Better Bored Than Sorry: Why We Create Chaos To Escape Quiet

The French philosopher Blaise Pascal once famously said, 'All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.' We often treat boredom as a minor annoyance, but modern psychology tells us it is actually a powerful drive that can push us toward addiction, unnecessary drama, and destructive risks just to feel alive. In this episode, we will explore why your brain hates the quiet, and how to turn that restless energy into creativity instead of chaos.

Music by Aonescape from Pixabay

Transcript

Welcome to the Happiness Podcast.

I'm Dr.

Robert Puff.

Have you ever been bored and done something you wish you hadn't?

When I was in high school,

A friend of mine did this very thing.

It was a summer in Iowa.

There wasn't much to do and he didn't have a job,

But he did have a car.

So,

To alleviate his boredom,

He decided it would be a lot of fun to drive his car on the grass on a park in our town and do spin-outs and basically tear up the grass all over the place in the middle of night.

It definitely alleviated his boredom,

But it caused a lot of damage to the park.

And about a week later,

After I found out he was doing this,

He got arrested.

Or did you ever hear the story about the Roman Emperor Caligula,

Who went to war on the sea?

Around 40 AD,

The Emperor decided to march his army to the northern coast of France and invade Britain.

But he stopped at the English Channel.

Do you know what he did instead?

In his boredom,

He declared war on Neptune,

The god of the sea,

And he ordered his highly trained Roman legions to draw their swords and attack the waves.

Then he commanded them to gather the seashells as spoils of war to be paraded back to Rome.

Whether this was madness or an act of humiliating his soldiers,

It stands as a monument to what happens when absolute power meets a lack of constructive purpose.

What is this itch that comes from boredom?

It isn't just relaxing.

It's an agitated state,

Where we want to do something,

Anything,

To engage our minds.

And here's the thesis of today's podcast.

If we don't fill it with something good,

It will fill itself with something bad.

So why does boredom get us in trouble?

Why does boredom hurt?

Our brains are wired for stimulation.

When stimulation drops,

Dopamine drops.

The brain panics and sends a search-and-retrieve signal.

So we experience life within the Goldilocks zone.

We need just the right amount of challenge.

Too much,

And we get anxiety.

Too little,

And we get boredom.

When we aren't focused on a task,

Our brains turn inward,

Rumination.

For many,

This is scary,

So we scramble for distraction.

And in our modern age,

Where so few people ever learn how to be still and quiet inside,

Quietness can be overwhelming.

When there's a moment low or break in the activity of our lives,

So many people turn to their phone,

Their screen time immediately to fill that void.

When we're waiting,

Our phones often are the first thing we turn towards.

I bet you've seen this one.

There's a stoplight,

You wait,

There's a car in front of you,

And it's a short wait,

Maybe less than a minute.

But during that time,

The person in front of you gets on their phone,

Gets distracted,

And when that light turns green,

They don't move.

And have you ever done a test to see how long they'll sit there before they notice the light turn green if you don't honk at them?

It can be quite a while.

So how does boredom get us in trouble?

There's a very famous shock study that actually shocked a lot of people when they heard about the results.

In 2024,

A study was done at the University of Virginia.

Participants were left alone in a room for 15 minutes to do nothing.

They were,

However,

Given one option.

They could push a button to shock themselves.

Do you know what happened?

67% of the men and 25% of the women chose to shock themselves rather than sit alone with their own thoughts for 15 minutes.

That is shocking.

We prefer physical pain to the pain of boredom.

You may be thinking,

Yeah,

But it probably was a mild or not that big a deal shock.

Not true.

Before that 15-minute portion of the experiment,

Participants were given a sample shock.

They were asked to rate how unpleasant it was.

To even qualify for the final part of the study,

The one we're talking about,

Participants had to rate the shock as negative and explicitly state they would pay money to avoid being shocked again.

In other words,

It hurt so much that every participant in the study had just moments ago confirmed they would essentially pay a fine to never feel it again.

Yet 67% of men and 25% of women chose to shock themselves again.

And why?

Because they were bored.

We do not like boredom.

How does this show up in our lives?

Do you know how many times over the course of my work as a clinical psychologist I've seen one spouse pick a fight with their other spouse just to create emotional intensity?

Or what about gambling,

Reckless driving,

Or substance abuse that doesn't always start off as sadness but out of dullness?

I work in Newport Beach,

California,

Where people often do extremely well financially.

And you would think with having so much access to wealth,

Activities,

So many different things,

That their lives would never get bored.

And yet with all that they have,

So many of their children,

So many of the adults turn to substances to numb the boredom they feel inside.

Or haven't we all known someone who numbs themselves by overeating or just doom scrolling just to silence the mind?

Does boredom in and of itself have to be bad?

No.

