Boredom

In this episode of Life, Lessons, & Laughter we are discussing Boredom! Glenn dives into what makes us so uncomfortable about being alone with ourselves and still. We also discuss how to deal with those uncomfortable feelings when they begin to rise up within us.

Transcript

Welcome to Life Lessons and Laughter with your host Glenn Ambrose.

Hey everybody,

Welcome to the podcast.

That's what we're doing.

We're doing so many things,

The live shows,

The Ask Glenn Anythings.

I gotta think for a moment and figure out which one we're doing.

But we're doing the podcast.

Hi,

Ben.

Hey,

Glenn.

We also,

Because of the new format and the new way that we're recording it,

We don't have to,

Like,

I'm in control of the cameras.

So you don't have to say the,

Like,

Life lessons,

Laughter,

Boredom beforehand,

Which we had to do at the beginning of every take,

But,

You know,

For the last two and a half years.

Right.

How has that adjustment been for you?

I'm getting better at the adjustments.

Yeah.

Now,

Like,

Before anything that wasn't exactly the way we always do it through me.

So now it's not that big of a deal.

I also love that we used Zoom for everything for years before other people knew what Zoom was.

And now that everybody's on the Zoom train,

We're off.

Yeah.

We're on our next.

Yeah.

So,

All right.

So what are we talking about today?

We are talking about boredom.

It is something that has been bubbling up during this COVID thing especially,

But it bubbles up a lot,

You know,

In different places.

So,

You know,

Boredom is,

I was kind of just contemplating it,

I don't know,

A couple weeks ago or something,

And it was just jumping out at me.

And I was like,

What is boredom?

Like,

What's that feeling?

And because I don't necessarily need to deal,

Well,

I don't feel boredom that often anyway,

But I don't need to deal with it the way I used to.

So I was just kind of looking at it a little closer.

And I was like,

You know,

I think boredom is something bubbling up inside because it's pushing me to be active,

Which is a lot of times mindless activities,

Which can be a distraction.

So distractions usually are trying to distract me from something.

So boredom,

I think,

Is a bubbling up of something that,

Some uncomfortability that's bubbling up,

Something that we need to deal with,

Something that we need to face.

And of course,

A lot of times instead of when we feel that uncomfortable feeling,

Whether we label it as boredom or something else,

We just mindlessly go take some action and go do something so we don't feel that anymore.

And then we never deal with what's coming up trying to be dealt with.

I actually,

I want to say something to the effect of what you just said at the beginning of that,

Which is that boredom pushes us to want to be active.

And I actually think that,

And the point that you,

The larger point that you made is that it doesn't.

Boredom doesn't push us to be active,

Boredom pushes us to be distracted,

To want to be distracted,

Not to want to be active.

I mean,

The way I'm phrasing it's the same thing.

No,

I know,

But I'm just saying the way that what you just said made me think of it is,

Because we think of active as a good thing.

We think of active as like.

.

.

And that's the problem.

Being bored makes me want to go out for a jog or to rollerblade like you like to do.

And that's not usually the case,

Right?

Being bored usually makes me go,

Oh,

I got to do something.

Let me see what's on Netflix.

Yeah,

A lot of times.

It's just,

I mean,

If there's,

I guess another way to phrase it is it's undissected motivation.

Because we feel boredom and we go,

Oh,

I feel bored.

I need to do something.

Well,

Is that really a thing?

Have we slowed down?

Have we slowed down enough in life to question everything and to go,

Oh,

Like is boredom natural?

Does it serve a purpose?

Is it innate within all of us?

Does it,

Like,

What's boredom?

And I don't think we've slowed down to look at that.

And that's why I think a lot of times we look at it and it's like,

I think it's just pushing us to distract ourselves.

And sometimes we do go do something active and go biking or rollerblading.

Sometimes we do watch Netflix.

It doesn't matter.

We're just trying to occupy,

You know,

And that's kind of what was jumping out at me.

Like,

I just want to be,

I just don't want my mind where it is now.

