Finding Excitement in the Little Things–How not to be bored when life seems boring

It’s the end of February. Christmas time is over. Valentine’s Day is over. Winter is lasting forever, or so it seems. There really isn’t much exciting going on for the next month or so. There seems to be little to look forward to. (I guess some of you might have spring break, but that still seems kind of far.) Every day just seems so similar they tend to blur together. So what do you do to keep from wasting away from boredom?

There are a couple of options. First, you can try to schedule something to look forward to. You could have an ice cream party, or set aside a day to go somewhere fun. But sometimes life is too busy (yes, life can be busy and boring at the same time) to do something that big. That is when you have to try the second option: Finding excitement in the little things.

Sometimes this isn’t as easy as it sounds, especially when you are getting burned out from a busy, seemingly pointless schedule. For some people it takes a fair bit of deliberate practice to get good at this. Others are lucky enough to be born with the ability to do it without thinking much about it. I think I’m somewhere in between. Each person might have a different way of going about it, but here are some of the things that work for me.

List some small, inexpensive, un-time-consuming things you like. For me, these might be chocolate, new notebooks and mechanical pencils, seeds to plant, or sitting down to play one of my favorite songs on the piano. Now, you could always just let yourself have/do one of the things on your list, but that gives a very fleeting satisfaction. If you want the excitement to last longer, make that thing a reward for doing something that you don’t particularly love/want to do. For example, if I finish washing the dishes, I get to sit down and play my song on the piano. Or perhaps, if I make it through school to the end of the week, I will let myself have a bar of chocolate. Having something to look forward to at the end of something hard can make that thing a little less awful feeling, and can give you something to look forward to, and you tend to enjoy your reward just a little bit more than if you just got it for no reason.

Another thing you can do that doesn’t cost any money and only seconds of time is to use your powers of observation and notice things. Take a few seconds to smell the air when it rains. Crack the window to take in the sound of crickets at night. See if you can spot a rock with a stripe in it when you are walking somewhere. Run your hands over the cool, rough bark of a tree and imagine the sap flowing through to bring life to the leaves and branches. None of these cost money. Most can be done in less than a minute. Yet, somehow, they make a difference if you can just take that long to notice and enjoy what is around you.

If everything else fails, find a few minutes in your day to do something nice for someone else. It doesn’t have to be big, but if you can make someone else smile, it will improve your day.

You don’t have to have anything big or expensive to find excitement. Even little things can keep your life from becoming so dull that you feel like you could sleepwalk through your day without it changing anything. No, it won’t bring the kind of excitement that a trip to Disneyland would, but it will help brighten things up a bit and make the time feel a bit sweeter. Just give it a try. What do you have to lose?

What little things make you feel happy? What sights, sounds, smells, tastes, or things to touch are your favorites?