Would you say you’re adventurous? The latest f:Entrepreneur breakfast session was hugely inspiring and hosted by #ialso100 2021 Jo Lee, founder of Infinite Pathways all about how we can be more adventurous in business and life.
It was a great session where Jo led us through a number of exercises to really ask questions about ourselves and our businesses – a huge thank you to Jo for hosting for us.
Jo has kindly shared with us this fab blog all about how we can all be adventurous – we hope you enjoy!
My aim at Infinite Pathways is to support women to become more adventurous when they believe they can’t – helping them to lead amazing, fulfilled lives. I have done a considerable amount of research into what ‘makes’ people adventurous and how can we use that knowledge for our own endeavours. Whilst interviewing adventurous women to help my research the amazing Rachel Kirkwood (world champion triathlete!) described adventure as anything that makes you go ‘WOW!’ I love that description as it doesn’t just apply to crazy adrenaline fuelled adventures, it applies to any area of your life or your business.
I would love to walk you through some tools I have found useful in supporting people to become more adventurous in business and in life.
So what can make us go WOW, what is adventurous? Anything!
- Presenting for the first time at a board meeting
- Opening our own businesses – that’s a MASSIVE wow moment for many of us
- Ice climbing
- Kayaking down white water
- Attending our first conference and maybe even being a speaker
- Employing our first team member as a business owner.
All of these things are adventurous and need a little prep to help us make the most of the ‘wow’ moment.
There are several simple steps to becoming more adventurous. The first one is to ask yourself some really big questions to open your mind up to adventurous possibilities. Focus on an area of your life that you want to become more adventurous in – business, sports, family, hobbies or work perhaps. Then take a deep breathe and ask these questions:
- Imagine if you had all the support you needed. What would you do?
- Imagine if you couldn’t fail. What would you do?
Write down some of the things you come up with. Pretty much everything you come up with will sound scary, but in reality it is all possible with the right prep.
How do I prepare for these incredible adventures?
So, let’s deal with the part about them feeling scary. Fear is very real and is the number one feeling people cite when they say they are finding it difficult to become adventurous. Fear is normal, natural and is there to protect us. We can however start to manage these fears and make them into positive actions to take us closer to adventure.
So……I am not a huge fan of ‘3 steps to happiness’ or the ‘5 steps to becoming a billionaire’ and those types of approaches, but this is essentially a 3 step guide to managing your fears to make them work for you – sorry! Maybe it’s the title of a book I should write??
I would like you to think about one of those adventurous things you came up with when answering the questions above. One thing that will make you go WOW! Then follow the steps below…
Step 1 – DEFINE. Actually define what your fear is. What are the things holding you back from doing that adventurous thing? What are you scared of? Can you write that fear down succinctly? Is it tangible, if not, ask, ‘So what?’
Step 2. PREVENT. Is thinking about how you can prevent that fear from coming true. What can you do to stop that fear happening or how can someone else help you to stop it or reduce the chances of it happening?
Step 3. REPAIR. How could you recover from that fear if it did actually come true? What if the worst really did happen, what could you or someone else do to make it better?
I have given you an example below to help guide you through the process.
We have begun the process of recognising and managing some of those fears which helps us build confidence. Confidence is great but it doesn’t make the adventure actually happen sadly.
How can you make your WOW actually happen? It’s a bit like anything really, you can’t eat a whole elephant so you have to eat it bit by bit. Break it down into manageable chunks and that elephant will be devoured in no time – planning is key here.
- Listing the ‘big things’ or ‘headlines’ – what you would like to be more adventurous at/your wow moments
- Listing the ‘small steps’ towards your adventure in a doable, non overwhelming way – list your ‘prevent and repair’ ideas from your fears exercise here to help you.
- Making this easy to read and a visual reminder to keep you on your path
My favourite way to do this is with a suitably adventurous mindmap.
Start by drawing a bubble in the middle of the page and write in the WOW moment or adventure that you want to ‘do’. Mine was hosting the #Ialso100 breakfast about becoming adventurous – genuinely, ‘wet my pants’ level exciting and a massive wow moment for me
Now start drawing beautiful, adventurous squiggly lines from your WOW and list the small steps you need to take to get to that wow moment. Include the fear preventers and repairs that we prepped earlier. Include who can help you and how they can help.
Then start putting some dates to these beautiful adventurous ideas of yours. When do you want the wow to happen and when can you take the first small step towards it?
To help you with the process, here is my mindmap that I prepped for this #ialso100 breakfast – my WOW moment.
Anyone can be more adventurous in life if you have the rights tools. We only get one of these precious lives and being a little more adventurous may well open more doors for magical things to happen. Go on, have a go at finding your WOW moment and plan to make it happen.
