Choose your own adventure
Choosing your own adventure… wow it’s such a powerful concept. When you really dig deep and figure out, what this really means for you day to day in your business and in your life then you are on to something big.
The reason I have been thinking about this came after a recent trip to Las Vegas. Las Vegas is always fun and there’s all tons of stuff to do. There was literally thousands and thousands of people there and everyone is always doing something different.
- When you are there you get to ask what am I going to do?
- What am I gonna do tonight?
- What am I gonna do tomorrow?
- Who am I gonna hang out with?
So that’s the sort of micro weekend of the kind of decisions that we make on a regular basis.
What are the things that people regret the most.
There’s all this research, about when you’re coming to the end of your life, what are the things that people regret the most. What are the things that we wish we could have done better? For me, that’s always the thing. I never wanted to be one of those folks, you know, that looks back on things and says, “Oh man, you know, I wish I had done this or that.” Especially when you’re coming to the end, you don’t really get a shot to do it all over again.
And one of the biggest regrets that people have is that they wish that they had the courage to live a life true to themselves and not the live that other people expected of them. If you are here reading this blog post then you are absolutely who’s exploring that. You don’t want to live just a “normal life”. You’re an entrepreneur. You’re someone who has a fire in your belly and you want things that are extraordinary because you want to live an uncommon life. I honor you for that.
So when I think about that statement “choose your own adventure” and I think you probably do too, it’s kind of thought provoking. It makes me think am I living my life with the focus on me being my true self and the self that I want to grow into and become? You know, it doesn’t always have to be defined, but I know innately when I make decisions and when I look at the future and I think about who I am and the people that I want to impact, some things feel good and some things don’t. We have that intuition.
So are you focused on becoming the best you?
So are you focused on becoming the best you so that you can give back to others and live this uncommon life that you want? Or are you just following the pre-set safest path?
When I was little, I used to love adventure books. You know the ones that you got to actually build your own story as you went along because you got to choose different paths along the way. When you got to chapter five or something, you would hit the end of that chapter and it would say, “There’s a fork in the road. To the left is a dark forest path, and to the right is an open field. If you took the path to the forest, turn to page 18 and continue your adventure. If you took the path for the field, turn to page 39.”
I loved those books. They were so much fun to read! In these books basically there were always two conclusions that you would reach, no matter which path you took along the way. You would either slay the dragon and find the treasure or you’d end up stuck in quicksand and nobody would ever find you and you’d be rotting in some jungle or something. So those endings were always buried somewhere in the middle of the book, you could never just go to the very back and be done with it and find out what it was, you definitely had to search and get through it.
I totally remember being so fascinated with the way that I could chose a totally different adventure along the way and yet still end up winning. With each choice I obviously got to experience something different things but I still end up in the same place. I would always re-read the book until I had literally explored all the different paths that I could take and I would definitely find a path that would kind of give me pause and I would say to myself “I don’t really know if I want to go to the dark forest, that seems kind of like a bad choice, right?”
But it doesn’t always turn out to be. I could wind up doing super unexpected things like hiking Mount Everest or discovering a hidden diamond cave in Zimbabwe or something crazy and fun like that. Looking back now, I’m pretty sure that’s exactly the whole point of those books, to get us to think outside of the box and take the most unexpected path to discover amazing things.
Are you living your own adventure each day?
And as much a I enjoyed these books as a kid, I get so excited about the idea of living my own adventure book every single day. We get to make those choices, every single day and they could take you to completely amazing and unexpected places, but you’ve got to have the courage to just make a choice and take a path. The only part that I think is a little scary is when you’re thinking about all the other things you could do, and we don’t get to go back and re-read each chapter.
We don’t get to go back and relive every day and make a new path and go down a new direction. Essentially, we don’t get presented with the same fork in the road over and over again. The decisions we make along the way in our lives and in our business seem a lot more important. The consequences and the outcomes are a lot more permanent. We want to know what outcomes are actually going to be available to us. What’s the likelihood of reaching them. We want to mitigate the risk. We want to contemplate things and make sure that we’re as sure as we can be that we’re making the right choice.
That’s really the idea between choosing an adventure.
What’s the right choice? Choosing your adventure has a huge impact. Do you go to UVA or JMU for that pre-law school? Different colleges mean you’re going to meet different people, you’re going to have different roommates, and that is totally going to impact the choices you make long term, the career options, because of the networking you do at college.
So which one’s better? What do you want to do when you get out of college? That probably will have an impact on what you decide. Do you make an effort to go hang out tomorrow or next weekend with that totally amazing guy or girl even if you have no clue if they actually really like you more than a friend, but if you don’t hang out with them you’re not really going to figure it out are you?
So that’s kind of scary, but what are you going to do?
Do you get started in that new opportunity that someone’s working on that you think it’s really cool but you’re not sure if it’s the right opportunity for you. It could be the one that’s going to skyrocket you to the level of success that you want, or it could be the team that you really want to work with, but you’re not really sure if it’s exciting so what do you do?
What I have found in my business and in my life is that when I choose the path that I feel in my gut intuitively is exciting to me, that really gets my blood pumping and it has my imagination firing all pistons, I can’t sleep because I’m so excited about the possibility.
When you finally choose your adventure
It’s when I choose that direction and that adventure that I don’t even care what the outcome ends up being, but what I do know is that I don’t regret the fact that I took a chance to actually live that adventure. I want to be that person when I’m at the end of my life asking, “Did I have the courage to live a life true to myself versus the status quo and what was expected of me?” and I know the answer was YES and it’s completely exhilarating.
At the end of the day as much success as I will have and you will have in your life and in your business, it’s really not about the stuff you can buy, it’s about the experiences that we have lived through and the people that we have met that will enrich our lives and enrich the lives of the people around you in the most significant way. You’re not going to have an experience unless you choose to do a thing and the only difference between where we all are today and this amazing place that we want to be is just the act of deciding to take a path. To choose adventure and take action into that adventure.
I can’t go to England if I don’t book the plane ticket, get on the plane, and go. I’ll never experience that if I just don’t take those actions that are going to get me there, and the exact same thing happens in your life and in your business every single day. You get to choose your own adventure book. You get to choose your path, every single day.
You must live in the present
I love this quote by Henry David Thoreau: “You must live in the present. Launch yourself on every wave. Find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land. There is no other life but this.”
Choose your own adventure and enjoy and explore everything that comes on the backside of that because that’s what it’s all about.
