You Need to Be Bored. Here’s Why.

0:07Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor podcast. I am your host, Rob Dial. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so you never miss another podcast episode. And if you're out there and you love this podcast, do me a favor, give us a rating and review however you listen to us. The reason why is because the more positive ratings and reviews that we get, the more that those platforms actually show this podcast to people who have never listened to it before, which allows us to grow and impact more people's lives. So if you would do that, I would greatly, greatly appreciate it.

0:33Today, we're gonna be talking about being bored. What if I told you there's a chance that the solution to all of your problems in your life is not about learning more or hustling more or being more productive, but from actually doing less and embracing boredom. See, boredom isn't just about doing nothing. When we're bored, our brain is deeply, deeply working to make connections, to solve problems, to get creative, and to come up with ideas that could possibly change our lives. The problem is that we have trained ourselves to be so overstimulated that we avoid boredom. the one thing that we actually need.

1:12So today I'm gonna break this down for you and show you how to change your life through literally doing nothing. So when we look at the brain, if you've been following me for a while, I say this all the time, our brains were not meant for this world. Our brains have not changed much over the past 200 ,000 years, but our environment that we live in as humans has changed drastically. We're not supposed to be inundated with notifications and with emails and with massive to-do lists and with media scrolls. We've been built into a world of overstimulation and our poor nervous systems are paying the price of it.

1:47Our brains and our nervous systems are designed to be in nature and everything is slow in nature. So if that's the case, why would we want to be bored if we live in this overstimulated, fast-paced world? Why would we want to be bored? We have so much to do. Like, we need to be productive, right? Well, you don't want to avoid boredom. I'm going to tell you that. I'm going to prove to you today why you don't want to avoid boredom. You want to go as deeply into boredom as you possibly can. Do not turn away from it. Embrace it and go deeper into boredom. And the thing about boredom is it actually unlocks parts of your brain neurologically.

2:23And this is where it really gets exciting. When you're quote unquote doing nothing, your brain isn't just shutting down. It's not shutting down at all. It's actually firing up something that's called the default mode network. And the default mode network is where self-reflection, long-term planning, and your memory all live. So in other words, it's kind of the place where all of your wisdom is stitched together. So doing nothing gives your brain the perfect environment for the most creative breakthroughs that you can have. Now, when you look at the feeling of being bored, when you sit down and you're like, I'm going to do nothing, or you think that you're going to meditate and you start getting very agitated.

3:06Boredom itself is a signal. It's a signal that you cannot sit without stimulation. I saw a video of a guy a couple of weeks ago. There was an experiment that he did and he tried to not have his phone for seven days. And then he went out with his family and they were just, you know, vlogging the whole thing. And about two hours later, he was gnawing on a water bottle and he was fidgeting and he was at, you know, there's a, they were out for dinner and there's a paper cloth like in front of him and he was ripping the paper cloth. So many people get so bored and get so fidgety and do stuff like him or gnawing on a water bottle because your brain is addicted to stimulation.

3:47You have been overdosing on stimulation and the silence is your just moment where your brain can start to flush all of that addiction out of your system. When you look at someone who's addicted to a drug, how do you get an addict off of a drug? You could either go cold turkey or you could wean them off of it. But what you have to do is remove the addiction, not try to continue the addiction or to justify the addiction. Like people like to say, oh, I just can't be bored. I'm the type of person who always has to be doing something, right? That's justifying the addiction. So that restlessness that you feel when you first get quiet, that's withdrawal.

4:25That's actual and addictive withdrawal. And so your brain has been conditioned to expect constant novelty. And when you start to pull away from always being, you know, seeing novel things and watching videos and being stimulated, it really feels uncomfortable to us. But beneath that discomfort, your neural networks in your brain are detoxing and rebalancing. So instead of calling it boredom, what I recommend that you start thinking of it as, start to think of it as relaxation. you're actually training your brain to relax. If you're someone who's very anxious or someone who has depressive tendencies or any of that stuff, when you're bored and you're just allowing yourself to be bored and think of it as relaxing, you're training your brain to relax versus training your brain to be go, go, go like a monkey mind.