That's what boredom is.

I'm just sitting here and I'm not comfortable with just sitting here.

Why am I not comfortable just sitting here?

And why do I feel this restlessness that I need to go do something?

Like,

What is that?

And that's when I started going,

Oh,

Well,

You know,

I mean,

If I dissect,

If I just call it boredom,

Then it's accepted by society.

Oh,

You got bored.

You got to go do something.

We never slow down and think about it.

But when I started dissecting the way I was feeling inside that the label is called the boredom,

And I was like,

What does that mean?

I'm like,

Oh,

Well,

I've felt this before that.

I know what that is.

From a spiritual perspective,

This is stuff bubbling up to be dealt with.

Me not feeling comfortable just sitting here means that there's uncomfortability coming up,

You know,

And that's where I made the connection.

And I think,

You know,

It can take a lot of,

You know,

Something that I really,

I didn't know we were going to mention this,

But like as soon as we started on this topic,

It just has jumped out at me like three times,

So I have to bring it up.

One of the first times I started looking at boredom was many years ago when my son was little,

Or when my son was younger.

And it was when he was a teenager and he started playing more video games.

And he started doing less stuff.

Right.

Anything.

I mean,

We used to constantly be on the go.

We're always doing things.

And as he got a little older,

He's like,

No,

I don't feel like it.

No,

I don't feel like it.

And he'd end up playing video games,

You know,

And,

You know,

And nowadays anybody that's a parent,

Well,

Not anybody,

A large group of parents,

Video games is an issue,

You know,

Like I'm not saying that they're all bad.

I'm just saying that we need to be careful around video games.

They can,

I mean,

People,

You know,

And this is the main reason for when my son was growing up,

You know,

I looked at it and I was like,

And I told him,

I said,

I think my biggest problem with video games is that you don't,

You never get bored.

You never get bored.

Like I was never in my house.

Why?

Because it was boring.

That's why,

You know,

Like I had to get out and do stuff.

I didn't care what I was doing,

Going to play basketball,

Going hanging with my friends,

Go walking the streets,

Riding bikes.

I was out doing something,

Anything because I wasn't going to sit in the house and be bored,

You know.

So,

But with kids,

They have this thing that sits in their room that can entertain their mind enough to distract them from the feeling of boredom.

They can literally sit in their room for six months straight and never experience boredom.

Like that.

So there's no motivation to move,

You know,

To go do something.

There's no,

I've been in this room forever.

Like they never hit that point because a portion of their mind is constantly being minutely stimulated enough to never experience the sensation of boredom.

How do you feel that translates to all of us now in the age where,

You know,

We're not playing video games,

But we all walk around with one of these and,

You know,

Everywhere we go.

I mean,

For example,

In the last 10 minutes since we started this,

These are all of the messages and notifications that I've gotten.

Those are just people interacting with me.

That doesn't even include YouTube rabbit holes that we find ourselves on,

Like Wikipedia,

You know,

Anything on the internet,

Facebook,

Social media,

Instagram.

Yeah,

We got it.

So it's like the,

I mean,

Yeah,

It's constant bombarding of the stimulation just distracting our attention,

You know.

And it is,

Like I think with kids,

They don't get that,

Hey,

Let's go do something.

And B,

In that case,

It is kind of being active even in a healthy way just to go live your life.

But I think as adults,

It's a little bit more,

I don't think we require quite as much.

It can prevent us from being active in a healthy way,

But it also can just be,

I think it's highly effective at distracting us from the way we feel inside.

You know,

That uncomfortability,

It's like that uncomfortability is,

As soon as it bubbles up,

Just,

And I mean,

I've caught myself doing it.

You know,

I'm sitting there having coffee with the dog and just in the morning,

Just chilling,

Relaxing.

Then all of a sudden,

It's like this stimulation goes,

And I'm like,

Wait,

Stop,

Put down the phone.

You don't need to be looking at the phone.

And then I'll just get still.

And a lot of times,

If I just get stilled,

There's a little level of uncomfortability there from something that I've been stuffing since I've been busy over the last couple of days.

