We crave adventure.

We need adventure; it keeps our souls alive and invigorated.

I looked up the word adventure and basically it means what you think it means, “an unusual and exciting, typically hazardous, experience or activity.”

I would like to put my own spin on the definition and suggest that not all adventures are exciting.

It’s all in how you frame it.

Let me see if I can explain myself…

Sometimes adventure doesn’t feel good, it can feel like a hard time or a difficult circumstance or any number of things. I guess when I think about the harder things I’ve gone through, I haven’t always called them an adventure, but they were “sometimes hazardous” and definitely an “experience” or “activity.” So… “hard times” could be implied in the textbook definition of adventure.

Obviously there’s discretion in this, I wouldn’t define the loss of someone dear to me as an adventure, not even close. But, I might define difficulty in the workplace as one. When I begin to look at my life through more positive lens, I might be able to see things that are challenging as adventurous. These are things, after all, I can learn from, and , inevitably they will take me to new places physically or emotionally or mentally.

And, to me, that is what an adventure is really all about.

Reframing a hard thing can help us feel as though we have some sense of power over it. I’m not talking about an unhealthy attitude of thinking we can control it, I just mean we won’t feel helpless when we decide it doesn’t have to destroy our well-being.

We get to decide its place of importance.

We can respond to a hard thing as if we’re hand gliding for the first time, slightly terrified yet confident in the wind. No one can control outcome, but we can live expecting the best outcome, or at the very least a decent one. Of course we’ll face disappointment from time to time, but I really believe, more times than not, a positive perspective and adventurous outlook is what gets us through and keeps us smiling.

And it keeps us from getting bored, but, that’s a post for another day. 😉