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Feeling Empty and Bored with Life? Here’s What You Can Do

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From the age of 12 to 18, I thought my life was the most unexciting, most depressing, and most boring place ever to be living in. Today, I would slap my younger self in the face and say, “Open your eyes!”

Life is anything but boring, anything but uninteresting. There’s an unlimited number of things to do, see, and learn. There are mysteries to discover, landscapes to witness, beauty and love to experience.

But why was I bored? Why had I felt this vacuum of emptiness towards life during those times? Why are YOU feeling it right now? I can tell you, and even show you, what to do about it – the way I learned to deal with that feeling in my own experience.

Can I promise you this will be THE article with THE answers you’ve been looking for all along? Is this THE article that will change your life? I don’t know, but it may very well be if you pursue the actionable words that follow.

Why Did I Feel Empty and Bored with Life?

I think it’s fair to start with an explanation of my misunderstanding of life and why I saw life through the glasses of boredom.

Yes, misunderstanding. Loneliness, depression, and suicide are in fact side effects rising out of the misinterpretation of beliefs – beliefs that are created by the places we are in, the people we are surrounded by, and ourselves. Misunderstanding stops us from seeing further, causing emptiness, and making life seem uninteresting, limited – and consequently, boring.

For me, high school was the main cause of that. Those high school years felt like what I could only guess being in prison would feel like. I was told what to do, when to wake up and when to go to bed, what to learn, where to go, what was real and what was not.

I was limited and restricted to what was possible, and everything else was impossible. I was a terrible student for the simple reason that I had no interest at all in the only likely “reality” in my future – which included but a few professions to choose from, and a narrow view of the world that school had shown me.

Feeling Empty and Bored with Life

When I turned 18, feelings of loneliness and thoughts of suicide had become considerable parts of my life. I lived and suffered with these thoughts and feelings EVERY single day throughout those six dark years.

Eventually, a deep internal calling – call it my survival instinct – forced me to make a choice: either give up or break out of my prison cell.

And so, I did. But it wasn’t an easy choice. Honestly, it was a tough decision to make at that time. I have to say, suicide welcomed me with warmer arms than the world, or anyone in it, did.

I feel sad now writing these words, as I know they are true for many others as well – maybe even for you. What disturbs me the most about all this is the fact that some people do fall over that thin edge between life and death, and do choose suicide. All because of a misunderstanding.

But let me tell you something, and you can take my word for it: If someone like me – crippled and beaten by a belief that I hated, so much so that I almost left for a better world – if someone like me can come to see the greater beauty and the significant truth of what this life and this world holds for everyone, then you can, too.

Now let me tell you what helped me and set me free from those feelings of emptiness and boredom; it may very well help you turn your life around.

Read/Listen to Books, Learn More About Yourself

Do NOT underestimate the life-changing potential that books have. Especially if you have never reached for one. I know, not everyone likes to read books. That’s okay. Audiobooks are a beautiful solution. Understand that just a few of the right books can have a significant impact on your life, the kind of impact you cannot even imagine.

Why and how? Because books contain a power that has brought down whole nations, caused wars and destruction. 

But a force that has also mended wounds, brought peace, revolutionized ideas, and changed the entire world and the lives of many for the better. Yes, that’s right, I am talking about the very power you are reading now – the power of written words.

The Power of Now - Feeling Empty and Bored with Life

Two fundamentals that have caused great pain and emptiness for me, for countless of others, and very likely, for you right now.

It’s only when you start to learn more about yourself, your heart, your mind, and your emotions, and how they all work together in the most magnificent ways, that you can bring some sense to the potential emptiness in you. 

Understanding yourself, and the complexities of the human mind and emotions we are equipped with, will produce a clarity about yourself and the many pain points that you may be holding on to for no other reason than the lack of information.

There is so much more to you than you can ever imagine. If you can zoom in closer to everything, closer to yourself, you can grab hold of the extraordinary powers you have waiting. Many times, however, we need someone, or something, to be that magnifying glass for us.

Books can be very much that.

Of course, because The IPS Project is an educational platform on life, built to provide you with the necessary tools and resources, we have created a dedicated book library filled with some of the most life-changing books on discovering and understanding yourself better. 

Oh, and guess what, you can find a link to any available audio version of a book in our library in the in-depth description for each book!

Do browse through the Book Library of IPS. Through its categories, you can easily find a book that’s right for you, in the areas you’d be most interested to explore.

To get you started, let me share two books that have had magnificent power and impact on altering my whole life.

The Power of Now -Feeling Empty and Bored with Life

Watch Documentaries, Learn More About This World

Learning more about yourself is one thing that can help when you’re feeling empty and bored with life. Along with that, learning more about our planet, the one you are a part of as much as it is a part of you, is just as healing. 

If you think the world is not exciting, there are marvelous documentaries to prove you wrong.

When you learn more about our cosmos, wildlife, the ocean and its marine life, the little insects that are all around us, plant life, etc., you’d be stunned and blown away by the complexity and marvel of it all. 

Your jaws will drop with the thought of how much – and yet how little – we know about our planet and its vast universe.

Just give it a try. Maybe you’re just like me some years ago, thinking that documentaries are plainly dull and not enjoyable. I promise you, I can prove you wrong on that. 

The following two documentaries did so for me.  I’m quite confident that if you give them a try, they can work as well for you, and broaden your views and interests about this world in ways you cannot imagine.

Cosmos - Feeling Empty and Bored with Life
Planet Earth - Feeling Empty and Bored with Life

The Final Step: Travel

The reason why I started with books and documentaries first is because they are a great and easily accessible way for anyone to begin breaking out of the prison cells that have trapped them into seeing and feeling that life is a dull and empty place.

Books and documentaries are literally a fingertip away from unlocking many of the prison cells you are stuck in, altering and presenting a whole new reality of yourself and the immersive world that is around you – a world that’s waiting out there for you to explore and witness.

But the final step that I need to add, the last stage that can completely settle it all, is travel.

Why?

Icelandic Horse and Jellis Vaes - Feeling Empty and Bored with Life

Because to travel is to embark on a journey. Not just alone and out in the world, but inward. No, I am not talking about a beach vacation or an all-inclusive hotel stay.

I am, in fact, talking about moving – venturing to a strange new land, either for a few months or any time you can spare, with a backpack as your home, and preferably all by yourself.

What travel, especially a solo trip, does is: it will force you to turn inward. You’ll have to take the lessons you have learned from those books and apply them in one of the best real-life practice grounds – the unknown.

No other place can enforce the theoretical lessons you’ve learned and put them into practice more than unfamiliar territory, where you do not know anyone.

While venturing through those unexplored parts of this world, you’ll also get to taste the vast beauty that was previously only seen as images on your screen.

While documentaries can leave an impact, nothing beats the experience of seeing it with your own eyes.

But what if you have no idea where to travel to? Or, what if it is too much of a stretch to venture off alone? To that I say: Volunteer abroad. Yes, you can still choose from numerous countries.

However, there are fewer places instead of a whole continent. The world is a big place; having fewer options will let you make more comfortable choices and make this trip happen.

Along with that, volunteering is almost always done in a group. You won’t feel too much like you are a strand hanging out there all by yourself. Taking it a bit further, the benefits of happiness that volunteering brings to a person are enormous. Just read through the following article to get a brief sense of it.

Jellis Vaes in South Africa - Feeling Empty and Bored with Life
Beach Cleanup - Feeling Empty and Bored with Life

Websites such as HelpX offer a wide variety of choices around the whole world for as little as 20 euros a year. Or have a look through the following article that lists some of the best volunteering organizations.

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