Why Is My Life So Boring?

Michael LaRocca

© Copyright 2013

Contents

Chapter One – Who Can I Blame?

Chapter Two – When Does Life Begin?

Chapter Three – Learning

Chapter Four – Programming

Chapter Five – Why Is My Life So Boring?

Chapter Six – Why Am I Here?

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Chapter One

Who Can I Blame?

You can blame anybody you want to, actually, but

you’re probably lying.

Are you shaped by nature or by nurture? It doesn’t

matter, because you control neither of them.

However, you can choose how to react to them.

That’s how you get past fatalistic victim thinking and

start living in earnest. Inertia may be (or seem)

easier, but it’s never as satisfying.

Whatever it is, own it. If you don’t own it, you can’t

change it.

Here’s something from The Chronicles of a Lost Soul,

which I wrote over 30 years ago:

All that we are is the result of what we

have thought. Excuses such as religion,

race, heredity and upbringing are exactly

that – excuses. What we are comes from

what we think. So we should learn how

to think. The wise man will neither

swallow everything blindly nor rebel for

the mere sake of rebellion. He will strive

to discriminate, to separate the wheat

from the chaff, to decide for himself.


Obviously, there is a shortage of wise

men.

As a novelist, I’ve written more than one book

around the subject of free will versus biochemical

determinism. We want so much to believe in free

will, but science finds more evidence every day that

our feelings and our actions are just the result of our

brain’s chemicals reacting to the physical

environment. Damn convincing evidence, too. But if

free will is naught but an illusion, damn if it ain’t a

convincing one.

I’m going to conclude that both are right. If light can

be both a wave and a particle, we can be both free

and predetermined. Act like you’re free, don’t use

any sort of determinism as an excuse to keep

making the same old mistakes, and go on about your

business.

In other words, quit blaming. Blaming yourself, your

family, your biology, or your deity isn’t getting the

job done. It isn’t changing anything.

Whatever’s wrong with you is not your fault.

However, it is your problem.

It doesn’t matter how you got where you are now.

Fix it.


A Chinese proverb states that it’s easier to light a

candle than to curse the darkness. Even if you don’t

always agree with “easier,” I guarantee you the

candle’s more effective.

And wow, I skipped a lot of emotions to string those

fortune cookies together.

I never said that it’s easy, but it is necessary.



Chapter Two

When Does Life Begin?

For a long time it seemed to me that life

was about to begin – real life. But there

was always some obstacle in the way,

something to be gotten through first,

some unfinished business, time to still be

served, a debt to be paid. Then life would

begin. At last it dawned on me that these

obstacles were my life....

So stop waiting; until you finish school,

until you go back to school, until you lose

ten pounds, until you gain ten pounds,

until you have kids, until your kids leave

the house, until you start work, until you

retire, until you get married, until you

get divorced, until Friday night, until

Sunday morning, until you get a new car

or home, until your car or home is paid

off, until spring, until summer, until fall,

until winter, until you are off welfare,

until the first or fifteenth, until your song

comes on, until you’ve had a drink, until

you’ve sobered up, until you die, until

you are born again to decide that there is

no better time than right now to be


happy. Happiness is a journey, not a

destination.

Alfred D’Souza

When you decide you need to do something, you

want to do something, it’s time to do something, and

then you don’t do it...

In Stop Saying You’re Fine, Mel Robbins compares

this to hitting the snooze button. You are going to do

it, but not right this minute...

I don’t think it’s always a crime to hit the snooze

button. Just be aware that, if you do hit the snooze

button, it means you’re not doing what you need to

do to be where you want to be.

Own that.

Feelings are a guide. Listen to them. If you’re

constantly hitting the snooze button, never starting

on that new thing, maybe you don’t want to do that

new thing.

Or maybe you’re just lazy.

Deciding what you want can be harder than

obtaining it, and you are allowed to change your

goals at any time. But if you don’t have any goals,

you won’t achieve your goals. Logical, innit?


The key is to know when to listen to your feelings

and when to overcome them and act anyway. The

only way to get where you want to get is through

action. To say otherwise is just clinging to a victim

mentality that is not truthful.

