Trading Routine for Adventure
Staying in our comfort zones is appealing, but it will never lead to growth, courage or perseverance. To reach your potential, you must push your limits — physically and mentally — and break that tedious routine you love dearly. Tailor your adventure to your boundaries, but encourage yourself to feel afraid. Take a risk and accept a challenge.
Ben Saunders became the youngest person to ski solo to the North Pole. A few years later, he broke another record by retracing Captain Scott’s fatal trek to the South Pole. Saunders shared his love for exploration at a TED Talk in 2012, where he spoke about the importance of getting outside and changing your life. During the talk, he struggled to do justice to the harshness and beauty of his expedition to the North Pole. He points out that to experience, engage and endeavor is much more meaningful than to watch and wonder as an audience. There is no way that we could understand the loneliness that Saunders felt as the only person within 5.4 million square miles — an area 1.5 times the size of the United States. Try to imagine the difficulty of dragging 400 pounds of food and supplies in -35 degree temperatures for ten weeks. We can’t, because most of us have never pulled that much weight or felt a temperature that cold — let alone the two combined for 70 days. To most, this adventure may sound like a nightmare, and while Saunders agrees that “there wasn’t [a lot] of joy or fun to be had,” in the same breath, he says that this is the real “meat of life”; “the juice that we can suck out of our hours and days.”
At the end of this terrifying challenge, you find the ultimate high. Ben laughs, saying that adventure has become a dangerous and expensive addiction. The thrill comes from accomplishing something that you didn’t even think was possible and experiencing something that millions of people never will. Saunders emphasizes that our lives in the 21st century are too safe. We can look up everything on the internet without even standing up. He implores his audience to find answers from experiences rather than from Google. Don’t look up “best hike in my area”; take every single one and find the best one for yourself. Online articles can be great, but nothing beats learning from your experiences in cultures and places that you only have one lifetime to discover.
Leaving your comfort zone probably doesn’t involve skiing the North Pole or taking a life-threatening hike to the South Pole; it can mean planning a trip that’s a little off the beaten path, or swimming with sharks, or rock climbing. Whatever you fear, find a way to experience it. As Ben Saunders says, “open the door just a little bit and take a look at what's outside.”
Don’t forget to tag @theedgemag if you challenge yourself to a bold adventure!