hello boredom.
As I wake up, grab my phone and head to start my workout, there is a song playing on the screen of my fridge as I grab my pre-workout water.
My workout routine is on my iPad. I paused thinking about how many distractions and conveniences are around me all the time.
As I walk to work and I am plugged into a podcast or a book, the audio as I walk through trees and miss the sounds of birds.
Remember when we would leave the house in the morning and not come back until the streetlights were on and we had no phones, no electronics, just a bike and whichever friends were around to enhance our imaginations and we would be busy all day.
Now we can barely watch a TV show without also being connected online.
I decided to try being bored. I used to doodle in high school so I figured that starting with doodling would be a meditative solution to ease my way into being completely bored.
I read this article in Psychology Today highlighting 5 great benefits to boredom:
1. Boredom can improve our mental health. In this age of information, our brains are overloaded with information and distractions.
2. Boredom can increase creativity. Boredom can provide an opportunity to turn inward and use the time for thought and reflection. Boredom can enable creativity and problem-solving by allowing the mind to wander and daydream.
3. Boredom motivates a search for novelty. Without boredom, humans would not have the taste for adventure and novelty-seeking that makes us who we are—intelligent, curious, and constantly seeking out the next thing.
4. Boredom motivates the pursuit of new goals. Boredom is an emotional signal that we are not doing what we want to be doing.
5. Boredom and self-control skills. Boredom affects the ability to focus and pay attention because the interest is lost.The ability to focus and self-regulate is correlated with the ability to handle boredom.
“Downtime replenishes the brain's stores of attention and motivation, encourages productivity and creativity, and is essential to both achieve our highest levels of performance and simply form stable memories in everyday life,” Ferris Jabr, Scientific American.
I knoew it was time to see if how boredom can enhance my creativity.
The first time I went for a walk outside without a distraction in my ears was both eerie and enjoyable. I paid even more attention to the items around me, and noticed small things like how much I dragged part of my foot on the concrete. I allowed my brain to go anywhere and once it finally relaxed it went from one thought to another like ping-pong.
Instead of allowing myself a half hour or hour of TV that was just filler, I went upstairs to my office, pulled out a sketchbook, and started doodling. There it made no sense and I just continued to add on, layering, more and more lines and before I realized it, an hour had passed, no music, no TV just me and my thoughts. I felt peaceful when it was done.
The day's stress fell off, it's hard to feel stress when you are doodling, or walking and ideas travelled smoothly through my head while challenges seemed to untangle and become clearer. This was not meditation but I could see meditation becoming easier with a few practice boredom sessions.
I am looking forward to the mental clarity and strength practicing boredom may have.
julie boake
awedity creative
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