The Power of Adventure: Transforming Fear into Fulfillment

In this solo episode, we dive into the transformative power of adventure and its ability to shape our lives, broaden our perspectives, and foster personal growth. Inspired by a recent six-week journey to New Zealand, I explore what defines an adventure and how stepping into the unknown can lead to profound self-discovery.

An adventure doesn’t have to mean travelling to the other side of the world—it could be as simple as starting a new fitness routine, pursuing a passion, or embracing a fresh chapter in life. I reflect on my experiences, including navigating unfamiliar airports, learning to thrive in solitude, and embracing the cultural richness of the Maori people.

We’ll discuss the benefits of adventure, from building self-confidence and reducing anxiety to uncovering a deeper understanding of ourselves. I share insights on overcoming fears like the fear of the unknown, failure, and judgment, emphasizing how growth often lies outside our comfort zones. Drawing parallels to Bilbo Baggins’ journey in The Hobbit, I highlight how even reluctant steps into the unfamiliar can lead to fulfillment and unexpected treasures.

Finally, we explore actionable steps to embark on your own adventure—starting with the simple yet powerful decision to begin. From planning and preparation to taking the first small action, this episode is packed with inspiration and practical advice for anyone ready to embrace the unknown and discover the gold hidden within life’s uncertainties.

Whether you’re dreaming of travel, seeking personal growth, or contemplating a leap into something new, this episode is a guide to finding courage, purpose, and joy in your own adventure.

