How to Escape the Monotony of Life as a Man (Without Blowing Up Your Life)

Even after you embrace a slower, more conscious way of living, you are not suddenly rid of the human desire for novelty, stimulation and adventure.

And I don't accept that becoming a healthy, grounded man means having to sacrifice passion in exchange for inner peace.

I've always had a complicated relationship with this.

I was an adventurous and sometimes fearless kid. Always getting into trouble, always pushing the envelope, always hungry, literally and figuratively, for more.

I had, and still have, a fire of sorts inside me that pushes me to follow my curiosity about the world and experience as much of life as I can.

Unfortunately, when your parents are Hasidic Jews and your father is a well-known Rabbi in the community, your options for adventure are somewhat limited.

Nonetheless, I found ways out of the house and into parties, drugs, unhealthy relationships and eventually other countries, all in pursuit of a little bit of the world I'd been sheltered from.

My first movie was Taxi with Gisele Bündchen and Queen Latifah, followed shortly afterwards by my first TV show, Californication. Hank Moody becoming one of my teenage heroes probably tells you something about how the next chapter unfolded.

Eventually, though, I had to confront the difference between feeling alive and constantly needing stimulation to feel alive.

Those are not the same thing.

When a Healthy Life Starts to Feel Boring

After leaving a lot of my unhealthy behaviours behind, doing years of work on myself and no longer building my life around constantly chasing the next high, something unexpected happened.

Life became healthier.

But sometimes, it also became boring.

I exercise. I meditate. I journal. I eat reasonably well, aside from my mandatory daily chocolate. I rarely drink alcohol. I don't have casual sex or casual relationships. I work on my ventures. I work on myself.

It's a good life.

But fuck me, sometimes I get bored of it all.

And I think this is something we don't talk about enough, particularly with men who have spent years seeking intensity.

When you remove the chaos, stimulation and constant novelty, you don't automatically become peaceful.

Sometimes you're just left with silence.

And in that silence, the old part of you starts whispering:

Surely there must be more than this?

The Choice Isn't Chaos or Monotony

For a long time, I unconsciously saw two options.

There was the exciting life: adventure, novelty, sex, travel, risk, parties, unpredictability and intensity.

And then there was the responsible life: routine, discipline, stability, work, exercise, meditation and going to bed at a reasonable hour.

One felt alive but eventually became destructive.

The other felt healthy but occasionally made me want to climb the walls.

I don't think those are the only two options.

In fact, I think part of becoming an integrated man is learning how to hold both.

Stability without stagnation.

Adventure without chaos.

Desire without being controlled by desire.

Discipline without becoming rigid.

The goal isn't to remove the fire. It's learning what to do with it.

You Have to Create Novelty

Life will present you with challenges and opportunities, but you also have to deliberately create some of them yourself.

There's nothing unadventurous about purposefully crafting adventure in advance, as boring as that might sound.

If you know you're someone who needs novelty, build novelty into your life instead of waiting until you're so restless that you blow something up just to feel alive again.

Seek novelty. Meet new people. Go somewhere you've never been. Learn something completely unrelated to your work. Try hobbies without needing to master or monetize them. Some things are allowed to exist purely because they're interesting.

Schedule adventures. Get out of your normal environment. Leave the city. Travel. Go into nature. Do something different every few weeks or months and make it non-negotiable.

Face your fears. If you're craving intensity, do something that genuinely scares you instead of reaching for cheap stimulation. Have the conversation. Take the risk. Sign up for the challenge. Go somewhere unfamiliar.

Set personal challenges. Physical, creative, professional, spiritual, whatever speaks to you. There's something deeply satisfying about choosing a difficult target and discovering who you have to become to reach it.

Stop Confusing Stimulation With Aliveness

This, I think, is the deeper lesson.

Modern life gives us almost unlimited access to stimulation.

Porn. Social media. Dating apps. Food. Entertainment. Shopping. Travel. Gambling. News. Screens. Sex. You can spend virtually every waking hour giving your brain something new to consume.

But stimulation and aliveness aren't the same thing.

In fact, constantly needing stimulation can eventually make ordinary life feel unbearably dull.

You lose the ability to experience the quieter forms of being alive: a meaningful conversation, building something slowly, sitting in nature, intimacy with another person, reading, training, creating, being present.

This is particularly relevant to the work I now do with men.

The answer isn't to eliminate desire or become some permanently serene monk who wants nothing.

It's learning to experience desire without automatically obeying it.

That's a very different kind of freedom.

Learning to Carry the Fire

I still have so many things I want to do and projects I want to pursue that my impatience sometimes gets the better of me.

I want to do all of them RIGHT NOW.

That forces me to practise patience and accept that I can't control the timing of my entire life.

As one project is completed, another idea inevitably emerges. I don't think that dynamic will ever stop.

And actually, I don't want it to.

That hunger gives me hope that I'll never be bored or purposeless for very long.

What has changed is my relationship with it.

I used to move cities or countries whenever I felt the urge for more from life. Now I appreciate stability and security much more than I used to.

But I still believe it's critical for those of us with an endless wanderlust for life to plan our years with intention.

Not because every moment needs to be exciting.

But because a disciplined life doesn't have to become a small life.

Freedom Isn't the Absence of Desire

I've started to think that the real goal isn't choosing between freedom and discipline.

You need both.

Without discipline, the pursuit of freedom can eventually become its own form of slavery. You're constantly chasing whatever makes you feel alive next.

But discipline without freedom can become another kind of prison.

The Free Man, at least as I've come to understand him, isn't a man without desire, appetite or adventure.

He's a man who can enjoy all of those things without being controlled by them.

Build stability.

Create adventure.

Seek novelty.

Do difficult things.

Follow your curiosity.

But learn to distinguish between the things that genuinely make your life richer and the things you reach for simply because you can't tolerate stillness.

Life doesn't need to lose its wonder, its adventure or its richness just because you've decided to grow up.

If anything, you finally get to experience those things consciously.