The Vanishing People

People are disappearing off social media, the backlash of data leaks, manipulation and the all-consuming addiction of these glowing boxes is taking its toll on us as individuals. Life is not consistent and there will be times when you feel amazing and others where you feel low. The constant tirade of ‘look at me’ can wear us all down (and yes, I’m aware of the irony of putting these thoughts out on the internet and social media). It’s not that we don’t want to see how well everyone else is doing, it’s that it grates against the polar feelings we might be having at that time. My day job is very different from my personal interests, but as a leadership coach I have the opportunity to listen to the concerns and thoughts of a wide range of people. Recently I was talking with a lovely lady from a charity and I asked her “if there was one thing you could tackle that would have the biggest impact on your work, what would it be?” Without hesitation she replied “loneliness”. Over financial difficulties and health issues, loneliness represents the single most impacting issue for us all

It’s my belief that loneliness is ultimately our greatest problem as a modern society. Yuval Noah Harari’s excellent book ‘sapiens’ lays out the path of community breakdown and Adam Curtis’s documentary ‘hypernormalisation’ provides details on the role of social media in this journey. All of which leads to increased loneliness. It’s increasingly easy to create a beautiful facade that hides our true self and blocks out anyone or anything that doesn’t fit with the way we want to see life. Add to this our ever increasingly busy lives that take us away from genuine human contact and nature. 

The resulting loneliness leads to us losing confidence in ourselves and projecting our own negative thoughts onto other people. (i.e. She’s posting pictures of her holiday to show how much better her life is than mine).

Coaching is fundamentally about listening, I listen and then I introduce choice. Ultimately it’s the clients choice but it’s a choice they reached themselves and not one led by me, I simply facilitated the thought process. 

Coaching at work


For myself, being involved in making, crafting, bushcraft and the outdoors is the other choice to working a 9-5 in an office, its gaining knowledge that gives me a feeling of pride I when I look at something and I think “I made that”. Fundamentally, it’s also about being involved with a group of like minded people with a common interest and also connecting myself with nature in a deeper way than looking out at it from behind glass. I’m giving myself knowledge that I hold important and exploring the role of the outdoors in self discovery, self worth and self belief. The aim of my blog is to detail my journey with the hope it helps you explore your world more; but if the above makes you think I have it all worked out, I don’t.

If you read all that and think, what a load of rubbish then speak up, don’t normalise your world further by removing my opinion from your world. Let’s bring back debate, let’s give ourselves a chance to change each other’s views without trying to pin a label on it that makes people too scared to speak up. We are not all the same and neither should we strive to be.


Be the person you want to be, do the things that support the person you are and you will have the things you need.


One final note on all the above. I believe that it’s easy to say these things and much harder to apply them to our lives. 

Happy travels.