Imagine waking up every morning and looking forward to what will happen throughout the day. As you take in a deep breath, you feel wonderful knowing you’re alive so you can enjoy what life has given you. That would be a great feeling, wouldn’t it?
That’s the way I try to wake up each morning. I truly see life as something to be enjoyed and each day represents a chance for me to feel great. After all, why would you spend most of your time feeling miserable?
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Are you the kind of person who accepts some things as true without actually questioning the facts and weighing the possibilities? It’s called conventional wisdom and we’re all susceptible to it to one degree or another. Who hasn’t heard that you need to spend three months’ salary on an engagement ring or you need to change the oil in your car every 3000 miles?
By the way, both of those pieces of conventional wisdom are actually wrong, but are generally accepted as true by a large number of people. While those things might not be that big a deal to you, there are bigger dangers to accepting conventional wisdom at face value. By tying yourself down to how you think things are supposed to be when it’s not necessarily true, you can miss a lot of opportunities to live life on your terms.
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If you were to compare my diet today to what it was six years ago, you’d be surprised. I ate a lot of candy, cookies, soda pop and fast food. To put it mildly, I ate a lot of garbage.
Then one day I realized just how bad I was eating. So I decided to make some radical changes to my diet. I took a garbage bag and threw out everything that was bad for me and stocked up on good foods like fruits and vegetables. To this day, I still eat healthy and rarely consume cookies or soda pop.
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A couple of years ago while traveling through Belize, I had the opportunity to take a boat out into the nearby coral reef and swim in an area full of sharks and stingrays. Before I jumped into the water, I thought about how crazy it was to put myself into that situation. Most people would probably think it was too dangerous.
But I love experiences like this. They seem dangerous and stupid at first, but afterwards you look back and wonder why you thought that way to begin with. In fact, I’d say there’s actually a lot you can learn by doing dangerous, stupid and crazy things.
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I think Jim Rohn, a motivational speaker, put it best when he said, “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with”. While there is always room for individual choices and personality, the fact remains that one of the biggest influencers of your behavior, beliefs and attitudes come from the group of people you most interact with.
You can’t deny the powerful influence groups can have over your behavior. After all, if they didn’t exert power then things like peer pressure and groupthink wouldn’t exist. Groups help shape social norms and expectations. So taking a closer look at what those norms are and how they influence your behavior is extremely important.
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It may seem surprising, but how many adventures you have is directly correlated to the thoughts floating around in your head. Your thoughts determine how you see yourself and what you think you’re capable of doing. They determine what decisions you make and how far you think you can take yourself. After all, what is an adventurous spirit more than a mindset?
However I think people who want to get more adventures often neglect this area. That’s really a shame too since these thoughts can be a powerful way to build a more adventurous life, create more excitement and do more of what you want to do. All it takes is a simple shift in the way you think about things.
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You have roughly 16 hours from the time you wake up in the morning until the time you go to bed at night to make the most out of your day. Even excluding the time you have to spend for work, chores around the house and various other responsibilities, you’d still think there would be enough time to do everything you want to do.
But I know it doesn’t necessarily work that way. Many years ago I’d regularly go through several days in a row where time flew by without accomplishing anything. So I came up with a way to take time back. Now when I wake up in the morning, I feel as if every day provides an opportunity to get the most of what I want out of life.
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