The Spirit of Adventure
by John Amatt

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Adventure isn't hanging on a rope on the side of a mountain. Adventure is an ATTITUDE that we must apply to the day-to-day obstacles of life - facing new challenges, seizing new opportunities, testing our resources against the unknown and, in the process, discovering our own unique potential.

We are living through one of the great transitional periods of human history, where economic, political and social changes are occurring at lightening speed. In today's business world, the norm is rapid and unrelenting change which threatens to overwhelm us with its intensity. But as Alvin Toffler has noted: "Change is not merely necessary to life. It is life. And by the same token, life is adaptation." So how do we meet the challenge of change and adapt? By learning to view change as a great adventure!

Advances in information technology and communications have come to mean that events taking place at any time, regardless of where on the globe, or what time of day they happen, can influence our daily lives. This true globalisation of the world economy represents one of the great changes in the past century. We cannot stop this change, nor can we ignore it. But we can increase our ability to adapt, to manage change effectively and to learn to benefit from the uncertainty that change creates.

In these rapidly-changing times, the metaphor of adventure offers the perfect vehicle for articulating a strategy which can turn this uncertainty to our advantage. By definition, an adventure is a journey with an uncertain outcome and adventurers are people who actively seek out difficulty in order to stretch their potential against the unknown.

Today, like it or not, the pace of change is forcing us to rediscover the adventurous spirit of our ancestors, as we move from the known world of our previous achievements to the unknown world of future opportunity.

It will take courage, resourcefulness and endurance to meet this challenge - the courage to try, to commit and to take more risks; the resourcefulness to be innovative and creative in finding new ways of doing old things; and the endurance to keep going when everything around you seems to be falling apart. But more than anything, it will be necessary to shake off the limiting bonds of complacency that dominate the lives of so many people in modern society.

In fact, the adventure of life is only to be found by those who continually strive to go one step beyond their previous experiences in search of discovery and new challenges. In the words of Marcel Proust, "The real act of discovery consists not in finding new lands, but in seeing with new eyes." Children do this as a matter of course, but as adults we must constantly force ourselves to remain dissatisfied with the secure world we have created through our previous efforts.

Instead, we should actively seek out difficult challenges and always ask ourselves what we can learn from the struggle. In adopting this philosophy, we will have to take risks, but risks that have been carefully controlled through adequate preparation and analysis - and risks for which the resulting consequences have been carefully considered, acknowledged and personally accepted.

It is this approach that form the roots of the "Adventure Attitude" philosophy, a new paradigm which offers an intriguing approach to happiness, fulfillment and success in the new millennium.

All too often, we see change as a threat, as something to be feared. We are so consumed with the need for certainty and predictability that we fail to accept that change is the only real constant in our lives. As a result, we often don't seek out the opportunities that only change can create until we are forced to do so by some external influence beyond our control, be it economic crisis, political realignment or personal tragedy.

Clearly attitude is the key to success in changing times. We can have all the education, all the knowledge, all the experience in the world, but if we carry the wrong attitude in our minds, we are doomed to failure. The academic world agrees! A recent study of successful people by the Carnegie Institute concluded that 85% of success could be attributed solely to mental attitude.

In short, it's not what you go through in life that makes you what you are; it's how you react to the world your going through that's important. These are the principles which form the basis of my Adventure Attitude philosophy the nine keys of the "Adventure Attitude":

A - Adaptability
D - Desire & Determination
V - Vision & Values
E - Experience
N - Natural Curiosity
T - Teamwork & Trust
U - Unlimited Optimism
R - Risk-Ability
E - Exceptional Performance

Looking at these basic principles, it becomes obvious that fulfillment in life is really quite simple. There are no magic pills which guarantee instant success. Achievement is just the contant process of striving to go "one step beyond" your previous experience; consistently applying a set of clearly-defined principles over a long period of time.

You either change, or you stagnate. You either leap forward, or you fall backward. You cannot stay where you are today!

© John Amatt