Is your life a daring adventure?
Hey daring readers!
It’s interesting how we come into this world adventurous. Yet, over time become fearful due to societal conditioning. What’s the point of taking pretty fearless humans and fearasizing them? How does that make the world a better place?
I spent most of my childhood exploring the world within walking/biking distance. I waded in streams, climbed mountains, danced whenever I pleased, performed back flips of the diving board, galloped my horse through the woods, wrote creative stories, paddled down rivers, laughed constantly. My life was a daring adventure. I wanted to learn about everything. I wanted to experience everything. I wanted to wake up every morning and do something new.
Then almost as suddenly, it became an undaring adventure. The invisible societal hands started to mold me with stronger and stronger Plaster of Paris until I felt so heavy I could no longer venture very far.
Still alive in my mold, I took to chipping from the inside out — (kinda like a personal Shawshank Redemption where I’m digging a tunnel out of the thick mold). With a lot of persistence, I eventually busted out of the Plaster of Paris that encased me.
Now, life seems like a daring adventure again!
I wanted to tell my fab readers about a neat on-line program I’ve put together with Tricia Dycka, the Negativity Slayer. It’s called “Dare to live your own life: You can do it! It’s for anyone who wants to bust out of his or her Plaster of Paris mold and resume seeing life as an adventure. If you want to read more about it, please click DARE. It will be a fun time for those who DARE to register.
Whether this program appeals to you or not, I’d love to hear if your life is or isn’t a daring adventure. Maybe share a memorable adventure of late?
Muse thx, Giulietta
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As much as I can, I seek an adventurous lifestyle, sometimes even a daring one. I hike, rock climb and do a bit of alpine climbing. High, lonely places just do it for me. The most recent little adventure I enjoyed was in Scotland, hiking the Great Glen Way solo, a fairly tame 73 mile route through the highlands and along the Caledonian Canal from the east coast of Scotland to the west, starting in Inverness and ending in Fort William. To make it a little more challenging, I did it in three days and camped along the way, staying away from the towns whenever I could.
More valuable to me, especially as I’m moving through my forties, is my commitment to staying adventurous in my mind, continually trying to learn new things, staying as (modestly) intellectually limber as I can. Testing my body and will would be meaningless to me if I stopped testing my preconceptions and assumptions.
Whatever adventure we pursue, the ultimate goal is to continue to stretch ourselves and learn more about ourselves. Each new adventure is an opportunity to gain new knowledge of ourselves and the world around us. I love a Sufi proverb I heard just last week: “Knowledge that does not lead us beyond ourselves is worse than ignorance.”
I’ve had plenty of stale years too. They’re hard to avoid sometimes. I’ve found myself wishing at times that, like the author Bruce Kirkby (his book, “The Dolphin’s Tooth” is definitely worth a read), I’d found my love for adventure a bit earlier in life. Still, I’m thankful every day that I found it at all. I hope that the stale years are behind me now, but one can never be too vigilant when it comes to complacency.
Thanks Giulietta, as always, you ask the best questions.
Hi Michael,
Love that Sufi quote. It’s a great way to take advantage of the greatest adventure of all — Life! Wish folks would see it like that. Transforms the experience from one of drudgery to one of amazement.
What a fun hike through the Scottish Highlands. My maternal grandfather was Scottish. Cool country. Folks have awesome senses of humor.
“Staying intellectually limber.” Now that’s a phrase worth repeating on a daily basis. Everything you say about keeping your mind adventurous resonates with me. What a world-wide motto that would be! Our present motto “live a life of quiet desperation” doesn’t help anyone.
Just ordered the book from the library! One of the worst things we do to each upcoming generation is to offer them a stale life in exchange for temporary security. (Of course, they don’t tell you the price you pay for staleness is near insanity.)
I look forward to reading your book on traveling to high, lonely places! Thx.
Giulietta
Great post and the comments equally so! We create a humdrum vortex of a life allow ourselves get sucked into it, but why? Why do we let that plaster of Paris thicken and hide our true selves? Why do we hoard so much when enough is enough? We do we think and act as though we’re the center of the universe? Why do we equate security and safety with piles and piles of superfluous material things? What are the things we believe that distance us from what’s really going on? Why are these myths we beleive so powerful? Why do we waste precious time being fearful or worse, hateful, when it could all be over soon?
