Become OK With Boredom EP#70

Hey, welcome to Habits and Humor. This week we are talking about rest, recovery, and becoming okay with boredom. That's right you guys. We live in such a fast paced, hustle bustle society anymore that there are very few times when you're bored. Think about it. When you were a kid, how often were you driving in the car, just looking out the window.

There was nothing else to do. Absolutely nothing. There were no tablets, there were no phones. There were not all of these distractions that we have now. So you were bored sometimes after school you'd get home and there would be nothing to do. You were bored. I'm the youngest of five kids and so when my siblings all graduated from high school before me, and I was home alone for two full years, I was bored.

I have phenomenal parents and they were a great time, but every day at some point, There was just not enough to do. We experienced boredom a lot more, maybe even just 10, 15 years ago than we do now. Very few times in our regular days do we find time to just be still, time to just be, time to do nothing, and feel no guilt for that.

Today, I wanna teach you how to bring boredom back into your life and how to be okay with it. One reason that we don't do this boredom thing anymore is because we feel guilty for it. We're in this fast-paced society that makes us feel like we have to be productive. We have to be doing something of value all the time, and if we're not, then we're wasting time.

This is absolutely untrue, and this is what gives people heart attacks at a young age and other. Physical issues that happen because their heart and their lungs and their body just can't push anymore. Oftentimes, when we push ourselves too far, the only thing that stops us is our own physical body that just says, Hey, you know what?

You need to be sick this week. How many of us have experienced that right before you're going through this really stressful time, you maybe have a big presentation at work, or you have this big huge thing that you've got going on, and right before it happens, you're sick as a dog. We've all had that and we're all just thinking this thought.

I don't have time to be sick. Listen, if you don't make time to be bored, then your body will make time to be sick. You need some rest, you need some peace. You need some recovery in your regular life. So today we're gonna go over a couple of different ways that can look like in your life. How you can put these into habits that you practice consistently, that you don't have to think about, but you can just build them in as habits and they'll happen on their own on autopilot, because we all know we want to make fewer decisions.

We have way too much to think about. So let's take a couple of those things off our plate, think less and achieve more by resting more. The four areas I wanna cover today are going to be four different areas of rest, mental rest, physical, rest, emotional rest, and spiritual rest. The first one is mental rest.

This one is a hard one because we constantly are multitasking. We are always trying to do more, to be more, to have more, to accomplish more. And that drive for ambition is great because that does lead us to more. However, if we push beyond our limit, then sometimes. We gotta put the brakes up. Maybe we get sick or maybe something blows up, or maybe we're succeeding in one area of our life, but we're failing in another area.

So we need to be able to tell when we need that mental rest, or if you can't tell, let's just build it in as a habit so that it's there consistently for you and helps you so that you don't have to think about it, you can get that mental rest. One way to build in mental rest for you is. To build in a time block shortly after, or right before periods of stress.

So let's say right before you go to work or maybe right after you get off of work, build in a little window of time where you just have some downtime, whatever that looks like for you. My husband used to work about 30 minutes away from our house, and he would have to commute home. And so that drive, working all day long and then this long drive to get home, he would come home and just crash.

He would have to just sit and just be, sometimes he would fall asleep, sometimes he would just sit for a few minutes. But the kids and I would always go outside and just give dad his little bit of recovery time, which was hard for them because as soon as he gets home, of course they're all over him.

We wanna play, we wanna play. And he's like, I just need a few minutes and then I'll be out. And it was beautiful. We were able to give him just, a couple of minutes to have his downtime, his recovery period, his mental rest from a taxing day, and then he was able to be fully present with the kids, with the family.

It was beautiful. I loved that. We learned this quickly and we were able to establish this as a routine, as a habit in our lives. Another way for you to get mental rest is to unplug. How many times a day are we on social media and we're comparing our business to somebody else's, our health to somebody else's, our parenting to somebody else's, our life to somebody else's?

