Becoming A Better Person With Boredom
When you pay attention to boredom it gets unbelievably interesting. Jon Kabat-Zinn
Have you ever being bored at any point in your life? Have you ever tried staying alone without doing anything? The answer is yes to these two questions.
At one point in our lives, we have been bored, and as well as staying all by ourselves without doing anything.
So the real question is how do you handle or treat boredom?
Boredom is not lack of stimulation. The more distractions and external stimuli we pursue, the more bored we get.
Boredom is the pain of unused potential; it’s a disconnection to everything we can offer the world and vice versa.
Being bored means having nothing to do. Nothing induces boredom quicker than a stale, changeless situation lacking freshness and surprise.
Boredom means you develop your own interior life. Hilton Als
I have been working remotely for the past 4 months now and the change that comes from working at home is different from working at the office especially if you are an introvert.
I see a lot of my friends struggling every day to overcome boredom when they are alone not because they don’t have anything doing but because there is always a constant need for them to escape their emotions.
As Wallace D Wattles put it in his book The science of being great Thinking is the hardest and most exhausting of all labor which is why few do it.
You can not think without growing and thinking is growth. Every thought produces another thought.
Most people find it difficult to stay with their thought.
I tell people every day you can be all alone by yourself and not get bored only if you can stay with your thought. The moment you want to start running away from your thought is when you experience boredom.
We can’t always have things in a single direction only. Of what good is a pleasure when there is no pain, of what good is happiness if we are not solving a problem.
Of what good is suffering if done without a purpose. Of what good is life if we can’t find a meaning to it and of what good is excitement without boredom.
“The price of being a sheep is boredom. The price of being a wolf is loneliness. Choose one or the other with great care.” — Hugh MacLeod
Variety is what makes our planet so intoxicating. And yet as species, we have an unremitting desire to cling onto positive experiences in an attempt to prevent their escape.
Things come and go naturally, and resisting them only pollutes our soul with misery.
To defeat boredom, you need less, not more, stimulation and novelty.
When you can’t stay alone with your thought, You will always get bored wherever you find yourself.
Creating
The current social norm of today has allowed more consumption rather than creating. Are you creating or consuming?
We seek to numb ourselves through a variety of means; TV shows, social media, and substances. A lot of the time these behaviors are considered normal. Rather we should be striving for fulfillment and balance.
Notice all the activities mentioned above all involve consumption. And in a way trying to cure our boredom by escaping our emotions.
Creating your art is what cures boredom. Cause only when you create your art can you begin to pause and surrender yourself to the present moment by immersing yourselves in it and giving it the attention of all our senses.
What is your art?
“I think boredom is the beginning of every authentic act. (…) Boredom opens up space, for new engagements. Without boredom, no creativity. If you are not bored, you just stupidly enjoy the situation in which you are.” — Slavoj Žižek
Values
If you want to change how you see your problems, you have to change what you value.
Good values are immediate and controllable, socially constructive and reality-based. Honesty, innovation, curiosity, vulnerability, self-respect, and creativity are examples of good values.
Good and healthy values can only be achieved internally by being able to stay with your thoughts.
As Mark Mason said in his book The subtle art of not giving a f**k. Technology has solved old economic problems by giving us new technological problems.
One of the problems technologies has given us is the constant need to escape our emotions.
There is never a time for us to sit, and stay with our thought. Hence there is a constant need for dopamine hit, and when we don’t get it, we become bored.
Boredom feeds creativity.
Boredom always precedes a period of great creativity. Robert M. Pirsig
Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash
Your brain likes to escape from the feeling of boredom. Instead of giving it external stimulation, let it feed on internal elements.
Mind drifting or wandering invites creativity. Rather than trying to focus on external stimuli, let it find its own way by moving from one idea to another.
Avoid technology when you feel bored.
Entertainment snacks will make you crave for more. Rather than controlling your boredom, your need for distraction will never be satisfied.
Technology is anything but a boredom cure.
With the ingrained cultural endorsement to always evade our emotions, we never really learn how to be with ourselves.
