Shelagh Meagher's Blog, page 8

How Adventuresome Are You?

I warn you right off the bat, it’s a trick question. It tricked me.

When I first started down this road of creating The Practical Woman’s Guide to Living an Adventuresome Life, I considered myself an adventuresome person. And it’s true; I am. I’ve ridden the Mongolian steppes solo, learned to fly tiny airplanes, raised my kids in Italy. Big stuff. Yay me. But along the way I discovered two things:

1. Adventures that do not seem ‘big’ in scope can sometimes be really, really hard to accomplish.

2. The adventuresome scale is slippery and just because you’re adventuresome in some things doesn’t mean you are across the board.

Not the only way to be daring.

This was a rather humbling eye-opener. Google “adventure images” and you’ll be amazed at how many involve leaving the ground or at least perching on a precipice so it feels as though you’ve left it. But some of the toughest ones are more internal; they have to do with personal appearance, and love, and speaking up, and other such emotional challenges.

Well thank goodness I’ve been creating The Guide, because it’s taught me a ton of useful stuff that works in all those areas, not just for getting up the nerve to perch on a precipice (which, by the way, I don’t actually want to do, but it does make for a thrilling photo). One of the best lessons: now that I understand what tools I use to get myself on those ‘big’ adventures, I can use them to get on with the internal ones, too.

I never suspected when I started that I was going to be my own most fervent student. So how adventuresome am I now? The answer is: it depends. But I’m learning.

How a Pink Coat is Like Climbing Everest

How is buying (and wearing) my pink coat is just like climbing Everest?

I used the same tools to get there as adventurers use for bigger things:

You don’t have to be Barbie to do it.

Clear motivation: Newly separated after 30 years of marriage, I wanted to look pretty.

Dream porn: I saw a pink coat in an ad for a high-end store. No way I could afford it, but it did crystallize my desire.

Risk assessment I: Beyond cost, pink is for young, girlie women. I am neither. Scary.

Guidance of a master: A silver-haired fellow chorister wears a red coat I’ve always thought looked fabulous. That’s close to pink, so if she can do it so can I.

Sussing alternatives to overcome obstacles: Found my coat while in Zara. Affordable, yay!

Risk assessment II: Worst that can happen at this point is to try it on and look ridiculous. I can handle that.

Support of cheerleaders: Tried it on in front of my daughter, whose jaw dropped. In a really good way.

Result: Every day, people compliment me on my coat and say how nice it is to see colour in winter. I feel not only pretty but like I’m doing the world a service. Awesome.

Which of these tools can you use to make your adventures happen?

How Our Neanderthal Brains Stifle Our Longings

Here’s the crazy but totally true thing about acting on our desires: When there’s a scary bit to them, we perceive the risks to be bigger than they actually are, and the rewards smaller. Result? We get nowhere.

Thinking up a plan to avoid disaster.

That’s our inner caveman at work. Our Neanderthal forebears survived by being good at avoiding disaster, so it’s no wonder we’ve got that hard-wired into our brains.

There are only two possible kinds of errors: false positives and false negatives. (Yes, only two, even if it feels as though you’ve experienced a hundred.)

The caveman’s false positive goes like this: You think that’s a sabretooth tiger hiding in the grass over there. You go with a friend, spears raised, to investigate. Turns out it’s just a rock. Whew. You survive, you procreate.

The false negative goes like this: You don’t see anything amiss in the grass over there. You wander over by yourself, spear lowered, while picking at your fingernails. Turns out there is actually a sabretooth tiger there, although he closely resembled a rock just moments ago. You get eaten. You don’t procreate.

It’s easy to see why we’ve been carefully crafted by nature to assume the worst when it comes to our personal wellbeing.

But avoiding disaster is not the same as avoiding risk. Risk-avoidance is the lazy person’s way of staying out of trouble. I’m pretty sure we wouldn’t have invented fire or airplanes or electricity if we’d just spent all our time staying safe.  And I’m pretty sure you’re not getting everything you want out of life, either, if you’re avidly avoiding risk.

Ok, you might be thinking, that’s great for getting it wrong, but what about the guys who thought there was a tiger and were right about it? They survived and procreate, too. Good catch. What was their trick? It wasn’t staying inside the cave. They survived by recognizing the potential risk and planning for it.

Preparation is the adventuresome person’s way to staying out of trouble. Or at least surviving it while escaping the cave.

Why Affirmations Could Be Killing Your Dreams

A lot of people love practicing affirmations. But beware: they can lull you into thinking you’re doing something to move your dreams forward, even when you’re not. When you stand in front of the mirror and tell yourself things are different than they are, or you are someone different than you are – without including concrete action – you’re falling for the triumph of hope over reality.

