That's the end.

Hi, it's Sam here.

Welcome to Radio Headspace and to Friday.

So much of my work teaching mindfulness has involved children, and if you have children

in your life, you know they can get bored pretty easily.

In analyzing this, I felt inspired to help children find tools for working with boredom.

One of those tools is curiosity.

Being curious can help with boredom in a few different ways, even if you're not a kid.

But let's keep talking about kids for a moment, because that'll help me to explain how all

of this works.

I remember one pre-teen client of mine who struggled with boredom and restlessness.

He would constantly jump from one thing to the next, couldn't sit still, and couldn't

listen for longer than a few seconds, and he felt powerless.

The first activity I taught him involved looking around the room and noticing as many different

details about the space that he had never noticed before.

And in doing this, he realized that there was always something to do in any situation,

no matter how familiar or mundane.

I challenged him to practice this during the week in various settings, grocery stores,

at school, and in the car.

And it worked.

When he was looking for new aspects of his surroundings, he wasn't bored.

He was interested.

...