Transcript

0:00

If I told you the biggest adventure of your life. Could start with just one decision. And what if this one decision. It's something you can make today. Would you take the risk? What would you carry on? Life is normal. Welcome to Man Questifying Meaning, where we help men navigate modern life, find their true purpose, and redefine manhood. I'm your host, James, and each week, inspiring guests share their journeys of overcoming fear Embracing vulnerability and finding success. From experts to everyday heroes. Get practical advice and powerful insights. Struggling with career, relationships or personal growth? We've got you covered. Join us on Man Quest to Find Meaning. Now, let's dive in. I've been looking at ways in which I can improve this podcast. And one of the ways, I thought, was to have certain topics, or a specific topic, on a specific episode. So, for example, I might have an episode on anxiety. I might have an episode on addictions. I might have an episode on self confidence, on health, on well being. And this will go be exactly the same for guest interviews. So, again, with the guest interviews, The guest will have a specific topic that they focus on. That will be what we focus on with regards to the podcast episode. But as of today, I'm doing a solo episode and I wanted to talk a little bit about adventure. Now, the reason I picked adventure is because I've just been on a six month, sorry, a six week trip to New Zealand. And this adventure, as I call it, it has really expanded myself as a human being, as a person, as a friend, as family. And it's helped me to really to understand myself. So first things first, what's, what's an adventure? An adventure is something new, something exciting, something where we step into the unknown. Now, a venture hasn't necessarily got to be something like a trip to New Zealand or a trip to America. It could be as simple as going on a walk, a big long walk. It could be as simple as starting a new phase in your life. It could be So it could be even be a new fitness regime. It could be, it could be anything. An adventure is just something new, exciting, and it's, and it can scare you. An adventure can scare people. And we'll talk about some of the fears later on. So let's quickly go along the lines of whilst I was in New Zealand, I visited Hobbiton. And in Hobbiton, obviously, there's the films Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. Now, in The Hobbit Bilbo, he usually, initially resisted the urge to go on this adventure with the dwarves simply because it scared him. It was the unknown. He didn't know what to do, but eventually he came around to it and it was one of the best decisions that he made in his life. And obviously, at the end, he writes, he writes a book all about his adventure. So what are some of the benefits? What, so what, what can an adventure bring to your life? The first thing is it can help with self confidence. So if I use an example of New Zealand as, as a base for what I'm talking about, with self confidence, there's the idea of navigating The, the airports, I had three, two connecting flights, but also there's the idea that I spent a lot of time on my own. So then there's the building, the self confidence of being by yourself, but also happen to communicate and speak to other people is the idea that it can help to build with anxiety because initially. It's you're going to feel anxious quite often, quite often when you step into these adventures, these new things, these, these things, it's really broadened your perspective. There is that feeling of anxiety of fear, but then eventually, eventually. It becomes second nature, and you do it anyway, and anxiety disappears. Even better is that you can allow yourself to feel that anxiety in that moment, and allow that anxiety to leave you. It also helps with self discovery. So while I was away over the six weeks, I learned so much about myself. I learned how I function throughout a day, especially on my own. Like. I learned that I can't spend the whole day doing activity, activity, activity, activity because I get exhausted. So I've learned that I can do something for two or three hours in the morning, then have two hours rest for lunch, then go and do some more stuff in the afternoon and the evening, and then chill. But then at the same time, I can decide, okay, on this certain day, I'm perhaps going to go for a whole day walk, and I'll go and do that. But also I've learned that it's, it's, it's about Finding out who you are as a person, how you function, how you go about in the unknowing. So, it's quite often, most, every activity that I did was really, I didn't know what was going to happen. So, it's helped to teach me to trust that in the unknown, things always, or most of the time, work out. It's also about Broadening one's perspective on life, on cultures, on people, and understanding how do other people or people, people like the Maoris, how, how do they function as, as, as a people. And it's also about helping, it can help with your fitness. So if you're going on quite an active an adventure, then it's going to help with your fitness. It might, there's also that sense of. And this is one of the bigger ones. Sense of fulfillment. So what do I mean by sense of fulfillment? So being able to navigate the airports. That's fulfilling. What's even more fulfilling is navigating an airport where they don't actually speak English. That's fulfilling. It's fulfilling to be able to go and speak to different people. It's fulfilling spending time on your own, but at the same time, it can be fulfilling spending time with other people. It's fulfilling kind of doing the different activities, especially ones that you know are going to scare you, and you are able to accomplish it. That's fulfilling. This is an adventure for yourself, might not be Might not be getting traveling to New Zealand. It could be if it could be as dangerous as training to climb Mount Everest or K2 and then climbing it. That might be a big, big adventure for yourself. If you're a climber, it might be taken on. A new fitness regime, it could be maybe you want to start things like CrossFit, or maybe just maybe you want to start a new job, a new chapter in your life, an adventure could be even going starting to go on dating apps