Welcome to the golden age of our personal adventures!
When I say “adventure,” I think of the hero’s journey from literature - think Bilbo or Frodo’s journeys through Tolkein’s world - or going on a great expedition (think Edmund Hillary climbing Everest or Teddy Roosevelt’s River of Doubt expedition).
No one sets out on a journey or an expedition without some preparations, and if you do you’re not going to get very far.
The ethos behind The Midlife Adventures is about making the most of the adventures presented to you. It’s about having the right attitude and mindset. It’s about being positive.
To make the most of those opportunities for adventure we have to be in the best mindset, the best health, and the best attitude.
That requires us to be prepared and to have a few rules, a few guidelines for our midlife adventure.
Are rules really necessary? They don’t seem very spontaneous or adventurous.
It’s not popular in our modern culture to like rules, guidelines, or guardrails. We’re supposed to rebel against tradition.
With modern society and culture in a contestant state of cultural rebellion against tradition, I think REAL rebellion comes from embracing the traditions, the rules, the guardrails of life that have been a foundation to men and women since Adam and Eve chose to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Rules or guidelines or preparations – whatever you want to call them – help us overcome our own inertia, our own insecurities.
Miguel de Cervantes, the author of Don Quixote, famously said “to be prepared is half the victory.”
Being ready or open for adventure is about setting yourself up for success.
This preparation is about acknowledging what is within our control and what isn’t.
We can’t control the outcomes. We can’t control success.
We CAN control the process. We can control our preparation. We can control our attitude and how we respond to the obstacles and the adventures before us.
Reducing the negative feedback loop
These rules - this process - gives me something to focus on rather than the outcome. I have quite strong anxiety attacks, and I find that being focused on the processes – on these rules – can help reset my mind.
When I am captive to my anxiety and to my various neurosis, I’m not looking for the next adventure. Instead, I’m spiraling into my own broken feedback loop of negative thoughts.
To break out of that spiral requires some self-awareness, a few rules, or a process, to live by, and a routine to keep everything on track.
Self-Awareness is a key to our adventure
I think some awareness or understanding of who we are, how we think, and what we feel as individuals is essential to understanding how to build the best process for enjoying and embracing the adventures life throws at us.
Harvard Business Review published this exhaustive study of self-awareness in leaders, and I think it’s a great summary of why this understanding of ourselves is so important.
Across the studies we examined, two broad categories of self-awareness kept emerging. The first, which we dubbed internal self-awareness, represents how clearly we see our own values, passions, aspirations, fit with our environment, reactions (including thoughts, feelings, behaviors, strengths, and weaknesses), and impact on others. We’ve found that internal self-awareness is associated with higher job and relationship satisfaction, personal and social control, and happiness; it is negatively related to anxiety, stress, and depression.
The second category, external self-awareness, means understanding how other people view us, in terms of those same factors listed above. Our research shows that people who know how others see them are more skilled at showing empathy and taking others’ perspectives. For leaders who see themselves as their employees do, their employees tend to have a better relationship with them, feel more satisfied with them, and see them as more effective in general.
It’s easy to assume that being high on one type of awareness would mean being high on the other. But our research has found virtually no relationship between them.
I think I have developed a fairly good understanding of the first category: the understanding of myself, my background, my values, etc. My anxiety and bouts of imposter syndrome make it more difficult for me in the second category.
The rules of my adventure
These are my guidelines, my priorities, and the guardrails that I believe are foundational for me. These rules help me to fully embrace the opportunities for adventure that life presents.
Pray everyday
Serve your family with love and leadership
Only spend your focus on things within your control
Exercise your body, your mind, and your spirit
Read daily
Cook your own food
Expose yourself to beauty
Provide service to your community
Listen more than you speak
Be accountable to yourself, but show mercy to others
Build community through service
Stretch your understanding through new experiences
Cultivate and enjoy a hobby, especially one that might be difficult
Learn, fail, assess, and persevere in deep work