Have you ever heard the phrase “Only boring people are bored?” Do you find yourself sitting and staring at a wall more often than not? Have no fear, I am here to cure you of your illness. Follow my 3 step process to being more creative and curing boredom.
1. Engage in physical activity.
As soon as you hear that voice in your head “I’m sooo bored,” stop yourself and get out of your seat. Walk to a window or step outside if you’re in a secluded dark hole with no windows. Getting up and walking, talking or exercising brings you back into the flow of life.
You can expand your creative brain by learning new exercises or stretches that you can do at work with even very limited time. Tai chi and yoga have a lot of useful simple stretches that you can do quickly (and discretely if you’re afraid of scrutiny) that will boost your brain activity. It’s important not to separate your mind from your body and get caught up in one place. Keep moving.
2. Focus on and expand past success.
Whenever you accomplish something it’s easy to feel good about yourself. On the other hand, when you’ve had some failure it’s easy to give up and sink into that familiar boredom and bad attitude. This will cripple the creative environment.
When you feel this happening think about something you really enjoyed doing and pick one of your strengths from this experience. It could be anything from completing a drawing, finishing a blog post or washing the dishes. Focus on a strength you had in that experience, i.e. “I drew that dog’s tongue perfectly!” Now draw that dog’s tongue again. Don’t stop there, but instead ask yourself questions about the experience. “Did the tongue look realistic enough? Was I trying to make it realistic?”
Self-interrogation will build on your skill and reinforce your curiosity. This positive, curious environment will allow you to feel more open to learning and being more in tune with the flow of ideas already present in your mind.
3. Do something that scares you.
Jump headfirst into a new learning experience. Pick one thing you’ve been afraid to do and do it. You may come out successful or you may fail misserably. Either way you will have shown yourself that you have the ability to step out of your boredom. This will boost your confidence. Even that failure can be viewed with a positive outlook and increase confidence. Any step towards that confident environment of the mind will build.
Try not to focus on the failure but rather see it and accept it for what it is.
Take a breath. Repeat step 1.