So if I dive in and I can sit with it,

I mean,

A lot of times for me,

It's just a releasing.

It's just allowing myself to feel an uncomfortable emotion.

And then it just releases.

And I never even know what it was attached to.

It could have been something from my childhood.

It could have been something from yesterday.

It could have been,

Who knows?

But it's just some little bit of trapped emotion that was bubbling up that since I put my attention to it and opened it up,

Opened up and allowed,

And it just was felt and it released.

So I think this is another way to kind of touch on the same thing.

When I first woke up,

I was given this piece of paper.

And it was 12 questions to assess my day and I filled it out every night religiously for like,

I think like five years.

I missed,

You know,

Probably like 10 days and like five years or something.

I mean,

I always filled this thing out.

And one thing that I noticed was one of the questions was,

Was I resentful?

And that one was one of the most helpful because like a lot of times I could fill that thing out in like 60 to 90 seconds.

Like I just knew the questions.

I knew the thought process to get my mind into to rip through it.

And I would rip through.

And then,

But even if I went through too fast,

That resentment one would come back up by the time I was finishing.

Be like,

Well,

Wait a minute.

You forgot to write this down.

And then what I would do is like if I had a resentment towards somebody or something or something was bothering me,

I just jot down the name of the person or the situation,

Whatever.

And a lot of times it's no big deal.

Sometimes people get on your nerves.

It's no big deal.

But what I would notice was that if I put the same person's name on there and it was,

I mean,

My son was young.

I was dealing with my ex-wife.

We didn't really get along.

Guess whose name it usually was.

You know?

So,

But a lot of times I,

If I catch myself,

If I saw that name,

Like after about the third or fourth time of writing her name down,

Like within a week or something,

All of a sudden they would catch my mind.

Be like,

Hey,

Haven't you been writing her name down a lot lately?

And I'd go back and grab the sheets and I'd be like,

Yeah,

I did.

I wrote down like four times in the last seven days.

I must be harboring an actual resentment.

This isn't that somebody just got on my nerves or something.

There's something there,

You know?

And then I would dive into it and work through the resentment and find a healthy way.

And it was very helpful because of the patterns like that.

And I think that that is kind of a technique that the paper that I,

And the questions that I just said was a very helpful tool to use to do that.

But I think we do that in our normal lives anyway.

If we allow ourselves to,

And I think that that's one of the things we don't allow ourselves to because of the phones and the constant stimulation.

And as soon as we feel something bubbling up,

Running off to do something to distract ourselves,

Instead of allowing ourselves to feel it.

Because if we,

When we stop feeling something uncomfortable,

If we go,

What's that?

Oh,

That has to do with this person.

If we just even recognize that,

If that happened three or four times over a week period,

We'd probably go,

You know what?

This person keeps bubbling up.

This situation keeps bubbling up.

I must have a problem with that.

And then we dive in and we deal with it.

We figure out how to look at it in a healthier way.

Maybe we talk to a friend about it.

We work through it.

So we're not harboring these resentments.

But since we have constant distraction and we don't allow ourselves to feel anything bubbling up,

It's just,

You know,

We go on for years and years and years of stuffing that stuff and never allowing ourselves to look at it or notice any patterns.

Absolutely.

My big question here in regards to this is about the stimulation.

Like,

How do you know,

Other than bringing consciousness to it,

I guess,

How do you know the difference between distraction stimulation and,

Like,

Fulfillment stimulation?

So a lot of people have to do certain things for their job or for their or what they want to do or that is making them happy.

You know what I mean?

Like,

A lot of people find a lot of joy in the things that are found on their devices or in the video games or whatever.

And sometimes it's work-related or productively done and sometimes it is distraction done,

But it's a real sense of joy and relaxation.

So how do you know and bring consciousness to what is good,

Like,

What is using this stuff for distraction and what is using this stuff for fulfillment and joy?

Well,

I think there's kind of two ways to come at that.

