Making Time for Adventure

One of the hardest things we all face is finding the time for things that really matter in our lives. Whether it’s quality time with your family, making time to hit the gym, going for a run, catching up with an old friend, or a hundred other worthy goals, there are so many things that often get in the way. Let’s face it people, the world is complicated and only getting more so. Think of how many things grab at your attention on a daily basis. As much as we would like to clean out ALL of this clutter like we’re taking out the trash, we know that many of these distractions aren’t going away and are here to stay.

While I spend a lot of my time thinking about my next great (or small) adventure, I also realize that I exist in the same cluttered, distracting and occasionally draining world that we all share together. Have you ever felt like a couple of months passed by like it was only a week or two? Or maybe one day you’re having a birthday party and then in a blink of an eye you were a couple of months from another one? These are the moments that generally freak us out! Where did the time go? Did I move forward in the direction of my dreams and passions? Do I even know what I am trying to do with my time? Am I just letting weeks slip by in a non-fulfilling job and then wandering the suburbs on the weekends filling my car with more junk that I don’t really need?

If we really open our eyes to the ways that we invest our most precious resource, our time, it’s an amazingly convoluted and occasionally sad spectacle. Not trying to cast any judgments at all, if someone is happy in their life then I am happy for them; we all get to paint our own pictures. However, if you’re like me, you want something more than that, a lot more than that! So what are we going to do about it?

Let’s start with the basics. How about making a list of all of the different things you would like to experience, learn, visit, share, discover, explore and otherwise devour in the next several months. I know this might sound like incredibly basic advice, but it’s funny how we tend to forget about all of this great stuff on a regular basis. How else can we explain the repetitive patterns we all get into? How many weeks a year do you spend living the exact same week of your life? You pick your own example, but if it was something like one of mine it would consist of working the same job, eating the same meals at the same restaurants, going to the same bars or movie theater and spending time with the same group of people. Evaluated on its own, there is nothing wrong with this at all. But if you find yourself “living” the same basic week 30 or more times a year then I think we need to shake things up a bit!

So grab your new adventure list we just created, circle a couple of options that you can take action on in the next 30 days and fire it up. Invite your friends as well. Since they’ve probably been sharing the same “time warp” week with you they’ll be excited to do something different. I’ve found that in my group of friends there are 5 or 6 individuals that take the time to put stuff together, be that person!

Creating a life of adventure comes in small steps. People too often focus on making HUGE changes in their lives and ignore the value of incremental improvement. While big changes are sometimes necessary, we can often improve our situation quite a lot by making it 20 or 30 percent better than it is today. Baby steps my friends. We know that you’re a rock star, let’s help you find a few new gigs!