Boredom (synonymous with melancholy and apathy) is one of the main reasons that prevents you from enjoying life. Unfortunately, no medications have yet been invented to help get rid of this mental state. However, you can try to remove unnecessary sensations forever in other ways.
Loneliness, boredom, apathy - all these are dangerous conditions that harm the individual. Therefore, it is imperative to get rid of them. And that’s exactly what this review will be about.
Dangerous mental anguish
Why is boredom so dangerous? It is not considered to be a simple kind of human mood that arises periodically without threatening our personality. In fact, it is one of the main sources of numerous problems.
Is boredom a feeling or an emotion? This is an emotional state that forces you to constantly look for external stimuli, any activity, in order to get rid of the feeling of discomfort caused by the lack of activity.
And there seems to be nothing wrong with that. However, it is worth understanding that when searching for activities, selectivity completely disappears. A person who is “attacked” by boredom is ready to do any, even the most meaningless, work, just so that the negative feeling disappears. Boredom is an emotion, and not a good one at that.
Boredom at work
Over time, a person may begin to feel bored at work. A person begins to perform duties automatically and gradually transfers this automatism, for example, to the family or other areas of life. To prevent professional deformation and boredom at work, it is important to prevent a stop in professional development.
Over the years, every person experiences professional deformation, which refers to the transfer of professional skills into everyday life. Such psychological disorders are caused by external pressure and are associated with the specifics of work. For example, a hairdresser, when he sees any person, immediately evaluates his hairstyle, a cosmetologist notices uneven skin, a psychiatrist sees deviations, a pastry chef at a party can begin to figure out the technology for making a cake, a nutritionist recommends a diet to overweight acquaintances.
Occupational deformations are caused by a number of reasons. The main one is the cessation of professional growth (long-term stagnation). It occurs when a person reaches certain heights in work activity and stops moving towards something new, which is where boredom arises.
Occupational strain can occur in any job that involves repetitive activities. Even the most prestigious professions are subject to stagnation. Professional deformation for the personality of a leader is also a common occurrence.
The following factors can lead to professional deformation:
– continuous, boring work;
- conflict situations;
– nervousness and fatigue;
– lack of prospects for professional growth;
– excessive load.
Psychological professional deformation at a young age occurs for two reasons:
– when a young specialist has high expectations and, disillusioned with the profession, performs functional duties without initiative;
– when a young worker chooses a profession not because of its characteristic features, but is guided by the desire to achieve power and prove his social significance. For this reason, he is bored, uninterested and falls under the processes of deformation.
Prevention of strain and boredom includes:
– playing sports, physical exercises;
– rethinking the view of work (understand what its value is);
– complete rest and relaxation (meditation, yoga, listening to your favorite music);
– leave work at work and completely switch gears at home;
– choose a job that brings pleasure (to do this you need to listen to your inner self and understand yourself).
So, the main problem of boredom at work is that it occurs where you don’t want to work and causes lack of money. A person hates his job every day, but cannot or is afraid to change something.
State of dependency
Agree, this is very similar to addiction, where the role of narcotic substances is information, a certain type of activity. In such a situation, a person will begin to have a strong desire to do something, the satisfaction of which is not capable of bringing any tangible pleasure.
Moreover, it is almost impossible to control your condition. All that can be achieved is to temporarily reduce the feeling of discomfort. And then life will become at least a little brighter.
No one denies that a person needs fresh impressions just as much as a change of place, meeting new people, and entertainment. If this does not happen, then the personality will stop developing. However, all this is good within acceptable limits. And boredom is the very feeling that can make you cross all the boundaries of reason.
What is the danger?
Boredom is a state of mind that is extremely dangerous. What troubles can this feeling cause if it becomes chronic?
- The person will begin to constantly experience nervous tension.
- There is a high probability of addiction - alcohol or drugs.
- Long trips, vacations, meetings - all this will begin to cause torment, from which only work can help you get rid of it.
- You won't be able to concentrate.
- Chronic fatigue will appear, which will interfere with relaxation.
- There will be a painful craving for various and useless purchases.
- The brain will simply become clogged with information garbage and numerous tasks.
- There will be a feeling of anxiety and apathy all the time.
This list looks quite impressive. Few people view boredom as the main source of evil, so this set of problems can be surprising.
So why is boredom so dangerous? After all, at first glance, it is a completely ordinary condition that occurs in the absence of activity. Something like hunger or thirst. However, boredom is not only a feeling or a quality of nature, but also a serious personality flaw. Therefore it must be eliminated.
History of the study of boredom
The study of boredom began in 1885, when the British polymath Francis Galton published a short report on how restless and inattentive listeners at a scientific meeting behaved.
Quite a lot of time has passed since then, and relatively few people are interested in the topic of boredom. John Eastwood, a psychologist at the University of Toronto, is convinced that this happens because boredom seems to everyone to be a rather trivial thing that is not worth paying close attention to.
