#73 How to Never be Bored Again -- Teach Your Kids How to do This

Gentlemen, welcome to the Formidable Family Man podcast.

I'm your host, Greg Denning.

I have not been bored in years, maybe even decades.

And I, I even forget about I, I forget that people get bored and recently had some interactions with some, some youth and, and they are bored.

And I was, oh, man, like, I need to share these strategies so that we don't get bored anymore.

Years ago, I realized that boredom is it's a personal issue.

Like if I'm bored, it's on me.

And now what we started saying to our kids from a very young age is like, oh, if you're bored, only boring people get bored.

And I want that to sit in.

It's like, it's not an insult.

It's not throwing anybody under the bus.

It's just this kind of factual situations like, hey, it's not the circumstances, not the situation, it's the individual.

So if I'm bored, it's on me.

If I'm bored, that's a personal problem.

And, and I'm going to give you some tools and strategies to make that a reality.

But, but ultimately, fellas, I want to, I want to invite you and and then you to invite your children to literally never be bored again.

Now, obviously some circumstances are much more difficult than others, but again, I still want to, you know, full ownership here.

It's not the circumstance.

The circumstances do not make the man.

They simply reveal him to himself.

James Allen said that, but I think he was even quoting somebody before him.

But that that's a powerful realization.

So you might be saying anything like, oh man, come on, when I got to go sit in traffic is so boring.

I gotta go sit at the DMV is boring waiting in the dentist's office.

Or if you go to a class and there's a genuinely boring teacher or you're at some engagement and the speaker or even church and the speaker is super boring.

Now, from my opinion perspective, that can be true.

The teacher can be boring, the content can be very boring.

The speaker can be very boring.

The environment can be very boring, but if we are prepared and well developed, you and I never have to be bored again.

Now there's a great lesson from the great classics and I hope that you are reading, if not every day, at least every week from one of the great classics because those, those lessons are timeless and should be read again and again and again.

And we should be reading them to our kids and reading them ourselves because gentlemen, there's never a graduation from education.

And that's that's why the key factors here I'll get to in a minute.

But the great book I'm thinking of is The Count of Monte Cristo, a phenomenal book, incredible story.

And Edmund Dantes gets thrown into prison by some friends that betray him.

He's innocent, but he gets thrown in prison and he sits in his prison cell for years.

I think it was 11 years, maybe it maybe I'm wrong on the number, but it was a lot of years.

He just sat there and he sat there just brooding in his, in his anger and his resentment.

And he thought, you know, I'm just confined in the cell.

There's nothing I can do.

And so he just sat there for years.

And one day his floor or the walls comes up and, and somebody came through and the the cell, the guy in the cell next to him had been digging and digging and digging for years and ended up in his cell.

And he had miscalculated.

He was trying to go out through the wall, but he's miscalculated and ended up in his cell.

And it was the Abe Faria.

And so he meets him.

He goes over to his cell.

He starts learning from him.

He realized during all those years that Dantes was just sitting there, Faria had been learning languages and writing and reading and practicing swordsmanship and martial arts and exercising and working on complicated equations, and he had just been busy making himself better and creating a plan to escape.

So during the same time that the Dante sat there doing nothing because of his circumstances, Faria did not use his circumstances as an excuse and continued to work on himself and prepare himself and develop himself and prepare to get out and strive to try to get out.

Just an awesome, awesome example that George Bernard Shaw said.

Men are always blaming their circumstances.

He said, I don't believe in circumstance.

The people who succeed or who get on in this life are the ones who get up and look for the circumstances they want and if they cannot find them, they make them.

Powerful quote, a powerful reminder.

And the same thing is true for boredom.

So if if you were ever bored, there's start start making changes and shifts in your life, in your person, in your head, in your surroundings, in your circumstances and all your preparation.

And please, please, please do this with your kids.

So because we've taught them from a very young age, like, hey, only boring people get bored.

And they start saying that when they're little, I'm bored.

Well, only boring people get bored.

What can you do?

And we start asking them and we teach them to think through those things.

Now, initially they're like, I don't know, there's nothing to do.

And so we start helping them.

But we're never jump in and tell them.

The more we tell our kids what to think, the less capable they are of thinking.

Let that sink in, gentlemen.

Ask more questions.

Do it in a tactful way.

Do it with diplomacy and respect.

