One of the basic challenges of self-development, self-improvement, is that so many of the things that we know are good for us are really kind of boring, at least compared to so many of the things that we know are bad for us, that are often very fun.
After all, the things that are bad for us that aren’t fun, well, if we can avoid them, we do.
But the things that are bad for us but our fun, well, it’s sometimes very hard to avoid those things.
So it seems like one approach to balance things out is, for one thing, to see all those fun things, kind of see the boring side of them, see the dark side of them, and just take a little bit of the shine of fun off those things.
Like, for example, smoking can be fun, but then we look at the bad side of smoking, coughing, feeling weak and sick, and then all of sorts of horrible health effects that can happen after a long time, and sort of imagine that as part of the whole package of smoking, and then it becomes less fun overall.
And so this can be done for all the things that are fun and yet we know we should do less or none of.
Then on the other side, it seems like we can tilt the balance by looking at all those boring things that we know are good for us, or we have decided are probably good for us, and try to see the fun, whatever fun we can, try to bring the fun into them in some way.
So even though, on the surface, there’s very little that can really be very appealing in a fun way about, you know, not doing any of these fun bad habits, and instead doing work and being very orderly and organized and do hard work all day and then go to sleep early and all this stuff: that doesn’t sound very fun.
So it seems like it needs some kind of mental twist to it that can help to put it in a new perspective.
And it seems like a great way to do this is through the idea of adventure.
Adventure is a naturally fun thing.
Adventure going off to do something new, something that has a lot of uncertainty to it, some danger to it, some kind of experience that will be exciting, will teach something new, will bring a whole new world of experience to life.
And this is something that we can have, really, at any time.
It seems like it really is a matter of perspective.
If we can really imagine that our life is moving in the direction of some kind of adventure, at least.
Even if we can’t necessarily see a day of hard work at the office and coming home and eating a healthy meal and going to sleep early and all this boring stuff- even if we can’t see that as actually being an adventure, it can be connected with an adventure, in the sense that we can be building towards it.
We can be building towards future adventure.
It’s like the feeling of preparing the expedition.
You know, I’m going to get everything ready so that I will be able to have this adventure.
And, you know, doing a hard day’s work and avoiding bad habits and going to sleep early and all this sort of thing: if it’s in the context of “This is my preparation for adventure.
I’m getting things ready to have a great adventure”, somehow that makes maybe not quite fun, but we can sort of build in some feeling of fun into it by kind of reassuring ourselves that the fun will come.
And in fact, anticipating adventure is itself enjoyable.
And so even though we can be doing exactly the same thing, and maybe we never even end up going on that adventure, but just from the mindset of preparing for adventure, that seems like it can turn what seems to be a pointless, routine, dull day, it can make it something fun.
Now maybe that’s a stretch, to turn everyday work into fun, but it seems like maybe we can at least nudge it a bit in that direction.
So I’d be curious to hear if you’ve tried anything like this and how it’s going.
#adventure #boredom #prepareforadventure