I adore the Shawshank Redemption comparison. If only we would tunnel our way out of the prisons we’ve built within and around us.
I thought after I took the first leap, that would be it. But I find that I arrive at various crossroads quite frequently, and I have to choose: safe and status quo, or follow my heart and take a risk. What my heart wants always feels like a risk, but it rewards me when I listen.
Giulietta: Great post. Thanks for the encouragement and inspiration to add some fun and adventure to life. I think we become so accustomed to doing thing in the same way and it really is important to push ourselves a little and explore. There is nothing that can compare to pushing yourself out of your comfort zone and seeing all the great ways you have changed and grown. Thanks for the motivation. It is time for me to do some things differently 🙂
Hi G – Congrats on your new program! I hope you reach many people with it. They can’t go wrong with you as their muse. I’ve had my share of adventures, many involving picking up stakes and just going. Leaving this or that, on to the next new horizon. New learning experiences. New places. New ways to work. Yes, the Seeker in me has propelled me forward on a path full of adventures. And yet, in the last few years, I’ve come to realize that as wonderful as those outer world adventures are, my Seeker really wants to take a deeper, internal adventure. Hmm, have I said this before here? Feels like deja vu. Anyway, one of my biggest adventures has been finding the sweet spot between outer yearning and inner yearning. I’m not there yet, but I keep working on it. Thanks!
Angie,
Love the leap metaphor. You’re right that you have to keep leaping because life is a series of crossroads with many choices. It’s good to listen to your heart. The rest of our bodies many have been programmed to follow the obedient path, but the heart knows what’s best for us.
Sibyl,
Best wishes for new explorations! So much to see and learn and experience. If only, we could get folks to participate in their own lives …
Patty,
Oh yes! The inner adventure is the grandest one of all and the hardest and most challenging and the scariest and least travelled.
I found that embarking on that adventure has brought me the greatest life fruits — self knowledge, self love, self forgiveness, self power and self expansion.
You’ve got me thinking in a new direction, like you always do. Appreciate kind words about the program. It will be one of those inner adventures.
Love The Seeker. I will now think of you as that.
G.
Great post Giulietta!
Within the first two lines I was saying “Yeah! Yeah!” That’s a pretty good sign. 😉
I know I had to go on a similar “Shawshank Redemption” journey in order to break out of the 9-5 world I felt so stuck in and start my own business.
Thanks for stimulating a great conversation!
Hi Paul,
Welcome to Take Back Your Life! Glad you can relate to the Shawshank Redemption journey. It’s a tough one to undertake with big rewards. Thanks. G.
It’s true! This happens. . everyone needs to do this. Good luck!
Giulietta, Loved your description of your childhood. Reminds me of my own in an English seaside village before I was transported to a large city in another country where outdoor adventures came to an abrupt halt.
For someone who led an adventurous life in my youth, took numerous risky leaps, and uprooted myself on many occasions, to be encased in a Plaster of Paris mold represented comfort and security. Until the mold shattered, and unable to gather up the pieces, I again took the risky path, exploring unknown venues, changing lifestyles, and uprooting myself, in midlife, to search for new horizons.
If I had not been so comfort/security focused, I might have achieved my life’s ambition. Instead, I shrugged off opportunities and settled for the easier life. Now, in middle age, I’m back chasing the same adventures that I left behind years ago. And with regrets, I realize that many will have to remain unfulfilled as there just isn’t enough time left to do everything I would want.
But at least I still have a few adventures ahead of me.
Memoirista! Thank you. Yes, let’s all break out of our Plaster of Paris molds.
Penelope,
It’s interesting that we’re taught or learn somehow that the easier life is often the harder life in the long run and the harder life is often the easier life. we “buy” into things without knowing what’s we’re getting into.
You’ve got an adventurous soul. I look forward to hearing about all your adventures. Book publication is coming up! That will be a neat adventure for sure.
Thanks, G.
It reminds me of Seligman’s phrase, “learned helplessness.” What a way to go.
I definitely prefer a daring adventure to an undaring one. Adventure is near and dear to me … and a metaphor in many things I do.
Hey J.D.,
Now, that’s a true phrase! One could write a book on that topic alone.
I knew you were a fellow adventure seeker. congrats. way more fun.
j.