WORKING ON THE SIGNS

Having an idle mind can be a scary thing for me most times, it makes me think about things that that I shouldn’t be spending time thinking about. The only thing I appreciate about the times when I feel idle is that it helps me know the kind of unhealthy things I have fed my mind with over time and most of them are not things that I’m proud of in any way. So basically, when I find myself idle, I always make conscious efforts to get myself out of that idleness.

Idleness can be a little tricky, someone might even mistake it as them having their me-time or private time but that is not true most times. When you are alone and all you do is think about unhealthy things, it only means you are no longer having a personal time but you are idle. So for me, I find it really easy to know when I’m idle and I start working on it immediately, most times, I do realize a bit late that I have been idle for a while but the moment I do, I start taking some simple measures to help me get out of that idleness.

I have had days when I seem to be the most busiest person but then I still feel kind of bored and idle in my head. I’m saying this because, sometimes, when we are occupied with work to do, it makes it harder to know if we are bored because we feel as long as we are doing something productive we shouldn’t get bored. Well, that is mostly true but not completely true. We fail to realize that our mind is a boss of his own and most times that is what really controls most of our activities.

When we are so productive and our mind is a bit far away from what we are doing, this is one reason why we feel bored even when we seem to have so much to do. We just feel that for some reasons, our mind is not interested in whatever it is we are doing at that time and that automatically start driving us to a place of idleness and boredom. At that point, the only thing we can do for ourselves is to take a break and sort things out with our minds.

One way I do this, I try to get some rest if I can. Getting a good sleep most times makes me feel better and more productive as it clears my mind. I have come to notice that I struggle a lot with overcoming boredom when I feel tired and stressed. The thing is, as humans, most times we have something to do, but we don’t do them because we find them tiring either because we are tired or because we are just lazy. So even when we have so much to do, we still feel bored and uninterested in things we ought to be engaging in.

One other thing I do when I’m bored is taking a walk more preferably with a friend. Walking helps me relax and pay attention to little details and most times that helps me resolve my boredom or idleness. When I take a walk, I get to see different things that just have a way of making me snap out of whatever world I was living inside my head. And if I’m privileged to have someone to walk with, it becomes even better because talking also helps me overcome boredom or idleness.

I have tried all three methods and they all help me in different situations. But then, some situations are new and I just have to find a way around them if all these different ways don’t work out. Then if I’m bored because I don’t have anything doing, it makes it even easier to overcome, all that I need is to know that I’m bored because of my joblessness. One thing I do at this point is rearranging my space, cleaning, washing or cooking.

These are the different ways I try to help myself out of boredom or idleness and they have helped me in most cases but not all.