And whether those comparisons are fair or not doesn't really matter. That comparison culture is hacking mentally. You are constantly thinking, am I doing enough? Do I have enough? Am I enough as a person? And you're always compar if you're always comparing yourself to other people. Oftentimes that feels like pressure, and that pressure is giving your mind the stress that elevates that cortisol in your body that works those adrenals over time, and you don't have that mental rest.

So instead of using your downtime to scroll through social media, I would recommend that you use your downtime. To just chill, to unplug, to just lay on the floor. Do whatever it takes to just be alone, be still, be unplugged. Take a minute away from all the technology, away from all the screens, and away from all of everybody else's lives.

Just be present with your own life for a moment, again, with the boredom. We're not good at doing this because we're not bred to do it anymore. This is not something that people are telling us to do. Hey, you should be alone and sit in a room and do nothing. Absolutely not. Nobody's talking about that. But if we fill that in as just a few minutes a day and we allow ourselves to do that guilt free, mind you, this is not a bad habit.

This is a phenomenal habit when you're able to spend a little alone time with yourself. This is a, an excellent mental health habit. One thing you can do during this time, if you're not good at just sitting and being still and thinking of nothing, you can practice affirmations. Maybe you just have a mantra that you repeat to yourself over and over again in your mind for a few minutes.

This can give you a mental rest. It clears your mind of every other thought and gives you one thing to focus on, and the thing should be applicable to you as a person. That's what affirmations are. Statements about yourself, about your life, about who you are, how you exist. I am, I have, I feel those kind of statements.

Say a couple of those to yourself and repeat one of those in your mind. Or you can look at yourself in the mirror. Be fully present with you, and you, and have a couple, a little conversation with yourself. Say a few things in the mirror to yourself. Whether you believe those statements yet or not, I promise you this is a powerful practice.

I know I've talked about this on the podcast before, but I absolutely love this practice for mental health. So your mental health rest comes from taking a little downtime, unplugging and giving yourself some rest during times of stress, either right before you go, so that you can have a focused mind when you get there or right after it is completed, so that you can have a little bit of time of recovery shortly after.

The next type of rest is physical rest. Again, like I talked about earlier, your body will tell you when you need a break if you don't give it a break. So instead of pushing yourself to the limit and then getting sick, let's try and find some balance. There are really helpful recovery practices for you that you can put in a couple of days a week as part of your exercise routine, as just part of your daily routine.

Things like walking. Walking at a slow pace where you're just walking for walking, going outside, experiencing this with your kids. This one was a hard one for me for a long time because I was, it was ingrained in me during college and my other educational experiences. That exercise needs to be super intense, super hard, and all out.

You need to put forth a ton of effort in order to get the results back. This is absolutely untrue. There are millions of different benefits to many, many kinds of exercise. And one of those things is to just move your body intentionally without needing speed, force pressure or stress. Just moving your body in a way that feels natural and being at peace mentally, physically, and socially with the people that you're with.

So I started walking around the neighborhood with my kids, and at the beginning I really wanted to push the pace and I wanted to tell them to run. And sometimes I would run and they would bike, but now I'm okay with just sauntering around the neighborhood. I've learned that this is a really healthy physical practice.

This gives me some rest, and I really like to do this on days when I'm really sore. Maybe I did have a really solid workout and I'm, my legs are sore, or my upper body is sore, and just walking can really loosen you up. So if you're having a day where you're feeling tense or tight, go for a walk. Get outside, get some vitamin D, get some fresh oxygenated air.

And take some people with you if you want to have other people with you. If you want a little alone time, that works too. But maybe just take a little time to be with the people that you care about. Maybe that's you. This is another phenomenal time to unplug. Oftentimes when we go on a walk, we wanna listen to music, we wanna listen to a podcast or throw something in our head because we want to multitask and be super productive.

