When I was told that I was “always dissatisfied”, my first reaction was dismay and guilt. With so much privilege, so much good fortune, I shouldn’t feel dissatisfied. Now I’ve come to think differently about it.

 I’m here today to tell you why it’s ok to feel bored or dissatisfied with your comfortable, privileged life. It’s because it may be TOO SMALL for you!!

Of course we should feel grateful for our good fortune. Of course we should do what we can to help other people. But in my experience that won’t make the dissatisfied feelings disappear. And feeling guilty about our dissatisfaction or boredom just piles on another layer of unhelpful feelings. So, let’s not cover it up, and instead, let’s investigate it.

When in your day / month / year does the dissatisfied feeling come up?

What are you doing when you notice that you feel dissatisfied?

or what are you about to do?

or what are you not doing?

Maybe one of those questions will lead us nearer the source of the problem.

Sometimes, for me, the dissatisfied feeling rears up when I’m being too isolated and tells me I need to get out and talk to someone. It also happens quite regularly when August looms and I’m at home. I can see now – now that I focus on it – how the deserted neighbourhood where everyone else is on holiday, and the first signs of the end of the summer, like the trees beginning to look tired, can affect me physically and mentally. And whenever our life is not reflecting what really matters to us, feelings of dissatisfaction can offer clues to what we need to do.

Sometimes just recognizing a source of dissatisfaction will be enough to chase the feeling away. Sometimes advance planning may be necessary to leap beyond predictable dissatisfaction: coffee with a friend booked in for that low time in the afternoon, a novel downloaded for the empty Friday evening. Several times, I’ve spent August in London on painting courses, blissfully occupied and totally satisfied.

And sometimes, the dissatisfied feeling is bigger than any of that; it’s telling you that your life really is TOO SMALL for you!

That’s when investigating dissatisfaction really pays off, and may offer a way in to a much needed life shift. Don’t turn away from your feelings of dissatisfaction and boredom. Hold them up to the light and find out what you’re being told. Then choose to act.

Catching the Whispers is an online course for those with a wild edge who are living a full life and yet still yearn for something more beautiful, more exciting, more moving, more soulful, more poetic. I want to support you in finding ways to experience the world more deeply and more consciously, to explore lost or dormant artistic or poetic passions so that you can make conscious choices to create and carry out poetic projects that bring joy and deep satisfaction.  

Find it here