Don't do it in a condescending way or, you know, make them feel stupid, but ask really great questions and don't be so quick to jump in and give the answers because the more, the more we tell them, the more we give the answers, the less they learn on their own.

And there's this struggle of learning how to think.

Thinking is one of the hardest things we we do as human beings.

There's a, there's an excellent audio program called The Strangest Secret by Earl Nightingale.

It's free on YouTube.

You should listen to it again and again and again.

It's phenomenal.

And he says that, you know, it's like the thing that so few, few people actually do is to think because thinking is extremely difficult.

Real thinking is hard, but we're teaching our kids how to think.

So any time they say they're bored.

So what could you do to not be bored?

I mean, you're only bored because you're just choosing not to engage.

Now, again, on the extreme, if you were in solitary confinement, that would be a very, very difficult situation in which you would not become bored or be tempted to be bored.

So that's that's to an extreme.

But you know, barring being in solitary confinement with nothing to do, there's still so much we can do.

So here's here's a, a list, and this is a no means a comprehensive list.

There's so many things you could add to this far more than I even do, but I've I've gotten with even with this short list, I've gotten to a point where I'm like, I literally have no reason, no excuse to ever be bored again.

And why would I want to be bored?

I'd let that let that sink in.

Why, why would I ever want to be bored?

Why would you ever want to be bored?

With so many amazing things to do in life, so many important things, so many meaningful, fulfilling things with so much service to do, so much growing to do, so much learning to do, so much work to be done, and so much great edifying play that we can do, why in the world would we ever choose to be bored?

And I think that's the fundamental piece right there is a boredom is a choice.

Let that hit home.

Boredom is a choice.

So if you're bored at home, it's on you.

You're choosing to be bored.

You can do something about that.

If you're bored playing with your kids, it's on you.

You can change that.

If you're bored at church, that's on you.

You can change that.

If you're bored with your work or at work or whatever you're doing with work, it's on you, man.

You can change that.

If you're bored with any of the circumstances of your life, you can improve them.

You can make them better or you can eliminate from your life if, if there's a a really boring teacher or speaker or a boring situation changes the situation or figure out a way to stay engaged.

So obviously we can do physical thing or if nothing else, even if I'm in a situation where it's just me, I have no tools or resources, I still have my mind.

I still have the ability to think that can never, ever be taken away from us.

Never.

Even the people who were in the concentration camps and in the gulags, they wrote about that.

They wrote about the ability to still have their own thoughts and their own attitude of mind and then they could escape into their minds even in horrible circumstances.

It's so profound and so powerful.

And you know, most of us are not likely to ever be in a situation like that.

So then what's our excuse?

And we don't have one except that maybe we're well, we have no excuse, but the reason is we're often underdeveloped and we lack creativity, we lack effort and ingenuity and, and we lack preparation and resources.

So here's some of the things.

And, and again, as we're going through this list, you add your thinks.

In fact, I would love if you, you shoot me an e-mail or make some comments here, leave, leave some commentary like what would you add to your list?

So here's mine.

Number one is reading.

Reading great books is one of the most important things in life, literally changed my life in forever.

And it generationally already because my kids love reading now.

And so I got into the love of reading and learning and books have changed my life.

And I've read books across many genres and I still do.

And they have, you know, either given me great reminders of things I need to do or want to do, or they taught me so many things, so many great lessons.

And so you can read from, from science fiction and fantasy and fiction books and, and novels and romances to business books and books on psychology and books on history and just every wherever you want to go, whatever you want to do, like fine grade books.

So there's one thing I always, always, always, always have with me is a book.

And obviously now in our time, it's, this is easier than ever because you can have digital books, you can have audio books and then you can have real books.

And so I usually have wherever I go, whatever I'm doing, have access to all three of those.

Honestly, I've got digital books.

I don't, I don't like reading digital books.

So I don't do that much.

But I've always have those some available.

I always, we have, I think we're approaching 900 books in our audible account.

And so there's always an audio book.

And then I have a leather book or a paper book.

I'm, I'm reading and I read in the mornings and I read before bed.

So I book in my days with reading and I read and listen throughout the day.

So anytime I'm driving or running or doing chores or whatever else, I'm, I'm listening to a book and I'm usually working on four to five different books at a times, different genres.

And so then I have, you know, I have times of days.

I like certain books and certain inspiration and input because input determines output.

And I and I, and I like the variety.

My mind likes the variety.

So it's not just one book at a time.

I'm getting a different perspective, a different experience in reading.

