Normal people are incapable of handling boredom. No wonder why they amount to nothing in life.
A normal person sees boredom as an enemy. Boredom is something to “kill”, “get rid of”, “beat”, “overcome.”
This is the wrong mentality to have.
Modern humans don’t have a shortage of things to do. We have more entertainment options at our fingertips than any previous generation but we are also more bored than ever. How could this be?
What the average person never realizes is that boredom can’t be killed, got rid of, overcome, or beaten.
Boredom is immortal. The more you attempt to kill it the more it multiplies. You can temporarily chase it away with mindless entertainment but it always comes roaring back, with each time stronger than before.
-But Lane, boredom is totally normal.
Of course it’s normal. That’s why the masses of people lead lives of desperation.
However, you don’t want to be normal and miserable. You want to be exceptional. You want to thrive. You want greatness, not mediocrity. This is why you’re reading this website.
Boredom Is A Prerequisite To Success
What separates an accomplished person from an average person is that the former befriends boredom and makes it an ally while the latter sees it as an ailment to be “cured” with entertainment and distraction.
Yes, everyone else is bored but doing what everyone else is doing is not a path to greatness. It’s a path to mediocrity, i.e. desperation.
The problem isn’t boredom itself. The problem is your relationship with it. Boredom is a prerequisite to success. If you want to be exceptional you can’t be like everyone else.
If you see boredom as an enemy that must be killed or avoided at all costs, you’ll never develop the patience and discipline required to succeed in life. You’ll waste your life away with whatever entertains or distracts you at the moment, never sticking to anything useful for the long haul.
If you see boredom as a necessary part of the process then you’ll embrace it and you’ll succeed.
Our goal is not to murder boredom which we cannot do anyway. Our goal is to replace one type of boredom (which is destructive) with another kind of boredom (which is constructive.)
If you successfully do this, you’ll never have to endure the first type of boredom that plagues the majority of modern people.
The Two Types Of Boredom
Not all boredom is created the same.
There’s the common type of boredom that everyone and their mom suffer from. Then there’s another type of boredom that paves the way to greatness.
The first type of boredom stems from the emptiness of having nothing to do. The bored person is seeking to fill in the void. This type of boredom is what destroys people. People resort to destructive activities trying to escape from their boredom but they end up destroying themselves when they’re thinking they’re destroying their boredom.
What the average person never understands is that this type of boredom is a symptom. It’s not the disease itself.
Unless you address its root cause, you can only temporarily chase away your boredom which is why it always comes back. It’s an endless battle that you can’t win unless you address the real problem. We’ll cover how to cure this disease later in the article.
The second type of boredom stems from building something of value. It’s the boredom of discipline, slow-paced growth, and patience.
This type of boredom carries you to greatness. The ability to endure it pays dividends while the ability to endure the first type of boredom pays nothing.
Let’s first address how to (and how not to) deal with the first type of boredom and then we’ll address how to befriend the second type. Let’s begin.
The Biggest Secret About Boredom That No One Dares To Tell You But I Will
Boredom is so common that it never dawns on most people that they don’t have to live miserably. If everyone else is also bored then there’s nothing wrong with you, right? Wrong.
If you frequently suffer from the first type of boredom then you’re probably a boring person. Take it from me because no one else will tell you this out of political correctness.
Boring people can’t stand themselves so they seek outlets (entertainment, drugs, or friends, etc) to save them from themselves. I know this because I’ve been there.
If this is you then don’t fret. You’ve come to the right place for the remedy. There’s nothing inherently wrong with you. Everyone is boring by default. You must put in the effort to build yourself up to be an interesting, well-equipped person.
You don’t have to be tortured by destructive boredom for an entire lifetime.
It takes work but by following the steps laid out in this article you can grow out of it provided that you’re willing to put in the work.
What NOT To Do When You Are Bored
Unfortunately, most people dig themselves into a deeper hole when trying to “kill” their boredom.
Here are the destructive things people do when they’re bored that you should avoid:
Do NOT Seek Other People’s Company To Relieve Your Boredom
The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.
