Boring People Get Bored

What I learned about myself talking with my 11-year-old brother

Today I was talking with my lil bro… (one of 3)… he is 11. He does some interesting stuff… like play, watch, and try to ‘hack’ Roblox… He likes making little movies and games via Roblox or stickman studio stuff or imovie stuff….

When he’s not on the ipad… he complains about being bored. I know every time he’s bored because he chooses that time to insist on getting on my back.

The only reason he can supply me when I ask why is ‘because Im bored’…

I try to get him thinking about other stuff he can do.. that will legit be more fun than (trying and failing) to pirate a ride on me.

But I fear its a moot point. If I say ‘Only boring people get bored’… he insists he is not boring… but then promptly ignores that and says he’s bored anyways.

I give him suggestions and he knocks them all day for the most trivial of reasons and goes on complaining about being bored and jumping on me to drive his point.

As I slammed him down on the couch and juked his little ankles to avoid his scrawny but persistent arms at grabbing hold of me… I realized a few things.

1. People get bored very easily when we dont care to empower themselves to do things.
2. People stay bored because we’re too lazy to do anything… or too insecure to give ourselves permission to do that thing we know we want to do.
3. People rather be bored then Doing… because we fear rejection or failure or risks more than we do inactivity and stagnation.
4. People entertain ourselves with anything to not be bored… but fail to actually solve the underlying problem of why we got bored… and thus, after that source dries up and our boredom comes back, we end up seeking more and more entertainment
5. People are silly. So much so that we justify our silliness with more silliness.

These are excusable with an 11 year old… both because parts of his brain just aren’t yet fully developed enough to care about self-empowerment and realizing that their lies other activities beyond the obvious points of entertainment… and because he doesn’t really have to find ways to not be bored. He can play and waste time standing around contemplating how to jump on his brother’s back without having to worry about bills, branding, or billionaire dollar ambitions.

I say ‘people’ because this seems to apply to a lot more than just my little brother. I figured as much when observing how all of my siblings (ranging in age from 8 to 22) spend their time… as well as my neighbors… and literally millions of people online via social media, or that watch TV, or that play games.. etc…

Boredom is not inherently a bad thing… in fact, many people have created truly amazing things solely because they were bored.

But choosing to be bored, and then complaining about it, when you *say* you want to achieve certain things.. thats where the problem arises.

I realized that it was due to my ambition that I almost never grew bored.

TBH... this whole realization is more about becoming more self-aware, haha.

When I questioned my little brother and observed all these people, I kept asking myself.. when was the last time I was bored? Why dont I remember being bored for any significant amount of time?

I realized that for me, boredom was a brief moment of feeling lost when pivoting between ideas in a time when I only had one or two ideas a time.

Now, when I have dozens of ideas at a time, and 3–4 actively being worked on… boredom is a strange, foreign concept.

There is SO much to do. All the time. Even when my internet gets cut off, my phone breaks, and my mind is the only source of stimulation on an hour-long walk… I cant really become bored. I’ve made thinking into a sport… into a productive activity.

Rather than thinking in circles or beating myself up like I used to, like many people do… I instead take the time to backwards engineer myself, to dissect principles and opinions that are alien or ‘opposite’ of mine and see what truths may lie there.

I like figuring myself out and empowering myself to do more. Thats why I never get bored anymore.

What about you?

Im going to be releasing and talking more about these other projects alongside my #blogumentaries… as they all play a part in my #pathofatrillionaire.

Thanks for reading!

Recommend, share, and/or comment if you get bored and let me know why. Or let me know if you, too, never get bored!