So always have a book with you.

That's it.

And then I would add, always have some somewhere to write.

So you can bring a journal.

I have some other journals I have that I take with me.

And I also take tons of notes.

I just use the notes apps on my iPhone and I have Google Docs with notes.

I have I think somewhere over 3500 pages of my own notes.

So you can write right, you can just capture your own ideas.

You can just think.

That's one of the that's one of the most entertaining and enjoyable fulfilling things to do is literally just think, think about things and and in that, then it it expands to all the other things we doing and we can just be solving problems.

If you're ever have a space where you feel tempted to be bored.

So we're solving problems, solve your own problems.

I go through all your personal problems and solve all your own problems and then start helping solve family problems and then community problems and then global problems.

Think about solving problems and there's there's always problems.

So we can have an unending challenge solving problems.

That's a great one.

And strategizing.

Just just deep thinking.

So good.

So drawing or painting now.

So you're like, I'm not an artist.

I'm not an artist.

I think every human being should spend a little time drawing, sketching, watch a couple of videos on YouTube, maybe take a class.

There's something about it.

Even even some of the oldest, oldest things they found on the earth are writings and drawings in caves and on on walls.

It's amazing.

Our ancestors from many thousands of years ago have been drawing.

There's something to it, right?

And then of course, the beauty, the art and the creation and, and you're training your eye and your brain to capture what's really there and to to draw what you see.

Anyways, it's so you can always do that.

You can get a little sketchbook.

I just recently purchased a purchased a beautiful leather sketchbook.

So draw, paint, get those resources, have them around, have them available for yourself or your kids.

Exercising.

I love exercising.

I love working out.

We can always, we can always do that.

Even if you're in like you are in a tiny room or a tiny cell or a tiny apartment or whatever, there's still great workouts that can be done.

You can do all kinds of things.

So there are guys that are literally in in prison and get in phenomenal shape in their little cell.

They figure out exercises to do.

So we can always move our bodies.

That's a great thing.

Stretching, yoga ability, just like, you know, like, oh, there's nothing to do.

Start stretching.

I bet you could use it.

Do some squats, do some push ups, do some challenges and you can start doing really challenging stuff.

So instead of just sounding real, there's nothing to do.

See how long you can do a handstand.

See if you can get yourself to do one of those kind of flagpole things, human flagpole, where you use a pole and try to hold yourself straight out.

It's so hard see how long you can hold a plank.

There's so many things we can do even with just exercises.

It's incredible.

Going down the list here obviously mentioned any kind of thinking.

You could do creative thinking.

You could do imagine imaginary thinking.

You could think about your past or reflect on their lessons learned.

You could think about your future and and dream like start establishing big dreams and goals and targets.

You could think about all the things you're grateful for.

You can think about your relationships and how to improve them.

You can think about the problems in the world and how you can be a part of the solution.

You can think about spiritual things.

You can think about your own psychology.

You can think of, I mean just on and on.

There's just there's literally an infinite amount of things that you can think about and thinking is challenging, but man, it's enjoyable.

Any kind of creativity, just be creative, Make stuff, build stuff, fix stuff.

There's so much.

That's why I think about it now.

I'm like, how could anyone possibly be bored?

I don't even get it.

Like there's so many things we could do.

Like how could you even conceivably ever get bored because there's so much.

Even just sitting here in my office, you look around, you're like, there's so many things I could, I can figure out how that works and take that apart and fix these things and rearrange those things.

I mean, there's so much that we can get interested in.

And I guess that's one of the keys we have to develop and cultivate our curiosity and our interestedness.

And I think one of the, I'll jump to it now.

I was going to talk about later, but I think one of the biggest problems in our day is that we're addicted to entertainment, absolutely addicted to entertainment.

And we just want, we just want to be entertained endlessly.

And it's killing us and it's killing our kids.

We have this unending stream of visual trash and it's leaving our brains underdeveloped and under cultivated and under exercised because it's very passive.

We're just sitting there and letting the entertainment just do something for us, right?

And I think, you know, I, we enjoy entertainment in our home and our family, but we keep it in its proper place and in it's right ratio or portion, right?

We always, we always talk about with our kids, it's the creation versus consumption.

So if you're on a device, you ought to be spending way more time creating than consuming.

And that technology is a tool, not a toy as we keep it in its proper place.

And even saying that, wow, there's an infinite number of good things we can do with technology.

