Brendon offers four ways to beat chronic boredom: be fully present in daily tasks, invest in relationships and serve others, pursue directed learning, and adopt a leadership mindset with bigger goals. He uses personal stories and concrete examples to show how each strategy works.
Chapters
Hey, everybody, it's Brendan. And you submitted this question about what do you do when you're bored to death? You know, when you know you've got some goals, you know, you want to improve your life, you want to make the magic happen, but you just find yourself over and over bored. You know, you're bored during the weekday, you're bored during the weekend, and it's like there's all this opportunity, all these things to look and learn and participate with, but you're bored and it keeps happening. And you don't know what to do about that. When. Well, first, don't hate yourself for that because I know how that can feel. You're like, oh, my God, there's so many great things in the world. There's so many problems. And I'm bored. What a jerk I am. And I don't want you to feel like that because believe it or not, everybody gets bored at times. So don't take it as some, like, existential threat, like, oh, my God, my life must suck, or I don't know what's going on. It's like, no, no. We just have to refocus you and realign you and change some of the ways you're showing up in your life, in your career, in your relationships. It's something you can totally fix. So today we're gonna talk about four things you can do to overcome boredom on a consistent basis. So you're not just kind of going through the motions in life tactic number one is you have to challenge yourself to show up in everything you do with way more presence and engagement. See, boredom isn't always about this long term thing that you don't have a purpose or a goal. It's that you're kind of going through the motions and you're allowing yourself to go through the motions each day. And, you know, one of you wrote in a comment here on YouTube of like, well, Brendon, you know, I have a lot of things that I'm doing, so it's not like I'm bored, but I feel bored. Even though they're doing a lot of things, it's the way that you are doing things that is making you bored. You're not fully engaging it. So yes, you're busy, but by the end of the day when you look back and you say, did I give my all today? You didn't. You just went through the motions. And if you go through the motions, even if you're busy day by day, day by day, week after week, month after month, year after year, all Of a sudden, you're like, just totally bored. I mean, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually, even though there were good things for you to do. So my first strategy for you is re engage the day with full presence, full challenge of yourself, right? Give yourself those little, like, challenges as you're going through the day to stay present, stay engaged, stay in the moment. Cause that's super hard, you know? You know, I'm shooting back here right now. Travis came down, shot us in Puerto Rico. Travis Shields back on the dials. And it's like, I'm having a crazy day. There's so many things going on. But as I'm filming this with you right now, I'm like, how do I get here? How do I get here? Because by getting here and being fully present with you, it's how after all these years of shooting for you, I've never gotten bored. Because I challenge myself to be in the moment when I'm filming for you. If I just came up here and started spouting my stuff, and I wasn't really here, I didn't really feel it. I didn't feel, like, that emotional and mental connection with you, this wouldn't work. So think about that. So many people could shoot a million videos but be bored throughout them. And I'm always gonna get here, be energized, serve people well. That's a presence challenge for myself, right? That's how I overcome that idea of, like, so many people say creators, well, they're gonna get bored at some point. Like, I haven't been bored. I've been doing this for 18 years. So I want you to really engage yourself in whatever you're doing. If you're washing dishes, feedback, feel the dish as you're washing the dishes, challenge yourself to wash them faster, you know, so you can go do something else. Like just challenge yourself and re engage. It will really change your life. The second big idea is if you're bored, go outside of yourself. The best way I love to do that is with friends, family, your partner, your spouse. Ask them about what their goals are. Ask them about where they want to go in the world. Ask them what they want to achieve this week, this month. And turn your attention to service. Turn your attention to planning with them. Turn your attention to helping them, right? Because maybe you are bored with what you've got going on because you've been doing it for so long now, you're going to show up differently. But also, if you ask other people, what are you trying to do, man? And you find out what they're trying to do. And you say, let me help you with that a little bit. It's in that service that will reenergize your heart and your spirit. And people miss that all the time. You know, people are married to people or have long term relationships and what they end up doing is going through the motions with their relationships too. You know, they don't even know what their partner likes or their spouse likes and so they don't engage that. And now that relationship becomes boring because you're not mutually trying to do something together. Explore new restaurants, travel new places, try new things, go for new walks in different parts of town. Like try to help each other achieve each other's goals. Goals. Your relationships are the greatest fountainhead for all of life's vibrancy. So if you're bored, re engage those relationships. Like go way deep in relationships, get greater depth and just feeling there, that will change things for you. Third big idea is you've got to re engage in your learning journey. You know what happens? People go, well, I'm bored. So what do they do? They turn on TV and they just start randomly flipping through instead. If you'd say, okay, I'm bored. What are the long term skills I need to develop? What would I love to learn about this part of the world or that part of the world, or this idea or this strategy or this skill set or this business idea? And instead of going to television, like