My friend Leann, who’s more of a sister, has a saying that I’m about to steal from her. It’s an entire philosophy, a way of living and being, condensed down into two words. The phrase will change how you see your life, and the world, if you let it sink into you and try to live it out. And I believe your life will be better for letting the phrase sink into your head and get carried out by your limbs.
Let’s see if we can sink it in:
Everyday Adventure
Now, if you saw that on a t-shirt, you might scoff depending on the design and the context. But, don’t be fooled by the simplicity. You’re mistaking triteness for elegance. There are no unnecessary words. It’s a jab, cross combo punching right at the essence of being alive, enjoying life, and making progress.
Definitions of the “jab” and the “cross” with the help of the Google machine:
Everyday: Daily. Happening every day.
Adventure: Unusual and exciting. Typically hazardous.
They read as contradictory and juxtaposed, don’t they? How can what happens daily be unusual and exciting? We’re not talking about a break from the ordinary, but the absolutely ordinary. Not skydiving over Yosemite’s granite monoliths or a solo backpacking trip on the Appalachian Trail. Where, my friend, is the hazard?
T-shirt triteness creeps in, doing its damnedest to distract us.
Let’s fight it with two more honest questions to guide us forward:
What are you but a daydreaming machine with your feet planted in your kitchen while your mind travels time to future fantasies and to a past that’s long gone?
What are you, then, but a walking juxtaposition living in two different worlds, not fully in either? This is not a full rebuke, but a reality check so that you may change your current reality. It is a dose of humility.
Your head can, however, join your feet in the same place, and your feet can follow your head to greater heights. But it’s necessary to change the way you view every day of your life. That takes effort.
I won’t ask you to do anything quirky like stand on your head or yell positivity at yourself in the mirror to change your perspective. I will, however, ask you to take a step back and have yourself a look at what’s truly hazardous and why you’re avoiding it.
I’m not talking about driving fast, taking chances, and listening to Slayer. I’ll do those things all on my own. I’m talking about something even more hazardous, not because it imposes real and physical danger, but because it existentially exposes you. You’ll release your grip on comfort, assumptions, and the rote patterns of living that you carry on every day.
This is scary. This is a true danger. It’s a step into the unknown. Does that sound too heavy, too severe?
Maybe it is. Maybe it isn’t. Why?
Even the shittiest of circumstances create hard-to-shake knowns and expectations. They engrain themselves in us. And even as our guts twist or our minds lull into a gray boredom, we avoid change because we are in the known. The known, however bad, is safer than the unknown because we anticipate what the known will do to us. By changing, by walking toward the unknown, we face all kinds of dangers within and without. We might have to navigate a new environment, or a familiar environment in a new way. What if we can’t? We might have to take a square look at our own insufficiencies. What will we find?
“I walk alone into the darkness
I came toe to toe and face to face with the beast
He knew me by my name, it was surprising
He knew everything about me that I despised.”
-From “Toes to Toes” by Mastodon
Sometimes we know what’s inside and we don’t want to look at it. Our own “beast” stares back at us. Worse, sometimes we don’t know what’s inside and we’re scared to find out. And any kind of phase shift dims the lights and raises the shroud of the unknown.
We think…
Best to just do the same things in the same way. Best to avoid any probing, any asking, or any digging. Best to avoid any change. Who knows what beast waits on the other side of the questions I’m afraid to ask.
Everyday maintains its grayness, a droning on in repetitive acceptance of a status quo that tricks you into false contentment.
Then you believe that adventure is a luxury you can’t afford. It’s far off on some mountain or in the lives of the people you follow on Instagram. But it certainly isn’t for you.
Last week I heard a statement on a podcast that I had to think a lot about. Here goes:
“The truth is the greatest adventure you can have.”
The speaker said that you can’t predict what’s on the other side of telling the truth. But each time you tell the truth you grow more and more into the person that can handle it. If that’s true, you can’t afford not to have adventure in your life. Think of all the adventures you’d have if you told the truth at all times during every day of your life.
You might say that’s not pragmatic. But is that true? Maybe you should test it. Adventure would await you on the other side of each statement. That’s pretty cool. That’s the start of a mindset shift.
I said I’d ask you to look at what’s truly hazardous and why you’re avoiding it. The hazardous thing is change because you’d have to stop being who you currently are to become who you could be. Fear and comfort keep you stuck.
We’ve come at this problem pretty heavily and pretty deeply, partly because that’s how I get down and partly because it’s necessary to illuminate just how damn silly you’re being. I’m not judging, we all make beasts out of dust bunnies. But if you cleaned up some of the dust bunnies, they’d have no chance to morph into beasts that hijack your mind. The more you clean up the dust bunnies, the more willing you’ll be to look at the real beasts – an accumulation of smaller adventures that lead you to bigger ones. And if that makes you nervous, remember, each time you tell the truth, you grow more and more into the person who can handle it. With each small adventure, you grow more and more into the person who’s ready for bigger ones.
Where, then, does the everyday adventure begin? Well, at the beginning, duh.
And at the beginning are values and mindset.
“The danger of an adventure is worth 1,000 days of ease and comfort.”
-Paulo Coelho
“Adventure is a mindset, not a destination.”
-Anonymous
Worth is the keyword of the Paulo Coelho quote. Worth denotes value. It says, “This way of being is better than the other way of being.” And if you value the richness and depth of life, the chance to get the most out of it, and to see who you could become, adventure is more valuable than ease and comfort.
