Boundless Leadership: Now Is The Perfect Time To Take On A New Personal Quest

Earlier this year I sat on the top of Mt Feathertop, Victoria’s second highest peak after camping there solo overnight to witness the end of one day and the beginning of another over the lower sections of the Australian Alps.  That morning colour seeped through the dark until the golden orb blazed awake.  Another day, a gift to enjoy! So many possibilities, pure amazement at this sight, a moment of a true sense of being boundless.
 
Life continues with or without our approval: the sun rises, the wind trails it’s fingers along the earth’s surface. Today is the southern hemisphere’s spring equinox, where the light of day equals the light of darkness – that shift where the Earth tilts towards the sun and the light begins to grow again.  It is all such a miracle and a gift to savour.
 
And yet we become oblivious to the sheer gorgeousness of it all.  We get wrapped up in routine, cocooned in comfortability and immersed in our own niggling and persistent woes.  The stories we tell about our lives affects the quality of our experience.  How we create ourselves in the narrative of our life matters.  Do we see ourselves as hapless victims, at the mercy of dispassionate fate …. Or do we see ourselves as captains of our own ship, setting course for unknown distant shores?  When we put ourselves front and centre in the starring movie of our life, which has a one hundred year or so running time, it sharpens our focus.
 
The human experience is a mere blink in the experience of the universe, so let’s have some fun while we’re still here!  And so we come to the present moment.  It’s an opportunity to set a new quest.  To claim a new sense of authorship over our experience.  To determine a new goal, a new result we want to achieve, a new sense of who we are and who we might become.  Escape-And-Explore is undergoing such a change presently from now until the end of the year.  Here are some of our quest guidelines –
 
Determine Who You Want To Be:
 
All results come from conceiving a future state, and requires us to be that person now.  Identity drives actions, and actions determine results.  What values does your future self hold?  What do they believe about themselves?  The world? Others? What routines and habits do they have?  Create a clear picture of this person, future you, so it can become NOW you.  If you don’t do this work first, you’ll never get the results you want.
 
Choose The Results You Wish To Experience:
 
Future you has some pretty cool experiences and results to enjoy. What are they?  Get clear on the end game.  What’s good about it?  What’s meaningful? What does it look like?  Sound like?  Feel like? Taste like?  Elite athletes and high performers use this technique all the time as a part of their training rituals to envision success.  When you bring the end game to life in vivid detail it becomes more real and attainable to you.
 
Troubleshoot It:
 
Things will happen that will want to derail you.  Things like other people.  Other people can be threatened by your change.  If you are undertaking a significant quest, it can push their jealousy buttons.  People will want to keep you in a box that is familiar because familiar is safe.  Be prepared for resistance.  Know what to say when the naysayers cut you down.  Prepare also for your own self-sabotage.  Your inner gremlin doesn’t like change anymore than the naysayers sometimes!  Know that the gremlin will want to get in the driver’s seat and steer you off course.  Be ready for this.  When they start their negative self-talk and seductive chat of ‘just give up’, be ready to acknowledge them and invite them into the passenger seat to enjoy the ride.  New You is in charge.
 
Negotiate:
 
Undertaking a quest means gaining something incredible!  Whatever the result you choose, be they business goals or personal fitness goals, this gain will also mean a loss.  What are you prepared to lose in order to gain the results of the quest?  You might give up negative self-talk, self-sabotage, worry, doubt, fear.  You might give up excess weight, fatigue and disappointment.  You might also have to give up chocolate, butter, alcohol, sleeping in or watching hours of Netflix every night.  You might also have to give up toxic relationships.  A quest means leaving familiar shores, so one of the more important things you are going to have to give up is being comfortable.  Be prepared to be uncomfortable with being uncomfortable.  I’ve done a lot of yacht racing and when those winds come up, we adjust our sails, lean into them but we stay on course.
 
Launch:
 
Just get started.  No one needs to know what you’re doing.  Don’t let the naysayers chip away at you before you get going.  Set up the habits and routine of Future You and take some baby steps to test it out.  Want to run a marathon?  Get your running gear on and head out for a few mornings each week, walking or shuffling, getting used to what ‘Marathon You’ does on a daily basis.  This habit matters first.  Amp it up later. Under promise and over deliver.  This is the best way not to freak out the gremlin.
 
Play:
 
Don’t go hard ass on yourself.  A quest is about getting us to explore who we might be, to play with the edge of possibility, to remind us that we are boundless creatures, that we can experience and create a multiplicity of future selves.  You can’t stuff it up.  Being alive is already the greatest achievement …. So enjoy it.
 
Escape-And-Explore believes and professionally focusses on this exploration of self.  Contact us for further information on how we can help you with being boundless in your personal quest.  What are we up to?  We’re off on our own boundless quest to distant shores!  Never stop learning, never stop growing.  Challenge is the pinnacle of experience.

Krissy 

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