Choose to Live Life as an Adventure
“Be careful,” an acquaintance said to me, after I finished telling her about an adventure in my personal life.
I was excited, full of nervous energy.
Bursting with butterflies, I was bounding like a little spright. What a beautiful feeling, juxtaposed between being queasy and vibrating.
Something you feel before a first date, or walking into a new job, or going on stage for a play. It’s beautiful and terrifying.
I live for this feeling.
I remember leaving Boston with my hot English boyfriend after graduate school and driving across country with no job, no money, and copious amounts of student loans and credit card debt. That one decision–my cross country adventure–changed my life trajectory. The people I met, the weddings I attended, the startups I worked at and ran would never have happened had I stayed in Boston.
Every time I’ve changed my life, I’ve had to take a risk. It has never failed me, even when I failed :).
Yet every time I have chosen the adventure, I’ve had more naysayers than not.
Now, I know…
if you tell me to be careful, you definitely need an adventure. 😉
Don’t Stop Believin’
I have noticed that those who admonish others for daring to dream, or actively attempt to quench the fire, are fixed and fearful.
They stopped growing.
Maybe at some point they took a chance and were met with pain. They stopped believing in the power of hope, and they refuse to see that pain is part of the deal with a life well lived.
I was there once, and it took a few surgeries for health issues, and reclaiming my life to remember.
In the great poetry of the band Journey;
“Some’ll win, some will lose
Some are born to sing the blues.”
Would you never get a dog again, knowing that one day you will be crumpled on the floor next to where their bed was?
Never fall in love again because someone betrayed you once (or dozens of times?).
Or create a business because it’s…uncertain?
Stay in a place, a job, a relationship that no longer serves you out of fear (and possibly miss out on the greatest environment, purpose and love you’ve ever known?)
Travel to a country you’ve never been because you don’t speak the language?
Or do you choose adventure?
I realized, after my trip to San Francisco, that I needed to evolve my new business, and evolve the direction of my book to be one of inspiration.
I can live an adventure and show women what freedom, joy, and love looks like. By living my dream, I will inspire other women to live theirs.
That’s the elixir.
The Should Haves = Despair
Erik Erikson, an American psychoanalyst, is best known for his theories on human development. He coined the term identity crisis, and also grouped people into 8 phases of life.
Late adulthood, which Erikson placed from the mid-60s to the end of life, is when people tap into either integrity or despair.
When people feel satisfied with their lives, they feel a sense of integrity. Direct correlations were found between having lived a purposeful life and feeling a sense of integrity.
On the other hand, people who feel they haven’t accomplished what they wanted, or look back on their life with regret for the “could haves,” and “should haves” feel a sense of despair.
I mean, clearly we’d all choose feeling full of integrity vs. despair…but yet….
Making the choice to live a full life automatically means choosing adventure over stagnation. Very few of us make that choice.
The Poetry of Experience
Movement begets movement, and conversation is also movement. Experiences are movement, for they form our character and priorities.
What created the version of me today is a recipe of conversations I’ve had late into the night on a roofdeck or a patio; the evening Kim and I almost set fire to a deck, my brother and I making vegan s’mores at a campsite, the best date to date (top this?) when we hiked for 5 hours to Limantour Beach at Point Reyes and ate cheese with a baguette and drank shitty shitty wine.
Or when Kim and I somehow ended up on a film set in Saint Petersburg Russia. We had just heard gunshots which was alarming…
until we saw the world’s most beautiful man in a boat in the river, and realized people were filming for a movie. What a relief ;). You can’t make this shit up. Quite the adventure.
My story is the result of choosing my own adventure (like the books!) time and time again.
Many of my adventures cost little more than time.
“A commitment to time,” is how one friend describes smoking cigars. I love this because it gorgeously describes the full poetry of an experience.
Everyday is a Story
This weekend someone asked me what I might have in common with a person whose background is quite different than mine.
The answer is: a lot. Because we are both adventurous. Our energy–our vibe– is the same. And that surpasses everything.
When we choose adventure as our life, we cultivate experiences and meet people we may otherwise never cross paths with.
As Maddy Cunningham, Functional Health expert and wise soul says, I called in my adventures.
The universe granted me the experiences I so desperately wanted after years of hibernation. And one by one, I collected new people in my life who all have the spirit of adventure.
Everyone has the ability to live their life as if it is the greatest story ever told.
You, too.
The Cost of Adventure
The thing about choosing to live fully, and experience a life without regret, is that it’s going to cost you some things:
It’ll cost you your old life.
It will, guaranteed, cost you some nights in tears.
The best part is you’ll embrace it all, and know the liberation is worth the price.
I hope you always choose adventure, and live a full life, one full of hope and dreams.
