Why I Choose to Live the Boring Life

My life used to be one big rollercoaster.

Lots of ups and downs.

Lots of adrenaline and dopamine.

Lots of peak experiences.

Lots of drama.

Lots of stories to tell.

For context:

I had been a nomad since I was a teenager, which is when I left home in a small boring town in southern Germany at 15 and started to study and live in different countries.

After I graduated university in 2009, I went travelling the world non-stop for about 13 years - first as a backpacker, then a scuba dive instructor and eventually as a location-independent entrepreneur slash creator.

For years, my days were a mix of go-go-go, work hard, parties and drinking, attending lots of events, retreats and gatherings, hopping on planes - anything that would allow me to not be alone or feel my pain too much.

On top of that, I was involuntarily initiated onto my journey of healing and self-exploration in 2012. And explore I did: I became an obsessive seeker - someone who was seeking relief from depression, loneliness, grief, anxious attachment and codependent, toxic dating patterns and the effects of suppressing my sexual identity since I was a young teenager.

It was an intense and wild phase of my life.

My life was the expression of trauma and the consequences of it: a massively dysregulated nervous system.

(As I was searching my notes app for relevant ideas on this topic, I found this diary entry from 2017: “I like the drama because my life without it boring and feels lonely”)

Enter breathwork.

Enter somatic therapy.

Enter covid lockdown.

Enter my partner Christine.

Over a period of several years, my life was slowing starting to take a 180 degree turn.

The emphasis is on SLOW.

True long-term regulation and healing takes time.

(The adrenals take about 1-2 years to fully recover.)

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Lasting transformation and healing often requires lifestyle changes.

At times, uncomfortable ones, unexpected ones.

For me, it took a very big shift. One that I could never have imagined five years ago.

It took falling in love with “the boring life”.

Making our life a little boring on purpose regulates our nervous system.

The destination is the boring Now - the place that seems so unsatisfying and painful when we’re in dysregualtion.

Dysregulation seems to makes us feel uncomfortable in our bodies due to the stored energy that causes us to be in high sympathetic (fight/flight) or freeze mode. Both are states of non-safety.

The more we get to access ventral vagal, the more safety and comfort we feel in our body, the more safe we feel in the word and safe to connect to it and others.

As a result, the desire to escape into dramas, peak experiences and bliss states vanishes.

You have come home.