Where’s the adventure?

To live life to its full involves bringing a sense of adventure into the everyday; of taking ourselves to the edge of our self-confidence. It’s the place that Joseph Campbell calls “Crossing the Threshold” on the Hero’s Journey (see chapter 3 of my book Building Self-Confidence for Dummies). From this point we can choose to move forward into the unknown or sit around allowing life to happen to us.

But you don’t need to climb thousands of feet in the Himalayas or sky-dive to have an adventure. Adventure simply takes focus and determination, qualities that we can bring to everyday projects and relationships. It begins with that simple intention to step over the invisible threshold and engage with what’s there with a sense of curiosity, letting go of our self-consciousness on the way.

Last month I ran a weekend workshop with my husband, Bob (pictured here with a couple of dophin friends!) Called ‘Clear Mind. Clear Body,’ we created a space for self-exploration that combined our respective interests in yoga and writing. We booked the date, hired a venue, sent out invitations, planned a series of activities to stretch mind and body, cooked up healthy food and loaded the car with yoga mats and writing pads. A small expedition in deepest Berkshire here in the UK.

(The next one is on 8th May, contact me if you're interested.)

As in the classic Kevin Costner film ‘Field of Dreams’ when you create the space, people come. On the way to the workshop I felt the butterflies dancing in my stomach saying: ‘Why am I doing this?’ On the way home, with a deep sense of contentment, I remembered why. Our guests had fun and left with a renewed sense of calm and focus in their busy lives. The event centred, not on our fears, but on our confidence that we could contribute something that others found valuable.

Our small Berkshire adventure into the unknown became an adventure for others to discover what they’d like their lives to be like this year. Such is the ripple effect.

At its heart, confidence is an adventurous act, a willingness to commit to an uncertain outcome with an open heart and open mind. In this sense opportunities to be adventurous present themselves to us every day. Walking a new route to the shops, trying a new food for lunch, signing up for a class you’ve never taken before, volunteering your time for a charity, introducing yourself to someone new at work or talking to a stranger in a café. One small adventure builds on the next; this is how confidence grows.

Life is uncertain, accepting it and seeing this inbuilt uncertainty as the doorway to new possibilities lies at the heart of the adventure. So often, we are the barrier that gets in our own way. I invite you to look for new small adventures in the everyday of your life. Keep a diary for a month of the small things you’ve done that take you over that threshold. Have fun and let me know how you get on.

Thaw begins on 1st March

Ruth's diary is the new novel by my friend Fiona Robyn, called Thaw. She has decided to blog the novel in its entirety over the next few months, so you can read it for free.

Ruth's first entry is below, and you can continue reading tomorrow here.

These hands are ninety-three years old. They belong to Charlotte Marie Bradley Miller. She was so frail that her grand-daughter had to carry her onto the set to take this photo. It’s a close-up. Her emaciated arms emerge from the top corners of the photo and the background is black, maybe velvet, as if we’re being protected from seeing the strings. One wrist rests on the other, and her fingers hang loose, close together, a pair of folded wings. And you can see her insides.The bones of her knuckles bulge out of the skin, which sags like plastic that has melted in the sun and is dripping off her, wrinkling and folding. Her veins look as though they’re stuck to the outside of her hands. They’re a colour that’s difficult to describe: blue, but also silver, green; her blood runs through them, close to the surface. The book says she died shortly after they took this picture. Did she even get to see it? Maybe it was the last beautiful thing she left in the world.I’m trying to decide whether or not I want to carry on living. I’m giving myself three months of this journal to decide. You might think that sounds melodramatic, but I don’t think I’m alone in wondering whether it’s all worth it. I’ve seen the look in people’s eyes. Stiff suits travelling to work, morning after morning, on the cramped and humid tube. Tarted-up girls and gangs of boys reeking of aftershave, reeling on the pavements on a Friday night, trying to mop up the dreariness of their week with one desperate, fake-happy night. I’ve heard the weary grief in my dad’s voice.So where do I start with all this? What do you want to know about me? I’m Ruth White, thirty-two years old, going on a hundred. I live alone with no boyfriend and no cat in a tiny flat in central London. In fact, I had a non-relationship with a man at work, Dan, for seven years. I’m sitting in my bedroom-cum-living room right now, looking up every so often at the thin rain slanting across a flat grey sky. I work in a city hospital lab as a microbiologist. My dad is an accountant and lives with his sensible second wife Julie, in a sensible second home. Mother finished dying when I was fourteen, three years after her first diagnosis. What else? What else is there?Charlotte Marie Bradley Miller. I looked at her hands for twelve minutes. It was odd describing what I was seeing in words. Usually the picture just sits inside my head and I swish it around like tasting wine. I have huge books all over my flat — books you have to take in both hands to lift. I’ve had the photo habit for years. Mother bought me my first book, black and white landscapes by Ansel Adams. When she got really ill, I used to take it to bed with me and look at it for hours, concentrating on the huge trees, the still water, the never-ending skies. I suppose it helped me think about something other than what was happening. I learned to focus on one photo at a time rather than flicking from scene to scene in search of something to hold me. If I concentrate, then everything stands still. Although I use them to escape the world, I also think they bring me closer to it. I’ve still got that book. When I take it out, I handle the pages as though they might flake into dust.Mother used to write a journal. When I was small, I sat by her bed in the early mornings on a hard chair and looked at her face as her pen spat out sentences in short bursts. I imagined what she might have been writing about — princesses dressed in star-patterned silk, talking horses, adventures with pirates. More likely she was writing about what she was going to cook for dinner and how irritating Dad’s snoring was.I’ve always wanted to write my own journal, and this is my chance. Maybe my last chance. The idea is that every night for three months, I’ll take one of these heavy sheets of pure white paper, rough under my fingertips, and fill it up on both sides. If my suicide note is nearly a hundred pages long, then no-one can accuse me of not thinking it through. No-one can say, ‘It makes no sense; she was a polite, cheerful girl, had everything to live for,’ before adding that I did keep myself to myself. It’ll all be here. I’m using a silver fountain pen with purple ink. A bit flamboyant for me, I know. I need these idiosyncratic rituals; they hold things in place. Like the way I make tea, squeezing the tea-bag three times, the exact amount of milk, seven stirs. My writing is small and neat; I’m striping the paper. I’m near the bottom of the page now. Only ninety-one more days to go before I’m allowed to make my decision. That’s it for today. It’s begun.

