Thank you for joining us for episode 544 of Live Happy Now.

We've heard a lot about the physical and emotional damage of loneliness, but it's also true that spending time by yourself can provide a much-needed reset.

Join us this week as host Paula Phelps sits down with Dr. Robert Copeland,

a psychologist, researcher, teacher, and author who has been studying solitude for more than 30

years. In his new book, The Joy of Solitude, Rob explores its benefits, looks at the difference

between solitude and loneliness, and explains how we can all

learn to benefit from embracing it. Let's have a listen. Rob, thank you so much for joining me today

on Live Happy Now. Thanks so much, Paula. It's great to be here. Oh, I've been so looking forward to this

conversation. I was looking forward to this book before I even knew it was being written

because it really is a book that I've been wanting to read, that I've been waiting for,

because you are talking about loneliness versus solitude. You know, we're hearing so much right now

about the dangers and the damage of loneliness. So before we start, let's like really talk about what the

difference is between those two, between solitude and loneliness. Yeah, thank you. I think that's a

wonderful place to start, actually, and an important place to start, because when we talk about

solitude, I always try to preface everything that I say, not to be misunderstood that I'm in any

way trying to minimize basically how much loneliness

sucks, right? Like, loneliness is awful. We talk about the loneliest epidemic and, you know,

loneliness causes real damage to our mental health and our well-being and even our physical

health. And it's something that we really do need to pay a lot of attention to. But loneliness

is not solitude. So loneliness is a feeling.

It's a terrible feeling. It's a feeling that we get when our social life does not live up to

our expectations, right? It's a disconnection. It's a discrepancy between how we want things to be

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