Here’s your prescription for life. Whether it’s once a month, once a week, or daily – do something that scares you. There’s lots of blogs and articles about doing cool things in exotic destinations. Unfortunately, most of us aren’t there yet. If you are going to escape from the 9 to 5, you need to get better at taking risks.
Last weekend I took the family zip lining. We have wanted to do it a couple times in other countries, but just never gotten around to it. The nice thing is that it is a fast growing feature at many ski resorts around the country. It’s also a way to ease into what might be more of an adventure elsewhere in the world. Most locations have an introductory zip line experience for under $50. We did 4 runs and it took about an hour and a half. It was only a few hundred feet and 40-50 feet off the ground, but if you haven’t done it before, it will get your adrenalin flowing again.
Why we avoid risk
Many of us have had something happen that has made us more risk averse. It may just be habit, or it could be a bad experience of some sort. Having something life threatening happen can also make you less likely to live on the edge. In our case, my wife got a rare form of cancer a couple years ago. After months of surgeries there was some nerve damage from lymph nodes being removed and this impacted the use of one arm. After a while, it becomes really easy to just sit on the couch. Zip lining was somewhat of a multiple risk for me since my wife is afraid of heights to start with, tends to be extra cautious because of the cancer, and wouldn’t have done this if I had told her where were going. I think she got through the first run based on peer pressure from the group, and the second run simply because it was that or climbing 30 feet down a tree. The third run was sort of choice to prove that she could do it on her own. And the fourth was a race to try and beat me. I may have created a monster.
We all had a lot of fun and I think it was a good jump start for a lot of reasons. If you have gotten out of the habit of taking risks, it’s more than worth the price of admission.
While I was writing this I happened to be watching a random program on Hulu. I enjoy British TV so I like to sample some of the different programs. The program I was watching was Derren Brown: Inside Your Mind. He is a hypnotist/magician and he does these elaborate mind tricks with regular people. In Episode 4 he does an experiment with this guy who is single, lonely and lacks confidence and radically changes him. You might not see the changes that occur in your own life, but this is pretty dramatic to watch. If you doubt your own potential to change, watch the video below.
