The Path Through Boredom To Bliss

As long as I was distracting myself from the stress, chaos, anger, painful beliefs, shame, and false stories running through my mind and body, I was just delaying the pain. That's what I did the first 43 years of my life until I was forced - and I mean forced - to face myself. I had nothing to do, nowhere to go, and no way to distract myself from the pain inside of me. 

I thank life every day that it took all of my distractions away so that I could finally heal. 

Once the pain started clearing out, peace and joy started filling the empty spaces, and that's when I finally began to feel alive. All it took was creating some space to turn inward for the first time in my life. 

Life Gives Us What We Need, Not What We Want

I had just been terminated for the second time in 20 months, my marriage was a disaster, my home was full of stress, chaos, and conflict. I was 300 pounds, drinking heavily, and suicidal when I decided to do something I had never done before. I had never closed my eyes, breathed, and did nothing. I just decided to sit still and pay attention to what was happening in my mind and body. I focused all of my attention on my body and breath.

I can't describe what fully happened in a way to help anyone truly understand, but I felt grief that I had never felt. I began to cry. I felt anger well up in me that only surfaced when I felt wronged, and the feeling of being broken and defective consumed my body. As these feelings consumed me all of my muscles tensed up and contracted, then all at once it felt like my body deflated. When it felt like all of the pressure was sucked out of me, I felt lighter, calmer, and less stressed. 

Since that day this has happened numerous times, and I've come to realize that before this started happening all of this pressure, stress, and tension existed in my body - and I just carried it around with me. Sitting with myself, turning inward, and connecting with my breath is a way recognize the struggle trapped inside, embrace it, and then let it go. 

For years I had jumped from one distraction to another and effectively avoided the pain that was inside. In order to distract myself I watched lots of television, worked a lot, drank excessively, and just about anything else that I could do to avoid feeling or seeing what was happening inside of me. Life knew I was a ticking time bomb, so it created a path for me to let go of the pain - by eliminating every distraction in my life. Work, gone. Income, gone. Ability to spend money to distract, gone. Marriage, gone. Friends, gone. I felt like I had nothing. So I sat still and focused on me.

I wanted income and distraction, but life knew what I needed. Life always gives us what we need, not what we want. 

Practice Mindfulness

Since these early breakthroughs I've developed a healthy mindfulness practice. Daily I spend time focused inward to see what's happening in my mind and body. I analyze my beliefs about life, health, wealth, and relationships. I observe my thoughts, and I see what stress, tension, and conflict I'm carrying around inside of me. Through a healthy mindfulness practice you can deal with these and create a powerful internal environment. It's so much easier to create wealth, success, and powerful relationships when you've resolved the struggles that rage within you. 

Sit in silence and stillness and feel your body. Feel all of the different parts of your body and identify all of the pockets of pressure, tension, and stress, and let them go one by one. Allow your body to decompress, and allow your entire being to release all internal and external conflict in your life. Literally feel your body let go. This will recalibrate and reprogram your mind and body to live stress free instead of being in a constant state of turmoil.

Your beliefs create your outcomes, so when you shift your beliefs you shift your circumstances. By turning inward and understanding your beliefs, you'll see why you're experiencing your current outcomes and circumstances. When you are ready to shift to a new belief, spend time in your mindfulness practice soaking in the feeling of the new belief. It's important to engage your mind and body in this exercise. As you sit in the feeling of the new belief you will begin to embody it... and that's when you'll see the evidence of its truth start to show up in your world. 

The main point is to sit still and observe your inner environment. Once you begin to rebuild a healthy relationship with your internal workings, you'll catalyze your ability to create wealth, success, and happiness in an easier and more joyous ways. 

Be Willing to be Bored

 We live in a world of distractions. Jumping from one dopamine hit to another is our current modus operandi. In the absence of dopamine and adrenaline, we say we are "bored."

Boredom is the gap in between dopamine hits where your mind searches for its next fix. There are no ordinary moments, and every second of your life is a miracle - whether filled with activity or not. The path to bliss and eternal joy is through boredom, not the absence of it. To experience bliss, if that's what you truly want, you must make peace with boredom, and allow boredom to become your friend. Once you free yourself from your addiction to dopamine and adrenaline, you'll see that bliss is what you've been after your whole life - you just never walked through boredom to find it. It's your aversion to boredom which creates unnecessary struggle in your life. 

Take time to build a healthier relationship with boredom. Try it out for a while, you'll see for yourself. 

Putting It All Together

I like to watch my dogs. They seem to have it all figured out. They love hard. They play hard, but they also relax hard. They never seem bored. They are very at one with themselves. They are in a constant state of bliss and peace. What I've realized is that humans, even when we are fully given a chance to live a relaxed and peaceful life like a dog, will choose constant distraction instead of peace and bliss. Dogs realized that constant activity and achievement is not the way to bliss. Enjoying every second equally is. 

Do you allow yourself to turn inward to notice what's happening in your mind and body? Have you observed the chaos or do you avoid it? Would you consider finding out what's happening inside of you so that you can resolve the conflicts on the inside instead of trying to find an external solution to cover up that conflict?

The answer to these questions will help you understand if you're ready to have it all -  wealth, success, and true internal happiness. Every challenge and obstacle you've ever faced has been inside of you. Were you paying attention?

Photo by Callie Morgan on Unsplash