Mental Health
From Boredom to Joy and Excitement in 7 Simple Steps
You can use boredom creatively to breed brilliant ideas, be more productive, have more joy, and improve your mental health.
Purpose of the Story
Pleasant and unpleasant emotions play a critical role in our mental health. This short essay introduces a mental model I developed for myself and my loved ones to deal with boredom effectively.
The model is straightforward, with simple steps. However, there are profound reasons behind them. I devised this approach to allow neurotransmitters to reset and hormones to balance practically. I summarize them without going into scientific details.
When we complete these simple steps, we will see an instant change in our thoughts, feelings, and moods. The model is natural and does not require external intervention. I used this approach as a self-therapy that was also modeled and customized by others.
A Brief Introduction to My Experience with Boredom
I never enjoyed getting bored. Boredom used to be an unbearable feeling for me. It was also dangerous, leading me towards risky, self-sabotaging, and unproductive behavior.
Gratefully, my creativity, productivity, and happiness significantly increased when I learned how to manage boredom creatively.
The key points were to observe my thoughts and feelings, accept them, and patiently act until boredom neutralizes and turns into serenity, joy, or excitement.
How to Turn Boring Moments into Exciting Ones
This section covers my approach under seven headings in order of start and finish. I provide a few simple techniques to make my points practical and valuable.
1 — Recognize and accept the feeling of boredom.
Boredom is an emotion giving us signals from our body and mind. The signs indicate that our life is not satisfactory at the current moment. Boredom depicts something as missing making us dissatisfied.
Once we recognize and accept boredom, we gain the power to manage it. Rather than suppressing it with instant gratification, we can let the feeling move in our bodies.
When we get bored, the mind keeps wondering which is an advantageous position. The next step is the beginning of creativity.
2 — Allow the mind to wander for a while.
By letting the mind wander, we stop resistance. This is an expressive approach to boredom. We can start observing where our imagination can take us.
This phase is where our creativity starts. Without resistance, we can channel our thoughts by using various techniques.
One of the best approaches I use is self-conversation when my mind starts wandering. I will explain it in the next section. Self-talk is not crazy but clever.
3 — Start self-talk by telling an intimate story.
Self-conversation is a mindfulness technique to take control of the neo-cortex. During self-talk, we can ask questions, challenge thoughts, validate them, and create more prompts to channel thoughts.
During self-talk, we need to show compassion for ourselves. It is called self-love or self-compassion, which is essential for mental health.
When we get bored, the mind can be too critical. The old brain tends to create anxiety, fear, guilt, and regrets. Anxious thoughts and feelings come from the primitive brain.
So boredom, if not controlled, might lead to more unpleasant emotions. Self-talk can prevent this transition and might bring pleasant feelings.
The neocortex gains more power if we can write our thoughts during self-talk. As a by-product, the brain starts tiny doses of dopamine that might expedite the formation of pleasant feelings.
Some people prefer to talk to a loved one or pet if available. Some people even talk to consequential strangers by engaging with them meaningfully.
4 — Close your eyes for 10 minutes and observe your thoughts and feelings.
This step involves pattern interruption with gentle acts. After activating the neocortex with self-talk and expressive writing, we might start transitioning to a better state by observing our thoughts and feelings.
This process is called meditation. It is a powerful mindfulness technique to strengthen the neocortex and calm down the limbic system and primitive part of the brain. Therefore, I meditate three times a day.
By observing our thoughts and feelings with the help of breath, boredom starts transitioning into calmness within a short time. As a result, we gain a more neutral position.
As boredom is in mind, mindfulness practices are the antidote to boredom.
Now it is time to energize the body with movement to feel more active emotions like serenity, joy, and excitement as we desire.
It is up to the individual to create desired emotions. I usually prefer serenity and joy. Sometimes, I like orderly euphoria and generate it intentionally after boredom. I explained the meaning of euphoria in mental health and spirituality.