and going on dates. That's an adventure. It's a different type of adventure. So. We've looked at what an adventure is. We've looked at some of the benefits, but also the, the one thing that stops most people in their tracks regards to adventures of fears. And one of the biggest fears, and it's, it's, it's, it happens to us all is the fear of the unknown because. Within the fear of the unknown, you don't know what's going to happen. You don't, you know, I feel, I feel sometimes as human beings, we want to try and control our day. But in the unknown, we have no control. We don't know what's going to happen. We don't know who we're going to meet. We don't know what dangers are lurking around. And quite often, When it's about stepping into the unknown as part of ourselves, maybe our inner child, or maybe the, the safety, the safety the safety side of ourselves wants to keep us safe. So we'll make us resist, or we'll self sabotage ourselves in order to not take that new adventure. But in the unknown, I always find that We find the gold in the unknown, we find new things, we learn things about ourselves that we never knew, we learn about new paths, we learn about, quite often in the unknown, that is where you might meet your partner, whether it's a wife, husband, boyfriend, girlfriend, whatever it is. Quite often in the unknown is where we find. Our purpose in your knowing is where we find the jobs that we absolutely love. Also, there's the fear of failure. So you might take that first step or the second or third step of that adventure, but then you might fail. And I'm gonna say it here now, that is okay. We all, all the, all the, all the top people who have done, who have done massive things in their life have failed many, many, many, many, many times, but we feel we fear failure because we want things to go perfect. And so we have this fear of failure and really stepping into this new adventure. And we don't even go on the adventure because we're afraid of failing, because failure might mean death to us. Not quite literally, but it might mean death. Failure might mean that people leave us. And we don't want that, do we? Because it's Where it's, you know, if it happens, what's going to happen? Whoa, what's going to happen? But also at the same time, there's the, there's a fear of disappointing others. So this is, it's kind of linked into the fear of the failure because if we fail, we might feel as though we've failed, we've disappointed a family member, or we've disappointed a friend. And it's not about, quite often, it's not about the action and accomplishing whatever, whether it's a goal, whether it's an adventure, it's about what you learn along the way about yourself. That's where the self discovery comes in. There's also there's a fear of embarrassment. So if when you're, if something that you want to do is become a big speaker on stage, but you fear the embarrassment, then quite often you will assist Learning and stepping into becoming a speaker because you have this fear that, Oh, no, I might embarrass myself. People then will judge me because then we have this fear of judgment. So we have all these different fears. So, a fear of being seen, fear of judgment. We have all these different fears that we're afraid of. It's our mind telling us, Oh no, what if I go into the airport and get the wrong flight? Oh no, what if I turn up and I don't know what I'm going to do and I fall on my face and embarrass myself? What if I go to a foreign country and get kidnapped? That's the unknown. But it's quite often these fears, these fears are unfounded. And so, It's about kind of allowing these fears to come up and say, okay, thank you for letting me know that, but I am choosing to do this. In fact, I might even do an episode on fears, but I might see if I can get a guest speaker who specializes in helping people to overcome fears. That's a good point, actually, I'll do that. So, how do we go on an adventure? What are the steps that we might need to take? The first and most important step. step is to decide. It's to decide to go on this adventure in the first place. So I made a decision. I think I've been putting it off and putting it off and putting it off to go to New Zealand because of certain fears, like fears that I don't have enough money, fears of the unknown, that kind of thing. But eventually I made a decision. I made a decision beginning of last year that I was going to go on to New Zealand and see my sister. And that's one of the reasons I went across actually is my sister lives across there. And so it's making that decision, whether it's a new fitness regime, whether it's to climb a mountain, whether it's walking, whether it's to travel, whether it's a new business, a new relationship, it's first things first, we need to decide. that we're going to do it. That is the first and most important thing that we need to do. Because once you decide, there's a kind of, there's a force almost with inside us like, okay, Now that we decide that we're going or doing this, what are the things that we need to do to make it happen? And this is where action comes in. But it's funny though, because when you start to focus on something, when you set an intention that you're perhaps going to do this, this or this, suddenly everything comes into alignment. Our brains start to focus on what we need to do you know, certain situations happen to align yourself with this, this decision to go on this adventure. And so, once we've decided that we're going to go on this adventure, this is where a bit of maybe a bit of research for planning. Now, you don't have to research and plan, you could just completely go with the flow and say, you know what, I'm going, I don't know what I'm going to do, I'm just going to go there and then it'll all pan out. That is kind of next level, but before we can get to that next level We need to have the confidence and the courage to do something like this. So the next step is about planning, planning and research. So when I decided that I was going to go to New Zealand, the first thing first was to find some flights, research and find some flights and then pay for the flights. So that was the next step. The step after that was now I've got my flights. I've got set dates. You know, a six week period where I'm going to go. So