In 2009 my husband and I began a tradition on New Year’s Day. We’d never been people who set five year plans or wrote goals for every step of our journey. We are a little more intuitive than that and we’d never quite found our own way of setting our intentions and path for the year.
In January 2009, we purchased a year planner and inserted what we called adventures. Each month had to include an adventure, whether it was flying to Uluru for the weekend, buying a kayak and taking lessons, volunteering our time/skills in Cambodia or embarking on some new study, we intentionally planned out the year with at least one major adventure a month. Along with the everyday work, family, exercise and social commitments one puts into the calendar, adventures were scheduled and fixed.
Some may say that adventure can’t be planned, that it is spontaneous. However, we found that by intentionally making ourselves plan for adventure, our year was filled with many more interesting and amazing things. Before that, we’d ask each other, ‘What do you want to do this weekend?’ Now, we found ourselves anticipating the weekends as we knew we would be having some sort of adventure.
Instead of saying we’ll wait until we retire, we say let’s do it now as tomorrow has no guarantees. Adventures don’t have to be expensive or involve overseas travel. Adventures can be found close to home. We bush walk the trails near our home and say ‘yes’ to invitations from friends to try new activities. Don’t allow a lack of finances to prevent you from having adventures, use your imagination to create adventures.
2009 was the beginning of a whole new life approach for us and opened up a way of living that is exciting and more deliberate than we’d ever lived before. It meant both of us giving up out regular careers and working full-time in creative pursuits. Planning for adventure changed the whole course of our lives.Along the way, spontaneity bloomed and we were taken on unexpected paths, met some crazy people and had a lot of fun.
So, as we sit and plan today for 2015, we are dreaming of a wonderful adventure-filled year. As someone we know once said, ‘Adventure is a journey with an unknown outcome.’ Don McIntyre
We plan and prepare, but life sometimes doesn’t go as planned. That’s where faith and excitement come in.
So what adventures are we planning in 2015? We are diving in the Cocos Keeling Islands and Christmas Island for two weeks, we’re speaking at a TEDx event in San Franscisco in May, we’re considering going to Alaska, Iceland and Greenland, writing more books, volunteering in Cambodia, and at home, and many other mini-adventures. We are leaving some space in between for those things that spring up — opportunities that arise because of the things you do.
2015 is an unwritten story and we are only plotting out the rough outline. The gaps will be filled, characters and settings revealed and the story will unfold as we step out into another year of adventure.
Why don’t you plan for some adventure in your own life?
