How I learned to embrace boredom

Embracing boredom

I’ve just returned from my 5th silent retreat. While periods of silence serve as a wildly nourishing experience, I find the practice of eliminating contact with my loved ones and maintaining silence for days at a time immensely challenging.

And not challenging in an exhilarating, heart-pounding way. Challenging in a dull, “I’m soooo bored. Is it over yet?”, kind of way.

My experience with silent retreats has reinforced a key insight regarding the activities that nourish us: they often don’t feel exciting.

In fact, they can feel uncomfortable and sometimes downright boring. Sticking with them requires a certain level of discipline, along with a deep trust that they’re worthwhile.

The concept of trading candy for gold was highlighted on the recent retreat I attended. It’s a metaphor for the short-term, feel-good things (the candy) we may need to give up in favour of our longer-term fulfilment (the gold).

You’ve likely experienced how dissatisfaction with the present moment can lead us to pursue candy as a way to sweeten things up. That may be in the form of actual candy, or we may see it in our relationships with social media, addictive substances or external validation.

As anyone who’s gorged on candy can attest, those sources of sweetness may briefly satisfy or distract us, but they won’t sustain us. And, if we aren’t skillful in our indulgences, we may miss out on the less flashy sources of true fulfilment (the gold).

So how can we learn to embrace the sense of boredom that can come when we sit in the present moment, without the candy?

Firstly, we can practice stating to ourselves “this is how boredom feels”. We can lean into curiosity as we explore exactly what we notice in our bodies when boredom comes up.

We can also practice noticing and savouring the richness that exists in the present moment. You can do this by taking more time to taste the flavours, notice the textures and admire the colours you encounter in the routine moments of your life.

I like to practice continuously falling in love with the simplest of life’s pleasures. Like the comfort of a warm shower, the intricate patterns of tree branches, the little dimples on my daughter’s tiny hands, or the aroma of a cup of tea.

When we slow down enough to get intimate with life, we can see just how rich, precious and magical the seemingly mundane truly is. And when that’s your perspective, the surface-level sweetness of candy feels a lot less intriguing.

How can we cultivate the discipline to continuously choose the things that truly nourish us over those that temporarily sweeten our experience?

Behaviours are formed and reinforced over time. When we make the choice to engage in an activity that is nourishing, but in some way uncomfortable, it can be helpful to draw our attention to the goodness that comes from it. Otherwise put, look for the gold, admire the gold, polish the gold, talk about the gold.

Name and really marinate in how you feel (e.g. confident, powerful, proud, optimistic, grateful) during and after doing the nourishing thing. Focusing your attention in this way will strengthen the neural pathways that associate the activity with positive rewards, making it more likely that you’ll do it again!

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