But it's okay. Just have some physical rest sometimes. Another way that I practice physical rest is what I call yin yang exercising. Talked about this on the show before too, but this simply means on days that you wake up and you feel low energy and you feel I don't know about today. I don't know if I'm gonna have it in me today to do the thing, whatever the thing is on those days, you can use exercise to raise that level of focus, raise that level of productivity, raise the ability to be able to do things that day.

If you do a little bit higher octane workout those days, you can get that oxygenated blood flowing through your veins to your mind and your body that can absolutely help you to overcome that feeling of I don't know about doing it today. And then on those days where you wake up and you already have the energy, sometimes you can use those days as recovery days.

So on the days when you feel a little yin, do a yang workout. When you feel a little down, do a workout that brings you up. On the days that you feel a little yang and you feel like you already have a lot of energy, you can do a recovery workout, do yoga that day, Tai Chi, go for a walk. Something simple that can help you to recover physically when you don't need it mentally.

Oftentimes when we don't feel like working out and so we're like, oh, today is the day. I need a rest day. That's actually just yin and yang and you're only getting half the harmony of your life. Or on the days where you're like, Hey, I have a ton of energy. I'm gonna go pump out a really hard workout.

That's Yang and Yang, where both, I both, you already have the high cortisol level going and now you're just keeping it high. This is where adrenaline or adrenal fatigue comes from. Cuz when you feel good, you work harder and then all of a sudden you're just going at high speeds all the time. And at some point it's gonna crash.

Versus on the days that you feel good, give yourself some rest. On the days that you feel like you want rest, give yourself some force. Give yourself some adrenaline and some cortisol, and some motion and activity and oxygen, yin and yang exercising. This is a great way to produce physical, rest, emotional rest.

That's part number three of this. Taking time to free yourself emotionally. This can look like a lot of different things. If you're carrying some heavy relationships, this can look like setting some boundaries. Hey, you know what? I'm going to not read these text messages today. I'm not gonna have this conversation today.

Let's have this conversation tomorrow. I really care about what you're wanting me to talk to you about, and I think this is really important, but I think tomorrow will be a better time. Let's set up a time tomorrow to talk about this. Set up some boundaries for yourself. What about in relationships with yourself?

If you're having those moments of self-doubt, of negative self-talk, Do the same thing with yourself. Hey, you know what? I'm really interested. I'm really intrigued by what is happening here. But today's not the day I'm not ready to have this conversation right now. Let's put a pin in it and talk about this tomorrow.

See if you can free your mind of those thoughts and put 'em for a future conversation where you have the emotional freedom and you can have that clear mind of, Hey, you know what? I was feeling this yesterday because, Now you can look back at the situation and sort of see it with a clearer picture and more understanding on what actually was happening at that point, versus if you try to deal with that negativity while you're in it, it can be really, really difficult.

So give yourself a little time, give yourself a little space. Let's go back to those relationships for a moment. I have a rule that I call the 48 hour rule. Anytime I am having an argument with someone that gets me really fired up, I'm an, I'm a redhead type A personality, and I get really emotional really quickly.

And so when things bring up those intense emotions, anger, fear, distrust, disgusted, all of that kind of thing, when I get those up inside me from a situation or circumstance or relationship. Agree, disagreement, something going on. I give myself 48 hours and I'm like, okay, we're gonna talk about this in two days, and if in two days I'm still feeling that angst, then we deal with it.

We face the conflict, we deal with it. We figure out what is the problem when we work through it. If on the other hand the conflict has gone away after two days, then I realize, okay, that was an emotional response, but it actually wasn't that big of a deal. It wasn't something that's going to continue to be a problem in my life and I can let it go.

This has been a very, very useful tool for me for a lot of relationships, including my marriage, my parenting, sibling relationships, parental relationships, all sorts of things. I use the 48 hour rule for, and it has really helped me as a very emotional person. I'm a huge, high energy, high E motor, big time, and I know this about myself, and so I use the 48 hour rule to give myself some space between stimulus and response where I can actually have some peace and some clarity.