― Ellen Parr
When people are bored, they often seek the company of interesting people.
While this tactic temporarily relieves boredom (provided that you’re able to find someone interesting to entertain you), you’ll go back to being bored as soon as you are alone again since no one has the time and patience to entertain you forever. It’s a bottomless void that can’t be filled by other people.
If you’re bored when you’re alone, you are not bored because of being alone. You’re bored because you’re a boring person. Strong, well-rounded people are never bored when alone. In fact, they often look forward to spending time alone.
Finding someone to spend time with doesn’t necessarily relieve a boring person’s boredom either. Two boring people get bored in each other’s company so boring people seek entertaining people to spend time with, which the entertaining person sees as a chore. This is why boring people are usually avoided. Even boring people avoid other boring people.
While there’s nothing wrong with socializing, using other people to save you from yourself is not ok. No one is your babysitter. You aren’t entitled to anything, including social interactions with the kind of people you want. You’ve got to earn it.
The solution is to become a strong, interesting person who’s sought after by others but looks forward to being alone. The more you improve yourself, the less you’ll be bored.
The best type of self-improvement to love spending time alone is self-education. It’s not a coincidence that ignorant people can’t stand being alone. Ignorant people are always bored when they’re alone because their empty minds aren’t capable of self-stimulation.
Self-educated people are insatiably curious. The pursuit of knowledge keeps them busy and entertained. Ignorant people aren’t curious. They always seek company to soothe their boredom.
The more you fill your brain with knowledge, the more you’ll crave solitude.
Once you stop being a boring person, you’ll love to spend time with yourself. If you love to spend time with yourself, other people will want to spend time with you too.
Do NOT Kill Time
Having a lot of time in your hands while having nothing of substance to do is what breeds destructive boredom.
What normal people usually do in such a situation is to kill time because killing time means killing boredom, they reason.
The problem is that time is not a renewable resource. It’s your most precious asset. You only live once and you don’t have as much time as you think. Life is short. Time is life. Run out of time and you die. Killing time is slowly killing yourself.
Moreover, killing time is not enough to kill boredom. Remember, boredom is a symptom, not the disease itself. Do something entertaining, kill your time and your boredom will rear its ugly head next time you have enough time to kill. It’s a vicious circle. A downward spiral.
Younger people are especially prone to wasting their time due to boredom because they think they have all the time in the world so they don’t mind killing some (or most) of it.
But time passes by quickly. Before you know it, your younger years are wasted. Make your younger years count. Don’t end up with no skills and no money to show for.
Do NOT Seek Instant Gratification
All of man’s troubles come from not knowing how to sit still, alone in a room.
― Blaise Pascal
Playing video games, binge-watching TV/Netflix, watching porn, gambling (including online gambling), drinking, doing drugs. These are some of the instantly gratifying activities that most people resort to when they’re bored.
Talk about digging yourself a deeper hole.
These instantly gratifying activities can temporarily relieve boredom but they’re never the permanent solution. Boredom always strikes back so these activities must be repeated forever since they don’t address the root cause of the problem.
Once you are hooked, you not only waste a lot of time and money for them but you also have to go through a lot of struggle to quit them should you decide to do so.
Most people never succeed in quitting their addictions. They waste their lives away with instantly gratifying but addictive vices. Not starting at all is easier than quitting.
There are better solutions. Don’t ruin your life just to escape from boredom.
What To Do When You Are Bored
Most people can’t handle boredom. That means they can’t stay on one thing until they get good at it. And they wonder why they’re unhappy.
― Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson
If you’re often bored because you have nothing else to do, then what you want is not to kill boredom which you can’t do anyway.
The times when you’re bored are not something to dread. They are opportunities for growth. Normal people squander these opportunities. Consider yourself lucky that you have time in your hands because boredom is a luxury which in the past only the rich had the privilege of having.
Successful, strong, and interesting people wish they had more time for doing all the things they want to do.
All you have to do is to make the best use of your time until you leave the average behind and become the person you always wanted to be.
Replace Unproductive Boredom With Productive Boredom
Your goal is not to eliminate boredom but to replace unproductive boredom with its productive brother.
