by Oli Anderson, Transformational Coach for Realness
If You’re Bored All the Time Then You’re Probably Being Unreal With Yourself
Let’s face a potentially uncomfortable truth about life:
If you’re bored all the time, it’s not because the world is boring – it’s because you’ve lost touch with your realness which means that YOU have become boring.
And, okay, I get it, that might sound a bit harsh but stick with me a sec…
We’re living in a world where you can access pretty much the entirety of human knowledge from a rectangle in your pocket; you can jump on a plane and be in some shiny new part of the world within a day or less.
There are eight billion stories being lived around you at this very moment and, still – despite all this – you find yourself lying on the sofa, scrolling, sighing, and and wondering why you’re bored all the time.
What’s going on?
This article will show you the way out.
Let’s dig a little deeper:
Bored All The Time: What We’ll Cover in this Article
- If You’re Bored All the Time Then You’re Probably Being Unreal With Yourself
- Only Boring People Get Bored
- Why You’re Actually Bored (And Why It’s Not a Problem With the World)
- The Dangerous Side of Boredom
- The Boredom Breakthrough: Make Your Values Valuable
- How to Become Un-Boring: A Realness-Based Approach
- Final Thoughts: Reality Isn’t Boring You’re Just Not Living In It
Only Boring People Get Bored
The headline for this section might be a bit of a slap in the face but it’s not about shaming you – it’s about helping you get your power back.
Next time you catch yourself saying “I’m bored” or anything similar then pause for a second and consider this:
Maybe the cure isn’t ‘out there’ but it’s in ‘You’: assume, for just a moment, that the problem isn’t the world, but your relationship to yourself and it:
Boredom isn’t an affliction that befalls innocent victims but a signal – a flashing neon sign, even – that reminds you that you’ve drifted out of alignment with your own purpose and presence in life.
Now, don’t get me wrong: the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (or “Arty Schoppy” as I like to call him for some inexplicable reason) once said that life swings like a pendulum between pain and boredom and so perhaps a little boredom here and there is to be expected somewhere along the line.
Here’s the twist, though: you don’t have to be stuck on that swing forever.
Especially not when you’ve tapped into your real purpose and found a real VISION for you life that lights a fire under your backside and gets you out of bed with a spring in your step every morning.
Why You’re Actually Bored (And Why It’s Not a Problem With the World)
There are two main reasons you might be chronically bored and – I’m going to level with you – both are kind of your fault.
That’s actually good news, though, because it means you can change it:
1. You’re Stuck at Surface Level
If you’re lost in your ego and the false identity that you’ve created for yourself because of underlying, unresolved shame, guilt, and/or trauma (a.k.a. the Unholy Trinity).
When you’re living to chase ‘likes’, compare yourself to others, or to try and impress the crowd, you’re not really paying deep attention to anything REAL.
Instead, you’ve become a surface-skimmer, taking things at face value, distracted by noise, and out of touch with your own philosophical centre.
And when you stop asking big questions, life stops giving big answers and so you stagnate.
2. You Lack Direction
You don’t know what you value, what you want to create, or who you’re becoming because you haven’t chosen it by figuring out a real vision for your life (this is something I help my clients with so book a call with me if this applies to you).
Instead, you’re coasting through life according to someone else’s definition of success and trying to find meaning when you’re meant to make it because meaning is always a by-product of having a real purpose.
Really, this is the core issue and why you feel bored all the time:
You don’t need more distractions. You need a direction.
The Dangerous Side of Boredom
Let’s get a bit dark(er) for a moment:
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, in The House of the Dead, observed that the fastest way to drive someone insane is to make them perform meaningless tasks over and over again with no end in sight (the example he used was of rolling a rock from one side of the street to the other and back again).
Maybe this sounds familiar because this is exactly what modern life can feel like when you don’t have a purpose or real vision for you life:
A never-ending loop of scrolls, snacks, and small talk.
You’re not crazy or lost but you’re constantly doing things that would make anyone feel crazy or lost. because you’ve trapped yourself in tasks that don’t matter to avoid asking why none of it means anything in the first place (the answer is because you’ve been living in the Void).
But here’s the golden ticket and the way out of a life of boredom:
‘Meaning is something you create as a by-product of having a real purpose that feeds into your own real life story.
And you do it through real action, aligned with real values, towards a real goal.
The Boredom Breakthrough: Make Your Values Valuable
If you want to escape the boredom trap, you need to stop asking “what should I do?” and start asking yourself “what do I value and how can I express it through real action?”
Your realness – the part of you that’s alive, awake and uniquely you in wholeness – is like an inner compass:
When you align your actions with it, boredom disappears because you’re too busy becoming even more REAL.
Instead of escaping life through Netflix or numbing out with political nonsense on Twitter (I know it’s called ‘X’ now) you bring your values to the table and make them valuable to others by creating a vision that allows you to grow IN and THROUGH them.
That’s when life starts to click and not only are you not bored – you’re energised, engaged, and fully alive too because you’ve managed to build flow for yourself.
This article is based on ‘Revolution’ #34 (Boring / Bored) in Personal Revolutions: A Short Course in Realness – the ultimate book about growing real, facing reality, and living your real life.
