“My Life Isn’t Even Average!” Boredom, Part 3/3

This is the final part of a three part post on "Boredom" - how it hurts us and what to do about it.  For parts 1 and 2, visit THE GYM RAT'S DAILY SQUEAKS  -  http://marksfitness.wordpress.com/ 

You’re at a party and somebody asks you “So, what do YOU do?”

You think “Oh God, how can I make this answer interesting?”  So you start to tell them, and you do everything you can to turn the discussion back to the weather, where at least something changes once in a while.

I treated the first two parts of this series on boredom lightly because they dealt with the kind of boredom that doesn’t last long or damage your health or sanity.

This third and final part isn’t funny.  Chronic, or Long Term, Boredom.  Unfortunately, it applies to a lot of people, maybe many of you.  There have been times in my career when chronic long-term boredom was killing me. Literally. 

Yeah, literally.   Here are some of the ways chronic boredom harms our health.

·         Boredom wears our minds and bodies out, and we get tired.  Really tired.  When we are really tired, we don’t exercise.  That hurts our health.

·         When life is not giving us any pleasure, there is always one thing you can count on, food.  And when food becomes our only joy, we lean on it.  We eat a lot of it.  We turn to fatty and sugary and salty foods, because they are comforting.  Eating like this hurts our health.

·         We feel a stress that psychologists call cognitive dissonance, which roughly means contradictions in your life.  “I know I’m fun, I know I’m creative…but my life feels like NOTHING.”   If left unresolved, cognitive dissonance can drive us out of our minds.  This also hurts our health.

·         Finally, in many cases, chronic boredom leads us to do more of things that comfort us, like smoking and drinking.  And again, smoking and excessive drinking hurt our health.

I learned a few things about chronic boredom along the way.  If you are dealing with chronic boredom, or know somebody who is, maybe you’ll find something here that helps.

·         Notice I said “times in my career” above and not “times in my life”?  My experience has shown me that almost all “ruts” in life originate with job and career.  When life holds no meaning or excitement from 8:00 a.m. until 6:00 p.m., we have a tough time putting on a happy face for the rest of the evening.  And sure, weekends are great, but they are haunted by the spectre of another week of dullness that awaits you on Monday morning.  Boring work not only screws up our work day, it screws up our lives.  Therefore I am only talking about fixing the boredom at work.

·         Bored usually doesn’t mean “not enough work to keep you busy”.  You can be working your butt off, be great at your job, produce amazing results, and still be bored off your rocker.  How can that be?  Because your job is out of harmony with what’s meaningful to you.  Perhaps Beethoven would have been a fantastic farmer, but he would have been BORED!

·         Any time in your career when you became chronically bored, you did not purposely put yourself in that situation.  You either a) made a mistake that got you there, like accepting the job without asking the right questions, or b) the circumstances changed, like an organization change that placed you into the job.  You never chose to be so bored.   BUT….

·         Any time you were happy and satisfied with work (IF you ever have been), it was because of actions you took yourself.  Nobody, not even your boss, has ever had “easing your boredom” high on their To-Do list.  You did it.  You took on a new job.  You asked for a change in your work.  YOU did something.  And you know what?  That’s a very good thing.  It puts it all in your hands.

·         Comfort zones suck!  When you’re bored, you are probably very good at what you do, and that puts you in a serious comfort zone.  GET OUT OF IT!  It’s a silent, but ruthless, killer.

Sounds good, but how do we break free from this rut, this comfort zone, this day after day after day pattern of the same old thing?

Some ideas:

1.    If your job is boring, take these steps.  Think of every task you do, rank them by importance, and stop doing the least important 10% of it.  Do it responsibly, communicating to others that you will be doing so, but do it.  Also, if you have a team or staff, delegate some work to them, it will help enrich their jobs.  Then, with the time you freed up, go to your boss and ask her to think about HER tasks, and ask to take some of them over.  You probably know this already, but BOSSES love that!  And you get some work that is different, probably more interesting, and definitely great for your career development.

2.    If your office allows for it at all, request a change of office or cubicle.  It doesn’t need to be far.  Perhaps you can swap with your neighbor.  This sounds superficial, but a change in setting often gives you a morale boost and a “new start” mentality, which can help you creatively dig yourself out of your rut.

3.    Look for other jobs, hopefully within your company, and if not, then outside the company.  Be careful with this one, especially if you’re looking externally.  This economy is trying to recover, but it still sucks out there, so changing jobs must be done with much caution, for you may not be able to undo a mistake.

4.    Force yourself to get started on a fun activity after work, no matter how tired you are.  The more activities you have outside of work, the less influence a dull job has on your overall happiness.  Over the past few years, I have done quite a few varied activities.  Some were successful, some were not.  But even the ones that weren’t successful, were a BLAST.  The successful ones:  Weightlifting (of course), running, yoga, trail biking, becoming a personal trainer, writing a blog   The not quite so successful, but still VERY fun ones:  Hapkido (a martial art),  swimming, belegarth (fighting with padded swords, that still hurt quite a bit), and believe it or not, singing lessons (My voice may have sent my teacher to therapy).

5.    In yesterday’s post (part 2/3), one of the tricks to get through a boring meeting was to pretend you were a movie star.  That was fun.  Here’s one that is also fun, but much more important, and much more powerful.  Ready?  PRETEND THAT YOU ARE YOU!  What???  Yes, imagine yourself in a situation in life that makes you happy and fulfilled.  Imagine yourself as that emoyionally charged person, who is in a temporarily bad situation, but is determined to change it.  If you pretend to be that powerfully motivated person that is yourself, you will become that person.  Then, making the changes you need to make becomes easy, and natural.

Go on… Stop reading… Get going!!!  Good luck follows the bold like a loyal dog!

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Tune In Wednesday – ”Anything Can Happen Day” *   – Another Healthy Recipe for an Appetizer, Dessert, or Anything in Between!        * anything can happen day  is borrowed from the old Mickey Mouse Club TV Show.

If you have any questions, comments, “beefs”, or suggestions for future topics, feel free to let me know.  Reach me at thinwizzyfit@gmail.com, and feel welcome to link up with me through Facebook and/or LinkedIn.