Boredom

Boredom

In our daily lives, we are not given enough time to sit in stillness, to simply exist. We need to unplug from the world in real and meaningful ways, doing nothing.

What Is Nothing?

Nothing is more than hanging out in your living room listening to music and drawing, or in my case, sitting at my computer or at a coffeehouse writing.

To experience true boredom, you must be in an absolute state of stillness, doing nothing meaningful. You have to remove every outside hypnotic and stimulating influence from your environment and bear through the prattling of your own mind.

Outside hypnotic and stimulating influences include video games, music, writing, watching TV, scrolling on your phone, reading a book, or having a conversation. 

To achieve true boredom, you must push through the frustration, anger, and discomfort of stillness, nothingness, and aloneness. The only stimulation you are allowed to feel is from within.

Enduring an extended state of true boredom results in peacefulness. It downregulates an overactive sensory system, reduces interoceptive hypersensitivity, and trains your brain to self-regulate. 

Restorative Activities

There is a value in restorative activities like writing, listening to music, and other behaviors that stimulate and calm the nervous system. But when a solid, healthy sensory baseline needs to be reestablished, the experience of nothingness is essential.

Doing these restorative activities is still doing something and provides you with a distraction to focus on. To achieve true boredom, it requires the inaction of nothingness to solely and only exist in the moment; that way, you are completely alone in your own thoughts.