Are you facing pandemic blues, sitting on the couch like a lump of coal wondering why life is passing you by? Being bored with life is a hard pill to swallow and many people don’t know what to do with themselves when they are given a few moments of peace. This does happen with everyone, once in a while, and it’s really difficult for some people to come out of this situation.

There could be one or more of the following few reasons you might be bored with life :

You are shying from calling people on phone or connecting with your friends online or social media. Despite staring boredom in the face, you continue to turn down perfectly good opportunities to connect with people. What’s up with that? If you don’t have anything better to do, why don’t you call a friend or family member to chat and share some thoughts? If you don’t connect with your friends at least once in a while, when you go looking for them one day, they might not be there. Consider adding new friends to your circle and shake things up a bit. Otherwise, you’ll be forever bored with your life. There’s a whole wide world out there and if you aren’t in it, you are going to remain in a state of chronic boredom forever.

You think changing out of your yoga pants is too much work. Let’s face it, yoga pants changed the landscape of being a homebody. It’s just too easy to slip those suckers on and live in them for days and days. Some people have even tried to get away with wearing them to work and companies are starting to make dress pants out of the same fabric so more people can be comfortable. But come on, life isn’t all about comfort. It’s also a lot about having fun and if you are living at home in the same sweat pants you’ve been wearing for days, you might need a life makeover. Change into a pair of jeans and get out in the world, of course, strictly follow the pandemic protocol. Safety of life and good health are far more important than boredom.

You feel terrible and you look even worse. If you’ve let yourself go and feel like buying bigger pants is too much effort, you are going to be in for a rude awakening. We often like to play the victims in our own lives and letting ourselves go, making ourselves sick with food and drink is an easy way to allow yourself to hide from the world. It perpetuates a chronic cycle of regret and fear. You fear being seen like that and you regret feeling like that and so you just keep eating or do whatever it is you have chosen to dull your life with and things don’t get better.

You aren’t taking any actions. You know the saying, “you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take”? Well, it’s true. If you aren’t doing anything to change your life, how on earth do you expect it to change? You are not alone in thinking that hope and prayer will bring about new entertainment and options into your life. Many people are sitting on their hands waiting for the right time to make a move. But the time is never right and boredom will continue to fester. Things don’t get better unless you make them better.

Boredom vs. Depression. It’s a common misconception amongst people that their lives are boring. In truth, people who believe their lives aren’t full of opportunity or challenge may actually be experiencing something more difficult to manage. When life looks lackluster all of a sudden, it might be that you are experiencing bouts of depression or even anxiety. We’re not doctors, but it’s important for you to pay attention to what might be going on under the facade. Depression is a real possibility if you aren’t just bored, but don’t find joy in anything you do; in particular, things that used to bring you joy no longer help to make you feel alive. This has to do with the fact that depressed or anxious people may conceal negative thoughts prior to being bored, so when they have free time, their mind starts to wander into negativity. Yet, it’s important to realize that not all boredoms are the root cause of depression.

You think you are better than people. You might not even realize it, but you might be avoiding people and places and things because, in some way, you think you don’t need them to be happy. If you look at a certain group of people or events and think you don’t need that to be happy, you might come to find that you are wrong. It’s hard to turn the mirror on yourself and acknowledge that you’ve created this life for yourself; after all, who would want to be bored and lonely all the time? But it does happen. We think that if we continue to play the victim, someone will save us. Life, unfortunately, doesn’t work like that.

You aren’t willing to do things alone. If you have to wait on someone else to entertain you in order to go out for dinner, see a show, or even take a walk in the park, you might be waiting a long time. You need to get used to doing things alone in order to take responsibility for your life and frankly, to enjoy your own company. If you can’t be happy alone, how do you expect others to make you happy? This is a classic case of not knowing what you want in life and relying on others to give it to you. That’s a slippery slope because you will turn to others to provide structure, joy, and even advice in your own life.

You might actually enjoy being bored. Have you ever stopped to think that you are bored because you want to be bored? After all, there are some benefits to being bored. A study published in the journal Academy of Management Discoveries found that boredom can spark individual productivity and creativity. In the study, participants who had gone through a boredom-inducing task later performed better on an idea-generating task than those who completed an interesting activity. The bored participants performed better than the others in terms of quantity and quality.

Some tips and suggestions how to deal with a boring life.

Do you look at your life and think, “what have I done?” Do you wonder what’s out there just waiting for your attention? Do you, more often than not, find yourself just slumping back into the couch for another movie marathon Friday night?

It’s time for a change. If life has got you down, you might consider ways to breathe some new life into your routines. Life is anything but boring and if you think it is, you are doing it wrong. You’ve only got this one life to live so get out there and make the most of it! Here’s what to do when you’re bored and start having an amazing life!

Take responsibility. If you’re bored with life, will you take responsibility for getting yourself out of this funk? I think taking responsibility is the most powerful attribute we can possess in life. Because the reality is that YOU are ultimately responsible for everything that happens in your life, including for your happiness and unhappiness, successes and failures, and for the feelings of boredom that you currently have. Courage, perseverance, honesty, and above all else taking responsibility, are the only ways to overcome the challenges that life throws at us.