The next or another emotional release that you can do. Another piece of emotional rest is listening to music. Music has a powerful way to reach you on an emotional level that maybe other things can't. Have you ever had maybe some grief that you're going through and you hear a song on the radio that just makes you break out into tears?

Absolutely. We've all had those experiences where music just speaks to us in a way that other things can't. Sometimes movies can do this, but oftentimes that's because there's music in the movies that do this to you for you. So the other day I was feeling really emotional. I've been going through some hard grief things lately, and I told my husband, I was like, I need to cry today, and I can't.

He was like, what do you mean you need to cry? And I'm like, I just feel like I need to cry. I need to let this out. I need to be emotional. So I'm just gonna watch a sad movie if you wanna watch it with me. And I just cried and cried and cried through the movie. He watched it with me. He did not cry, but I just cried and cried through the movie and I felt so much better.

That was the emotional release I needed. The emotional rest I needed, it was perfect. It was exactly the answer. And again, it's okay to feel your emotions. Practice these rest periods. Emotional, physical, mental practice, rest. Without feeling bad for it. There's nothing wrong with taking time for yourself mentally, physically, emotionally, or spiritually.

This is the fourth aspect of your rest that we're gonna cover today. Spiritual rest. Sometimes you feel like you're disconnected from yourself. Sometimes you feel like you're just weighed down and things are really, really heavy, or you're the only one who understands. Sometimes you feel like you just need to be able to express.

Yourself, express your problem and share this with somebody. Look to your source of spiritual guidance, whatever that is, pray to God or meditate to whatever it is that you worship. I personally pray to God and I use the power of the Jesus Christ atonement so that I can feel the relief and the stress goes to him.

There's an image that they talk about often in the scriptures about yoking your oxen together. Two oxen are paired together through one harness, and when there's two of them, they share the burden. And if one of them pulls harder than the other, they still go at the same pace. And so the load is equally balanced, and the savior in the scriptures refers to take my yoke upon you because his part of the burden is very light.

He says, I can, I can do. The thing for you, if you give it to me, give me your hard thing and I will carry it. You can just walk along next to me. We're gonna share this harness. I'm gonna do the work, and you just be next to me. He's not gonna take it away. He's not gonna make it so that you don't have any problems, but he is going to make it so that you can make it through.

You can keep walking, you can keep moving and keep going to the place where you need to go, but he's gonna help you bear that burden. So that it's easier, so that it's possible so that you can feel that spiritual rest. Give your difficulties, give your struggles to the person you worship, the thing that you worship.

Give it to your higher power, your source of spiritual peace, and open yourself up to be able to receive in return that peace. Give yourself permission to feel peace. Again, we're not taught this in society very often. We're taught to go, go, go, and to work, work, work, and to keep on going through everything and multitask and bring on more.

But sometimes it's okay to just let go to just surrender. Be okay with allowing your higher power to take the difficulties in their hands. Allow them to give you the guidance, direction, and support and peace that you need. To go where you need to go to do what you need to do. Give yourself that spiritual peace.

Ask for guidance, ask for forgiveness. Ask for whatever it is that would relieve you of that spiritual pressure that you're carrying. Release that burden, let it go and give yourself that spiritual recovery, that spiritual rest. So those are the four types of rest today that we're going to cover.

Mental rest, physical rest, emotional rest, and spiritual rest. And of course, we gotta wrap it in with a funny story. I want to tell you guys how you can choose this at any point because you have the gift of agency, you have the gift to choose how you act in any given circumstance. Doesn't matter what's going on around you, you always have a choice.

So here is a story about my grandfather. Towards the end of his life, he started to sort of lose his hearing. So he was able to get a hearing aid and he also would go to a Thera therapist for his mental health. And my mom was with him during one of these therapy sessions and the therapist was walking him through a verbal and visual meditation.

And he had him walking down a pathway and he had described this whole scene to him and walked through this whole thing that was supposed to bring him peace, physically, mentally, and this beautiful place that this man was describing to him. And after about, you know, three to five minutes of this meditation, he looks up and he says, how was that for you?