So powerful, so fun.

I even even on YouTube, YouTube can just be an absolute waste, right?

And there, there's so much garbage on there, but it can also be absolutely fantastic.

And there's so many things we can learn, so many things we can figure out how to do if we learn how to use it appropriately and use it well.

And do you know, whatever you, you can find anything on there.

I, I've been telling my kids and tell people for years like there isn't anything that YouTube and I can't do together.

Or we can get on there and watch stupid cat videos or just dumb stuff, whatever dumb you waste your life away.

You could become insanely wealthy.

We're watching videos on YouTube about business and about investing.

You could become so well educated by listening to the greatest thinkers and teachers and mentors and coaches on YouTube.

It's all free, man.

This is wild.

There's just no reason to be bored.

Let's keep going.

So I talked about problem solving service.

There's always, always, always ways that you can serve and help other people.

Sometimes we think service has to be like the poorest of the poor and after a natural disaster or somebody really struggling, you got to go to a developing country and and then we can serve.

It's not true.

There's philanthropy at every level with every human being on this planet.

Sometimes it's just listening, sometimes it's expressing gratitude.

It's it's complimenting someone.

It's, it's asking these questions, it's showing interest in their lives.

There are so many amazing ways to serve and love and inspire and teach and encourage other human beings.

My, my experience is that the vast majority of people are, are facing some kind of challenge, some kind of struggle.

So just let that sink in that over half of the people you interact interact with on any given day are facing some kind of challenge.

And you can help them with that and you can help them feel validated and appreciated and remind them that they're important, that they matter.

Man, there's so many ways to surf in that also, as well as like you can learn from people.

It was Emerson that said that.

Every human being is is my superior in some way, and in that way I can learn from them.

So that means every single person, from a child to a homeless guy, has something that they can teach you and me.

How could I ever be bored?

If there are other humans around, we can strike up conversations.

Now, obviously some conversations are excruciatingly boring.

They're empty and vapid and and frivolous and frothy.

There's no substance.

But again, that's on me.

Like if, if the conversation is so boring, then I need to change it.

I need to redirect it.

I need to ask better questions.

I need to take it to another level.

If I just sit there and endure in a boring conversation, that's my fault.

I have to own that.

I can just stop.

Like, hey, what, what, what about, you know, tell me about your life dreams.

Tell me about your biggest challenges.

Tell me about your goals.

Tell me a story from your life that really changed everything, right?

Come up with some really good questions and good conversations and Start learning how to navigate that.

If nothing else, develop some social skills while you're sitting there.

But everybody has a story and it's fascinating to hear their stories and to learn from them.

So that's, that's another thing we do.

We can practice.

There's any kind of practice, all kinds of practice.

You just practice things, practice any kind of skill you want to develop.

And that's another one is skill development.

But you, you're practicing anything from musical instruments to languages to social skills.

Like we talked about thinking skills memorizing, you could just practice memorizing.

And then once you have a bunch of stuff memorized.

So I've started memorizing in my teens and I've memorized countless things and I can still recall some of the things I memorized 20 years ago.

And so in, in the downtime when I literally have no other resources, I could just start recalling all the things I've memorized anything from songs to scriptures to poems to whatever.

It's, it's amazing.

You can do so much just with your mind.

So memorize things, practice any kind of practice, every kind of practice from, I mean, the even flexibility and, and little skills with, with your, with your body, with your fingers, your toes, your mind.

I mean, you can practice so many things.

It's so cool.

There's so infinite number of things to practice.

So we talked about skill development.

We should be thinking about that all the time, like what skills you're developing.

For me, every single day of my life and for my kids, we should be practicing or developing some kind of skill, a skill that is valuable in our life, a skill that is valuable in the marketplace just to have skills right now.

Obviously not all skills are of equal value.

So we want to practice the higher value skills.

But even if you, if you got nothing else and and there's a skateboard sitting there, practice some tricks.

I mean, do something, you know what I'm saying?

Like there's so much to be to be done.

It's so cool.

Business development.

I think, I think all of us would be blessed and benefit from having multiple streams of income or, you know, expanding our own business or starting and starting a business or starting another business or getting into vestments.

So any kind of business development, you could spend so much time and effort thinking about that, working on it.

I mean, you could do business develop at all time.

You see what I'm saying?

See how we're only through a short list here And, and just with this already, like there's there's no reason we should ever be bored ever.

We can learn a musical instrument.

