Why Loneliness and Uncertainty Are Crucial for Surviving (and Thriving) in the Modern World

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been navigating through periods of quarter-life crisis.

Surrounded by people, yet deeply lonely.

A future planned ahead, yet full of uncertainty.

I initially thought this was a problem of acceptance—a matter of being more present and mindful of the discomfort. Accepting I will be fine for the future.

But the more I observed, the more I saw a painful pattern:

The path I’m on isn’t much different from the one everyone else is following.

I observed that people everywhere drowned themselves in shallow work—school, jobs, and relationships. It was clear that their daily action was majorly given to them, not consciously chosen. And even when it was chosen, there was an unconscious autopilot- like attachment to it.

People who've landed perfect grades and the perfect job at some big firm still continue to complain about the same monotony.

And when I’d ask if they’d ever considered pursuing their ideal lifestyle or improving their health, they’d always say, “I want more, but I’m too busy”, like life will magically free up time later.

If not now, then when?

Then I realized I also filled my own time with unorganized schoolwork, job applications, and endless consumption—media, distractions, and external validation.

I used "I'm too busy" as an excuse to avoid making time for what I wanted: better health, deeper relationships, and fulfilling work.

But the more I did, the clearer it became—this is not the life I want.

People then tell me, "That’s just how it is," "Welcome to adulthood," or "Get used to the loneliness, find something to fill your time." But every time I heard that, I felt a deeper rejection of that reality.

Walking around New York, I couldn’t help but observe the people who have already walked 20 years into that path:

• Suited guys walking on the street, their eyes dull and lifeless.

• Their faces worn by stress, minds consumed by work.

• No semblance of curiosity left, no passion—the grind of daily existence.

Yeah, Fuck that.

At some point, if you’re overly attached to a path that doesn’t align with your future vision, it catches up with you.

When you're left alone, stripped of external distractions, you’re confronted with the reality that you’re discontent with yourself. You’re unsure of your current path, and not sure if where to take it after.

And that's what Uncertainty and Loneliness is—a deep disconnect between your deep authentic self and the environment.

These feelings are normal. But what most people miss is that they are a treasure in disguise. They are signals that you’re not whole, and that’s exactly what propels growth.

But instead of confronting it, people distract themselves.

Now in the modern world, it’s easy to lose touch with who you really are. You take projects that don’t align with their vision. They default to their path of certainty—school, a 9-5, or meaningless distractions tasks—and lock themselves at the same point in their lives.

Overconsumption, information overload, and the pressure to follow narrow, specialized career paths make it all too easy to outsource your autonomy and critical thinking.

People spend their lives building other people’s projects in the name of survival and stability, sacrificing their own vision to meet society’s demands. In the process, they strip away their sense of self, making decisions unconsciously, without intent, for survival.

In a world that’s rapidly evolving, where replaceability is becoming the norm, self-actualization—a life driven by your own vision—has never been more critical.

And this is what I’m here to explore in this letter:

As I stand at a crossroads in life, with uncertainty and anxiety building, I’ve come to realize that every action, every job, must serve as a stepping stone toward my vision, my ideal life.

My goal is to build a conscious orientation toward uncertainty and loneliness, so that these experiences become tools for self-actualization in a world that constantly projects its wants and expectations onto you.

Clarity and Order

To start, the mind hates ambiguity.

The mind is a machine that is always trying to solve problems. Its primary goal is to maintain order for its survival. It's how we survived for thousands of years of evolution.

When you’re uncertain, the mind feels chaotic, so it searches for stability in its environment. It seeks external anchors—work, relationships, routines—to stabilize itself.

So you take on jobs, distractions, and other external structures that don’t reflect their own values, because your mind seeks to avoid that instability.

This is why so many people unconsciously adopt the projects and goals of others—they seek to quiet the discomfort of uncertainty by finding something to hold onto.

