Your Invitation To Adventure

OBEWelcome to the 5-Day Everyday Adventure Project!

Just A Thought …

If you’d like to share your Everyday Adventures on my Community page, just send images, links to YouTube videos and SoundCloud links to me at jane@janetalbot.com. If you send a couple of “About You And Your Adventure” lines of text to go with your submission, that would be FAB 🙂 .

And Now Let’s Talk About Adventure!

I’m so pleased that you’ve decided to join this 5-day adventure project.

What You’ll Need For This Project

  • A way of recording your experiences so you can reflect on them. You might like to keep a journal, keep a daily video diary, keep a sketching diary or record your thoughts on a dictaphone. This is your personal record ~ you don’t need to share it with anyone. It’s just a useful way of tracking your experience through the 5 days of adventuring. 
  • An open mind 🙂 .
  • A sense of playfulness and curiosity.
  • 10-15 minutes of adventuring time per day.

infographic adventureBefore You Start 

It’s probably a good idea to understand where you’re at with the notion of ‘adventure’ before starting this project. Recording your views, concerns, expectations and hopes before starting the project will help you to make useful comparisons and to gain insights about your adventure experience in 5 days time. It’s okay not to be able to answer all of the questions 🙂 . Here are some questions you might like to consider before starting the project ~

  1. What does adventure mean to you right now?
  2. Whats is the feeling of adventure like for you?
  3. What fears/concerns come up for you when you think about embarking on this project?
  4. What hopes come up for you when you think about embarking on this project?
  5. What do you want to get out of this 5-day experience?
  6. What opportunities for adventure can you already see in your day-to-day life?
  7. How “close” to life do you feel right now? [10 – you’re right in it! ~ 0 – you’re totally disconnected from it]
  8. How alive do you feel? [10 – totally alive ~ 0 – you’re having a Near Life Experience]
  9. How free do you feel? [10 – free as a bird ~ 0 – more like a caged bird]
  10. How connected do you feel a) To yourself? [10 – totally connected ~ 0 – totally disconnected] b) To others?  [10 – totally connected ~ 0 – totally disconnected] c) To the world around you? [10 – totally connected ~ 0 – totally disconnected]
  11. How present do you feel to life? [10 – completely present ~ 0 – not present at all]

 

stockhausenYour 5-Day Adventure Menu 

For each of the days, I have made some adventure suggestions – and these are only suggestions! If you’d like to experiment with your own Everyday Adventures, please feel free to do so. Either way is better 🙂 .

Adventure 1 ~ Come To Your Senses! Today your invitation is to adventure in the SLOW lane and notice how everyday experiences come to life in new ways! To really enjoy this adventure, all you need to do is to get out of your head and into your body (an easy way to do this is to you focus on your breathing). Then open up all of your senses and pay full attention to your experience.

What do you notice? What are you noticing about what you’re seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and feeling? (By the way, this adventure is here for a reason : when you slow down and get into your body, it’s much easier to pick up the Everyday Adventure Signal!) You might enjoy eating chocolate, drinking coffee or wine, eating your favourite food, or listening to your favourite music.

Here’s me adventuring in the slow lane with coffee 🙂 .

Adventure 2 ~ Explore! Today your invitation is to explore your surroundings with the eyes of a pioneer! You might enjoy standing in your supermarket and opening up to what’s going on around you or even pushing your trolley a different route. You might enjoy walking up your street backwards; or looking out of an upstairs window and setting your eyes on a target and then trying to navigate your way to that target by human power (and without a SatNav!). You could take a lunchtime stroll in a street or park you have never visited before or use public transport to get to work and back (if you normally drive your own car to work). If you walk your dog, try a new route! What do you learn about your environment by exploring to it in new ways?

Here’s me talking about my experience of walking up my own street with the eyes of a pioneer. It was literally an eye-opening experience!

starAdventure 3 ~ Learn! Today your invitation is to spend 10-15 minutes learning something new! You might enjoy learning 5-10
words of a foreign language or how to perform a magic trick. You could try memorising something using a memory technique. You could even try buying a magazine on a topic that you’d consider of no interest to you and dedicate yourself to discovering  3 or 4 interesting facts.

What do you learn about yourself as a result of adventuring into learning in this way? It might be helpful to remember to be playful and to have fun with your learning adventure. It doesn’t matter whether you succeed or not ~ the true adventure lies in the trying! Allow yourself to immerse yourself in the experience, let go of the need to be perfect and just open yourself to the insights and awareness that becomes available as your offer your full presence to the activity!

Here’s me learning an Inuit language (it was quite challenging but I had  HUGE amount of fun!).

Adventure 4 ~ Break Out Of Your Comfort Zone! Today’s invitation is to do something that is a little uncomfortable for you. You might want to try a food that you think you don’t like or walk up the High Street of your town backwards (unless you did this on Day 2!). You could give flowers to a stranger, or strike up a conversation with a stranger in a queue, on the bus or on the train. You could go for a whole day without wearing make-up or without combing your hair. You could camp in your own back garden (or, if you are feeling totally up-for-it, your front garden!)

What feelings do you experience as things become less than uncomfortable? What are you saying to yourself in your head or out loud as you attempt to break out of your comfort zone? How do you feel if you are successful? How do you feel if you are not successful? (Again, it’s really worth adopting a playful attitude towards this adventure!).

Here’s me way out of my comfort zone, attempting to take a supermarket trolley beyond the “Do Not Take Your Trolley Beyond This Point” sign!

createAdventure 5 ~ Create Something! Today’s adventure is to create something. Try writing a poem or a song, sketching a drawing or painting a picture. Take a photograph, make a greetings card or learn how to tie a macrame knot! Make a sand castle or get your hands into some mud architecture (I’m not sure if mud architecture actually exists but it sounds like fun, doesn’t it?). Arrange flowers or create your own recipe. What can you manage in 10-15 minutes? (If you feel like creating for longer, please go right ahead and CREATE for longer!)

What do you think about what you’ve created? What do you learn about yourself as a result of your creating adventure? How creative do you think you are now? Will you choose to do more creative things in the future as a result of this experience? What does creativity mean to you now?

Here are the lyrics I’ve written as part of my song-writing adventure!

After The 5th Day Of Adventuring

Now it’s time to review your adventuring experiences! You might want to look through any personal records you kept (photographs, journal entries, video diaries) and consider some of the following questions ~

  1. What did you enjoy? [What made it enjoyable?]
  2. What didn’t you enjoy? [What made it not so enjoyable?]
  3. What’s changed for you over the last 5 days?
  4. What’s remained the same for you over the last 5 days?
  5. To what degree are you now in touch with your own “Adventure Radar”? [How do you know?]
  6. What’s the biggest thing you’ve got out of this 5-day project?

 

aureliusAnd now, look back over your responses to the 11 questions I asked you before you started out on your Everyday Adventures! What do you notice?

REMEMBER! This is YOUR adventure. This invitation is a starting point, a way of helping you to get in touch with your own Adventure Radar so that you can find your own adventurous path. You’ll know when you’re on the right track for you  ~ you’ll feel fully alive 🙂 .

I am just going outside and I may be some time 🙂 .

Jane Talbot © 2014