In order to change things, to improve things, to just

figure out where you are and where you want to be

and what the heck’s going on, you need feedback.

You need information. Why would you want that

information to be anything but accurate?

Being authentic is easier than being any other way,

and it’s also more satisfying. Lying to others is

usually immoral, but lying to yourself is just plain

stupid.

If you don’t like where you are, get over your

internal resistance and be somewhere else. Quit

snoozing, quit coasting, quit letting your internal

wimpiness hold you back. As Mr. Spock noted, there

are always options. If you choose not to take them,

I’m going to quote my Chronicles again.

...it takes no strength of will to resist

temptation. It merely proves that the

desire to resist is the strongest

temptation.


Know what you really want, not what you think you

want or you kinda sorta think it might be nice to

have. Then take the action you need to take to get

it.

And by that, I’m not talking about new cars and

houses and stuff. Let the “law of attraction” snake oil

peddlers help you with that. I’m talking about

changing who you are and how you live. That’s all

that matters.

It is never too late to become what you might

have been.

George Eliot




Chapter Three

Learning

Edmund Burke noted that reading without thinking is

like eating without digesting.

If you swallow a bunch of stupid stuff from mentors

and peers, I don’t blame them. I blame you.

But if fear of being brainwashed, or just plain

stubbornness, means you don’t listen to peers and

mentors, I’m gonna blame you for that too.

Use your common sense. You do have it. All

wisecracks aside, it’s called “common” for a reason.

You can trust your gut. Examine it from time to time,

since it ain’t perfect, but there are worse things to do

than to trust it.

One of the greatest things about being human is

being able to learn from others. Those like you,

those unlike you, those older than you, those

younger than you, those who strike you as

exceedingly stupid. What you read, what you hear,

what you see, what you write.

If you haven’t figured out the value of letting others

screw up so you don’t have to, you have real

problems.



Chapter Four

Programming

The longer I live, the more I realize the

impact of attitude on life.

Attitude, to me, is more important than

facts. It is more important than the past,

the education, the money, than

circumstances, than failure, than

successes, than what other people think

or say or do. It is more important than

appearance, giftedness or skill. It will

make or break a company, a church, a

home.

The remarkable thing is we have a choice

everyday regarding the attitude we will

embrace for that day. We cannot change

the fact that people will act in a certain

way. We cannot change the inevitable.

The only thing we can do is play on the

one string we have, and that is our

attitude.

Charles Swindoll


Blaming current problems on childhood traumas

drifts in and out of fashion, and the pendulum

usually swings too far in one direction or the other.

Unearthing every trauma you’ve ever suffered is a

waste of time and energy, distracting you from the

work that you need to be doing while providing the

illusion of progress.

However, unearthing the patterns and programming

that have resulted from those traumas will give you

the knowledge you need to change those patterns

and that programming. Ineffective or inappropriate

coping mechanisms and so forth. But dwelling on

that stuff is not effective, efficient, useful, or fun.

Program yourself to be positive. You are changed by

all that you surround yourself with, so choose wisely.

If you don’t program yourself, you’re letting others

program you. Why?

All experiences fire neurons.

Repeated experiences cause groups of neurons to

wire together more strongly.

Over time, with repetition, especially when

accompanied by emotional intensity, these neural


circuits develop a greater probability of firing,

forming habitual responses to experiences.

Any state of mind can become a trait of being with

sufficient reinforcement.

So, which state of mind will you program your mind

to favor?



Chapter Five

Why Is My Life So Boring?

All of humanity's problems stem from

man's inability to sit quietly in a room

alone.

Blaise Pascal, Pensées

What a terrible burden it is to have

nothing to do!

Nicolas Boileau-Despéraux

If something in your life is causing you stress, and

you cannot address the cause of that stress, it’s

usually unpleasant enough to distract you from what

you’d rather be doing. But at least it isn’t boring.

Why do you do what you do? Are you enjoying

yourself, or are you simply trying to fill the

emptiness?

Tolkien (and Chris Thile) reminded us that not all

who wander are lost. But if you have no destination,

and you’re not enjoying your wanderings, that may

be why your life is so boring.

