Life is complex. To navigate it, clever humans have come up with many tips and tricks to work through the complexities. But none are more powerful than this ultimate #lifehack…
Life can be hard, confusing, unjust. Even outright depressing.
Each of us is born into this world trying to make some sense of it and we are all on our own journey to figure it out.
Where did we come from? What is our purpose? Where do we go when we die?
These questions aren’t easy to answer and school certainly doesn’t prepare us with the tools to affectively work through them. So what do we do about it? How do we make sense of our lives and answer life’s greatest questions?
The greatest life hack of all time can help. Let’s get started.
Adventure
Science has shown us that the experience of adventure can be one of the best ways to induce happiness. And if you are a traveler or adventurer, I’m confident you’d agree.
Going on adventures isn’t just about the physical journey of going to new places. There is an internal journey too.
Seeing new places or countries and experiencing different environments and cultures transports us both in the outer-physical world, and the inner-personal one.
To put if frankly: adventures can change us. It’s one of the few things that has the power to alter our personality and transform our consistently stubborn opinions and mental schemas.
Being exposed to different ways of living and having novel experiences disrupts our regular brain patterns and we perceive reality in a new light. New environments teach us to think in ways we are not accustomed to and therefore change our perception of life because we are altering the way in which we think and relate to it.
The best part is, you don’t have to fly across the world to reap the benefits of adventure. Instead, visit a new place in your city, take a mini road-trip a few hours away, or have a micro-adventure and camp right in your backyard.
Adventuring stands alone as one of the greatest life hacks of all time but what if I told you there was a way to take this a step further?
The Ultimate Life Hack
Take a step back from your life and try to perceive it from an outside perspective: What is it you currently need? Where is there a deficit that you need to fill?
What do you need to become happier?
Surely it’s not money or things. Time and again, research has shown us that once our income reaches a certain point, money doesn’t really increase our happiness. And neither does buying the newest trending gadget or fashion accessory.
Pretty cool, right?
Experiences not only make you happier than buying stuff, they decrease anxiety, depression & somatic problems.
So what is the Ultimate Life Hack?
The process of combining therapeutic benefits of adventure with the things you need in your life.
It is conscious adventuring, guided wandering, planned spontaneity.
It is healing your past by seeking what you need — while experiencing something new — and subsequently improving your future.
Here’s how you do it.
Seek Conscious Adventures
I use the term, ‘conscious adventures’ to express the idea of mindfully adventuring to fill a void in your life.
If you’ve been really busy and feel overwhelmed, perhaps you need to lounge in a hammock on the beach or find some trees to hang in on your lunch break.
Are you craving spontaneity? Fly or drive to an unfamiliar place for a few days with zero plans on what you should do.
Need to break out of a rut? Go adventure in a foreign place or create a micro-adventure in your own town.
You will be reaping all of the benefits of travel while customizing the experience to match what you specifically need and can afford in your life.
Conscious adventuring truly is the Ultimate Life Hack.
Check out this awesome video by The School Of Life that expresses this exact concept in detail:
Now get out there and create your own conscious adventure. And remember, you just may find it in your own backyard…
Images courtesy of Pexels.
Originally published at medium.com