How To Turn Your Everyday Life Into An Adventure
“It is more important to know where you are going than to get there quickly. Do not mistake activity for achievement.”
There was a time in your life when adventure was your middle name. Your life was about exploration. You learned from experiences, so your mind had a mission to soak in as much as you could. Walking around with my two-year-old niece reminds me that my entire backyard is a jungle ready to be explored. There's always an adventure waiting for a hero, you just might have forgotten that you can be that hero. You can be the one who sets off on the adventure of a lifetime. But, will you?
Should you choose to accept, three crucial questions will guide your adventure.
What does the hero want?
Who or what is opposing the hero getting what she wants?
What will the hero's life look like if she does (or does not) get what she wants?
Bonnie Ware's job was to comfort those facing their own mortality. As a palliative care nurse she supported them in the last three to twelve weeks of their life. Her experience has given us a look into the final thoughts of thousands of people before they pass on. She found the regrets so profound that she decided to write a book, giving us the chance to join these intimate conversations.
What made it such an unbelievable story was that it spoke to the connectedness that each of us share. There weren't thousands of different regrets that haunted the dying, there were five.
One common theme surfaced again and again, and speaks to the adventure that is waiting at your doorstep. This regret is often the biggest villain that is opposing you getting what you want in life.
You wish you'd had the courage to live a life true to yourself, not the life others expected of you.
When people had the chance to look back on their life, they saw how many dreams and adventures never came to be. Most people had left these dreams and adventures on the table and went back to their busy lives. They had to die knowing that more than half their dreams would never be fulfilled because of the choices they had made (or not made).
Easy choices, hard life. Hard choices, easy life.
The easy choice in this moment is to ignore the feeling that this could somehow be your fate.
The hard choice in this moment is to recognize you too have dreams that have been gathering dust for far too long.
The easy choice is to pretend this conversation never happened.
The hard choice is acknowledging the tension that's pulling at your soul, screaming that it's ready for an adventure.
Are you ready to choose your adventure?
We can get caught up thinking adventures are all about thrill-seeking, throwing yourself out of a plane for an adrenaline rush. For many people, this thought of risk-taking is not in their vocabulary. Stability, security and something that keeps their feet firmly planted on the ground is priority numero uno.
Except change is an inevitable part of life. In the same way that the weather is unpredictable, we have no idea what kind of shifts could happen in our lives overnight. But if we recognize that this is the reality of the weather and life, we can prepare. We can be ready because we took the time to plan ahead.
An adventure is an exciting experience that is a bold, sometimes risky undertaking. Sure, risk could involve an element of physical danger (jumping out of a plane). But a more likely danger is the fear of confronting the naysayers, the haters, the people who don't want to see you succeed, and the nasty impostor syndrome that makes you question your self-worth.
The courage you'll need to live a life true to yourself, not the life others expected of you, starts by investing time into making yourself valuable.
Being valuable in society (and in your own eyes) is a quiet confidence you gain when your aim gives you something to strive for. An adventure is an opportunity to reclaim what it is you want to accomplish with your life. As philosopher Henry David Thoreau said, “What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as who you become by achieving your goals.”
You don't have to be Elon Musk to add more value to the world. What will serve you well is to make a daily habit of improvement over who you were yesterday. Not as a comparison, not as a sense of judging your worth, but because it serves as a reminder that you matter. Without a reason to wake up, your ability to give more, be more valuable and live a happier life falls apart like the stitching of a cheaply made shoe.
Having a purpose for your day is the golden thread that stitches together a happier, healthier life.
It's the unbreakable strength that comes from stringing together tiny improvements in your life. You don't will yourself into believing you matter, you fucking prove it by showing up even when a tornado threatens to throw your life into chaos.
Being purposeful with how you invest your time means you can add more value to any environment you're in.
We're not just talking about things that add commas to your bank account. Take the 10 areas as a starting point. You've been using this exercise to align your life with what's most important. How can you add more value in each of these areas of your life?
It is the small decisions you make every day that pave the path to what you want to accomplish with your life.
Your brain needs a plan for your adventure because it only knows what to do when it has a clear idea about what it needs to avoid and what it needs to move toward. This is where it falls apart for most people because school did a piss-poor job of helping you map out your life. You might find yourself motivated to make a change, maybe even set a lofty goal to aim for, but in no time you're back to your old routine, beat up, bruised and no motivation to stick with it. You're wondering what the hell happened?
It’s been five years since my partner Lindsey lost her Grandma. Among many memorable things about that woman was her famous dumpling soup. Lindsey gets a nasty craving for it every few weeks. I've watched as each cousin and aunt claim, "I think I finally nailed Grandma's soup!" It's like watching Gordon Ramsay pick apart a dish because he knows exactly what it should taste like. You see the feeling of disappointment creep across everyone's face as the spoon hits their lips. That glimmer of hope for a taste of nostalgia and a memory of their Grandma has left them unfulfilled.
This isn't their fault. They're all trying their best. But they've been trying to make Grandma's famous dumpling soup without a recipe. It's damn near impossible to get the result you want (a mouthwatering dumpling) without the right ingredients and a step-by-step plan to put it all together. There are far too many variables and if they're left to chance, you're doomed to disappointment.
"You do not rise to the level of your goals," author and habits guru James Clear found in his research. "You fall to the level of your systems. Your goal is your desired outcome. Your system is the collection of daily habits that will get you there. This year, spend less time focusing on outcomes and more time focusing on the habits that precede the results."
I admire the determination to recreate the taste of Grandma's famous dumpling soup. It's a delicious goal that I'd love to sink my teeth into. Except there's a damn good chance that it will never happen because their attempts will always fall to the level of systems (ingredients and step-by-step plan) that they don't have.
Having a solid plan is like having Google Maps ride shotgun for your adventure. You can't get lost if you take the time to prepare and map out the critical details.
Charting your adventure helps point out places you often get stuck, the elements that zap your focus, choose the dream team to make this a reality, plot a path where you encounter the least resistance, develop the skills and habits that will support you, set a mission that calls you to action. This charting reminds you how your life will be different when you succeed, or warns you that there's a real cost to failure if you don't follow through. It tells you who you will become by accomplishing this goal.
It's both exciting and nerve-wracking to go on an adventure. Having a plan will help you harness that energy and will save you from getting bucked off a wild stallion that can't be tamed. This plan will help you calm the jitters by instilling a confidence that this adventure is possible, and you know exactly how it's going to be accomplished.
When you try to avoid pain in the short term, you often make decisions that create pain in the long term.
You end up finding yourself fighting the same battle, dealing with the same shit, and feeling hopeless about your future because things seem unchangeable.
Ever been in a relationship that goes well beyond its expiry date? The choice to stay in the relationship might feel like you can numb the pain by not making a decision. But it's really death by a thousand paper cuts over a lifetime.
You don't have to sign up for adventure.
You don't have to live a different life.
You don't have to do anything.
But you do have to live with the regret that you wish you'd had the courage to live a life true to yourself, not the life others expected of you, when you avoid the voice that screams yesterday you said tomorrow.
Helen Keller is known the world over as a symbol of courage in the face of overwhelming odds. She was an author, political activist, and lecturer. She was the first deaf-blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree. She was driven by her desire to be a valuable person in the world. She devoted her life to helping others overcome significant obstacles that kept them stuck and miserable. She empowered others to see that anyone can create opportunity in their life. But her greatest gift was a fierce belief that sums life up in ten simple words. "Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all."