Things began to change when, in 1986, Norman Sundberg and Richard Farmer of the University of Oregon showed the world a way to measure boredom. They invented a special scale that could be used to determine the level of boredom without asking the subjects the question “Are you bored?”
Instead, the following statements needed to be confirmed or refuted: “Does time seem to pass too slowly?” “Do you feel that you are not using your full potential when you work?” and “Are you easily distracted?” They were formulated by Sandberg and Farmer based on surveys and interviews in which people talked about how they felt when they were bored. After the respondents gave their answers, each was given a score, according to which the degree of susceptibility to boredom was determined.
Sandberg and Farmer's Boredom Proneness Scale became the starting point for a new round of research. It served as a prototype for other types of scales, and has also become incredibly useful in other applied sciences, helping to link boredom to things like mental health and academic performance.
However, the proposed boredom scale also had significant drawbacks. According to Eastwood, this indicator directly depends on a person’s self-esteem and is therefore very subjective, which spoils the purity of the experiment. In addition, the scale only measures the level of susceptibility to boredom, not the intensity of this feeling. The imprecision of concepts and definitions still creates some confusion among scientists.
Work on improving the boredom scale is still underway. In 2013, Eastwood began developing the Multidimensional Boredom Scale, which includes 29 statements about various sensations. Unlike the Sandberg and Farmer scale, the Eastwood scale measures the state of the respondent at the current moment in time. With its help, you can determine what a person is feeling right now.
However, before measuring the level of boredom, the researchers had to make sure that the participants in the experiment actually experienced it. And this is a completely different task.
Or maybe this is motivation?
There will always be people who will say that boredom is a serious motivator. And without it, it’s unlikely that anyone will move or do anything. Perhaps she even helped someone achieve great heights in one field or another.
But it’s worth drawing an analogy with drug and alcohol addiction. After all, she also forces people to work so that they have money to buy drugs. And if he does not look for opportunities to earn money, he will have to endure torment. Do you think a person should be grateful to drugs for helping him achieve something?
And the same can be said about boredom, which can turn anyone into a robot that obediently and diligently completes assigned tasks. And if you think that boredom is synonymous with motivation, then this is a mistaken opinion. The motivator should be a keen interest, a desire to improve and reach certain heights, while realizing one’s potential.
Dead Sea
Boredom not only devalues our actions, but also poisons the time of inaction. It is scary in its emptiness and resembles a “dead calm”, which is more terrible for a sailor - this is very colorfully and accurately conveyed in the film “Master of the Seas” with Russell Crowe:
“Mortal boredom”, “dying with boredom” or even “killing time” with this feeling. Boredom is an encounter with nothingness, the emptiness that lies behind the scene of life. No wonder Samuel Marshak remarked: “boredom is a yawn of non-existence.”
Charles Dickens, in A Christmas Carol, confronts the existentially bored old man Scrooge with the realization of his mortality. Scrooge is visited by three spirits, but the most terrible, the most sinister is the Spirit of the Future, practically death with a scythe. He accompanies Scrooge to his own grave - lonely and forgotten by everyone:
Cemetery. So this is where the remains of the unfortunate man must lie, whose name he will finally learn. Needless to say, a fitting resting place for him! It's cramped - grave to grave - compressed on all sides by houses, overgrown with weeds - greasy, having absorbed not vital juices, but corpse rot. Nice place!
The ghost stopped among the graves and pointed to one of them. Scrooge stepped towards her, trembling. Nothing changed in the appearance of the Ghost, but Scrooge felt with horror that some new meaning was being revealed to him in this majestic figure.
“Before I take the last step towards this gravestone to which you point,” said Scrooge, “answer me one question, Spirit.” Did I see the ghosts of what will be, or the ghosts of what could be?
But the Spirit was still silent, and his hand pointed to the grave where he stopped.
“The path of a person’s life, if followed steadily, leads to a predetermined end,” said Scrooge. “But if a person leaves this path, then the end will be different. Tell me, what you show me now can also change?
But the Phantom was still silent and motionless.
A shiver ran through Scrooge from head to toe. On his knees he crawled to the grave and, following the Ghost's pointing finger with his eyes, he read his own name on the grass-overgrown stone slab: EBENEZER SCROOGE.
Charles Dickens. "Christmas Stories"
A similar experience happens to the hero of one of Akira Kurosawa’s most poignant films, “To Live.” The elderly official suddenly realizes that he has only a few days left to live, or, if he’s lucky, months. He is also already imagining his funeral. And he understands that no one cares.
It is at this moment that the transformation of the heroes begins. Therefore, being able to slow down, feel the passage of time, look into the eyes of nothingness is the most important experience that boredom gives us.
Why does it occur
Do you often have to say the phrase “I’m dying of boredom”? Before telling you how to get rid of this emotion once and for all, it’s worth understanding the reasons that cause it.