Continue reading here.

Ten top tips to close down creativity

Many of the people I work with in organisations are under immense pressure to perform miracles. Too much to be done in the allocated time. Unrealistic understanding of the real work and time involved. Expectations that they should be innovative, inspirational, creative, confident and competent - all of the time.

With the pressure so creativity declines. That's why the Saturday afternoon workshops; Clear Mind. Clear Body as well as the writers' events are so popular.

Stop for a moment to consider how your creativity suffers. Here are some of the ways I get in my own way.

1. Get too tired. Know that feeling of working late when you should be relaxing and winding down?



2. Eat sugar. Drink caffeine. How did I get tempted by coffee and a biscuit instead of water and fruit?
   


3. Take on extra work. That little word 'no' went missing.
   


4. Spend time with energy vampires. Again, I could have said 'no' to that invitation that didn't appeal.



5. Beat myself up for what I haven't achieved. Why not see the successes?
   


6. Compare myself with others. When I know their world is so different to mine.
   


7. Worry. About stuff that won't matter later.
   


8. Forget to go out and play. How dull is that?
   


9. Feel there's no time, so don't get started. Even ten minutes is worth getting started for.
   


10. Cut out the clear thinking time. When I know how these moments of space are so important.

I also know how unblock my creativity by turning these situations on their heads. Here's how:

First - Write down how you get in the way of your creativity as I've just done here.

Second - Take each statement in turn, flip it upside down and find the opposite situation.

Third - Identify one thing to do differently.

As an example, my number one of 'Get too tired' flips to 'Get too much rest'. OK, that's unlikely to happen. Yet, one thing I can do differently is to take a lie in or afternoon nap when I feel the tiredness builds. It's really that simple. And it's amazing just how it can feel wonderfully indulgent resting up a bit and how much faster the creativity flows afterwards.

The Safe Haven

When my house was built back in the 1920s, it was the fashion to give houses of this kind names like 'Dunroamin' or in our case 'Sunnyhaven.' It was built in an area of woodland where folks came out of London for weekend retreats.

Last week on Saturday, a group of would be book writers came out of town to join the first of this year's Kick-Start writers' workshops. It's a friendly format and a retreat from business life at the weekend. Time to let go of logic and allow the creativity to emerge on the page. When we make the writing fun, it flows and we're surprised at what happens.

One writer sent a thank you email that evening that she had been surprised to write the story she's never written before. 'Thank you for opening your home and providing the sanctuary.'

In my new book, Live Life. Love Work, I write about my belief that we all need a safe place to come home to. How lucky I am to be able to provide that safe space for others, and nurture my own creativity at teh same time. By the Sunday morning after each workshop, I'm buzzing with ideas to drop onto the page from this 'Sunnyhaven.'