and soul. Sometimes these pains are fresh wounds like a breakup, death in the family, or losing our job. Sometimes they stem from something much deeper, like a lack of connection with the family growing up, a childhood trauma, or hurt caused by someone in our past. Whatever it is, when you lose something or someone, all of the wounds, emptiness, pain, and hurt are exposed. As much as it hurts, the void should not be avoided. Don’t stuff yourself with other things to hide the pain and hurts.

Otherwise, you will lose out on the miracles, strength, and change that are birthed in this kind of situation.

The fact is that anytime you try to stuff yourself with things to run away from feeling what you are feeling, you are avoiding the fact that you're not whole; you are running away from your healing. Something is missing, damaged or broken, and until you face it, no person or thing will ever give you feel the satisfaction or fulfillment that your life requires.

7. Get honest with yourself

Why? People are going to be seeing you and only you. You have to face yourself. The old you were simply your shield and covering that you hid behind for a long time in the name of a relationship.

To take a serious look at what is missing, what you left behind and the parts you have ignored. Sit with the void and be honest with yourself. Tell yourself to feel the hurt and let them out. You are the only one who can heal yourself and close the voids. Otherwise, you will stuff them with a new relationship or something else and you will finally bury yourself.

If you can do deep soul searching and find out what you are hiding from, avoiding or what exactly scares you about facing this part of yourself? If you are ready to heal and grow above this emptiness, remove whatever you are using to distract yourself. Sit it out and deal with them once and for all.

As you fill yourself up doing the things you love to do in life while enjoying the friends and family you love. When you take the time to feel and experience the uncomfortable space that is the emptiness, you begin to see things. And when you can see things clearly, you will gradually start to radiate with the deepest love that shines from within you for the world to see, you can begin to heal. And that is when you will be ready for a relationship and will attract a good man into your life.

The point is that you serve someone. And by serving others, you will begin to notice that strange, empty hole closing more and more, until one day, you find yourself smiling all the time.