5 — Move the body for 10 minutes with music.
We can use our bodies to influence old and new brains.
Moving the body with music is one of the best tools to start joy and excitement. While movement can balance hormones, music can balance neurotransmitters.
From my experience, we can create a noticeable hormonal and neurotransmitter impact within ten minutes to create pleasant emotions.
Our boredom starts melting with this approach. We gain a new mental state manifesting as an uplifting mood.
6 — Create a quick plan to achieve something small.
Now it is time to reap the benefits of boredom for our creativity and productivity. This simple step is a gateway to them.
Planning is another executive function of the neocortex. It further activates our thinking brain by increasing blood flow. All we need is a quick plan, not a master plan.
The plan can be a recipe, an outline for an article, a small gardening project, decluttering the home, or any pleasant goal that can boost our mood.
After completing the desired plan, the brain rewards us with more dopamine. This change in the brain’s biochemistry can motivate us to take action. With this simple step, we put the brain in an advantageous position.
7 — Immerse in the activity until complete.
Now it is time to reap the productivity benefit of boredom. At this stage, we don’t feel boredom anymore. It just acted as a catalyst to start pleasant emotions enabling us to produce.
We can achieve a flow state by starting a task from our plan and entirely focussing on it. This state is ideal for creativity and productivity with pleasant feelings.
We don’t feel stress and anxiety in the flow state. Work turns into pleasure with productivity. We can generate more novel ideas in the flow state.
As I documented in this story, we can effortlessly influence the whole brain for success by entering a flow state in six steps.
This process also can improve our focus, attention, working memory, and problem-solving, increasing cognitive reserves and reducing the risks of neurodegenerative and mental health disorders.
Conclusions and Takeaways
Boredom is a complex, unpleasant, and risky emotion if it is not managed well and timely. We lose interest in mundane things when we get bored.
Our jobs, chores, other tasks, and even hobbies might look dull. Excessive boredom is also associated with anhedonia, a medical condition requiring intervention by qualified healthcare professionals.
Unfortunately, boredom can lead to risky behavior like self-harm, instant gratification, gambling, unnecessary sex, and substance abuse to find an instant escape from the effects of this unpleasant feeling.
Furthermore, these high dopamine-producing activities cause more boredom due to punishment pathways in the brain. I explained the situation in an article titled. Awareness of Punishment Pathways in the Brain for Mental Health.
If appropriately managed, we leverage the power of boredom to be more creative, productive, and happier. I don’t see boredom as boring and destructive anymore.
The method I introduced is straightforward. I used it for many years successfully to manage my boredom. After a while, consistent use of the approach can rewire the brain. Then it gets easier.
After using this simple approach for many years, I don’t allow boredom to upset me anymore. As soon as boredom enters my consciousness nowadays, it takes me a few minutes to neutralize it and turn it into the pleasant emotions I choose intentionally.
Living in the moment without engaging in past regrets or future worries is the most sustainable tool for my mental health. I learned to turn everyday activities into brain boosters through mindfulness.
I believe anyone can customize the model I summarized. I provided a few examples from my toolbox. It is up to each individual to create their own tools to use this approach.
By using boredom creatively, we can breed brilliant ideas, be more productive, have more joy, and improve our mental health. Thus, I see boredom as a valuable emotion.
Besides increasing the hormonal intelligence of my readers and writing about neurotransmitters such as dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, GABA, and acetylcholine, one of my goals as a writer is to raise awareness about the causes and risk factors of prevalent diseases that can lead to suffering and death for a large portion of the population.
I aim to educate, create awareness, and empower my readers to take control of their health and well-being.
To raise awareness about health issues, I have written several articles that present my holistic health findings from research, personal observations, and unique experiences.
Thank you for reading my perspectives. I wish you a healthy and happy life.
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As part of my creative non-fiction writing goals, I’d like to share a few stories that might warm our hearts with a bit of humor into weighty topics.
Sample Humorous Stories
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