I am uplifted by action

The problem with affirmations is they’re often the only thing a person does to make a change in their life. And that makes them about as useful as waving a fairy wand about and hoping its magic is real. Affirmations lack the key ingredient of proof.  

Confirmations, on the other hand, move you and your dreams forward.

When you actually show yourself that you can accomplish something you didn’t think you could, you have very powerful proof of your own capability.

Any tangible movement in your chosen direction, the smallest step, can give you this treasure. Currently paralyzed with fear? Try recalling a past action where you proved your pluck. Then you get to stand in front of the mirror (if you like that) and say this is a woman who has actually demonstrated that she is capable of doing what she wants to do. That’s a confirmation. Way better than affirmations. 

Clinical psychologists will tell you confirmations are key to building self-efficacy, or the ability to believe that you can actually do something. Adventuresome people will tell you they’ve been doing them for years. With or without the mirror.

Affirm if it makes you feel good. Then go and actually do something, even a little thing, that you didn’t think you could. And see how truly capable you start to feel.

Energy Vampires

In honour of Halloween I’m writing about the potentially life-draining effects of well-intentioned loved ones who are concerned for our well-being: the dreaded Energy Vampires. How can we cope when people who love us want to talk us down from our dreams?

Consider for a moment some reasons why your energy vampires might be doing the big suck:

They’re worried you’ll be hurt and want to protect you
They’re worried you’ll succeed and be changed, leading to shifts in your relationship that they might not like.

Vampires used to be less hunky than they are now.

#1

Is this an insidious lack of confidence in your abilities or just a fearful, knee-jerk reaction? It can be really poisonous to let yourself believe it’s the first thing. Ask them what dangers they think you face and what they think you’ll need to do to be successful. Involving them can help ease their fears as much as your own.

#2

You will change. That’s part of the point. If you have a loved one who’s worried about that, can you get them to do something exciting themselves, or come along on your adventure? You both get to grow and share your experiences that way.

Anyone who’s watched The Vampire Diaries knows that vampires aren’t evil. They’re often pretty adorable. But when they lean in for your precious blood, you get to chose how you deal with them.

Cat Power

This is not a gratuitous use of cats in a post just because everyone knows cats rule the ‘net and guarantee eyeballs on your content. Really. I’ve been thinking about the ways in which my cat manages to get everything he wants and needs in life, with very little angst. Maybe there’s a reason the ancient Egyptians worshipped them. They know stuff.

Yes I am magnificent. Now feed me.

Like what?

1. The Stare. First posted on facebook and an immediate hit, this is the look of complete confidence. Just practicing that look could help give a person the feeling.

2. Relaxation Techniques. Even people who are not cat people have to admit that cats have this down pat. I look at my cat lolling on a sunny flagstone in the middle of winter, literally soaking up what’s good about the day, and appreciate that bit of sun more myself. People spend decades on yoga and meditation training for what a cat accomplishes naturally at least 20 hours of every day. Of-the-moment bliss and gratitude.

Blissed anytime, anywhere.

3. Tenacity. Whether they’re demanding that you feed them or they’re out catching their own grub, a cat will always do what it takes to get its essential goodies. They will wait for ages for that mouse to reappear. We won’t talk about what happens when it does – not something I want to emulate. But the part about getting there is impressive.

Unswerving focus.

4. Boundary Setting. My cat is very affectionate – one of his most endearing traits – but when he doesn’t feel like physical engagement, he makes it very clear. The Stare helps. If I’m being a little thick about his message he finds more forceful ways to get the point across. Rarely drawing blood and never ruining our relationship. That’s something worth learning.

Now all I have to do is figure out how cats do all this.

Everything to Gain

Not sure I can be bothered.

Adventuring is hard. Climbing Everest, ditching that lousy job, daring to wear the bright pink sweater – whatever your dream, it takes guts and planning to make it happen (even the sweater). So why bother?

Here are some reasons why our contributors have made the effort:

I was at a change-point in my life and needed to do something different to understand what I wanted.
I was stalled in my own progress and needed to do something big to push myself in a forward direction.
I really just needed to get out of the house and do something lovely and social with the high likelihood that wine would be served. (Whatever gets you going!)

And what did they gain?

It makes me laugh to think what I’ve become!
I gained joy and confidence.
It made me conscious of how consumer oriented we are…you actually need very little to get by in life.

Or, the very best of all:

“Everything.”

Solo Across the Mongolian Steppes

When I was twelve I watched a movie about Ghengis Khan, starring Omar Sharif. That single viewing sparked a life-long dream to ride across the Mongolian steppes. I never had enough money or time to do it. There were so many other priorities in my family and work, how could I just flit off to little-travelled place and indulge in such a crazy fantasy?