I think those are the kind of the, the core things that we should do as, as human beings, We should learn another language, at least one of the languages.

There's things that happen in your brain that you can't get in any other way from, from learning another language.

And then you get engaged with an entire new demographic of people on the planet.

So, so just just right there, if we did nothing else, you're like, you never have to be bored again because you can practice another language.

You can even master your own language.

Just learn vocabulary.

It's something else we do.

And I think learning a musical instrument is another thing that's just so powerful and, and so transformative in our lives.

The very good thing to do, we could practice handwriting.

I, I would guess that the vast majority of us still need to refine, including me, still need to refine and improve our handwriting.

That's something we could practice all the time.

So you're sitting there and, and you're like, I'm bored, like, and just grab something to write with him.

Practice improving your handwriting, right?

What a, what a beautiful skill that's being lost.

You can write letters, you can write notes, you capture ideas like I talked about before, like there are just so many things to do.

That's just, that's just my short list right there.

You can add to that, right?

You could listen to different types of music and then create music.

You could sing, just sing me.

You could write poetry, try poetry.

Now all these things I'm, I'm mentioning, I imagine some of you like, oh, I don't do that.

Oh, that's not who I am or I've never done that.

Oh, I suck at that.

It's like, listen, listen to all your excuses.

This is all these fixed mindsets to stop us.

And so then it all just circles back.

Like if we're ever bored, man, it's our own fault.

So anyways, I just want to share this because it's it's a reality that I often forget about because I haven't been bored in decades.

And again, if I get into a boring circumstance or boring situation or there is truly a boring speaker, then I have tools, resources, and things I can do, even if it's just in my own mind to be engaged with life.

Why would we waste life, right?

I think it's Franklin that said, dost thou love life?

Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff that life is made of.

So gentlemen, let's let's never be bored again.

Make a commitment today that you will never be bored again.

And then make it easy on yourself and easier for your kids by having lots and lots of resources.

So our home, even when we're traveling around the world or wherever, as we're traveling, we always have several things that that I can do, that my wife can do, that our kids can do to keep us from being bored.

And we're going to have our house full of good stuff, from arts and crafts to books and tools.

There is so much to do all the time.

And then even in the more difficult circumstances, maybe you got a crazy long flight, right?

So you can bring a journal and a book and some audiobooks and some movies.

There's just so much to be done.

So make the commitment, exercise your mind, get some things set up and establish a new culture in your family that only boring people get bored.

And in our in our family, we're going to be highly developed.

We're going to know there's always engaging, cool, fun, good things to do that can keep us from getting bored.

So that and, and don't get caught up in this cultural obsession and with, with boredom and entertainment.

And really it's come down to this.

And, and it really, as I see it, it's, it's a symptom of a much bigger problem that it's highly, highly underdeveloped.

And you get down to this, this base level of entertainment or boredom, entertainment or boredom.

It's like those are the only two options in life, entertainment or boredom.

What a horrible existence, right?

So stay away from both of those places and live a fully engaged, meaningful, exciting life.

And then we have fun, we play hard and we work hard and we love life.

There's so much to do that that we literally could go the rest of our lives without ever being bored again.

So hopefully it's been helpful for you give you some things to think about and I hope, I hope you engage.

Thanks, thanks for listening, thanks for being here.

I mean, the fact that you're doing this, there's another thing like there's so many great podcasts out here and you're listening to podcasts.

So you're in, you're engaged in this.

And so kudos to you.

If you want more tools and and resources, tactics, strategy systems for what I call holistic optimization.

It's like you're optimizing your entire life and boredom is just one aspect of it.

You, you got to get every part of it, your, your fitness, your family, your finances, your physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, social, financial, the whole aspect of our lives.

We get each little aspect dialed in and, and it meant to create this amazing family culture and a family legacy.

And we get our lives and our business, our families dialed in so well.

Then every day we're excited to wake up.

We're excited to live life and life is so, so good.

And if you want to live at that level, and I believe you do, that's why you're listening to this engage.

Let me know how I can help grab the tools and resources that we've created made available.

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I mean, there's just so much out there.

And this is part of our passion, part of my life's work to help you live at your very best and to become the very best version of you, whatever that looks like in your own unique path, but to give you the tools and systems and strategies to make that possible.

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Love you brother, Thanks for listening, thanks for watching, thanks for caring about yourself and your family in the world.

Go out today and be the man.