How to Get a Hobby, What hobby should I have?
Fill the void
They say boredom is the devils playground, this statement is so true. When you have nothing to do and have no positive way to fill your time and your mind space your mind will run in all directions, many of which can pull you into negative directions if you let it. This happens with both young and old people and I have seen first hand how this type of behaviour can destroy a person.
My grandmother is a lovely lady, bud she is bored out of her mind. In her younger years she was happily married, travelled a lot, had tons of friends and family, read books, swam, took care of her grandkids and a lot more. As the years past she began to lose things as all of us will. She lost her husband first, he passed away of heart disease and she was now alone. After that her grandchildren grew up, they did not require the supervision and discipline they once did. After that she sold her business and retired. Now what was she going to do? That is a lot of time, what does a person do with that time? She started watching a lot of television, and she slowly digressed into a very miserable person. During this time she had 2 great grandchildren that could absolutely fill some of this void time! Unfortunately, it did not help because of the inner talk she was having within herself…nothing could make her happy. Every day she would sit in her home alone reminiscing about the life she used to have, she spent a lot of time crying and feeling sorry for herself. She continued the behaviour thinking about how old she was and how things could go wrong for her health wise in a blink. Her thoughts then gravitated to every single person around her and what they had done to her life by the actions they took. It was very sad to watch, she did this to herself long enough that she stopped doing the hobbies she once filled a lot of her time with. She fell into deep depression, and started to degrade health wise in what I believe was degradation by her minds thoughts.
If she had acquired some hobbies along the way she may not have had so much time on her hands to have these shitty thoughts. Just existing is not enough, people must do something with their time or they will find themselves in a rut. I choose to fill my time with things I think are important. I think my overall health is important so I choose to cook and workout as 2 of my hobbies I also add in yoga, martial arts, tennis and more to stay in shape. I think it important for me to have a good marriage so I choose to be a foodie with my wife and go out often to eat, I also make sure I have a lot of time set aside for good old sex. I think it is important to do well financially so I am always starting something new in business to help me move forward or studying things that will make me do better. I play video games, do puzzles, do gardening, have a salt water aquarium, scuba dive, play pool, swim and a lot more.
Having a lot of good hobbies leaves very little time in my mind for bad thoughts. But when things are silent, negativity creeps into my mind and bad thoughts come out of this causing me to sometimes second guess decisions I’ve made or try to find the easy way out, or give up too early. When this happens I force myself to get doing one of my positive hobbies to change my train of thought.
Many young people create this bad habit throughout their lives because they think that they are not or cannot be good at something, so they fear even trying. Obviously failure is not fun, but the prospect that you can be good at something is a trial and error thing and takes multiple tries before you can be totally comfortable trying a new hobby. The first time I went to a kickboxing class I was scared shitless…Will I be strong enough? will I embarrass myself? Will I fall over my own feet? All kinds of weird thoughts came up. If I listened to all of these thoughts and internalized them, I never would have gone in the first place. Even with work, if I thought I would fail in self employment, I might never have achieved the things I wanted to financially.
One of my best friend Jerrad is the perfect example of how these thoughts can fuck up a young person. At one time he had a lot of hobbies and this was the time in his life he got into the least problems, as he got older and into his twenties he quit everything. He had a great job and bought his first house. He was scared like a little bitch to talk to girls, so he never had a girlfriend. He was socially awkward because he never put himself into social situation. As time passed he started to do drugs to calm his thoughts and fill his time. The more he did it the more he wanted it and drugs became his hobby. He lost everything from his job to house to his health. This guy literally has no hobbies….Now many years later he lives a very solitary life. He is getting better in that he has a relationship now with a woman but his self talk is still bad and has segregated himself from seeing anyone that cares about him.
A big part of stopping acting like a little bitch is to train yourself to take action, if you know you have too much time on your hands try something new. Stop acting like a little bitch and do it. You should have a minimum of 5 hobbies at any given time. Write them down here.