One of the great opportunities of boredom is that it can be the birthplace of creativity.

History shows that boredom is often the precursor to brilliance.

Isaac Newton,

Who many people feel was one of the most intelligent,

Creative,

And innovative people who've ever lived in history.

He's been raised in the countryside and his mother wanted him to stay home and manage their farm.

But thankfully his uncle intervened and talked her into letting him go to the University of Cambridge and study.

When he got there,

He was delighted and loved all the things he was learning.

But unfortunately,

The plague came to Cambridge and he was sent home.

And when he got home,

He was bored sitting under a tree when he watched an apple fall.

And he realized that the moon fell just like the apple.

So in order to explain this,

He invented calculus and the theory of gravity because he had nothing to do.

He was bored.

Or have you heard of the story about how Harry Potter began its inception when J.

K.

Rowling was stuck on a train for four hours.

She didn't have a pen.

She just had a window to look out of.

And during that time,

She sat and imagined the world of Harry Potter.

If we numb our boredom immediately,

Say with our phone,

We're killing the opportunity to create an idea before it was even born.

I do a lot of things to make sure I have time where I'm not actively using my mind and being still.

Because I find in these moments of stillness,

Out of the silence comes direction,

Comes wisdom that I need for my life.

So every day,

Twice a day,

For 30 minutes or more,

I sit quietly and meditate,

Allowing myself to be still.

And then two times a week,

I go for a swim for over an hour.

And there's nothing but myself in that pool.

No distractions.

And then often,

I go on retreat where I just am still and quiet for a weekend,

For a week,

Just to make sure all is well in my life.

These moments of stillness are so important for us.

And sadly,

What I'm seeing in our world is an erosion of this stillness because people are so fearful of boredom.

I remember at the beginning of my private practice,

When I started working as a clinical psychologist,

I was working with a group and the man that ran it really liked people who he knew were very wise.

And he looked up to them.

But I knew that the people he liked had spent a lot of time in solitude.

And that's how they got their wisdom.

And he knew that I was taking time like them on retreats because I felt it was healthy for my soul to do these things.

And when I asked him,

Hey,

Why don't you go on retreat or take some time away from your busy lifestyle?

And he would say,

Oh,

No,

I don't have time for that.

I'm too busy.

He was fearful of losing money and not making enough.

But no matter how much he made,

It was never enough.

And he was always fearful.

If instead of building his empire,

He had taken time to be still,

He would have found that life can be beautiful even with little or less.

Think of the wisest people that you've heard about in history.

Have any of them ever had a life where they never slowed down?

Or do they have large swaths of time where they made room for solitude,

Silence,

And stillness?

Didn't Jesus spend 40 days in the wilderness?

Didn't Buddha spend years meditating?

Didn't Muhammad go to his cave to spend time in solitude?

Didn't Henry David Thoreau spend two years in his small cabin in Walden?

One of my favorite sayings that you may have heard of before goes like this,

Be still and know that I am God.

Perhaps another way we could put it is be still and know who I am.

Life can be very complicated,

But when we create stillness and don't run from the boredom,

Often that which we are seeking is there.

The questions that we need answers to are there,

In the silence,

In the present moment.

So how do we take little steps not to run from the boredom when it comes to us?

We can do the 10-minute rule.

When we feel bored and reach for our phone or a snack,

Wait 10 minutes.

Sit with the discomfort.

Next,

We can distinguish rest from boredom.

Rest restores us.

Boredom agitates us.

If we're agitated,

Move our body,

Go for a walk,

Stretch,

Rather than numbing our minds.

And then lastly,

Learn to listen in the silence.

Really be still and see what arises inside of you.

It can be scary.

It can be hard.

But what we'll find with time and with help from others,

We can solve the things that need healing inside of us.

We can move in the direction that makes our lives better,

More whole,

More peaceful.

We can live the life at the highest level that we're meant to live through moments of stillness.

Boredom doesn't have to be an enemy.

Boredom doesn't have to be something we need to remove.

Instead,

See boredom as an opportunity to make our lives better.

We really can have beautiful lives,

But it takes work.

It takes insight.

It takes growth.

It takes change.

Boredom can be the catalyst for all these.

When we sit with the stillness,

When we face our fears,

Our anxieties,

What we'll find is there's a solution to anything,

No matter how difficult our situation is right now.

This isn't easy,

But anything beautiful is never easy.

But it does reap the rewards of a beautiful,

Peaceful life that any of us can have.

We just need to work at it.

And we need also times of stillness to know what needs to be healed and where to go next.

And also what is beautiful right now in the here and now when we quiet our minds and just be.

Thank you for joining me on the Happiness Podcast.

Until next time,

Accept what is,

Love what is.

Reviews

Great message! Thank you for the reminder!! 🙏🏽✨🙏🏽