James Clear, author of Atomic Habits has said: “The greatest threat to success is not failure but boredom.”
Shane Parrish, creator of Farnam Street has redefined this: "The greatest threat to results are boredom and impatience."The only way to become really good at something is to keep on keeping on doing the boring old basic stuff.
We all know what we should be doing, but the trouble with that is that sooner of later we get bored.
The enjoyment fades, the excitement and novelty wears thin, and we're left with the hard grind.
The same old same old - just the boring old basics.
We live in a world that glorifies the results and not the process.
In a world dominated by social media, we glorify the results and not the process. We see the move that knocked someone out, or scored a home run, but not the years of effort that went into perfecting it.
We see the results, not the hard work.
But it’s hard to be above average if you can’t find a way to do the same thing over and over again.
As Bruce Lee allegedly said: “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.”
Our boredom gets fueled by impatience and frustration.
We seek novelty.
The grass over there really does seem greener.
Before we know it, we let our good habits slip and then we start rationalising our behaviour.
Motivation is fleeting. It was easy at the beginning because we’re fired up and full ready to conquer the world.
But becoming really good at something - acquiring mastery - requires practice - endless practice - and that involves repetition and that eventually becomes boring.
So how do we find a find a way of showing up despite the boredom?
James Clear says that: "The only way to become excellent is to be endlessly fascinated by doing the same thing over and over. You have to fall in love with boredom."
I agree with the first part of Clear's statement but I am not sure about the falling in love with boredom. That's a cute turn of phrase but what does that mean in practise?
Boredom is not rational it is an emotional response.
There is a part of you that is committed to your goals and that understands and accepts the effort that is required for you to achieve mastery - or at least excellence - as the means to achieving those goals.
But there is another part of you that has a short attention span, that demands instant gratification, and it wants it now.
In my experience you can not fight boredom, and with all due respect to James Clear - and I have much respect for him - you can not love boredom.
So what to do? How do you deal with boredom?
Short answer - sit with it.
Longer answer, take a mindful approach to the feelings associated with boredom. Just sit quietly for a moment, take a deep breath and observe the feelings and emotions and thoughts that are associated with your boredom, and that arise.
When I do this I observe some or all of the following:
Ok now we know what we're dealing with, so what to do?
The next step is to apply the transformative power of acceptance.
This is a simple yet extremely powerful mindfulness practise that will release you from the grip of these thoughts and emotional responses to doing what you need to do.
Here is how to practise acceptance.
Follow these brief and simple steps and your boredom and associated feelings will disappear, you will feel calm, centred and ready to do what you need to do.
If you feel any kind of resistance to doing this - just do it anyway and see what happens. It just could be one of most productive 5 minutes you have spent for a while!
Next Article: The Luck Factor - 4 Principles
Return from "Boredom" to: Walking The Talk
Contact me
- What if everything we think…
LATEST ARTICLES
The Balanced Brain - The Ultimate Route To Personal Transformation
How To Experience The Benefits Of A Balanced Brain. Underpinning all of the belief systems and practices that offer routes to personal change, transformation and spiritual growth is the balanced brain…
How To Make Better Decisions - By Avoiding The Narrative Trap
To Understand The Truth We Have To See The Whole Picture. One of the best ways to make better decisions is to have a deeper understanding of the many things that might stop that happening. To understa…
The Greatest Love - The Most Important Relationship You Will Ever Have
Yet Most Will Never Know It Everyone of us has a place, in our hearts there's a space, that is home to the greatest love of all. This love transcends everything we think we know about the world of for…
Everything Is Connected And Why You Don't Feel It
...And Why It Matters
As human beings we are skating on very thin ice with our sense of self and certainty about "how things are" and what we like to think of as reality:
Who Is In Charge Of Your Brain?
How Not To Be Stupid. Who is in charge of your brain? This is not a silly questions. It matters because the outcomes that you experience in your life are determined by how you respond to the events th…
How To Be A Winner On A Very Large Scale
The Incredible Benefits Of Selective Attention. This is not a typical article about how to be a winner. We are not going to talk about goal setting, the importance of habits, the power of focus and al…
The Metagame Approach To Life
How To Achieve Your Biggest Objectives.
The metagame approach to life is all about winning and achieving your biggest objectives by:
- Understanding the bigger picture
- Being better by doing things d…Shantideva - The Way Of The Bodhisattva
Walking The Path Of Compassion. Shantideva the 8th century Indian Buddhist sage is famous for his treatise "The Way of the Bodhisattva" delivered as an extended teaching to the monks of Nalanda monast…
Reframing History - Deconstruction And Discussion Not Destruction
History is always about context, not imposing our own moral values on the past. For those of us fortunate enough to live within western democracies, we are living in an age where a vociferous and into…
Tao Te Ching - Connecting To Your True Source Of Power.