Try one new thing each week. If you are on the fence about trying new things, start small. But start. Don’t keep doing the same old things and expect life to change. You need to shake things up to make life interesting. If you hide away from the world, you’ll miss out on all that is bright and beautiful and wonderful. Start by trying one new thing each week. Set a date and time and get to it. Whether you decide to try new food, visit a different museum, drive to another town, or read a different genre of books than you normally read, little changes can add up to one heck of an exciting life.

Strike up a conversation with a stranger. One of the best ways to add some adventure to your life is to talk to strangers. Find someone who is sitting alone in a coffee shop or at a restaurant and introduce yourself, ask if you can join them, and talk to them. It might feel strange at first, but that’s okay. It’s supposed to. The whole point is to make yourself feel different things than you normally do. Talking to other people helps you understand more about the world, learn new things, and of course, make new friends.

Write down the good things that happened to you. Gratitude can go a long way in helping you see that life is not so boring after all. We tend to take the good things for granted and don’t focus enough on what’s going well. We do focus, however, on a lot of little negative things and blow them way out of proportion. Get into the habit of writing down positive things in your life and you’ll soon find that more positive things come your way. Or, as is usually the case, it’s not that more positive things come, it’s that you find more things to be positive about. What a concept!

Take up a new exercise routine. If you really want to shake things up in life, physically shake them up with a new exercise routine or workout. If you aren’t doing any physical activity at all, start. Start with just a walk around the block. It’s fun to think of yourself as someone who exercises and takes care of themselves, but the work of actually doing that is sometimes overwhelming. Being bored is a great trigger for exercise because once you get into the routine of it, you’ll find all kinds of other ways to keep moving and having fun. You might take up hiking or rock climbing, skiing or swimming. Life is anything but boring when you are on the move. And as an added bonus, you’ll feel great!

Become your own life coach. If you’re feeling bored in life, then you need direction. You need to figure out where you want to go in life. A popular way to do this is through a professional life coach. Bill Gates, Anthony Robbins, Andre Agassi, Oprah and countless other celebrities go on and on about how much life coaches have helped them. Good on them, you may be thinking. They can certainly afford one! Search online how you can find a way to receive all the benefits of professional life coaching without the expensive price tag.

Date more. Get out there and start flirting. The more people you meet, the more you’ll have fun. You don’t have to date every single person you meet, but dating more frequently certainly gives your boredom a run for its money and keeps your calendar full. If you aren’t doing anything else anyway, why not go out and meet new people who might turn into potential relationships. You never know where that kind of thing can lead, but if you don’t change your ways, you can bank on it not changing at all. If your love life is boring, it’s because you want it to be boring.

Find out more about yourself. If you are tired of living a boring life, but don’t particularly like the company of other people and aren’t interested in dating right now, you might want to spend some time getting to know yourself in a deeper and more meaningful way. You can take a class, start a reflective practice, read self-help books, take a road trip by yourself, go on a singles cruise, find a library and go there to listen to quiet music and relax and think about how you want your life to look. Get to know your emotions. If you’re angry and you want to let it go, ask yourself, why am I angry? Take up journaling or channel your thoughts into drawings or paintings. You don’t have to rely on other people to help you live an interesting life if you are willing to go out there and live on one your own!

Take a class. If you can’t entertain yourself, and you feel like you are at the end of your rope, get out and let someone else entertain you. Take a class, enroll in a course, or sign up for a workshop where someone will fill your time for you. Getting out of the house can help stimulate your senses in its own way, but engaging with other people who are working toward a common purpose can make you feel like you have something to focus on again. Boredom is a real problem when you can’t find ways to solve it, but taking a class is a way that you can keep on moving without having to do a lot of the work yourself. If you are suffering from depression or even anxiety, following someone else’s lead will take the pressure off of you.

Find a new friend. If doing your favorite things don’t bring you joy anymore and you are bored with life, find a friend who can help you see the silver lining in things again. The great thing about hooking up with a friend is that they can reduce boredom just by being near you. Sometimes, you just need to know you are not alone in order to pump up the excitement in your life. Reducing boredom isn’t always about filling every second of your day with entertainment. It can be about spending as much time as possible enjoying life with people that are important to you. Nobody said you had to be doing things together. You can just be together.

Set out to do something you’ve never done before. If you are looking for ways to spice up your life, but friends are few and far between and you can’t find a class that interests you, try getting out of town and doing something you’ve never done before. Now, if you are feeling overwhelmed by change, don’t worry. You can take small steps to try new things. Boredom can be reduced if you look for ways to test the waters and try things that can help you learn new ways to live and to look forward to life again. Giving your life a facelift doesn’t have to include radical change; it can include small steps.

Walk it off. If all else fails, and you can’t put your finger on what’s going on, get your walking shoes on and take to the great outdoors to think about where you are and where you want to go. Sometimes, boredom is self-induced because we are trying to procrastinate about something else. Rather than sit around and die of boredom, get out and walk it off and try to figure out what is going on that you are really avoiding. Another night of binge-watching a mediocre show is not how you need to be spending your time. A little exercise never hurt anyone and it gives you something to do

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