Adventure: Remixing Your Perspective

June 29, 2009

Last week I read a post on Alex’s blog, Unleash Reality, called Buddhist Butchers and Adventures of Change. I was so intrigued and inspired by the idea that I asked him if he would write a guest post for our Spirit of Adventure series, and he was happy to oblige. This is Alex’s take on a very cool way to remix your perspective on life.

Adventures of Change: Remix Your Perspective

Life is Magical

Life is magically amazing.
 
…but it’s easy to forget that and get distracted from it.

It’s easy to get caught up in the daily grind and reduce your experience to a series of mechanical ‘to-do’s and stripped-down processes.

It’s easy to lose perspective.

But it’s also easy to inspire that perspective and reconnect to the amazingness of life… and what better way than an adventure.

Adventure of Change

Sparking change is easy. Realising that it’s possible and good is a whole different thing.

As soon as you get up from your computer to go wherever it is that you’re going, take a different route.

If you’re at work right now, get up and go talk to somebody you don’t usually speak to.

Drive or walk a different way from work.

Stop at a coffee shop or café that you’ve never been to and order something you’ve never had before.

Smile at random people. Start a conversation. “Hey, how’s it going?” works really well.

Next time you go to a restaurant, ask the waiter what he recommends. And have it.

When you get home, don’t do your usual “throw keys on the table and then this and then that” – do something different. Drop your stuff and go to a room that you don’t spend that much time in (we all have our favourite hang out spots – even in our homes)

Call up three friends that you haven’t spoken to in at least a year and ask them what they’re doing later. Push to hang out with them, doing something you’ve never done and never thought of doing.

…or get a friend you haven’t seen in ages to meet you at the local park. Take a picnic with some fruit you don’t usually eat and peanut butter sandwiches. Do a handstand and run around.

Take a class in something you’ve never done. Salsa, fire-spinning, and capoeira are highly recommended.

Tonight or this weekend, go to the centre of town, close your eyes, spin around until you’re dizzy and then open your eyes and head in that direction. Stop at the first place that you’ve never been to. It can be somewhere to socialise, a shop, an art gallery, whatever.

Now you might not like whatever it is that you land up doing. But do it. As an experiment even. We cut and define a whole lot of likes and dislikes, closed-minded preferences that limit our experience and shrink our world.
 
Spend your entire day differently. Completely going with the flow of whatever happens, doing things differently to how you usually do them.

Remix Your Perspective

Spending a day completely going with the flow of life will make it clear how much space there actually is in what you’re doing because you remove yourself from the habit of your usual grind.

And that space – that adventurous whirlwind of possibility – brings perspective that reconnects you to life and warps you out of the well-oiled mechanics of daily life.

You take your whole movie a little less seriously.

…and you might discover a couple of things that you like, meet some new people and create some amazing memories – all of which will give you evidence that it’s possible. It’ll show you how much of life you’re censoring out by limiting your experience to the same thing over and over.

And that’ll remind you of how magical life is.

Enjoy the adventure.

Unleash Reality
Alex

So what do you think? Are you ready for an adventure of change? What small things could you do differently today to start shifting your perspective?

(Photo Credit)

Related posts:

1. Adventure: Starting Over
2. Adventure: From the Heartland to the Front Lines
3. Adventure: Persistence and Determination
4. Adventure: Is Your Comfort Zone Holding You Back?
5. Adventure: The Road To Freedom

Posted in Spirit of Adventure, choices, simplicity