And my grandpa just stares at him blankly for a minute, and he says, how did you feel about that experience? And he reaches up and he turns on his. Hearing aid and he goes, I'm sorry, I didn't hear a word you said.

So that's a funny story about how you really are in charge of when you take rest a little bit conscientious about when, and where you take your rest and perhaps how it will affect other people. But hey, you do you if you know when you need a rest, if you know when you need a break, mentally, physically, emotionally, or otherwise.

Take that time for yourself. I love that story and I think it's so great. He was just like, I'm not gonna do this this time. So that's a little example on how you can be at rest, how you can choose to have the recovery and the rest built into your life. Given you several examples today. But I wanna close with three simple habits because that's how we do here on the habits and humor.

Show three simple habits that will help you to be present. So that you can feel the rest mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually in order to be fully present in your life. The first one is to unplug. Be okay with being alone, with being still, with being you. You don't have to be in the comparison game all the time.

Take some time, downtime, chill time, whatever you wanna call it and unplug. The second habit is to stop, to be bored. We are never bored anymore. So build that into your life so that your brain, your body, and every other part of you can have that little bit of rest. This wasn't a concept that we needed to necessarily focus on, you know, 10, 20, 30 years ago, but now we do.

So take that moment, take that time, build in a little boredom. And the third habit is what I call three plus three journaling. You're going to write down every night before you go to bed. Three wins from the day. Just take a quick. Thought about your day, quick evaluation of your day, and think of three things that you're grateful for.

This will help you sleep better. This will help you to, take stock of how your day has gone. Three things you're grateful for, proud of, three wins from the day, whatever you wanna do. Three things. And then in the morning, actually, excuse me. And then at that night, before you go to sleep, I want you to write down the three things, the most important things you need to do the next day.

This will help you to start the day with a little bit of momentum, some clarity, some focus, and we'll eliminate overwhelm because oftentimes we feel like, okay, tomorrow I have to do 800 things. But if you start your day knowing these are the most important three, as long as I do these three things, everything else is gonna be okay.

I highly recommend this practice. Right before you go to bed, write down three things you're grateful for, and three goals for the next day. Three gratitudes, three goals, and practice this each night. I absolutely love this practice and during those times of high stress, when I feel like I'm in that adrenal fatigue or I feel like I just am running, barely holding on, those are some practices that I use and I absolutely know that they certainly help.

Take some downtime, unplug, be bored, and practice three plus three. Journaling. All right, so that's the end of today's show. If you guys are interested in learning more about habits, we have a Habits and Humor Facebook group. If you're not a part of that group, you should definitely get in here. This is where we talk about habits, where we ask questions, where I do a lot of trainings and workshops and different things that can build in simple things into your life like this.

And if you're looking for that consistency, if that's something that maybe you struggle with, Hey, I love this idea, but I don't have the time, or I don't wanna put in the effort to make it part of my life. Then I also have a group coaching program called Habit Health, and this is going to help you to be more consistent, to prioritize yourself, to simplify health and to be healthy and happy on autopilot, because we're gonna turn these into habits so you don't have to think about as much, but you can accomplish everything you want in your life.

We're gonna do it three simple habits at a time, so it eliminates overwhelm, it simplifies things down so that it is possible even in your busy schedule, and it will help you to prioritize yourself, which is really, really difficult when we are constantly on the go. I hope you guys got a lot of value out of today's episode.

If you would like to, I'd love to have you drop in the Habits and Humor Facebook group or at Suzi B Habits on any social media platform. Drop your favorite part of the show. Share the the show and share it with your friends, and then share with us your favorite takeaway. And then tag me in there at Suzi B Habits.

Would love to know what you're getting out of these episodes. Thanks for being here, and we will catch you next time on Habits and Humor. I'm Suzi B, your personal trainer, your habits coach, and your coach to help you be healthier and happier on auto for life.