then it's about looking at what is it that you, I roughly want to do. What is what, what kind of itinerary, what kind of stuff do I want to go and see? What kind of experiences do I want to witness? Who do I want to meet? How do I want to meet them? And then. Once we've been able to answer all these questions, okay, now I've got all this, and now I know what roughly what I want to do, and then it's about planning my accommodation, it's about planning my travel, it's about doing, and then it's the small things like vaccinations and all that kind of stuff. So it's researching and planning. So this is another example of research and plan. Let's use an example of. We want to run a marathon. Okay, so you want to run a marathon by, on this date, you've just booked the date. Now, you perhaps you've got a year to before your marathon, so then what you're going to do then is you're going to research. Okay. What is it? I need to do with regards to marathon. So marathon training. Obviously, the 1st thing is running, but also it's about recovery. It's about stretching and making sure that we don't get injuries. It's also about, I feel, myself, it's a bit about strength training with regards to certain muscle groups. Yeah, so you're going to research all that. Another example might be, you want to find a new job. Doing, or it's public speaking, you're going to be a big, you're going to be a big speaker. So then this might involve, okay, we decided that you want to be a speaker. What are the things that I need to research? So you look at people who are, who are speaking, what do they do? You might look at what kind of topics do I want to speak about? Who do I want to speak to? That kind of thing. That's, that's about it. Examples. Examples. Obviously. It's about putting aside time, well deciding first, putting aside time, researching what you need to do to accomplish this thing, and then doing it. Then, it's about preparing. So you've done your research, then it's about preparing, so it's about, I think I've covered a little bit anyway, but preparing, so the flights, the accommodation how we eat food, all that kind of stuff. Then it's the simple thing. It's about taking action. So it's all very well deciding, researching, preparing, without the action, you go nowhere. So you have to take the steps. Now for a lot of people, this is one of the most hardest things to do. My advice here is to start off nice and simple. So if you. Let's get back to the running quickly. If you're not a runner and you want to do a marathon and you've done the research and prepared for it, you might have to start by going out on runs. That's the action part. As well as obviously researching this action as well, but the physical action is to go out and run. So the next step is to, it might just involve just walking out your front door and going for a 200 meter run down to the bottom of your street and then building that up. from there. It might involve going out and getting the correct food for your nutrition, your diet. It might involve going out and buying certain equipment which is going to help for your recovery. Quite often the action part is the hardest bit to do. You know, we can have this idea. Yeah, I'm going to do that. That's not an issue. I'm going to, all you do is this, this, this, and this. And then it comes to the action part and we're like I can't. We make excuses. We make excuses that we can't do it. By booking my flights, I took the action to say that I was going. You know, I had invested 1600 quid. For my, to my flights there and back. So suddenly I had what people say, the skin in the game, but yeah, it's action. For my, for my own perspective, action is about just starting off small, starting off nice and small and building up from there. Because if we take small action, it's easy to accomplish. We can then become consistent at the action side of things. So you might not want to go six weeks. Initially to New Zealand, which is right beside the wa, beside the world. So you might decide that, you know what, I'm gonna go for a two for a a a one night up to the late district. I live in the uk. Or you might decide that you go to go to Europe or a two or three day break. That might be your first start. These, these adventures of traveling. Also, there's the idea that without action, we do not get results. In, in, I hear it, I don't know, I maybe, I maybe I got this wrong, but I'm going to say it anyway. Some people think that they can just focus in their head and visualize and all will happen. Again, we can visualize, then without the action, we don't get anywhere. But then at the same time, we can take action, but with no direction, we end up going like that. And we get nowhere. So alongside action, we need a direction. So my direction was to go to New Zealand. And so, for example, with a new job, you have to have an idea of what you want to do. Because otherwise, you can buy this massive, massive list of jobs. And you're like, Oh my word, what do I do? And that's when we get overwhelmed. So let's go over the main key steps. Of really stepping into a new adventure. The first thing is to decide. The second thing is to research. And plan. The third is to prepare, so which, which means to take to dictate the action. And then the fourth step is action. So that's the end of this episode. I hope. I hope it helps. Please, please let me know. Please let me know if it helps, because the more that I know it helps, then the easier. I can find the easier is for me to know what people want. And if I know what people want, then I can help them more. So if you like the episode, please share with your friends and family. And if you have any If you have any, if you, if this episode's helped you, leave me a testimonial, leave me, leave me, leave a rating, because the more that you are able to leave ratings and testimonials, the more people are going to pick up on this, and the more that I'm able to help more and more people, because at the end of the day, this is what I'm doing, I'm here to help. So please share with your friends and family, and please, if you enjoyed the episode and it helped, leave a review and give a testimonial. And I look forward to bringing in next week's episode, which will be a guest speaker. So thank you very much and have a great day.