Like,

One is,

You know,

If you're feeling uncomfortable and you don't like the way you feel,

So therefore you reach for something,

Then that's distraction.

You know,

So if I'm sitting here and I'm going,

I'm just bored,

I just want to,

And then you go do something,

Anything,

Mindlessly,

That's distraction.

But if you're sitting there and you're going like,

I feel like I'm wasting the day,

Like,

I should be going to do something,

You know,

Proactive.

I should be making use of my time.

That's,

You know,

So bringing consciousness,

You can kind of just notice which one of those two are.

And then,

And like your answer to the healthy way is usually something healthy for you.

And I don't mean just physically,

You know,

Like,

So,

I mean,

Of course,

Physically,

Like,

Oh,

What do I feel like doing?

You see,

That's,

It leans more,

You automatically lean more in that direction.

Oh,

What do I feel like doing?

You know,

Oh,

What do I feel like doing?

Like,

How can I feel joy?

Oh,

Going for a bike ride would be fun.

Or,

You know,

Calling so and so,

I really miss them and I'd like to be in touch with them.

Whatever,

You know,

That's something,

But if you're just hiding,

Then it's probably like anything.

I don't give a crap what I do.

I just want to go do something.

I'll go take a drive meaninglessly.

I'll,

You know,

I'll play a video game because it just gets my mind off things,

You know.

I'll watch a movie that I give two craps what is happening in it.

It's just enough that I can think of stuff and stimulate a part of my brain.

So,

You know,

I think that that's,

I think that's part of it.

It's bringing consciousness to the question.

And I know,

Like,

When you were asking this,

Two things came up and then I went down that one and I lost the other one.

Was it something about productivity?

What was the question again?

So,

It was,

You know,

When you,

Well,

It was just in general.

I mean,

You answered it fully.

When,

Like,

Sometimes we use our devices or games or shows or everything that we talked about that you use when you're bored to distract yourself.

Sometimes we genuinely use those things for our,

Also for our sources of joy and our sources of relaxation or sources of productivity.

So,

I think it's just that paying attention to that feeling,

You know,

Within.

It's bringing consciousness to it and paying attention to that feeling.

You know,

Why am I doing this?

No,

That's,

It's a self-reflection.

It's living on purpose.

It's not just doing things because we think we're supposed to do them or doing things because we're bored or doing things.

It's going in and going,

Why?

What's my motivation here?

Oh,

That's,

That was the other piece.

So,

It's balance,

You know,

Like,

How do we know?

Well,

If you're playing,

If you're playing video games,

I don't give a crap how much enjoyment you get out of it.

I don't care if it's your life's passion.

And it's exactly what God put you on this planet to do was to play video games and to show others how to bring,

Get joy out of video games.

Even if that's your sole purpose,

If you were doing it 96 hours a week,

You have a problem.

That's not balance.

I don't give a crap what you're doing.

If you're doing it 96 hours a week,

You have a problem.

There is no balance in your life.

It's not the way to live.

You're going to burn out with whatever you are doing,

Whether you like it,

Whether you don't like it.

I mean,

You know,

Maybe there's,

Maybe there's some small exceptions to that,

But I mean,

It's just a matter of living in balance.

You have to be able to stop doing something and interact with other human beings.

If you have a life with no relationships with other people,

Then your life's not in balance.

If you can't take time to eat,

Your life is out of balance.

You know,

It's just,

If your bladder is exploding because you can't stop to go to the bathroom,

Your life is out of balance.

You know,

It's just common sense stuff.

Just like you have to have some levels of balance.

If you have to wear astronaut diapers to perform your job,

You have a problem.

I feel personally attacked.

Yeah,

Right.

It's just balance.

We have to have,

We just have to have balance.

And,

You know,

We can take,

And it actually enhances the joy that we take.

If we cannot stand to do anything other than that,

If there's no other areas of our lives,

Then we're using it to distract ourselves.

So,

I actually completely have a story that I think is on point for this.