Uncertainty and loneliness are therefore symptoms of mental unclarity, a sign that your mind, in its chaotic state, realizing the current situation doesn’t align with your deeper vision.

When we feel uncertain, it’s the mind’s way of alerting us that something is off, that there is a conflict between our internal and external reality.

Well, what's wrong with focusing on other people's tasks? It's just a job.

The problem is the brain filters information based on what you focus on. Whatever goals you set, the mind will filter for and highlight the information needed to achieve that goal. Everything else you ignore.

• If your goal is to find a job, your mind will hone in on job opportunities. You’ll start noticing job listings, conversations about work, and anything related to that goal. Soon, your entire life revolves around that single pursuit—wake up, work, eat, scroll, sleep, repeat, locked in for only your survival needs.

• If your goal is to build your ideal lifestyle (your vision), a job becomes a stepping stone. You’ll eventually recognize the capped potential of a job, the 9-5 structure forced onto you. This alone will make you realize your non-negotiables. You will push yourself to create a work environment and lifestyle that aligns with your vision. You will experiment and fail, but through constant iteration, you will figure out the next steps.

Therefore, uncertainty and loneliness guide us where your life is lacking: health, relationships, freedom. 

This is why setting clear intentions is so important. When you define what you want—whether it’s to build a business, improve your health, or deepen relationships—your brain will seek out solutions and opportunities that support that goal. The non-negotiables, and you aim to build your life around it.

But if you haven’t clarified your vision, the brain will default to seeking short-term stability and avoiding discomfort, which keeps you trapped in the status quo.

Let those feelings create clarity in what you want. Let that life that you don't want and the life you want propel you towards that reality. Let that propel you into growth.

And what's wrong with this stability?

In the modern world driven by specialization and overconsumption, many people fall into the trap of attaching themselves to distractions that don’t serve them. Jobs, corporate roles, and societal expectations offer a false sense of stability.

However this stability comes at the cost of your replaceability.

Layoffs are becoming increasingly more prevalent. Automation and AI are rapidly taking over specialized roles, and those who rely on external structures for stability will find themselves increasingly disposable.

You rely on corporations that don’t care about your growth, your potential, or your unique strengths. Your potential and income is capped—not by the value you provide—but by the minimum they can get away with paying you. To them, you’re just an expense on a balance sheet.

Then you 'evolve' to learn new skills to build other peoples project in order to not be replaced. From every point of view, there’s no leverage.

You’ve given your power away to an economic system that fluctuates beyond your control. You rely on stability that collapses the moment the market shifts or the technology evolves.

Meanwhile, we’re growing more isolated.

More people are lonelier than ever. Fewer people have close friends, and society is drifting into disconnection. I don’t even need to show you the statistics—it’s painfully obvious in the way we live.

The lifestyle path society lays out for you—a narrow role, a stable job, the promise of security—it’s a losing game.

So what's your solution?

Build your own project—whether it’s a business, creative endeavor, or life’s work—becomes essential. It’s not only about financial independence; it’s about taking full ownership of your life’s direction.

When you work on something aligned with your own goals and values, you stop outsourcing your life to someone else’s vision. You become the architect of your own life, confronting your true desires and refining your potential.

In this sense, building your own path becomes a spiritual act. You are constructing meaning from the ground up, on your own terms.

You’re designing your own, solving your own problems, and growing through the uncertainty and discomfort.

As you align with your vision, you create value not only for yourself, but for the collective whole. Creation becomes the new value in a world where replaceability is rampant. You become the creator of your own life, shaping your future and growing through every challenge. The skill of being a creator is what I envision the future as becoming:

Uncertainty becomes a tool for growth, and loneliness becomes a reminder to realign with your true self. Together, they propel you toward a life of meaning, creativity, and self-actualization.

The Deep Ocean

I’m about to get a little ranty, but hear me out:

Pursuing the life you want isn’t about working 14-hour days grinding yourself into the ground or selling constantly. That’s no different from the unconscious attachment people have to a job—it’s the same trap, just disguised differently.

