How To Be More Adventurous

I love that my How I Learned To Love Solo Travel post is still going on Medium and had something of a bounce again recently. And I guess it had to happen, finally someone points out that I wasn’t really being that adventurous.

Fair enough, although I’m not interested in any man’s thoughts on the precautions I, or any other woman, take for our physical safety, or for our feelings about our physical safety. I have been sexually assaulted. Even aside from that, the statics show that precautions and concerns around physical safety are more than reasonable.

Mainly, I felt it missed the point. Sure – I’ve not taken a trip to a desert to survive on my wits whilst sleeping in a yurt or some such, but I think that is why the article resonated with people. It’s about making new experiences more accessible. Sure, going for dinner in a highly recommended restaurant in another western country isn’t the most adventurous thing, but it beats ordering the usual from your local takeout place.

The coolest thing resulting from that article – someone told me that having read it, he’d booked a weekend away by himself, and he’d had a great time.

So, how do you become more adventurous? You open yourself up to new experiences on a regular basis, and over time you’ll broaden your horizons, and expand your comfort zone. Or, you can leap wildly outside your boundaries, go do something extreme, go somewhere extreme. The barrier to the second option is higher, and harder to get over. Power to those adventures – I’ve had them, they were cool – but I refuse to accept that is the only way. Personally, I think anything can be an adventure – if you approach it in the spirit of discovery, embrace the uncertainty, and enjoy the unexpected.