Defining What is Boring
Steven Pressfield, one of my most favorite authors, once defined what is “boring.”
“My impression is, you keep recycling the same things that never work in your relationship,” I told a married couple in a session a few weeks ago.
He writes, “Something that’s boring goes nowhere. It travels in a circle. It never arrives at its destination.”
“My impression is, you keep recycling the same things that never work in your relationship,” I told a married couple in a session a few weeks ago.
The wife asked, “Can you give an example doc of what is recycled that never work for us?” “Your husband just mentioned it awhile ago: negativity,” I responded.
Daily, “negativity” dominates their talks and behaviors to each other. Outside their awareness, more likely, they do that.
And it’s keeping their healing and marriage stuck. The same endlessly-repeating loop.
Addictions are like that too. Substance abuse, such as alcohol or drugs. Rage. Sexual escapes. Financial overspending, materialism. Cyber-addiction. And a host of many others.
Repeated act, but no forward movement. No destination gets reached. It’s simply tedious, futile.
That’s what makes addiction, like boredom, a life of hell.
That’s what makes addiction, like boredom, a life of hell.
In both boredom and addiction, two primary qualities then apply, as Steven Pressfield put it:
1. They embody repetition without progress;
2. They produce incapacity as a payoff.
1. They embody repetition without progress;
2. They produce incapacity as a payoff.
Boredom. Remember what it can do to your mental health.