Find Adventure Where You Are
Every place you go is different from the next, you just have to have the perspective to be open to it.
Up until college, my family moved around quite often around the U.S. We moved from large cities to small towns back to large cities, and back again to small towns.
With every move, my parents had a routine down on making a new home. My dad would go ahead to the next town/city, find a house and schools for my brother and me. My mom would finish up packing up our life, and move us across the country to our new home. There was always some sadness about leaving a place you call home, people you call friends, and a place of comfort. But the sadness never lasted too long.
My mom always made it a point to find the beauty of every new place and what made it unique. Soon after the moving boxes were unpacked, my mom would take us around the area. She always found a way of making our new home a place of adventure.
Here are some lessons from these experiences:
Don’t Compare: Every place you go to is different from the next. You take out the fun of a new place if you compare the people, size, look, or vibe of every place you go.
Find What Makes It Unique: You will always find chain restaurants and bars in most places where you go. But every place has a story with its founding. The good and the bad are in every place. Talking with locals can go a long way.
Challenge Your Own Expectations: We limit our experiences when we expect places to be a certain way, the people we meet to behave a certain way and underestimate the experiences we have.
Whether you are new to a city (or country) or you have been living there all your life, it never hurts to take another look at the home and find something new to explore. Adventure doesn’t need to mean backpacking across Europe, hiking in the mountains, or “escaping” your daily life. Finding adventure where you are can enhance your daily life and help to balance the mundane nature of day-to-day life.
