In a time and place, in a world where anything and everything is just a click away from being satisfied instantly… how much do we avoid boredom?
With sugar, coffee, shopping, sex, porn, eating, social media likes or any form of need for validation, drugs & medication, alcohol, smoking nicotine, gambling, working, studying, creation, reading books, watching tv, and so on.
On a certain level, we are all addicted to a drug; the feeling, the high, the low aka the reward something or someone gives us.
How small, insignificant, or innocent it seems at first…
When does it become a hindrance or even destructive in your health and natural growth as a human being?
When does it become pathological?
In a time and place, in a world where anything and everything is just a click away from being satisfied instantly…
How much of this reward system of “pleasure or pain” is a way to avoid any form or sign of boredom?
Following is an excerpt from the book 📚 Dopamine Nation:
“ Boredom is not just boring.
It can also be terrifying. It forces us to come face-to-face with bigger questions of meaning and purpose.
But boredom is also an opportunity for discovery and invention.
It creates the space necessary for a new thought to form, without which we’re endlessly reacting to stimuli around us, rather than allowing ourselves to be within our lived experience.”
You might think, why would I want to give up anything that gives me pleasure? It’s individual & personal for everyone.
Personally, I didn’t think I was addicted to anything until I tried out a sabbatical month abstaining from drinking & smoking. I enjoyed the positive effects so much that 1 month became 3 months. 3 months became indefinite.
I could finally see how much these 2 particular actions had been enslaving me; not only physically but also mentally and psychologically.
Together with my other practices, it has a positive ripple effect on my relationship with my body and in areas I felt stuck with.
I realized you have to make space to have space and in that space, you can wonder and move forward not from pain or need for pleasure, but from possibility. Which feels pretty close to boredom in a way.
What if you would gift yourself at least a month of abstaining from that which you think you can’t live without, and let it show you?
My next challenges are coffee and sugar. 😅✊
What can you challenge yourself and your body with?
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