Why Am I So Bored? Your Brain Is Hiding Your Deepest Desires

Boredom is your brain’s sneaky way of preventing you from realizing how terrified you are of your deepest desires.

Boredom is the intellectual strategy which clouds you from having to face the fact that you’re so afraid your biggest dreams won’t come true that you must not even acknowledge you have those desires at all.

Why Am I So Bored? The Lie We Tell Ourselves

Many reading will say, “Oh, how terrible that people can’t find something to do. I’m never bored.”

But for most I meet, that statement is an absolute lie.

When drugs, alcohol, or massive television and aimless internet habits fill our free time, we’re bored. And likely, we’re afraid to admit that there are deep desires which we’re terrified we’ll never achieve. So we cloud those desires out of our conscious mind as a defense mechanism.

How It Manifests

This manifests in our life as: “I don’t know what I want. I’m bored. I can’t figure out what to do with my life. I can’t find my true purpose. I can’t decide.”

The reason we suffer from boredom and then indecision is that we’ve so thoroughly convinced ourselves that the thing we truly want is not possible that we can’t bear to even think about it. It’s just too painful. And our brain is brilliant at helping us avoid pain.

The Downward Spiral

So, instead of ever feeling the pain of regret, we zone out of those areas of life which would give us the most amount of joy and satisfaction. This slowly begins to affect our ability to cognize and learn. Then it begins to attack our nervous system. And manifests in our body as disease.

It’s a terrible cycle that starts with: “I’m bored.”

Breaking the Cycle

Here’s how I’ve solved the downward spiral. Whenever I feel bored or my thoughts start spinning so quickly that I can’t make a clear choice, I stop.

I stop and I close my eyes and I ask my body to show me where there’s something trapped. I ask my body to show me what I most need to feel and to help me feel it fully. I ask to be shown the images which will trigger the feeling that I most need to permeate.

And then I sit with that feeling. And it’s terribly uncomfortable. And sometimes it gets more uncomfortable. But I just keep sitting with whatever feeling arises from my boredom.

The Truth Beneath

Because I know that my boredom is a mask covering some terrible lie I’ve told myself that goes something like: “I know there’s some thing that you want to do more than anything, but you cannot ever have that thing, so stop trying.”

But that’s a lie.

And as I feel into how uncomfortable believing that lie is and has been—and then beneath all of that feel all of the insecurities that forced me to believe that lie was true in the first place—as I feel into these things, sometimes for hours, something interesting happens. I realize I’m far from being bored any longer.

What Emerges

I realize that feeling those feelings was exciting and stirred me in a way that seemed meaningful and proactive and empowering. I realize that to achieve anything I desire in whatever way I want to achieve it, I only need feel into all of the projections which have told me something is not possible. To feel how disgusting and heartbreaking and maddening those projections have been.

And as I feel into those projections fully, they begin to fade away and something new takes their place: Hope. Enthusiasm. Confidence. Inspiration. And finally, brilliant action.

I wasn’t bored. I was terrified. Until I felt into that terror and the deep grief beneath it. Once I felt into that, I became empowered.

It starts by sitting and asking: “Show me what I most need to feel and let me feel it fully.” Then just sit, and feel, and be born again.