Today, I want to talk about something a little more personal.
Loneliness as an entrepreneur.
You probably wouldn’t be the first to think that I experience loneliness quite often.
I’m a social person. I meet new people easily, and there are a lot of people around me. I have a team, friends, family and many different people I get to share my life with.
And yet, over the past few years, I’ve noticed that I’ve actually felt more lonely as my company has grown.
And as I’ve grown with it.
Maybe one reason is that entrepreneurship has forced me to look in the mirror quite a few times.
I’ve had to think deeply about who I am, what I actually want from life and what kind of life I want to build.
And the better I’ve gotten to know myself, the more clearly I’ve also started to understand what really matters to me.
And maybe there’s another, simpler reason too:
I have a lot of passion for creating things.
I want to build, create, develop, experiment and actually see the things I imagine become real.
I have so many dreams and ideas that I still want to bring into the world.
And I don’t mean that as if I’m somehow more ambitious than other people, or that everyone should want the same things I do.
This is simply the way I happen to be.
But sometimes, it can also be exhausting.
Because even when things are going really badly with my company, giving up can feel almost impossible for me.
Not because I believe you should always just push harder.
But because there is such a strong fire inside me to build the things I believe in that I’m willing to tolerate a lot of uncertainty, pressure and discomfort along the way.
I’m willing to take risks that not everyone around me would take.
And I completely understand that.
If someone next to me sees a much easier or safer path in life, it’s not strange that they don’t always understand why I choose something different.
And they don’t have to.
But this is where entrepreneurship can sometimes feel lonely.
Because some things are difficult to explain.
Sometimes I find myself wishing I had more people around me who I could talk to on a really deep level.
Not just about how the business is doing.
But about why I’m doing all of this.
What I want to build.
What I’m afraid of.
Where I’m going.
Why something matters so much to me that I’m willing to take a big risk for it.
Those are the conversations I probably miss the most.
This is perhaps one of the most important things I’ve learned.
Sometimes loneliness isn’t solved by filling your calendar with more people, more plans and more things to do.
Sometimes what I need is simply for what I’m going through to be heard and seen.
I’ve started writing honestly about how I’m doing in a notebook.
Not some beautiful, perfectly organized journal.
Just writing down what’s actually going on inside my head.
What feels heavy.
What I’m afraid of.
What I’m excited about.
What I don’t understand.
What I really want.
And sometimes, that alone helps.
When I get everything out of my head and see it written down in front of me, I somehow find my way back to myself again.
And maybe from there, I can understand a little better what I actually need.
I’ve also decided to become more intentional about asking myself what I genuinely enjoy.
What do I want to do when I don’t have to be productive, build something or achieve anything?
And then I want to do more of those things.
Because maybe finding like-minded people isn’t always about actively searching for people.
Maybe sometimes they appear when you start living more of a life that actually feels like yours.
I don’t think everything is supposed to happen alone.
Quite the opposite.
I still dream about having a small circle of deeply creative, big-thinking and passionate entrepreneurs around me.
People I can share both the crazy ideas with and the days when absolutely nothing seems to be going according to plan.
And yes, I also dream about having a partner one day who understands this kind of life, my visions and why I want to build so much.
Someone who doesn’t try to make my dreams smaller, but encourages me to go after them.
I don’t know when or how those people will come into my life.
But I believe they will.
And maybe that’s why I don’t want to see loneliness only as a problem that needs to be fixed.
Maybe it also tells me something about how I’ve changed.
How I’ve grown.
How much clearer I’ve become about what I want and who I want to share my life with.
Maybe the next step isn’t to fill the empty spaces with as many people as possible.
Maybe it’s to slowly build a life where I don’t have to make myself, my dreams or the things I want to create in this world any smaller.
Maybe the right people will find me somewhere along the way. 🤍
-Elli, Ecbelle