Entrepreneurship is a project, but so is your life. Building your vision means constructing systems, structures, and goals that reflect you—not just filling your time with meaningless work. We live in an age where the internet allows us to learn any skill we need and indirectly reach millions of people. Yet, despite having access to this powerful tool, many don’t fully use it.

"But I don’t have time. I have a job search. I need money."

I’m not telling you to drop your job or ignore your grades. Those things can be stepping stones. You need to fulfill your survival needs in order to get to your higher needs. Think Maslow's Hierarchy of needs.

But if you think being attached to the same thing for the next 20 years will get you out of the situation you're in, you’re mistaken. Responsibilities and complacency build up, and you will be chained even further down.

• You want that health—the feeling of mental clarity and a strong, healthy body.

• You want those relationships—the ones that inspire you and offer genuine support.

• You want to work hard building your own project, something that aligns with your goals, not someone else’s.

You’ve felt it—the droning anxiety in the back of your mind. You’ve numbed it with endless scrolling, pointless drama, and staying stuck in your comfort zone. You’ve been putting off the real work for yourself.

So what's holding you back from going for that relationship or launching that business idea? Why the guilt? What are you afraid of? You need experiences and projects to iterate and refine off of. Break the script you're following right now.

Take that anxiety, own it, and dive into the void. Confront the fear, and throw yourself into your vision.

Take that anxiety in and accept it, throw yourself into that void and confront it, throw yourself into that vision. Get lost, then get curious about your observations and go into intense work to build up that life.

Dip yourself into the pool of discomfort and chase after the horizon.

Swim into the far distance with no land in sight.

Yes, the next steps will be confusing.

Yes, you’ll feel uncertain.

Yes, you’ll feel lonely.

But you’ll figure it out, one stroke at a time. You iterate, you fail, you experiment, until you get there.

By the end of it, after your chase for the relationship, the job, the superficial that will supposedly guarantee your life satisfaction,  you'll come to realize:

I Am My Fucking Guarantee

No relationship, no job, no person will ever guarantee your success.

Get comfortable with uncertainty. Stop outsourcing your life and critical thinking to others and become your own guarantee.

Get comfortable with loneliness. When you no longer approach people out of neediness, that’s when you become that guarantee.

This marks the end of the script society handed you—and the beginning of authenticity, the truest expression of your evolving vision.

This is what self-actualization is:

A pursuit that begins with the superficial—beauty, wealth, success—and evolves into something internal.

• The pursuit of an attractive partner, only to realize the beauty in their flaws, the humanness in them.

• The pursuit of a job or entrepreneurship for money, only to find a spiritual motive in your work.

• The pursuit of a clickbait video, only to uncover deeper lessons and values by the end.

Don’t neglect your vision. Don’t avoid uncertainty.

It’s the over-focus on one job, one relationship, one thing that traps people. They get stuck, thinking that will complete them.

Spoiler: It won’t.

Here's what I'm doing this week and I encourage you to follow:

• Notice and sit with your feelings of uncertainty and loneliness. Don’t push them away or distract yourself—let those feelings fuel clarity about the life you truly want.

• Construct an anti-vision (Dan Koe's philosophy) and a vision  for that life in 10 years. What do you want in your life? What don't you want? Break down that vision into 1 year, 1 month, and today. Then act on it today. This vision will constantly evolve as you learn what you do and don't want.

I can’t tell you what your vision is or what business you should start.

You need to figure that out yourself.

I can’t give you the complete solution. I can’t tell you what your next step should be, because then you’d just be outsourcing your path to me. You need to develop critical thinking skills to do this yourself.

Get lost, find your curiosity, chase it down relentlessly and explore every possible way to pursue it.

This is Andrew—I'm going to release videos and making my newsletter more frequent, so keep an eye out for that.

Thanks for reading.

PS: sorry for the double email, the formatting on the last email got bugged

- AL