literally go to the bookstore, get some books, get some biographies. If you're not a reader, that's great. Then find some podcasts that you can listen to that will re engage your learning journey. Watch some videos on Ted, watch some videos on YouTube, watch some videos that aren't like just casual like browsing through, but are rather like very directed towards helping you develop. Because when you engage personal development again, professional development again, when you say, oh, I'm going to really learn about this thing, your body and your mind gets enthusiastic about it. I've never met somebody who gets bored learning about something they care about. Right? You might get bored with the way you're doing it, but now when you really re engage and you challenge yourself, that will make a big difference. I'll tell you an example for me right now is I'm trying to learn another language. And one way I was going through is I had an app and it was boring as hell to me. Like, everyone's like, use this app, use this app, use this app. And I was like, uh, it was just, it wasn't my thing. But the outcome that I Want learning this other language. It's exciting to me. It was the method I was going about that was not working for me. So what did I do instead? I said, you know, I like people. I want to learn how to do this, so let me change it up. So I got a Skype tutor, somebody. I go on Skype and they talk to me in the other language and they help me with my words. And now it feels like again, that second strategy I told you about, there's a relationship engagement there, and now it's fun for me. So you have to find the method that's fun for you to learn. But if you aren't learning right now, I guarantee you're bored. If you're not learning right now, I guarantee you're not setting yourself up for more success at the next level. So what happens is if you trip into the next level or you show up there, but you haven't prepared yourself, now not only are you bored, you're going to be stressed out of your mind. You must re engage your learning journey. I want to see what you want to learn on your calendar. I want you to have specific times that you're working towards learning. And if you do it in the right way, you. You won't be bored. Last big idea here, leadership. You've got to take the mantle of leadership in whatever you are doing in your life. You might not accept it yet, maybe you haven't owned it yet, but you are leading the kids. You are leading your peers at school. You are leading the people at work the way that you show up. See, people who are bored are often bored because they're in their own head. They're not someone saying, you know what? I'm a role model. People are paying attention to me. I want the kids to see a fully vitalized mom. I want the, you know, my team to see me have the best attitude here. I want other people to see me following my dreams, so I'm going to work hard for that. They're not aware of others and they're not aware that you are a role model. Good or bad. You really want to get out of boredom. Start leading people. Start defining a bigger vision with other people. Start setting bigger goals for your teams, for your family, for other people. And start talking about those goals all the time. What do they really want? How are they working towards it? Cheer them on, empower them, inspire them, give them tools, but lead other people to a bigger vision. This comes back to you also leading yourself. You've got to reengage yourself in a Different way to avoid boredom. Like, you got to paint a big vision. I remember maybe four or five years ago in my own career, I was like, everything was humming along. We'd kind of hit way bigger goals than I ever wanted my entire life. And everything was going great. And so what did I do? I said, you know what? If I just accept where I'm at right here, I can be happy, I can be satisfied, I can be fulfilled. However, in three or four years, I'm going to end up bored. I'd better take on something big right now. I better decide, instead of just doing my things, I'm going to start a movement. So I said, I'm going to start a movement around this topic of high performance, about pushing ourselves to reach the next level of success re engaging in life in a different way. I'm going to do some research. I'm going to roll out some new brands, roll out some new events, route some new courses. I'm going to start a movement around this topic of high performance because nobody had owned it. And I said, I'm going to take that. I'm going to own that out in the world. And it's been a great challenge for me to lead this movement of high performance. If I just kept saying, I'll just teach personal development all the time. But I didn't decide to make it a bigger community thing, a bigger movement thing. I'd been bored by now. I took the mantle of leadership. Even though it's hard, even though I don't know what I'm doing sometimes, even though I gotta build a bigger team and get a bigger office and do all these big challenging things, that's the changing of the game when you accept the mantle of leadership, when you take it on your shoulders. So I hope this has served you. It's okay that you get bored sometimes, but if you're bored consistently, consistently, we got a problem. There's so many things that you can engage with. Your relationships, your learning, the people that you lead, how you meet this very exact moment that can change your life, give you back that full charge, and put you on the path to high performance. Hey, all. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, would you please smash that subscribe button and also post any questions you have down below? Because it's these questions that you're all asking that inspires these episodes. I'd love to hear what you think about it. Also, if you would love to join us on our next upcoming live training. We call it our High Performance Experience coaching program. If you'd like some coaching and have some perspective and get some two hours of live with me every single month. Then click the link in the post down below so you can join us in HPX Coaching. I'd love to give you some more strategies, more insight and what more interaction to help you reach your next level of success. Until next time. Again, please subscribe Share this video with anybody who could be inspired by it today. And thanks one more time for being part of my community.
