Dull world! I mean, what is this page all about? I wonder how many of you came to this website (and thank you for visiting by the way), looked at the top menu, saw a few menu items you’d have expected to see (About Matt, Blog, Coaching Services, etc), then your eyes caught ‘Dull World’. If I had done the same, I would not have been able to stop myself from clicking on the link. So thank you for doing so – let me now explain what on earth I am talking about.
By the way, just to confirm to you, every image on this page will be dark and a bit, well, dull. It is Dull World after all.
Let me cut to the chase then. Dull World is something I will be talking about in my Podcasts from time to time, when I feel it’s relevant. Dull World is an imaginary place where other humans live, but their life is anything but interesting. They lack choice, they have next to no freedoms, how they use their spare time is highly limited, and they don’t, in fact, they are not allowed to socialise. They work – they watch TV – that’s pretty much it. Nothing else. Sounds a bit dull, doesn’t it?
Remember, though – this is an imaginary world. It doesn’t exist – apart from in my head, that is.
So I guess a fair and relevant question you might be asking is “But why Matt? Just Why? What are you talking about with this? Okay, three questions then.
To be fair, there is a serious aspect to all of this. So let me tell you what it is.
Mindset.
Mindset, and also appreciating what we have and the opportunities out there for us. Now, a disclaimer here. I’m not trying to paint the world as a harmonious and wonderful place to be – we all know that it’s anything but perfect. And I do appreciate that when I talk about opportunities, some of us have more than others. Many factors go into this, which, as much as this is the case, is not a route I will go down on this page. For now, just consider the notion that a lot of us have freedom of choice and an abundance of ways we can use our time, in particular, our spare time.
It’s been a while – another dark image has to be called for.
Yes, just the ticket.
Okay, let’s just clarify what I am getting at.
In Dull World, the imaginative place that doesn’t exist but does exist, their life is truly, well, dull. It’s boring, uninteresting, monotonous, simple, unexciting – I could go on, but I think you get the picture. The inhabitants have very little to do, next to nothing in fact. It’s not a great place to live.
Every now and again, they get to hear about life on Earth. And they get jealous. They see the choices we have, the freedoms we have, the resources we have, and the multitude of things we can do to fill our spare time. They envy us and just wish they could even have a fraction of what we have. But they haven’t, and that’s just, well, the way it is.
As I mentioned previously, life is anything but perfect here on the very much not made-up Earth. For all of us, we have different challenges, different events that happen in our lives. Some of us have more opportunities than others, but all of us have a choice in how we approach life, how we consider things, and, let’s be fair, how we deal with the trials and tribulations that will inevitably be thrown at us.
We get used to things the way they are.
For a lot of us, we have an abundance of supermarkets and shops we can go to and get our food – that’s the way it is, and we probably don’t give it a second thought.
For a lot of us, we have running water readily available. If we’re thirsty, off we go to a tap or a fridge and…boom, all sorted, thirst completely gone.
If we’re bored, we can switch on Netflix, we can listen to Spotify, we can pick up a book, we can browse the internet, we can go outside for a walk, we can do a jigsaw, we can learn pottery, we can…yes, okay, I will stop now!
We can learn anything we want. For those of us who have a connection to the internet, learning is a few types and clicks away. For those of us not connected up digitally, libraries and book stores are likely never far away (I do, however, appreciate that this depends on where you live in the world).
We can wake up when we want and go to bed when we want. If we feel like we need a chat with someone, with the tech we have these days, a friendly voice could be just a moment away. If we want to learn a new skill, we can either search online or see what our local community offers.
Okay, enough of all that. If I had to sum up in a few sentences the point of what this page is all about, it would be this.
We have more choices, opportunities, freedoms, and ways of spending our time than we truly realise. I think we sometimes forget this.
Right, let’s lighten things up a little bit. And yes, I’ve gone against what I said earlier in the post about dark images. I think it was needed.
Dull World is a bit of silliness. But it has a serious message behind it. We need to adjust our thinking and see that we really do have an abundance of choice in life in how we use our spare time. Yes, our lives are governed by work, raising families, caring for others, maintaining our properties – the list really does go on – but all of us have some form of spare time. And in retirement, we have more than we have ever had.
We have choices. Retirement gives us a lot of time – that’s great. Fortunately, we also have a lot of ways we can fill that time. But perhaps we don’t always see it that way.
So Dull World, as daft as it may seem, is a way of changing our mindset, changing our thinking, and appreciating what is out there. If we think nothing is out there, that there’s little for us to do, well, that’s how we’ll live our lives. That’s how those in Dull World have to live their lives. But if we stop for a second, take a moment to realise that we do have a crazy amount of choice in what we can do with our time, then maybe things might just be a little bit better for us.
Like I said, a bit of silliness, but with a serious message behind it. I will talk more about this on my Podcast around topics where this is relevant.
In the meantime, thank you for heading into the dark zone of my website, and realise this is just one page. Most other posts have pictures of cute cats, lovely scenery, and people being very active. This, I promise you, is a one-off.