You don’t want to kill your boredom. You want to befriend it and make it an ally. This will separate you from the miserable masses who avoid boredom at all costs.
There are too many things to do and learn in order to become a competitive person who can carve out a nice place in this brutally competitive world. You don’t have time to waste.
Leave the games to the kids and immature masses. Real happiness is built by climbing up the ladder of status. You are not seeking to kill time. You are seeking to make the best use of your time so that you build yourself to the point of wishing you had 240 hours a day for all the awesome things you want to do.
Commit to growth and soon you’ll be so busy that you’ll never have the time to experience destructive boredom.
Take Care Of The Fundamentals
You have no business wasting time if you haven’t even taken care of the fundamentals.
Here are the fundamentals that you should sort out before you move on to a higher level:
- Fitness
- Self-education
- Social skills
Sort Out Your Diet And Exercise Habits
Sorting out your diet and exercise habits will take care of your fitness.
If you’re out of shape, getting in great shape will teach you the value of the productive type of boredom where you patiently stick to something until you reap the fruits of your labor.
Enduring the boredom of slow progress is essential. Meaningful progress that transforms your life never happens quickly. If it did, everyone would be superior people.
After you achieve to get in great shape through exercise and diet, then you can apply the same formula to achieve any other goal in life.
Progressing step-by-step is the only way to succeed in anything
― Robert Greene
Read Books
Most people prefer watching TV/Netflix/Movies in their spare time but reading books is where the magic happens.
What saves you from being a boring person is what you carry inside your skull.
Ignorant people are always bored. The more you fill up your mind with knowledge, the less you’re bored and the more interesting a person you become.
Moreover, the more you educate yourself the more you’ll love solitude.
Socialize
Social skills are necessary to navigate the terrain of modern life.
The more you improve yourself, the more you’ll love solitude but that doesn’t take away from the importance of developing social skills.
Socializing is different from seeking human interaction out of boredom. It’s a great way to enjoy and improve your life, not a way to relieve boredom.
Develop A Useful Skill
Being bored with a lot of time in your hands is a great opportunity to develop useful skills.
Here are a few useful skills to give you an idea:
- Learn how to play an instrument
- Learn a foreign language
- Learn how to cook
- Meet new people
- Learn how to dance
- Learn how to paint
- Learn a digital skill
- Start a blog and/or a vlog
- Start an online business
You can expand the list however you want as there’s no shortage of useful skills to develop. Choices are endless. Much better than wasting your life away with instantly gratifying but useless and addictive activities.
Travel
If you’ve taken care of the fundamentals and you have the money and time to travel then you can travel to interesting places to get to know different cultures.
I’d recommend not to go to popular tourist destinations. Everyone goes to Paris, Rome, Barcelona or London.
Do something different. Go to places that are actually interesting. Learn about different cultures and try to understand why they do things differently. Human nature is fascinating if you develop an interest in it.
Make Self-Improvement A Cornerstone Habit
Most people stop improving when they reach adult age. This is a mistake.
School education is nowhere near enough. Not only it falls short of preparing you for the challenges of real life, but it also does nothing to contribute to your personal growth to be a well-rounded person who is capable of enjoying life.
You’ll never stop being a basic, boring person without improving yourself. Lottery winners are good examples of this.
Lottery winners squander their money because they think shallow pleasures will make them happy. They often lack the sophistication required to enjoy wealth so they squander their money for instant gratification, only to go back to zero within a few years.
The only way to be content with life is to be a well-rounded person filled with knowledge, life skills, and experience. This can only be done through disciplined self-improvement.
Normal people hate discipline because they think it’s boring and it restricts their freedom.
First, discipline expands your freedom, not restrict it.
Second, enduring the boredom of disciplined but slow growth is a prerequisite for success. This is why normal people are never exceptionally successful. Avoid boredom and success avoids you.
Discipline is the only way to become a high-value person who doesn’t have time to get bored. When you build up yourself to be a high-value person, you’ll have so many things to do because you’ll have money, time, and the maturity to enjoy living.
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