5:16The silence is actually restorative and research actually shows that even just two minutes of silence, just complete silence, is more calming to your nervous system than listening to relaxing music. The silence lowers your heart rate, it stabilizes your blood pressure, and it lets your brain reorganize itself. And what's really interesting is this right here, okay? When you allow yourself to rest and do nothing, not fall asleep, just rest and do nothing, there's been fMRI studies and electrophysiology studies that show that after learning something new or going and doing something, your hippocampus will replay those neural patterns during quiet, wakeful rest.

5:59And so what is happening is your brain kind of calms down for a second, your nervous system kind of calms down for a second, and boom, your hippocampus comes on and says, okay, it's time to start filing all of this away. Essentially, it's strengthening the connections with the cortex, filing away the memory of what just happened, which gives yourself more mental space after your rest. and it's the exact same mechanism that's used during sleep. So just as sleep is so essential for us and good for our brain, so is rest. And so the consolidation really boosts what mental bandit we have after the rest.

6:35And so the real reason though, one of the real reasons why the quiet scares us is this, let's be completely real. A lot of us are scared of sitting down and being quiet. For me, years I was running from being quiet. I had to work 110 hours a week because I was just running from so many things. Most people don't avoid boredom because it's boring. They avoid it because of what surfaces in that space. The stillness that you sit in has a way of pulling up things that you've stuffed away. Your grief, your sadness, your things that you haven't allowed yourself to process, the truths that you've ignored in your life, the deep unsatisfaction you have with where you currently are, the hard conversations that you've been afraid to have.

7:22In one study, I've said this many times in the podcast, but it still blows my mind. In one study, people were given the option to sit in silence for just 15 minutes or give themselves an electric shock and get out of sitting in silence for 15 minutes. And 71 % of men and 26 % of women chose to shock themselves instead of actually just sitting in silence for a minute. There's a quote that I love that correlates to this and it says, all of man's problems stem from his inability to sit quietly in a room alone. And so that's how uncomfortable we are with our own selves. But the paradox is those whispers that you're running from, those moments of silence where you start to think about where your life currently is, you start to think about the things in your life that need to change, the stuff that you're running from, that is the exact guidance system that you need to make a change in your life.

8:15So your subconscious just finally is like, oh my God, I get a second. It finally has a chance to just speak up because it's not being drowned in all of the noise. And a lot of people are running from that. Now, if you're out there and you're a parent, this is especially true for you and your kids. This is really, really important. So many parents are just trying to keep their children quiet at every moment with screens and activities and new toys and turning on some crazy overstimulating thing on YouTube for them to watch. When you do that, you actually train your child to be more anxious because they can't learn to sit and be bored.

9:02They can't learn to sit in silence. And you rob your child of some of the most essential brain building experiences. When they sit quietly, it helps them with their executive functioning. Kids with less structured time and not having to be doing things all of the time actually develop stronger self-directive skills and a better ability to actually set goals and guide themselves. Another thing that boredom is really, really important for children is creativity. When children are bored and they have nothing to do and they have one toy that's sitting out. That's when they get to be able to play freely and they're able to start being more creative with what's going on.

9:47And they were able to, you know, take this little toy, a spoon and turn it into a princess on a rocket ship. And, you know, that creativity is really important for them in childhood and all the neural connections that are being created. But it's also really important for them to have that creativity in childhood so that they can also be a creative adult. And the other thing that's really important for a child is emotional resilience. Boredom teaches children how to tolerate frustration, how to regulate their feelings, and how to find joy in just sitting and not having to do something. And so I want you to really just think about this.

10:26If you think about if I'm needing to keep my kid busy all of the time, all of the time, all of the time, for whatever reason, because I want to, or because they're bothering me or because I've got to be productive or something to do. What am I training them to be as an adult? Am I training them to be a child that grows up and turns into an adult that has ADHD or someone who ends up having overstimulation problems or anxiety problems? And so you don't need to give them the newest toy. What you need to do is protect empty space for them. You know, when they're like, I'm bored, whine, and they're like, I just want to do something to do.

