CLIP: The Attitude of Adventure

Sometimes when people hear about these expeditions, they, or certainly before they've met me,

they think I must be some kind of fearless, special forces kind of superhero. And then they meet me

and they say, I'm just a really ordinary guy. I'm not very strong. I get frightened of things pretty

easily. I'm not particularly clever. I'm just very ordinary middle of the road kind of guy.

And you know, standing up, giving speeches and stuff. I still get terrified doing that sort of thing.

But I think what I figured out sort of intuitively along the way on these expeditions is that it wasn't,

I wasn't going to get through all these obstacles and things through being super tough.

It was more about having the right mindset, what I call the attitude of adventure,

which is just approaching the challenges with the right mindset, the right principles.

And that was really what was key to getting me through things. And that would include things like

when I did have an obstacle in front of me, not to just sort of sit down and just

ruminate on what a big problem it was. But to think of it as a challenge, if I applied myself,

I could figure it out away through it. Things like being very clear about my long-term goal

of trying to get to where I was going, but then breaking that down into shorter goals,

that really helped me to keep going. A practicing self-care, which was, although on an

expedition, you're pushing yourself hard the day after day after day. When I had the chance,

I would try and take a day off because it's so important. When you're pushing yourself hard,

you also look after yourself or eventually you lose your good judgement, you just get too

exhausted to perform well. It's easy to think a lot of these expeditions I've been on my own,

but I always say, although I was alone, I couldn't make it on my own. And I was constantly having to

meet new people, ask them for advice, ask them for help. And that was actually, I think that was

probably the real, the best and most beautiful thing I experienced on these trips was just meeting

the local people in these far-flung places, who so often, whether it was a gold miner in Russia

or a bike mechanic in Iran or wherever I was, total strangers would invite me in that insist

on having me to stay, they'd feed me, they'd look after me. And there was so much kindness out there.

I just, I couldn't, you know, I had to remember, I don't have to make it on my own. It was a wonderful

experience. And I think it does apply, you know, I reflect a lot on this, how it applies to normal life.

I think all those things I'm mentioning, which you need to get through an expedition, that those

attitudes make such a difference in life, including self-discipline because that's key on an

expedition, you know, you've got to be disciplined to do that, or you're, you're kind of

slip behind schedule and all sorts of other problems.