If you haven’t noticed on this blog, in my books, and talks, I’m all about adventure. I joke with others that my middle name is adventure. (It really isn’t. My middle name is Noel, but I may have to get a legal name change.) Whether its traveling adventures to Cuba or raising the bar on something that is a mental challenge like learning a second language, I believe that if we live a life full of adventure the result is our best, happiest, and successful life.
Whenever anyone asks me for advice or presents an unfavorable predicament, I prescribe adventure. Yes, injecting doses of adventure frequently is one sure fire way to tap into the power of perspective and even meditate.
In fact, this past weekend, I had the honor of reading at a wedding not just of a friend, but a couple that I had originally introduced. They asked me to read an original piece poem entitled, “The Adventures of Falling in Love.” I think it was the first time that anyone has pulled out a survival kit with band-aids, duct tape, and water at a wedding ceremony. However, my advice via the poem was that falling in love and marriage are true adventures. If you have done either, you know I speak truth.
Defining Adventure and Explaining, “Adventure is my meditation.”
Although you may think, I’ve gone too far advising adventure at a wedding or that I’m full of sh**, hear me out.
First and foremost, let me debunk the myth that adventure is only for adrenaline junkies. Yes, it certainly can be jumping out of a perfectly good plane or white water rafting, but it doesn’t have to be.
Let’s agree on a broader definition of adventure as:
An adventure is an activity that is all-consuming, either physical, mental, emotional, or perhaps a little of all, requiring your complete focus. In most cases, it is also a bit frightening. Doing it (whatever IT is) in spite of the fear, makes it an adventure.
I believe so strongly in this that I have written, “Adventure is my meditation.” So how can that be? Watch this video explaining adventure as a quintessential component in life as well as my quote.
So do I walk the walk and talk the talk?
Let me share with my next adventures…
This week, I turned in my final manuscript of Cubicle to Cuba. It an introspective travelogue that follows me through my transition out of the corporate world and Cubicle Land into my hybrid career of travel and writing in Cuba and beyond.
Although the writing is over, now it is double-checking details, formatting, contracting printers, ebook submission, and of course promotion. It will be my third book in three years. WooHoo! I anticipate its official release in January 2017, but I have a gift for you today!
Get a sneak peek of my next book now!
Also, I’m turning forty this month. On Thanksgiving, I will be turning another decade older. For this milestone day, I’m going on an adventure. I’m heading to a Colombia, which I have never been before, for an adventurous celebration. The days leading up to my birthday, I will be hiking to Lost City, Ciudad Perdida. It is a four-day, thirty-mile hike to an archeological site dating back six hundred years before the Machu Picchu. It is called the Lost City because it was rediscovered in the mid-seventies, coincidentally, the year I was born. I’ll have more for you upon my return.
What’s your next adventure and when?
Please share with a comment below.
Here’s to looking up!