A dorky movie spawned a big adventure.

Then I turned fifty. Shazam. I realized that if I didn’t do it soon, my body would never be able to cope with days in the saddle and nights on the ground. And that I’d regret it forever if I didn’t make it happen. That’s a common theme amongst adventurers.

Once it became a priority, it was amazing how the whole thing came together. In fact this is often the case with dreams; once we give them importance we also find ways to make them happen, just like all the other things we accomplish in our lives. My husband minded our little kids, I pulled the money out of a savings pile, I found a specialist group that had managed to take an entire National Geographic team across Mongolian and could probably handle one small, competent horsewoman. Those weren’t small things, but they did turn out to be possible things once I had agreed with my family that this was a priority.

The result? The journey of a lifetime, every bit as breathtaking, fun, and spirit-enhancing as I’d ever imagined. A guide, a translator, a wrangler, our horses, and solo me.

Erstwhile guide and happy adventurer.

Highlights: A vast landscape barely touched by the hand of man. Mongolia’s warm, hospitable people, who welcomed me into their gers and fed me salt tea, warm butter biscuits and other delights. My guide taught me how to sing a Mongolian song about horses and spring (in Mongolian, which sounds like cats spitting and is not easy to grasp). I taught him how to polka – while singing ta-da da dah, ta-da da dah as we had no instrument. Sharing highly potent yak’s milk vodka over campfires with the locals at every overnight stop, I sang ‘I’s The Boy That Builds The Boat’ more times than I can say, by way of cultural exchange (the vodka helped). I tore up the steppe galloping into a brilliant sunset and whooping at the top of my lungs with our young wrangler. Every night I witnessed a star-filled sky of unbelievably high-wattage clarity.

I was both wonderfully myself and wholly someone else entirely, compared to my normal life.

I met an old monk rebuilding a monastery that had been demolished in the time of Stalin and repressed for decades. That story became a novel I spent eight years writing (Pearls in the Ashes), an effort I never imagined when I first started on my Mongolian journey.

So much from one trip, dreamt of for four decades and realized over a two-week span. If I ever doubt my ability to make a dream come true, I think about this trip and understand I can do anything.

And that is the biggest gift of all.

What’s So Scary?

Why don’t we make our adventure-dreams happen? I don’t have the time. I don’t have the money. Great, logical reasons. But typically not the real one: I’m scared to death.

Don’t let him get your toys.

Whether our longed-for adventure is a trip to Italy, sky diving, overhauling our personal look, or switching our career, we often lie to ourselves about why we can’t do them – so we don’t have to face down the boogeyman in our heads. Failure, rejection, ridicule, guilt; the boogeyman wears a lot of hats. Yes, a real lack of money or time might be the actual, bona-fide reason you aren’t doing your thing. But are you sure?

Try the Why exercise to get to where your boogeyman lives so you can bop him on the head. It goes something like this:

I can’t afford a trip to Italy. Why not? Because I have other financial commitments that are more important than my dream. Why? Because I promised each of my children a new laptop computer. Why? Because I feel the need to give them goodies. Why? Because I’m afraid if I don’t they’ll withdraw their love.

Of course, your children are not actually likely to withdraw their love because you chose to spend money on your well-deserved self instead of indulging their desire for updated equipment. They might even shock you by understanding. But it’s a surprisingly common prioritization of money for mothers.

Even if that made-up (but sadly real) example seems far-fetched to you, I can guarantee if you do this little exercise for yourself and keep at it, you’ll discover the real reasons for what’s stopping you. And if it’s a boogeyman, once you identify him you’re halfway to beating him.

How? Take a look at some of the other posts under ‘Tools’ and stay tuned for more boogeyman-busters.

What’s Your Road?

Do you tend to be a straight-to-the-destination kind of person, or is your life more like a scenic meander? There are benefits to both – and to learning when each kind of road is most likely to get you where you want to go.

Gotta get there before dark.

Goal orientation (are we there yet?) is really helpful when you know what you’re doing and you have a will to succeed. Straight-road drivers get where they’re going when they know how to drive and have a fast car. But beware: this kind of goal approach doesn’t take well to hiccups, screw-ups and unforeseen roadblocks. Road rage happens.

The scenic route (I don’t care when I get there, the view is so cool) is the most successful approach when your skills are not 100%. You’re open to experiences along the way. Even roadblocks provide opportunities for learning instead of frustration. Meanderers enjoy the ride and eventually arrive – wherever – with an expanded set of life skills. But they get there slower and the destination isn’t always the one they set out to reach. 

Great scenery, man.

What road are you on for your dream adventure? Think about which one is going to best get you where you want to go.