When Better Starts Feeling Boring
Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another one of these ten minute Mondays. I want to talk about something today a little bit different, and that's what happens after things actually start going well. Because here's what happened to me after a few months into an extended break from drinking. Things got really good, genuinely good.
Speaker 1:Sleep was better. I became an early riser. I had so much energy that I hadn't felt for a really long time. And on top of that, my confidence returned and my mood was stable. All these great things.
Speaker 1:And I remember thinking, Okay, this is everything that I was working towards. And then that just became my life. And after a while, my life started feeling kind of repetitive. Not bad, just kind of flat, like in this low grade way. And I wasn't expecting it.
Speaker 1:Like, I wasn't advancing as fast as I had before when I started. And then this voice in my head kind of showed up and said, I thought I was gonna feel better than this or keep feeling better. What's next? And the reason I'm talking about this today is I think that that moment, that specific feeling is where a lot of people kind of quietly drift back to. Not because anything is really necessarily going wrong, and in fact, it probably is the opposite, But instead, just because fine over time doesn't feel like enough, especially when you were expecting your life to continue to open up in this rapid way.
Speaker 1:So I want to talk about why that happens and what to do about it. In psychology, hedonic adaption. And the basic idea is that humans return to a baseline level of happiness pretty reliably regardless of what changes are happening in their lives. There's a famous study that you may have heard of it's of lottery winners that found within about a year of winning, their reported happiness was basically the same as people who hadn't won anything. Their brains recalibrated, and what felt extraordinary just became normal.
Speaker 1:And it does the same thing when you cut back on drinking. The first few weeks, the first few months feel like a real shift because there is a real shift. But your brain adapts to that and it stops registering things like a clear morning as a win. And it just starts treating it as how things are. The hangovers being gone stops feeling like relief and starts feeling like nothing happened.
Speaker 1:And that's a weird thing to sit with because nothing you did was wrong. You're just not getting credit for these things anymore. What made it harder for me was the alcohol. It was doing a specific job I hadn't accounted for. It marked the end of the day.
Speaker 1:It was the thing that said, Okay, you can stop now. You don't have to be on anymore. And when that was gone, I get to 07:00 and just feel kinda restless and unsettled. And I had all this space in the evening, and I didn't know what to do with it. The energy was real, but it didn't have anywhere to go.
Speaker 1:And I think this is something that people underestimate when they cut back. You can't just remove something that had a job without that job still needing to get done. The drink wasn't just a drink. It was a signal. It was a transition and for some people, a ritual.
Speaker 1:And if you take that away without putting something in place, you're not just dealing with boredom. You're dealing with this vacancy, this void, and an end of the day routine that used to exist and now doesn't, your nervous system notices that. It keeps looking for the thing that's supposed to be there. For me, it took a while to figure out what actually could fill that role. And, ultimately, just like I love watching the sunrise, a simple walk to watch the sunset really did something for me.
Speaker 1:And then other nights, you know, I'd make something. I don't usually eat steaks, but a steak dinner with some intention behind it, that would fill that void. That served as a good replacement. And anything that said basically that the workday is over and this part is different really worked for me. And at least for me, not everybody is the same.
Speaker 1:It doesn't have to be elaborate. You don't have to pick up this big new hobby. You don't have to sign up for classes. You don't have to go out and be out. You just have to have something that exists there because that restless that I was feeling, it really wasn't about wanting a drink.
Speaker 1:It was basically not having a landing spot, a bookend at that end of the day. But before that, a few weeks of not figuring that out, having a drink, honestly, even though things were going great, started to sound appealing again. Not because I was struggling and it wasn't because anything in my life was hard. It was because I knew with certainty that having a drink gave me that bookend. One of the reasons I wanted to talk about this today is because I actually think that that is where most self sabotage happens in this process.
Speaker 1:It's not at the low points. It's right when things are going well in that novelty of not drinking or cutting back and feeling improvements starting to wear off. In my journey, one of the things that I really had to understand was that this steadiness that I wasn't used to wasn't an emptiness to fill. It just kind of felt that way because I was comparing it to something that had been basically artificially dramatic in my life. That old cycle had real intensity to it.
Speaker 1:It had relief to it. It had crash and shame and then the recovery and this whole loop. And that intensity can feel like aliveness even when it actually is truly is chaos. We literally can subconsciously want to inject drama into our lives. So when that's gone and things are just, you know, steady, that quietness, that evenness can register as something missing.
Speaker 1:I hear that all the time. I don't know what to do with myself. I'm bored. I'm restless. But the truth is nothing's missing inside you even though it can feel that way.
Speaker 1:So practically speaking, what do you do with this feeling when it shows up? The thing that helped me most was something that I now think of as the time travel check-in. When I was sitting in that weirdly disappointing fine feeling, I'd go back. Not years necessarily, but just far enough to find a specific morning where I woke up maybe anxious and foggy, maybe already behind on the start of the day. And I'd ask what that version of me would think about where I am right now.
Speaker 1:What would he give for a Tuesday that just felt okay? Because progress becomes invisible once you have it. The time travel check-in gives you the contrast back that your brain stopped doing on its own. The other thing worth saying is that being bored, it's actually okay. I know that sounds obvious.
Speaker 1:People say that all the time. But I mean it in a more specific way. We're wired to treat boredom like a problem to fix. This is one of my biggest struggles, especially if drinking was your primary way of filling space for a long time. But there's actually good research suggesting that sitting in boredom rather than immediately filling it is often what precedes people building something new.
Speaker 1:That restlessness that you feel when the novelty is gone, it isn't a sign that something's wrong. It's actually just energy that hasn't found direction yet. So if the thought arises, I'm bored, you don't have to fix it. You can just say, Yeah, I'm bored. And that's okay.
Speaker 1:Being bored doesn't mean that I'm boring. I can just be here for a minute or as long as I need to be. And then the last thing that I'll say is get honest about the expectation. Because a lot of people come into this thinking that if I fix this one thing, everything else will follow. And I totally understand that.
Speaker 1:But drinking less or maybe cutting it out doesn't fix your relationship or your work or whatever else feels unresolved. What it does is it gets you out of your own way so that you can actually work on those things. I will say that my worst day without a hangover, without shame, without regret, is still better than my best day with all of that. Now that doesn't mean that everything is perfect, but at least in that state, I now know that I'm actually present for it and in the best state to take on both challenges and the joy. And that part is meaningful and it's life changing.
Speaker 1:But I will say it's different from everything being fixed. And sometimes what feels like boredom or flatness is actually just disappointment that the rest of your life didn't automatically sort itself out to. So if that kind of thing is going on, it's worth being straight with yourself about it because that's the thing that might quietly pull you back if you let it go unnamed or unaddressed. Alright. That's it for today.
Speaker 1:Thanks for hanging out with me. If you got anything out of this, please rate and review wherever you're listening to. Send me an email. I'd love to hear from you. Mike@Sunnyside.co.
Speaker 1:And until next time, cheers to your mindful drinking journey.
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