Do you get bored easily? Have you ever stopped to consider why?
Studies done on boredom show that people who are unable to remain attentive get bored easily. They seem to require frequent, new and different stimuli to keep their minds active and thus avoid feeling bored.
Studies have also shown that people who are not very self-aware and not accurately in touch with their emotions are more prone to boredom.
When we feel bored, we are not really present to where we are and what is happening within us and around us. This lack of attentiveness can have unhelpful long-term effects.
For instance, over time, we become less and less in touch with our internal and external world and require more and higher intensity stimuli to keep us interested in life and focused on the things we need to do.
However, if we were able to pay more attention to what is going on within us and around us, not necessarily with a judging eye but with the keen eye of sheer observation, the most mundane things can suddenly become the most fascinating things in our world.
This is what people who practice mindfulness meditation frequently experience. Both the inner world and the outer world become amazingly exciting and intriguing.
They begin to notice that the sky is not just blue or pink but that it holds so many different and constantly changing hues and shapes and forms that it becomes a panorama of movement and colour!
Grass is no longer just green but a palette of many ‘greens’ depending on where and how much light hits it, what length it is, how damp it is, what other plants are growing around it and so on.
Now all this may seem trivial and useless but for the person who suffers from boredom (which can often be a precursor to depression), this ability to be very mindful can be a life-saving skill.
In fact, mindfulness is really about being in ‘the flow’, the natural flow of consciousness, of life. It allows your natural happiness to flow through unimpeded by feelings of being stuck or resisting the way things are or fearing the way things will be or regretting and obsessing over the way things have been.
Of course there are other ways of overcoming boredom and most people tend to rely on these. Sports, hobbies of various sorts, social activities and intellectual pursuits are often things that people engage in for a variety of reasons including the desire to avoid or reduce boredom.
The practice of mindfulness and other forms of meditation is, however, something that you can do without any additional resources, anytime and anywhere.
For instance, being mindful of your breathing can open you to the fascinating world of something as mundane as your breath. Or simply being very mindful of a mundane task such as washing the dishes can help alleviate any boredom or resentment you feel when you have to perform the task.
Instead of eating or reaching for a cigarette, practicing mindfulness meditation can not only help you overcome your unhelpful habit, it will also increase your ability to focus and be attentive, increase your powers of observation, improve your memory (which is closely related to attentiveness) and remove blocks that have collected in your mind and body as a result of feeling stuck, bored or even anxious.
It can also put you in touch with your feelings, allowing you to encounter them in a relaxed and fearless way. It offers you the experience of noticing how your feelings come and go thus encouraging you not to get fixated on them or to make hasty decisions in order to try and get rid of them.
Before I finish this post, I would like to mention another kind of boredom that mindfulness practice and meditation more generally can help overcome. It is called ‘existential boredom’.
This boredom is with the world generally. It is the kind of boredom that a person experiences when they find the world meaningless and their life purposeless. They have little enthusiasm or passion for anything. It is the kind of boredom that is most frequently associated with severe depression.
When we fail to see the magnificence of the world, the diversity and intrigue that it holds, when we fail to feel the very pulse of life throbbing, the world can indeed become a cold, lifeless and meaningless place.
The practice of mindfulness and other types of meditation can tune us into the very heartbeat of the world. It can awaken in us the natural joy and passion that we so long for.
See also Three kinds of Mindfulness Meditation
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