You must value your future self more than your current self in order to take on everyday adventures – even the dust bunny adventures. Otherwise, you won’t do anything. That’s not to say you shouldn’t like who you currently are. Carl Rogers, one of my psychological heroes, said, “The curious paradox is once I accept myself as I am, then I can change.” (Side note: that’s the real meaning of self-acceptance. Not that you’re fine just as you are, but once you realize who you are right now, you can move forward toward a better version of yourself.) We all have things we love about ourselves and should bring more of into the world. We all have dead wood we should burn away.
Values and mindset have a chicken-and-the-egg relationship. It’s tough to tell which comes first. Is it what you value that creates your mindset? Or does your mindset shape what you currently value? It seems that the answer to each question is yes. They seem to cross-pollinate, one, at all times, influencing the other.
An adventurous mindset, then, is likely the most valuable asset in living out everyday adventures. You’ll have to cultivate it.
Start by letting go of outcomes. Getting caught up on how something will turn out often paralyzes us, and stops the adventure before it starts.
For example, let’s say you consider cooking a new dish, but you’re worried that you’ll fuck it up. So, that stops you from even trying. Instead, you do the same old thing because a dose of fear made you overly concerned with a potentially negative future.
Well, how negative is that potential future really? Are the consequences so dire that they can’t be overcome? Hell no! And you know that. You toss the burnt, misshapen, pile of supposed-to-be-food in the trash and move on with your life. It’s 2023, you live in the Western world, and you’re reading this. You have plenty of resources. This truth is a throughline for most of modern life.
But that’s not the scary part, is it?
The real fear is that you’ll feel like a fool. The beast of your insufficiency might grab you by the shoulders, spin you around, and look you in the eyes. What if you can’t? Well, first, don’t make a beast out of a dust bunny. Second, being a fool is the prerequisite for all adventure. (And who are you to be so critical of a first-timer?)
Adventure is fueled by a willingness to find out, and to be a fool while the finding out is done. It’s placing value on what you can learn and what you might experience more than reaching whatever imagined destination you’ve cooked up. When you shift the value to learning and experience rather than the outcome, adventure is inevitable. Fear of an undesirable outcome diminishes. Your head and your feet live in the same time and place.
So, you have to ask yourself:
Would I rather experience and learn and maybe be a little bit of a fool in the process, or would I rather spend my time imagining negative outcomes and then talking myself out of living a life I know I’d rather live?
I think you know the answer. Despite the fear and comfort that resist the truth. Despite the voice that’s telling you this is all just nicey-nice bullshit and not at all pragmatic. You know the truth.
We’ve come to the point in this conversation where it’s necessary to discuss how you might go about living your Everyday Adventure.
How about some honest-to-goodness gratitude? For cripe’s sake, you sleep inside, you have food, and there’s at least one person in the world who loves and cares about you. That’s wonderful. And you have the time and resources to read the meandering thoughts of a 37-year-old man writing an article for a gym. Things ain’t so bad.
Gratitude bolsters your inner reserves. It lowers your threat level and prepares your mind to look for opportunities. While values and mindset set the stage for adventure, gratitude is a proud parent, standing behind them and goading them forward.
Then it’s time to let go of the shoulds and accept what is. The truth is the greatest adventure you can have. Once you accept yourself just as you are, and things as they are, then you can change.
Value being the fool that learns and experiences. Do things and do only those things while you do them. You’ll feel yourself relax. You’ll notice that you’re having more fun. And then the craziest damn thing happens – you get the outcome you were after.
If you do these things, your everyday perspective will change. You’ll cook the new dish instead of buying the same old shit at the grocery store. You’ll commit to doing something positive for yourself every day because you want to learn instead of worrying about whether or not you’ll do it. You’ll ask that interesting person a question rather than living in your own head in fear that they won’t like you.
The rote, dullness of life will become vibrant. You’ll find true contentment, rather than the counterfeit version you’ve sold yourself.
And you’ll find adventure in every day.
Imagine that – 365 adventures every year. What a life.
It’s about time that I wrap this up, but I want to leave you with something from a movie that I love, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.
It’s the fictional motto of Life Magazine in the movie, written by James Thurber, but hell if it isn’t poignant. It’s the essence of this whole deal.
Here ya go:
“To see the world, things dangerous to come to, to see behind walls, draw closer, to find each other, and to feel. That is the purpose of life.”
Let go. Find out. Live your Everyday Adventure.
You might also like:
- 3 WAYS TO INCREASE MUSCLE MASS
- WHEN CAN YOU EXPECT REAULTS FROM TRAINING?
- WHY STRENGTH SHOULD BE YOUR MAIN FOCUS DURING THE FALL AND WINTER
- YOU’RE NOT OLD, YOU’RE JUST ACTING LIKE IT
- BUILDING RESILIENCE: HOW MOBILITY TESTS ENHANCE YOUR STRENGTH TRAINING
- RELATIVE STRENGTH: WHAT IT IS, WHY WE TEST IT, AND HOW TO BUILD IT
- LIFE BEYOND YOUR GYM GOALS
- THE MOST IMPORTANT FITNESS VARIABLES: CONSISTENCY AND CONTINUITY
- EUSTRESS TRAINING: HOW TO LIFT WEIGHTS AND MANAGE STRESS AT THE SAME TIME
- WANT TO MAKE PROGRESS? PUT SOMETHING HARD ON THE CALENDAR
- STRENGTH LOVES REST: WHY YOU NEED LONGER REST PERIODS TO BUILD STRENGTH
- HOW TO RECOVER FROM YOUR WORKOUTS
- MORPHEUS HEART RATE TRAINING: WHAT IT IS, WHY WE USE IT, AND HOW YOU CAN GET THE MOST OUT OF IT
- START NOW: WHY WAITING FOR THE PERFECT TIME IS THE WORST THING TO DO
- HOW (AND WHY) OUR YEAR-LONG TRAINING PLAN WORKS