I’m not saying everything you do has to be goal-

driven. Being so compulsively driven is one way to

get things done, and an effective one at that. For


some people, oh yeah, that’s the stuff. But others

travel that path until they burn out and find

themselves bored and empty again plus lethargic

besides.

Finding out which type of traveler you are is one of

the joys of living your life rather than letting

somebody else do it for you.

But regardless of who you are, it helps to have goals.

Vague and ongoing, small and easily reached, big

and audacious and needing years or decades.

Whatever suits you.

But once you’ve got goals, chunk them down into a

series of attainable steps. Make them measurable

steps, because if you can’t measure it you can’t

achieve it.

Set a time frame. If circumstances later require you

to change that time frame, we’re all too old to be

surprised by that. But still, “someday” isn’t a time

frame that will motivate you. Set a time frame that

strikes you as realistic, and adjust as needed.

Planning is a good thing. I’m guessing you’ve figured

that out by failing to plan a few times.


I’d have sworn that what I just wrote was common

sense if I hadn’t seen so many life coaches stressing

the importance of these simple statements.

You’re on this river bank and you want to be on the

other river bank. Would you rather take a big ol’ leap

or jump from stepping stone to stepping stone?

Those stones are the “chunks” of chunking things

down, and your plan is how you ensure that the

series of stones takes you to the other bank rather

than to some other place.

Prioritize. If everything is a rush job, then nothing is

a rush job. I think we all know that, but just in case

we don’t, we do now because I just wrote it. And

doesn’t that make us all feel better?

If something isn’t working immediately, stick with it.

If it keeps failing, quit at the right time. Use failure

as feedback. You won’t find your purpose if you don’t

look for it.

That’s what you want. Purpose and meaning. It’s

what gets you past the boredom. Rest when you

need it. Seek mindless non-driven pleasure when

you need it. But if you’re just filling emptiness all the

time because you have nothing to strive for, you will

always be terminally bored and you will absolutely

hate it.



Chapter Six

Why Am I Here?

Two questions:

Have you found joy in this life?

Have you given joy to others?

Have you learned that the second might be the best

way to achieve the first?

“Do no harm” isn’t just for the medical profession.

Beyond that, all the various debates about morality

and ethics are largely semantics. You know what’s

right. Do it, or don’t do it, but don’t pretend you’re

ignorant.

Judging others is bad. It’s impossible to avoid, of

course, for practical reasons if nothing else, but be

aware that you’re doing it, and keep it to a

minimum.

Give more than you take. Serve as many as you can,

as well as you can. Put others’ interests first

because, in truth, that serves you as well because it

makes you so gosh-darned happy.


Mark Vonnegut said we’re here to get each other

through this thing, whatever it is. And as his more

famous father noted, that one’s a keeper.

It is not selfish to care for yourself, if your life is one

of service to others. If you’re an asset to others,

then it only makes sense to care for yourself, so that

you can be an effective asset.

Being selfish isn’t always bad. If you do something

you enjoy that doesn’t hurt anyone else, that’s

selfish but not bad. If it hurts others, then it’s bad. If

you help other people, for that really good feeling

you get when you help other people, that’s selfish

and it’s also good. This is the type of selfishness you

can and should embrace.

If you’ve never helped anybody, I feel sorry for you.

Go try it now and you’ll see I’m right. You can have

one of those epiphanies that the sentimental

novelists and script writers get so much mileage out

of. And then you’ll know why they get so much

mileage out of that stuff.

“Adding value” is a catch phrase that I actually have

no problem with. But I think of it in the sense of

adding value to the world. On a global scale we’re

probably feeling a bit impotent. So add value to one

person’s world, one animal’s world, even your own


world as a last resort. That adds value to the world,

and won’t that make you feel good? Yes, it will.

Have I told you anything you didn’t already know?

Maybe not. Is it a lot easier to say all this stuff than

it is to actually do it? Of course it is. Do it anyway.

You know you’ll be glad you did.

Have you found joy in this life? Have you given joy

to others? It’s never too late to start.

When you cease to make a contribution,

you begin to die.

Eleanor Roosevelt

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Why Is My Life So Boring?

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