11:00That's the moment just before their imagination switches on. And so try to protect that silence and that boredom for your children. Now for you, the thing that's really important about silence is where that's where your wisdom actually lives as well. When you allow yourself to sit in silence, as I said, your brain's default mode network switches on. That's the network that gathers all of your past experiences and your memories and starts connecting them to future possibilities. Parts of your brains that have never connected before are starting to connect. and it fuses your past experiences and your future possibilities into something new.

11:39Out of quiet comes your wisdom because you suddenly start to see patterns and lessons in your life that you were just too busy to catch before. And so out of that silence also comes your creativity because your mind starts connecting dots in new and fresh ways. And out of that quiet comes ideas for you in your life. The type of ideas that can change the entire course of your life. So silence isn't just like empty time. It's a incubator for the breakthroughs that you've been waiting for in your life. The ideas, the creative moments in your life that you've been waiting for. For me personally, I believe that every person has within them all of the answers that they need in their life.

12:25I don't think you need anybody in this world. You don't need anybody to teach you anything. You don't need me to teach you anything. All of your answers lie in your silence. For those of you guys that are spiritual, I also believe that the universe or God or life speaks to you in those silent moments. It's that little whisper that comes in and says, hey, what if you tried this? Hey, you should follow this thing. That's where your intuition lives. And so when you look at it, I've hopefully sold you on the fact of why you should be bored, but how do we actually put this into practice? Let's create like a boredom practice, right?

12:57Let's take 14 days and just try this experiment out. Try to have, one of the most important ways of doing this is to have very solid boundaries on no phone times. Don't just put your phone face down. Put it in another room and it can be from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. I am not on my phone. Maybe from the moment that you wake up until 10 a.m., you're not on your phone. Find your no phone times and be very, very diligent about that. If you heard my episode I did about a month or so ago about social media and screen detox, try to find one day a week where you just don't have your phone at all. Okay, so that's one thing.

13:37Have no phone times blocked in your schedule. The second thing is to try to have what I call boredom blocks in your schedule. Try it for twice a day. Start with just 10 minutes. No screens, no stimulation, no music, no podcasts, nothing. You just sit down. You set a timer for 10 minutes. and you just breathe and you notice the sky and you notice the leaves and you notice the way that the sun feels on your skin. And you just allow your brain just to rest for a second and you allow your hippocampus to kind of clean up your desk in your brain and just start to file things away. Another thing I would recommend is to try to find moments of micro silence.

14:17You know, if you go from one meeting, the meeting ends at, you know, 1055 and you've got another meeting at 11 o 'clock. Give yourself two minutes, three minutes. Run to the bathroom real quick. Come back, give yourself two minutes, three minutes, five minutes. Just close your eyes. Just breathe. Just listen to the sound of the air going in and out of your nose. And just allow your brain to just rest for a minute. And then the last thing that I recommend is try to go on more walks. Go outside without headphones, without your phone, by yourself, and just let your mind drift. And if you have children, let your children be bored.

14:55Give them one toy instead of 45 toys. They've actually found that children will play longer with one toy than if there's 20 toys sitting out in front of them. And so if your child comes up to you like, mom, I'm bored. Say something like, perfect. Your brain's about to make something awesome. Let's see what it does. And just allow them to start being more creative. And what you'll notice if you start doing this is you'll notice more original ideas. You'll start to have deeper focus when you return to work. You'll have a clearer sense of what actually matters. And then for your kids who can be bored, they're going to melt down less because they're actually going to become more self-resilient.

15:29And so here's my challenge to you. Stop treating silence like it's something to avoid or some void that needs to be filled. Boredom isn't your enemy. Start treating it like it's this temple where you're just going to go in and you're going to learn about yourself and about life and come up with ideas because your boredom isn't wasted time. It's a place where your subconscious whispers to you. It's a place where you allow creativity to grow. It's a place where you're able to access the wisest parts of yourself. And in a world that's getting louder and louder and busier day by day, the real rebellion might be just sitting in quiet.

16:06So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please share it on your Instagram stories. Tag me in at RobDialJr, R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. If you want to learn more about coaching with me outside of the podcast, you can learn more at coachwithrob.com. Once again, coachwithrob.com. And with that, I'm gonna leave you the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make somebody else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.