There are all kinds of adventures you can take: adventures indoors, adventures outdoors, adventures with friends, adventures alone, adventures with animals, and more. But why not try an adventure in your mind? You won’t even have to leave the house.
Pirates, Spaceships, and Superheroes
It doesn’t take much to enjoy an adventure with swashbuckling pirates, or spaceships careening toward another planet, or superheroes about to save the day. All it takes is a book.
Reading is one of the best ways to have an adventure. It’s an adventure you can take anywhere because it’s an adventure in your mind. Pick up a book on anything and you’re instantly transported to a new world with new characters and new settings.
I recently read a script for a TV show pilot. Even the script transported me to new worlds with alien creatures, heroes, villains, and some that were in between. Reading is a gateway to new worlds and new locations, but also to new ways of thinking.
An Adventure in Learning
Did you know that people that read novels are more empathetic? According to a 2013 study in the American Psychological Associations journal Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, reading lead to an increase in empathy. As Keith Oatley, cognitive psychologist at the University of Toronto put it, “people who read more fiction were better at empathy and understanding others”.
Of course there’s also non-fiction which we can read to learn about history, to discover new skills, and to better understand the decisions of well-known and successful people.
In short, not only is all reading, whether it’s fiction or non-fiction, an adventure in your mind, it’s also a way to improve yourself. You can grow smarter, wiser, more empathetic, more skilled, and have more fun, just by picking up a book and taking a journey as a way to relax or a way to be inspired.
Grab a book, have an adventure in your mind, and uncover a world full of new potential.
