š Hey, itās Joseph. Welcome to my weekly newsletter where I share my own direct experience on managing ADHD without medication.
In this weekās newsletter, weāll dig into how Iām learning to overcome a lifetimeās habit of allowing boredom to destroy my happiness.
Read time: 2 mins & 49 seconds
Every few weeks I find myself spiralling into a familiar cycle:
Getting bored of a project I was previously ecstatic about
Berate myself for losing interest
Lose confidence in myself
Find a new obsession
Repeat the cycle
Iāve repeated this every few weeks since I was a teenager.
Itās exhausting.
So I had to do something about it.
Just because we have ADHD doesnāt mean we will always be this way. We can work on ourselves. We can improve our attention span and learn to be less impulsive.
I still get bored. I still get dragged into new obsessions. But Iāve trained myself to remain focused much longer and, crucially, to stick at what I promise.
Hereās how Iām doing it:
Step one: Mantra
The moment I notice Iām bored, I go immediately to meditation and breathwork.
Specifically mantra meditation.
I repeat the mantra āI amā over and over. If the boredom is painful, I repeat āI can handle thisā instead.
If the boredom persists, I do breathwork.
This technique works well:
In for 2 seconds (through the nose)
Out for 10 seconds (through the mouth)
Repeat until you feel calmer
Make sure you fill your lungs on the in breath.
Hereās the most important partā¦
Relax every muscle in your body during every out breath.
Why?
Because your boredom creates resistance. But you donāt fight resistance, you let it go.
Imagine youāre competing for tug of war with the England Rugby Team. Do you pull harder, or let go of the rope?
You let go.
Thatās exactly what we do here.
We relax and let go of the tension inside of us thatās connected to the boredom.
Crucially, we DO NOT try to change what the voice in our head is saying. That will only create more disturbance.
We simply let go.
Step two: Read
As Montaigne said: āIf one book bores me, I take up another; and I turn to reading only at such times as I begin to be tired of doing nothing.ā
If the book bores you, pick up another.
If youāre bored of reading you might be reading the wrong books.
You need not persist because you feel you should.
Pick up a kindle and download as many books as you can. There are sites you can download books for free (Iāll let you find them yourself).
If passive reading bores you, take notes.
Iāve upped my note taking game of late, hence the Montaigne quote above.
To dive deep into a book, to have a conversation with the author, to argue with them, to agree with them, to realise how Iād do things differently is a beautiful thing. I thank Jim Clair for improving my reading game.
Step three: Surrender
If Iām bored of my work, I try to remember that I am just a conduit to a higher force. My job is to surrender to the work that is put before me.
I have this pinned to my notes so I never forget it (I pull it out whenever Iām suffering the cycle of boredom):
And soon I will have the words āDo the work, expect nothingā tattooed onto me as a constant reminder.
To end
Overcoming boredom is easier than you think. But weāll never do it if we continue resisting it. Once we learn to let go and accept reality, we can take our first steps towards feeling a little more content each day.
Takeaways:
Boredom is a natural part of ADHD
But we have the choice to overcome it
Through mantra meditation
Breathwork
And learning to let go of our resistance
Thanks for reading,
Joseph Pack
PS: see you next Tuesday at 7:45am GMT.
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