How to Become Un-Boring: A Realness-Based Approach
So, how do you actually do it?
Here’s a process rooted in personal transformation that doesn’t require buying another overpriced productivity app or moving to Bali to drink some hot chocolate:
Step 1: Get Real About Your Boredom
Stop blaming the world and start taking responsibility for your attention, your energy, and your mindset as a whole.
Next time you feel bored, ask yourself some probing questions to start raising awareness (which is always the first step):
- What am I avoiding?
- What values am I not expressing?
- What would I be doing right now if I believed my life actually mattered?
It’s not about guilt or feeling ‘bad’ – it’s about ownership and shifting into real action.
Step 2: Ask the Big Questions
You don’t need all the answers but start asking the questions that start to shake you awake even more:
- Who am I really when I’m not performing for others?
- What breaks my heart and what would I die to protect?
- If I could do anything with my time, and I didn’t need to look impressive doing it, what would it be?
The process itself is powerful and takes you deeper into ACCEPTANCE (always the next step after ‘Awareness’).
The more you ask, the clearer things become, and the more you can accept what you really want to be doing (instead of getting blocked by passivity and boredom).
Step 3: Determine Your Purpose (For Now)
Forget finding a forever-purpose written in the stars – just choose something real that speaks to your values and start walking toward it. You can always change it later and you will learn more about yourself and your real vision along the way anyway.
Whether it’s writing a book, building a community, learning a craft, or mentoring others – the point is having a point that gives you a direction for that real action.
Step 4: Infuse Your Doing with Your Being
Real purpose doesn’t live in the clouds – it shows up in your schedule so take your values and infuse them into your daily life with goals and habits.
What does “courage”, “creativity”, or any other of your values look like on a regular Tuesday afternoon? What does “truth” look like when you’re sending emails?
If your actions don’t reflect who you are, you’ll always feel a subtle kind of boredom – the spiritual kind that become a black hole in your life.
Real purpose only comes from real expression so make sure what you’re building is based on something true.
Step 5: Cultivate Curiosity
Anything – and I literally mean anything – can be interesting if you dig deeply enough:
That conversation at the bus stop? That weird feeling in your chest? That random book in the charity shop?
All of it can open you up if you bring real curiosity to the moment and stop waiting to be entertained and find a way to stay fascinated.
Step 6: Build Momentum in the Gaps
Even when nothing’s happening, something can be:
Use downtime to reflect, plan, grow, rest, or create:
Read, write your thoughts down, develop a new skill, speak to strangers, ask better questions, go for a walk and try to see everything that’s right there in front of you.
Your boredom is not a sign of lack – it’s a sign you’ve stopped living with intent.
Final Thoughts: Reality Isn’t Boring You’re Just Not Living In It
Most boredom comes from living in the ego – the fragmented part of us that’s always thinking, comparing, grasping, and demanding that reality entertains us.
But realness isn’t passive – it’s participatory and so if you want to live a real life you need to participate in it.
You can’t just acquire a meaningful life the way you might acquire a sandwich or a new jumper or something – you build it from the inside-out through action, awareness, and alignment.
When you do, the world stops being a blank screen and starts being a kind of playground for exploration and growth.
Remember that you’re here to make something happen and when you live like that – from a foundation of real purpose and real presence – you don’t get bored.
You get busy becoming someone only you can be: who you are in your REALNESS.
TL;DR: The Cure for Boredom
- Stop saying you’re bored – start asking what you’re avoiding.
- Find your purpose – (it doesn’t have to be perfect).
- Align action with values – daily, consistently, and messily if need be.
- Dig deeper into everything – be curious and active, not jaded and passive.
- Use your downtime wisely – build momentum instead of inertia.
- Become interesting – by taking interest in yourself, the world, and reality.
You’re not bored because life is meaningless; you’re bored because you’ve forgotten your power to make it meaningful through real purpose.
Stay real out there,
P.S. If you’re bored of the current version of you’re life and you’re interested in coaching then book a free coaching session with me to experience what my coaching can do for you.
Trust: A Manual for Becoming the Void, Building Flow, and Finding Peace is a book about learning to return to your realness by cultivating trust in yourself and trust in life.
It contains practical exercises and dedicated meditations (Transformational Bridges) to take you DEEP in knowing yourself and life.
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Personal Revolutions: A Short Course in Realness is a book designed to help you look at your life from the inside-out so that you can stop holding yourself back and go get what you really want.
It contains 166 practical ‘Revolutions’ for awareness and over 8,000 Self-Guidance Questions for you to uncover new insight about yourself, the world, and reality that you can translate into action and start building your real life on the realest possible foundation.
Shadow Life is an exploration of the human shadow and the hidden side of our personalities. It looks at the masks we wear, where these masks come from, and how we can take them off.
The book explores how we can better manage our relationships with shame, guilt, and trauma in order to remove the Mask that the world has asked us to wear (and that we forgot we were wearing) so we can live an authentic life with less drama, chaos, or BS whilst we’re still around.
The Flow Builder Journal has everything you need to make the next 21-weeks of your life a turning point.
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