If your New Year’s resolutions are retreads of years gone past and do not include adventure, it’s never too late to add some.

What are the benefits of stepping out of your comfort zone?

Not sure how to start adding adventure to your life or even to your career?

My post this week is from Sam Gustafson, an educator, who is no stranger to stepping out to adventure.

She offers pointers on the gifts adventure can give at any stage of our life or career.

ADVENTURE, The Great Developer  By Sam Gustafson

Adventure, defined in the Oxford dictionary, is an exciting or unusual experience.

It may be risky or bold. It has an uncertain outcome.

Our adventures provide stories, examples, and proof for others to learn and live from.

I separate adventure into three main categories:

Travel adventure – such as rock climbing

Creative adventure – like sculpting, or building

Common adventure – the adventures that take you by surprise, like when your car breaks down

Let’s look at how each adventure category can provide benefit in your life.
No, no! The adventures first, explanations take such a dreadful time.  Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

True, explanations take a long time. So, let’s begin with examples for each type and the explanation outlining the benefits for you, as you experience, adventure will come second.

Travel Adventure

During my senior year of high school, I began to study outside the classroom. I was into bicycles. In reading magazines about them, I discovered, bicycle touring. You use special bags to attach to your bike, you carry your sleeping bag, your tent and your food; everything you need, and you’re off!

At 18 years of age a friend and I boarded the plane for California with bikes, equipment and our map. We would bicycle the coast from north to south.

This adventure introduced us to new people and new places. Every night we sat on the beach and watched the most beautiful sunsets we had ever experienced. We endured flat tires a
nd head winds. We rode between 40 and 100 miles every day. The day we rode over 100 miles, we were exhausted and giddy. Neither of us had ever biked that distance before.

This adventure created self-reliance in us. We had left home dependents. Now we had to make decisions about where we would camp each night, what food we would eat and where the next store along our route might be located.

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.— Mark Twain

Travel adventure builds self-reliance. It helps you to become more self-aware, confident and decisive.

Creative Adventure
Creative adventure is the act of creating something new.

Michelangelo created timeless sculpture.  He said every block of stone has a statue inside it, and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.

From a hunk of marble, he discovered, by his creative hand, the Pieta, Mary holding a limp Jesus. It is a moving master piece.

Not everyone is a Michelangelo; but,
within us all, is an element of creativity.

My son Zach creates short films. He begins with ideas. Then he organizes his ideas on a timeline. After he collects video footage, he carefully edits, piece by piece. He creates music to play in the background. When he puts it all together, it is a masterpiece. Sometimes he wakes in the night with his ideas flowing through his brain. H
e has to get up and work. His sense of adventure has been ignited; He is excited and eager to engage in this experience.

The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience. Eleanor Roosevelt

Creative adventure begins by exploring a curiosity.

It is a catalyst for invention and progress.
Common Adventure

This type of adventure is unplanned and unexpected, catching you by surprise.

When my dad was nearing the end of high school, he dreamed of going to Alaska. He wanted to hop into his car and drive north. A high school teacher had been to Alaska. He described the picture of a place which excited and inspired my dad.

But that dream was set aside, for an unexpected, ‘common adventure’ of life.
His girlfriend was pregnant. She thought he would leave her, but he didn’t do that. Instead, he changed his adventure plans. When she told him through tears they would be having twins, he excitedly responded, “Oh! Okay, that will be great!” with a big smile. Her tears made him think something was wrong, seriously wrong. Twins was a relief for him.

An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered. G.K. Chesterton

Through my dad’s change of circumstances, his adventure changed course. Supporting a wife, and twin boys, was not what he expected to be doing the fall after high school. It was hard work, but it was responsible, and that felt good. This adventure continued for over 50 years.

Unexpected adventures inspire.

You impact the people around you.

You overcame, you struggled on.
Unexpected adventures develop and refine your character.

Adventures.

Travel adventure – builds self-reliance and confidence.

Creative adventure – a catalyst for invention, and progress.

Common adventure – provides inspiration and impacts the people around you.

The Morris Institute states, adventure can be frightening or it can be great. It can cause pain or produce joy. It can end badly or it can end well. But you never experience an adventure unchanged.

I urge you to remember Mark Twain’s advice, we are never too old to throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails.

Exploring, dreaming, discovering has no age limits.

I hope, like me, you will be motivated to bring more adventure into your life and will plan travel or creative adventures. Or, maybe you are reflecting on your common adventures and how they are contributing to your brilliance!