Play | Try new things

How to have adventures

This month will be all about play: Children do it all the time and even in adults it serves many functions: Social bonding, emotional regulation, higher creativity, productivity and ultimately higher life satisfaction. We will cut it up into the five dimensions of adult play: Adventure, restoration, engagement, fun, mastery, starting with adventure.

Switching things up with the podcast: Instead of inviting guests we’ll try to narrate the same content as in the post, just in our own voices.

How to have adventures

Try novel experiences

Getting out of your comfort zone to experience something new helps to break monotony and thereby combat burnout, builds higher tolerance against uncertainty, builds agency and increases our openness and curiosity.

• Pick one: fix your plumbing, buy a random bus ticket, crash a stranger's wedding, enter an eating contest, join a random protest, … prompt AI to create an absurd and unhinged list. Can’t decide? Roll the dice on it to make it truly random.

• Grab a friend: Doing something new can feel scary but doing it together actually strengthens your bond by living through that slightly scary thing together. Bonus points for picking this for your second date.

• Integrate: Process the new experience in a way that works for you: Journal, tell stories to a friend, go through your pictures: Was there something in there that you can take with you to your day-to-day life? Schedule regular time for these?

Play within your day

Going on adventures is fun but to try something new you don’t even need to make much time for it - you can just stay in your routines and add spice to them:

• Work: Can you do an existing task differently? Try a new AI tool? Work with somebody you haven’t worked with before? Try sales? Work from a new spot? Grab lunch at a different spot?

• Life: What’s a show you’d never watch? Something you could cook that you never tried? A new type of sports class? Something your friends do you could join them on? A new activity you could explore with your kids?

• Take it easy: When trying something new in our existing patterns we can sometimes feel that we “should” know how to do something or already be good at something. Try to find areas where you can explore without risk and truly play.

Go on an adventure in your mind

For one of the biggest adventures you can go on, you can just stay on your couch. Psychedelic trips (LSD/mushrooms/ayahuasca) have been shown to have significant and lasting effects on one’s openness to experience, life satisfaction, and fear of death.

• Substance: If you are curious, starting with very low doses and slowly working your way up works best. Every body is different, this allows you to learn what works for you. Always test your drugs and study the risks.

• Set: Prepare your mind through enough sleep, intention setting, feeling comfortable, readiness to accept whatever comes up. Working with an experienced and trustworthy facilitator great way to prepare both set and setting.

• Setting: The environment you’re in, the people you’re with, the greater environment you’re in. Doing this in a country where it’s legal with people you trust in a cozy house in nature with calming music is what you’re aiming for here.

Plan your own adventure right now

• Pick a thing from the list: Which sounded most fun?

• Find somebody to do this with - text the idea to a friend.

• Commit money on actually doing it