The Internet is awash with glitzy, highly-polished tales of jaw-dropping adventures in stunning and exotic locations, illustrated with often wonderful pictures. That’s the show-reel, to draw you in. Do not for one moment think all adventures are like that!
Sooner or later, something will go badly wrong on an adventure. That’s all part of the adventure (even if at the time it might be Type 2 fun!)
Setting yourself up for failure
You can walk into any travel agent’s shop, and buy a package holiday. Sure, they’ll ask a few questions about your expectations and budget, then present you with a ready-made holiday. All you have to do is pay up and get yourself on the flight.
Many people look at adventure in a similar manner, and might say something like “Oh, I thought I’d buy the ‘Visit Basecamp and view Everest’ long week-end break this year”. Don’t make that same mistake! (Also, try and avoid flying, and for the love of all that’s good, stay away from Everest! It’s already enough of a rubbish dump!)
When you look at an adventure as a package holiday, you expect no more and no less than what was shown in the brochure. If you do that, you’re robbing yourself blind!
What is failure?
If you set yourself an absolute and singular goal of cycling around the world, and something happened to stop you from completing it, did you fail? Or did you simply not achieve one arbitrary goal, while having an amazing adventure?
Change your perspective! Travel should be ALL about the journey. The destination is a nice-to-have, but shouldn’t matter all that much overall. Focus on the journey!
When you do that, and for whatever reason you don’t reach your original destination, it was still a fantastic adventure, instead of a failure. You will be far better prepared on a mental level, and be able to more easily shake off setbacks.
Change your mindset
Failure would be never going on an adventure, for fear of somehow “failing”. Failure would be to think whether or not you achieved some arbitrary goal defines you as a human being. Failure would be to attach your sense of self-value to the outcome of your chosen adventure. Don’t do that to yourself!