Leverage Boredom and Get to Know Your SELF
Embrace boredom and get to know yourself.
As my month in France winds down, one of the things I’ve realized is that the more you turn inward, the less frequently you are bored. In other words, the less busy-work you engage in, the less bored you’ll be.
Say whaaaat?
I submit that, just like spelling (spellcheck) and mathematics (calculators) and penmanship (texting) and personal conversations (social media) - we’ve gotten lazy and need external sources to keep us engaged (and spelling, adding, and conversing properly).
Busyness
I call these types of activities “busyness”. Things you do that take your time and attention without adding any value to your life.
- TV binging
- Social media scrolling
- Celebrity worship
- Shopping as a sport
- Perfectionism
It's like eating empty calories. They may taste great, but do absolutely nothing to make you look, feel, or be better in the long run. And getting lost in busyness, at best, you waste precious time you can never get back. At worst, you're reinforcing a lazy habit that will continue to take more and more from you.
What does it take from you? It steals from your relationship with your SELF.
Your SELF
Busyness makes it easy to fool yourself that you're being productive. Remove the stimuli - the netflix, the iphone, the over-analysis - where does your attention go? Just like having difficulty spelling and adding and subtracting without “help”, you’ll forget how to engage with yourself. You’ll be bored with yourself rather than being with yourself.
For most of us, at this stage in our lives especially, what we are longing for most is to know and nurture our authentic SELF. Disconnect from busyness and be still. Get back in touch with your SELF.
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