The Power of Boredom

The phrase, “if you're bored then you're boring,” has always bothered me. Boredom is an amazing gift you can give your brain. Embracing boredom can allow you to live more fully in the moment. It can allow your creativity to flourish. And it can help you build the mental resilience you need to live in health.

The first thing we have to do is ditch the stigma around boredom. “We mistake busyness with productivity and boredom as being lazy.” Our self-worth can be tied to our sense of how busy we are and how much we accomplish, keeping us from taking time for self-care or important work in our life that doesn’t feel productive.

Recovery work is boring. If you’re not in the midst of a major breakthrough, it feels like you’re slogging through your group assignments. You probably wonder where the value is in filling out your FASTER Scale for the fortieth week in a row. 

Recovery takes consistency. Consistency is boring. There’s nothing new or exciting about it. You might find yourself discouraged, tempted to test one more time whether there’s some quick fix that will work. However, “consistency always beats intensity.” 

If you want to reach any long-term goal, consistency is what’s going to get you there. It doesn’t matter if you trained all out for a week, you’re not going to run that marathon. And recovery is the same way.

I’ve heard about the concept of “the pain cave” from a documentary on ultrarunner Courtney Dauwalter. When Courtney gets to the point in a race where the pain feels overwhelming, she goes into what she calls “the pain cave.” The pain cave is a visualization in her mind of how she feels physically. And she’s trained herself to look forward to that place. Why? Because the pain cave is where the most growth happens. It’s when you are pushed to your limits that you grow stronger. 

When we face this place in recovery where we want to quit, we are just entering our time of greatest healing.

Pain and boredom go hand in hand. These are two negative feelings that we try to avoid, but the only way out is through. Rejecting the temptation to numb out and embracing these feelings is integral to healing.

Humans have always found ways to escape boredom and numb out, but having the glow of every possible tidbit of information and distraction always at our fingertips makes it easier than ever. You don’t have to read the back of a cereal box ever again!

I was talking with some coworkers recently about boredom, and one informed me that some people interpret boredom as a form of anger. It’s this anger of being in limbo.

Another coworker mentioned how “muse” means “to think,” the prefix “a-” means “not,” and so “amuse” means “to not think.” It is so easy to keep ourselves amused and never having to think.

I think about “back in the olden days” when most people were doing physical labor of some kind. Think Little House on the Prairie. People were out plowing the fields or stitching clothing by hand all day long. Their bodies were occupied while their minds were free to wander. 

I’m not bashing technology, but I think we miss out by being able to keep ourselves amused at all times. Our brains don’t have to work, they don’t have to think. We avoid actually having to sit with ourselves and be aware of what we’re feeling and what thoughts run through our minds.

In recovery, this mindset can be worse than simply distracting us from what is best for us; it can lead down a path of relapse. When we reject discomfort, we detach. We are not engaged in our world or with the people around us. We enter a passive mindset, we’ve already decided we don’t want to do the hard thing, and we can find ourselves slipping back into old habits. 

I’d like to make a note here before moving on to some strategies for using boredom. For those of us who have experienced trauma, the idea of boredom can be scary, because it means that all our wounding can come back to the surface. If this is you, don’t feel like you have to jump right in. You can practice leaving your mind without distraction for just a few minutes at a time to start or waiting for when you are in a safe space with safe people.

So what are practical ways to embrace boredom?

1. Meditate

I find that I am at my best, most engaged, creative, and focused when I meditate for 40 minutes a day, which is the generally recommended amount of time for the full benefits of meditation. I meditate for two blocks of 20 minutes, usually once first thing in the morning and once before I go to bed at night. 

I won’t lie, sometimes it feels like pure torture. It can feel like it will never end and I will be trapped in the excruciating jail of my own mind. However, how I feel for the rest of the day makes it worth it. And some days are easier than others.

The style of meditation I default to is simple: I set a timer for 20 minutes and sit in silence with my eyes closed. I focus on one thing, usually my breath. If my focus wanders, I don’t berate myself, but simply return my focus where I want it.

2. Ditch the Entertainment

One of my vices is a phone addiction. As someone with a lot of anxiety, scrolling through my phone gives me an escape. But sometimes, this escape turns into a prison and I feel myself not looking at my phone because I want to connect with a friend or learn something new, but because I feel compelled to. 

When this happens, I like to take an entertainment break, for a day, a week, or however long I feel I need. For me, this generally means putting away all screens. Sometimes I’ll just stare out a window.

A friend with ADHD gave me a great tip of not doing anything that gives your brain an easy dopamine dump, like checking social media, before starting on your work for the day. When your brain gets that easy dopamine, it adjusts to a new baseline and avoids tasks that take more work to get this chemical reward.

3. Work on Something Hard, but Important

When you practice embracing the boredom of a hard task, you train your brain to do this more in the future. If you know Pure Desire, you know all about training your brain. The more you do your recovery work, the more you train yourself to do that recovery work. The more you avoid the easy fix, the less likely you are to seek it out.

Whatever method you try, I hope you will give boredom a chance in your journey. It can add a new layer of focus and health to your recovery!

1. https://genius.com/Harvey-danger-flagpole-sitta-lyrics
2. https://thefutur.com/content/boredom-is-the-key-to-creativity-pt-1
3. The Futur with Chris Do - Episode 225: Energy is Everything with Simon Ong https://thefutur.com/content/energy-is-everything
4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQSiygnDm-U
5. Ingalls Wilder, L. (1935). Little House on the Prairie. Harper & Brothers.
6. https://www.manhattancbt.com/archives/309/how-long-should-you-meditate/#:~:text=Mindfulness%2Dbased%20clinical%20interventions%20such,recommends%2020%20minutes%2C%20twice%20daily.

The views, opinions, and ideas expressed in this blog are those of the author alone and do not reflect an official position of Pure Desire Ministries, except where expressly stated.