- A person is unable to manage his time. Due to constant progress, people have more free time, because now they no longer have to spend a significant part of their lives trying to get food. And these minutes, not filled with work, many do not know what to do.
- There is no meaning to life. A person can go forward, or he can stand in one place. And yet nothing changes in his perception. He is simply unable to notice the difference between vigorous activity and a waste of time.
- Work is not a calling, and tasks are performed only “for money.” There is no interest as such. In such a situation, a person waits for the lunch break, the end of the working day and the working week. He is not interested in performing his tasks efficiently, and attends work simply because it is necessary.
- Not enough communication. In this situation, one’s own thoughts can poison oneself.
Trying to get rid of boredom can lead to the wrong path. You should consider how you can eliminate this state of mind, causing yourself even greater harm.
Prison of time
Time during boredom is subjectively experienced as a viscous substance. This is probably why children experience it especially painfully, because their subjective sense of time is more blurred, it flows more slowly, and therefore the boredom is more vast. Her childhood boredom is involuntarily recalled when looking at the painting “Portrait of Varya Adoratskaya” - she herself recalled that she felt a little strange, sitting for hours on the table in an uncomfortable position, with constantly numb legs:
Portrait of Varia Adoratskaya. Nikolay Feshin. 1914
However, the passage of time gradually accelerates - this concept of “proportional theory” was put forward in 1897 by Paul Janet. When we are 4 weeks old, a week is a quarter of our life, but by the end of the first year it is only a fiftieth of it. If we are lucky enough to live to be fifty, then a whole year will be the fiftieth part of our life. You can clearly see at what speed time passes in different periods of our lives, for example, here.
Increasing the concentration level of the past is in our memory. If it is true that “life is measured not by the number of inhalations and exhalations, but by the moments when you take your breath away,” then with age the density of bright moments in time decreases. Our experiences are less and less intense, and in order to experience the “first feelings” we need more and more effort. Every year, such temporary anesthesia becomes more and more noticeable: the density of events is lower, and the speed of time is faster:
... Of course, at the age of fifty, it seems as if each year flies by faster, and because it constitutes a smaller part of my expanded reserves of existence ...
Vladimir Nabokov. "Hell, or the Joy of Passion"
It is no coincidence that boredom plunges us into nostalgia and thoughts about the past - such a mechanism makes it possible to reflect on experience and fill the future with new meaning.
Will new sensations help?
Search for new sensations and impressions. It seems that constant travel at first glance is a harmless way to get rid of boredom. However, it requires an almost bottomless wallet and a huge amount of time. In addition, over time, such entertainment will get boring. The same can be said about changing sexual partners. Boredom seems to disappear, but then it appears again. And the more often the change occurs, the shorter the period of time spent without this sensation.
Correct Methods
So how to get rid of this negative feeling correctly? Some fairly effective methods should be listed, and all you have to do is choose the most suitable cure for boredom.
- Find several goals in life that will push you to develop and improve your skills. Thanks to this, you can improve physical and intellectual parameters, as well as relationships with people. You can make an action plan for the near future so that you know in which direction to move.
- You need to learn how to manage your time correctly. Getting up in the morning, a person should be aware of what he will do during the working day and after it. Planning will again help with this. Weekends don't have to be spent solely on the couch watching a movie or TV show. You can devote your free time to communicating with friends, going to the movies, theaters and other events. You can go to nature or make a list of what to see and read. Don't forget about playing sports. With their help, you can get rid of apathy, and not just boredom.
- An excellent way to get rid of negative feelings is to change your job to one that you will like and bring satisfaction. In such a situation, you will be able to occupy your thoughts not with how to quickly complete the assigned tasks and go home, but with how to do everything efficiently.
- Close people will help you get rid of boredom. We need to communicate more often with friends and relatives, relax together, share thoughts and help each other.
Boredom is from the past
Photo: Pexels.com
Boredom can be a fairly long-term phenomenon if the cause lies in the past. Try to remember what a strong mental shock you have experienced in the last few years: divorce, a quarrel with your best friend, something happened to your family, something you couldn’t overcome. The root of the problem should be looked for in the past, because you may not have fully emerged from this internal crisis and conflict. And all this pain developed into boredom, apathy and lack of interest in life.
There may be another reason for boredom. If for many years you have been living for others and not for yourself: you have forgotten about your desires, you don’t understand where to move, you don’t realize your worth, you don’t have your own interests. Sometimes a situation arises when tea and coffee are placed in front of a person, and he becomes hysterical because he cannot make a choice. This is because a person no longer knows what he loves, but at the same time he remembers what socks the husband wears and what time the child has a mug. Your desires have been forgotten, and this can be the cause of boredom.
Another option is when you live from a “should” position. You work to pay off the mortgage, you don’t move because your husband has relatives living nearby. Or all achievements are made for mom and dad: they wanted you to become a lawyer, and now you have a career, but life seems so boring that it becomes unbearable. Familiar feeling?
