You may be wanting to live a more adventurous life, but what do you do when you don’t have time for adventure?
Craving Adventure
Life is challenging. There are so many things pressing on us to perform. There are so many ways we feel pressed for time, making it hard to break away.
Even when we are able to get away it’s often expensive or time consuming or we feel guilty for taking the time for ourselves.
We want adventure, but finding it and making it work for us just seems out of reach. We often decide that it’s not for us; we feel like we’ll have to go without it.
The Need for Adventure
But we need adventure. We need to have excitement in our lives. We need to do more than just pay the bills and go from day to day.
In fact, we often think that spending money on things will make us happier because things last awhile. But research shows that spending money on experiences actually is a wiser approach. Dr. Thomas Gilovich, a psychology professor at Cornell University says that “One of the enemies of happiness is adaptation.” It seems shaking things up impacts our happiness.
It extends to relationships. Psychotherapist Esther Perel explains in her Ted Talk that we have two competing desires in our long-term relationships: our desire for security and our need for surprise. Finding the balance between the two is part of a strong, healthy relationship.
When you don’t have time for adventure it’s worth remembering that, although we need stability and security, we also need adventure. It helps us live in the present and find happiness.
The good news is it’s not as hard to find as you might think.
Finding Adventure
If you want a life that’s exciting and happy, full of fun and the envy of others, you need to find adventure. Here are three stepping stones you can use to find it even when you don’t have time for adventure:
- Make It Fun: Sometimes we get so bogged down in the day to day we forget that how we live is often up to us. Sure we have to file the paperwork, but we can always make it a game to see how quickly we can do it. Or we can compete with other coworkers to make it extra challenging. And if we can make work an adventure, we can make other things fun too.
- Make It Bite Sized: Remember going out at Halloween and getting a bag full of bite-sized candy bars? Regardless of the size of the candy bar, that first bite was still awesome. You don’t have to go on a trip to the Bahamas if you don’t have the time or money. You could drive to a neighboring state, enjoy a state park, or simply take a couple hours to get away and enjoy someplace special to you.
- Make It Vivid: Sometimes we simply need to take a few seconds to close our eyes and imagine the joy of a wonderful adventure. We need to picture the sights and hear the sounds and feel the warmth of the sun on our face as we imagine it. Taking 5 minutes out of a business day to have a mini vacation can get you ready to make the rest of the day more impactful.
We need adventure and fun in our lives. We need to take time to make it a part of what we do. When you have time, find something to make life more adventurous, like these 5 Adventurous Things to Do.
But when you don’t have time for adventure, you can make some, even if just a little bit, by making it fun, making it bite-sized, and making it vivid. It’s your life; it’s your adventure. Take it and find exactly where your adventure will take you.