Last night,

I mean,

I'm somebody that we've talked about it on the show before,

But I'm somebody that has used video games as a distraction in the past.

I really enjoy putting on like a sports video game and just destroying the other team for a while as like a sense of control.

Like I just have my entire life since I was a child.

And last night,

I had some free time at night where I wasn't doing anything.

And I went in the living room and I was like,

Oh my God,

I haven't touched a video game controller with the exception of playing with a five-year-old.

I haven't touched a video game controller on my own in my downtime since the beginning of March.

It's Memorial Day as we're recording this.

And I took the,

I was so excited.

I put the TV on,

I grabbed the controllers,

I put them on the side table next to my chair,

I got a drink,

I was all like comfortable and set.

And I never played a video game last night at all.

Because I'm not in the space where I'm bored and distracting myself,

Because I've been doing a lot of the stuff that brings me joy,

Instead of doing the thing that I use as a distraction,

I literally couldn't even bring myself to do it.

It was boring.

It was not interesting to me to actually turn on the PlayStation and play the video game.

And instead,

I wrote a script,

Which is not something that I do for work.

It's not something that I do,

You know what I mean?

But like that's something that really brings me joy,

That's active,

That's healthy for me.

That's something that I want to do.

And I sat down and I took the time that I would have done something to distract me to entertain myself.

And I did something that really,

Really,

Really felt good in a positive,

Productive way.

And that's how we get,

The healthier we get.

That's my point.

That's what I wanted you to talk about.

Yeah,

That's where we lean to.

And we lean towards healthier behaviors.

And not only is healthier behaviors like doing something that actually brings you joy.

Because when you have less spare time,

All of a sudden that spare time becomes precious.

So you look at it and you go,

Well,

I could do a video game or I could do something that really brings me joy.

And a lot of times when you have that limited spare time,

It's an easy choice like it was for you.

You look at it and you're like,

Oh,

I would love to do that.

And you're telling yourself that you would love to do that.

But something deep inside you knows better.

And it goes,

Well,

I mean,

Yeah,

We could distract that.

The difference between those two becomes so glaringly obvious.

Whereas if you weren't in the situation two years ago,

Somebody could have told you this.

Well,

Do you want to write a script or do you want to play video games?

And even if you knew that the script actually brings you more joy,

You might have been like,

I don't know,

It depends on a day.

I really do get the enjoyment out of those video games.

But then now you have more clarity and it's like the distraction versus joy.

I'll take the joy,

Thank you.

You know,

And the thing,

We just did a podcast on this,

I think recently,

Maybe you'll remember what the title was or something.

But it was about distracting yourself.

What the heck were we talking about?

It was about recuperating instead of distracting.

So it was like when you're sitting there and if you watch movies all day,

You're like,

I'm burnt out,

I can't handle work anymore,

I'm stressed out.

I'm just going to sit there and mindlessly watch movies all day.

And what that happens is it distracts your mind.

So you're not obsessed with work,

But you don't recuperate throughout that time because you're just distracting yourself.

So whereas if you sit and get still and meditate and release some emotions possibly or do something that's healthier for you,

Rest,

You know,

Whatever,

You actually recuperate,

Your body recuperates and you come out at the end of that day less stressful.

I think it was probably episode 159,

Three levels of consciousness,

When you talked about the different levels of thinking.

Either that or overthinking or possibly the one that you did with Dave about going within.

Yeah,

So you're probably right.

Any of those three would be fantastic.

I know it was recent,

So yeah,

Check those out people.

So,

But yeah,

It's the,

If we're,

When we're stressed out,

Like I mean,

I've done it,

You know,

When I was very,

Very,

Very,

Very busy in my life,

You know,

I just get so like,

Oh my God,

I just need a day off and I just stop everything and I'd watch movies all day.

And I would like,

Sometimes like I'd be,

I noticed that also in my driving,

I'd be like,

Oh,

You know,

I'll just wind down when I drive because sometimes I was the only time.

And then I'd get back from the drive and I'd realize I was still just as stressed out as I was before the drive.