How To Be Lived By The Tao. The Tao Te Ching is one of those books that many people read, few understand, and even fewer put into practice. The only way to know the Tao is to experience it, and it is…
How Things Really Are - The Inbuilt Design Flaws
Chaos, Disorder And Decay Is The Natural Order Of Things. Nobody has the perfect life. We all struggle and strive to attain health, wealth and personal happiness. Yet these three big areas: our health…
Intuition Or Anxiety - Are There Angels Or Devils Crawling Here?
How To Tell The Difference Between Intuition and Anxiety. How do you know whether the voice of your intuition is real or just the product of your inner anxiety? Several months ago I was having a drink…
What Is Truth - How To Tell A Partial Truth From The Whole Truth?
How the truth and nothing but the truth is often not the whole truth. My great aunty Flo broke her arm and died. It is true that she broke her arm in 1923. It is also true that she died in 1949. But t…
Duality And Life Beyond Your Thinking Mind
Duality and life beyond your thinking mind focuses on the limitations of time, foreground and background, duality and "stuckness". The first aspect of duality and life beyond your thinking mind focuse…
The Conscious Mind Is Limited - Be Aware And Be Prepared
Being aware is the first stage of being prepared. The conscious mind is limited in so many ways. There are some who would argue that there is no such thing as conscious thought and that it is represen…
Your Inner Map Of Reality - Here's Why You Think The Way You Do
The big picture of how your inner map of reality creates your feelings, thoughts, and behaviours. Your inner map of reality is based on the filters of your own ethnic, national, social, family and rel…
The Failure Of Cancel Culture - Suppression Not Engagement
Why we need to wear our beliefs lightly and develop negative capability. Throughout history people have campaigned to fight beliefs, ideologies, and injustices that they perceived to be oppressive, di…
4 Big Reasons Why We Get Stuck In Our Attempts At Personal Change
Most People Spend Their Entire Life Imprisoned Within The Confines Of Their Own Thoughts. This first of the 4 big reasons why we get stuck is, in my view, the most important. The "self-help industry…
How Do I Change And Why Is It So Hard?
We Would Rather Die Than Change, And We Usually Do In my experience, the vast majority of people who say they want to change don’t change. Most people reading this won’t change because they don’t real…
The Illusion Of A Separate Self - Windows 11 With Self Awareness!
Beyond the content of your mind you are so much more than you think you are. When we talk of "myself" this is the conventional way of referring to our self image which is in fact the ego's constructio…
Finite And Infinite Games - Dazed, Confused & Ultimately Transcendent
This is not an instruction manual, it is a wake up call!
Over this past week I have read Professor James Carse's highly regarded "Finite And Infinite Games - A Vision Of Life As Play And Possibility"…
The Gap And The Gain - How Your Brain Sabotages Your Happiness
How Your Lizard Brain Sabotages Your Happiness We are hardwired to measure our progress in any and all areas of life where we have goals and aspirations. We can't not do it. But what we measure and ho…
How To Wake Up - 4 Simple Practices To Help You Wake Up Now
So What Exactly Does It Mean to Wake Up - What Is "Enlightenment"? There is nothing magical, mystical or mysterious about waking up we’re actually having glimpses of enlightenment all the time. Enligh…
Situational Communication - Different Strokes For Different Folks
Situational communication is about taking account of 3 often ignored factors about the other person. You are a situational communicator when you recognise that effective communication is not an event…
How To Influence Without Authority - 6 Key Tips
The secret to how to influence without authority is that you get what you really want by giving other people what they really want. We live in an interconnected world and knowing how to influence with…
Change Questions To Change Your Outcomes
Asking The Right Questions Is Critical For A Successful Change. Every time we initiate a significant change - whether in our personal life or in an organisation - we will most likely over-estimate our…
Group Culture - The Invisible Software That Rules Your Life
Group culture is: "How we do things round here". We like to see ourselves as free agents making our own choices and living authentically but the reality is that The Matrix has many layers and we are u…
Why Getting From A to B Is Not Aways A Straight Line
In circumstances of significant change, the progress from A to B will not be in a straight line. We run our lives largely on auto-pilot. In most circumstances your experience of getting from A to B is…
The Art Of Persuasion Planning For Success - Here's How To Do It!
To be successful in the art of persuasion you must ensure that certain things happen. To be successful in the art of persuasion you must establish a framework of what has to happen to get you to that…
The Art Of Persuasion Advanced Communication Skills - Gaining Buyin
Create The Environment Where They Want To Buyin to Your Proposal In order to build the win-win you have to uncover what it is that the other person really wants or needs, and to do that you have to as…