The Weekly Minute - Be Bored

Instructions for "Be Bored":

1. Pick a time each day where you know you will be idle - perhaps when you're sitting on the bus, or train, when you're standing in a queue, or waiting before an appointment.
2. Set an intention to allow yourself to be bored during this time.
3. Notice any urge you might feel to reach for your phone, or a magazine, or a book. - Can you sit with the urge and not act on it?
4. Be curious about the urge, are you trying to escape your thoughts by checking your phone? Are you trying to retreat from your immediate environment by hiding in a magazine? Is it difficult for you to sit still?
5. See what you learn, and open yourself to being with any discomfort.
6. ​Don't forget to use your breath to help you ease any discomfort.

What you have just done is expand your ability to be happy. By practising being a bit bored now and again, you diminish the need to be stimulated all the time. Too much stimulation has a negative effect on the nervous system, and therefore your physical and mental health, eventually wearing down your ability to be happy and content.

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"A person accustomed to too much excitement is like a person with a morbid craving for pepper, who comes last to be unable even to taste a quantity of pepper which would cause anyone else to choke. There is an element of boredom which is inseparable from the avoidance of too much excitement, and too much excitement not only undermines the health, but dulls the palate for every kind of pleasure, substituting titillations for profound organic satisfactions, cleverness for wisdom, and jagged surprises for beauty." - Bertrand Russell

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