Or I'd spend a whole three day weekend doing absolutely nothing but laying on the couch and watching movies.

And then as soon as I start back up,

I was just as stressed as I was when I started.

And I'm like,

Why am I not feeling better when I'm giving myself this downtime?

And I realized what I was doing was just distracting myself the whole time.

And my body and my mind never had a time to actually recuperate from all the stress that I was putting it under,

You know.

So yeah,

When you're,

When I think it was that levels of thinking,

Because when you drop below the level of thinking,

You're just distracting.

There's no recuperation there.

When you rise above the level of thinking,

That's when the recuper,

You can recuperate.

That's why meditation is like,

You know,

Whatever they say,

Something like 20 minutes of meditation is equal to,

It can be equal to like two hours of sleep or something.

I mean,

That just sold me on the fact that I had written it down today,

But I need to start meditating again.

Yeah,

You do.

Yeah,

That would be,

That would be infinitely helpful right now.

That would be stellar.

It would be.

So we are about at that time.

And I do want to just remind everybody that we have,

You know,

Like we just talked about several different episodes,

There are like 170 episodes in the bank for this show.

And you can find them all.

I mean,

Most of them are on Insight Time,

Like 169 of them or something are on Insight Timer already by the time you're listening to this.

And you can check them all out,

GlenAmbros.

Com.

Just click on Life Lessons and Laughter.

But yeah,

There's,

It's funny,

Like we're going through stuff and we're like,

Did we talk about this?

Yes,

But there's more angles to cover it on.

Always.

And so it's really cool.

But we've also been doing a new show every Thursday at 6 p.

M.

Where we answer your questions live.

It's a live Q&A with Glen on Facebook Live and YouTube Live.

And how have you been feeling about that?

We haven't done a podcast recording since we started doing those.

It's a blast.

6 p.

M.

Eastern time.

Yes.

Sorry,

6 p.

M.

Eastern.

We've got listeners all over the world.

That's right.

Yeah.

You know,

It's a blast because it's,

You know,

You know,

Because you're there,

But the listeners don't.

I just feed off of it.

You know,

That's one of the reasons that I enjoy having you on here with the Life Lessons and Laughter because you keep me going.

But,

You know,

With the live shows,

You know,

You can get questions right in the moment and there's nothing I enjoy more than that.

It's just because then I can tap into the energy of the person asking the question and just go off.

And,

You know,

By the time we start,

I'm a normal human being to some degree.

By the end of the show,

I'm like,

Wow,

Like I just had 16 cups of coffee.

So just all jacked up.

There's also Ask Glenn Anything.

If you want to ask Glenn a question for him to answer it more in depth and a little bit more privately,

Because you can just send an email and ask it instead of putting it up as a Facebook comment or YouTube comment publicly.

You can send that in to Glenn at GlennAmbrose.

Com and Ask Glenn Anything comes out every Friday to the email list on GlennAmbrose.

Com.

Other than that,

I mean,

You get the book in the background of your house there.

Yes.

Let's see if I can do this because,

No,

It's backwards.

There's my book.

See everyone?

I'm pointing to it.

It's so weird,

This thing.

This is the only thing that I think StreamYard should flip around.

I feel like you should have still known which side the book was on.

Of course I should have.

I would not fight you on that for a moment.

You still know which side your kitchen's on.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I overthought it.

You really did.

I did because I was going to just point naturally and I went,

Glenn,

Remember it's opposite.

And I went,

Oh,

Well,

The kitchen's technically over there.

So opposite,

I should point the opposite way,

Which is over there.

Oh,

Man.

All right.

Take us home,

Man.

It's not pretty,

Man.

Take us home.

Yeah.

So thank you,

Everyone.

Thank you,

Everyone,

For listening and all the support.

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Reviews

Another good one! Some interesting angles on boredom, thanks gentlemen! Love and blessings 💖 x

Very helpful! Makes so much sense. The avoidance of checking in with boredom creates anxiety, and it builds up and can cause panic. Hummmm. Thank you.