The Doorstep Mile: Live More Adventurously Every Day

• Write a letter of advice from your 80-year-old self to you today.

Am I too busy to move to Africa for a year? • Am I too busy to cross Iceland for a month? • Am I too busy to go biking in Scotland for a week? • Am I too busy to camp out this weekend? • Am I too busy to climb a small hill and watch the sunset? • Am I too busy to go for a run at lunchtime? • Am I too busy to swim in a river before breakfast? • Am I

OVER TO YOU • What should you work on more slowly than your impatient side wants you to?

• I’m always torn between what society says someone my age should be doing, the fear of not knowing what my future self might need and living in the present.

OVER TO YOU • What practical barriers stand in your way? • What mental barriers have you built up? • Which concerns can be shunted further down the line? Think of the most significant thing blocking you from living adventurously. • Now ask these questions, known as the Dickens Process: • What has that barrier cost you in your life so far? • What is

OVER TO YOU • List all the ‘no buts’ you were shouting at me.

How do you define ‘failure’? • Is this definition sufficient cause to not attempt something bold?

the newsletter at www.alastairhumphreys.com/living-adventurously) • I feel guilty/selfish/it’s not fair on my family! (49%) • I don’t have enough money! (38%) • I’ve got nobody to do adventurous stuff with! (37%) • I worry about making the wrong choice! (29%) • I don’t know how to begin! (24%) • I feel like an imposter! I’ll fail! (23%) • I’m scare

A liberating side effect of spending the next few years on the road was that I realised there is no such thing as the right way to live. Travel shows you many different versions of ‘normal’. Pedal far enough from your front door and you eventually become an exotic specimen yourself. There is no correct route through life. There is no ideal lifestyl