What?  How can boredom be a gift?  Isn’t boredom what we read blogs and mess around on social media to avoid?
Let’s think for a moment about the situations where boredom arises.  Do we usually get bored when we’re doing something empty and meaningless?  In my experience, the surprising answer is no.
Look at your own experience [...]

We all have behaviors we use to “take the edge off”—to temporarily rid ourselves of anxiety, depression or nagging discontent in our lives.  Alcohol and drugs are the most obvious examples, but there are many other, subtler behaviors we use to distract ourselves from our difficult feelings.
For me, until I started consciously catching myself in [...]