As a child of immigrants, I grew up with a pretty linear definition of what it meant to be successful.You went to school, maintained excellent grades, secured a good job (preferably as a doctor, lawyer or engineer). Then you worked hard, moving up the ladder until retirement. Along the way you got married, had a family and bought a big house in the suburbs with enough space for your family to come visit.
As you can guess, there wasn’t a lot of wiggle room.
In my mid twenties, I had the blueprint down and was checking things off my list when it hit me… this was not the life I wanted to live.
This definition of success was slowly killing me. How was it possible to hate a “successful” life?
Luckily, with some self analyzing and deep diving into what truly made me happy, I was able to create a new blueprint for myself, Nailah’s Blueprint. It wasn’t long before more joy and less anxiety were reintroduced to my life.
It’s the same thing with adventure.
We have a pretty concrete idea of what it means to live more adventurously. What’s worse is we have a pretty narrow idea of whodeserves to have an adventurous life. Have kids? Adventure is not for you. Not a trust fund kid? Sorry, no adventure for you. Single woman with no one to travel with? Guess you’re stuck at home. Not a single, white dude? Adventure is out of the cards.
Who is making up these rules?
The same way you get to decide what success looks like for you, you also get to choose what an adventurous lifestyle means for you. Maybe you love the outdoors, but are lukewarm on the whole winter thing. No problem, you get your hot coca on and we’ll see you in March. Perhaps your idea of thrill-seeking is riding your bike down new trails. Awesome, get your bike on, girl.
There’s no need to follow someone else’s path or to measure their heart-pounding thrills against your own. You get to choose your own adventure.
N-