The Savvy Life

MSN had an article the other day that I found intriguing. As I get older, I pay more attention to things like nutrition because I am a bit more aware of the causal relationship between diet and health. I spent a good portion of my twenties thinking I didn’t have to worry about what I ate. Then when I suddenly gained forty pounds and saw how what I ate affected my emotional state, I took a keen interest in all things food. Which of course led to a keen interest in cooking and thus a food afficienado was born.

Enough of the history and back to the nutrition discussed in the article. The title of the piece, “What Men Should Eat Every Day” is a bit limiting, because if you ate and drank all of this every day your diet would stop eating out of boredom.

I’m not a huge seafood fan so I struggle to eat fish once a week let alone every day. There is no way this article is serious about that suggestion.

The article makes some obvious suggestions and some not so obvious suggestions that I’m going to walk through.

Fruits and vegetables/fiber

If you don’t know already that most of your diet should have lots of fruits, vegetables, and fiber, then you’ve been living in a cave for the past twenty years. The only part of this that I’m going to dwell on is the fiber aspect. We all know fiber is the cleansing element, but it has other positive benefits as well. Consider what the American Heart Association says about fiber:

When regularly eaten as part of a diet low in saturated fat, trans fat and cholesterol, soluble fiber has been shown to help lower blood cholesterol. Foods high in soluble fiber include oat bran, oatmeal, beans, peas, rice bran, barley, citrus fruits, strawberries and apple pulp.

Insoluble fiber doesn’t seem to help lower blood cholesterol. But it’s an important aid in normal bowel function. Foods high in insoluble fiber include whole-wheat breads, wheat cereals, wheat bran, cabbage, beets, carrots, Brussels sprouts, turnips, cauliflower and apple skin.
(June 30, 2008 http://americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=4494)

So by adding oatmeal, peas, beans, brown rice, and strawberries to your diet, you are lowering blood cholesterol. Whole wheat bread, carrots and cauliflower provide the cleansing aspect of fiber. All of this satisfies the need to eat fruit and vegetables every day.

Folate

Honestly, I read this and thought, “What the hell is folate?” I’ll avoid the science of folate and focus on the legend of Popeye. Remember Popeye got nice and strong from eating spinach? It was always said spinach was high in iron and prevented anemia. Well, that is a lie, but spinach is high in folate and prevents anemia. Folate is also an anti-cancer vitamin, fighting off those free radicals that cause our cells to go haywire. So for good healthy blood and cancer prevention you can’t do better than folate.

I know I don’t get enough folate in my diet, but that is easily fixed. I just need to increase my intake of folate. Not that I’m shilling for a certain cereal but Cheerios(tm) provides all 400 micrograms of folate that is recommended. 1 cup of cooked pasta provides about 100 microgams. Half a cup of peanuts provides 40 micrograms. I’m used to reading labels for calories, but now I’ll have to pay attention to folate as well.

Tomato Sauce

Okay, this is easy for me, seeing that I eat a lot of pasta dishes, but I was a bit surprised by this inclusion. What is it about tomato sauce that provides a health benefit? Tomatoes are a ‘risk diminishing’ food. They lower the risk of all sorts of things men should care about – like impotence, heart disease, and memory loss. But unfortunately, just adding a few tomatoes to your diet won’t cut it. It takes 165 raw tomatoes to equal 10 tablespoons of tomato sauce. And ten tablespoons a week is the amount recommended.

Tomatoes are also a great source of lycopene, which is yet another cancer fighting substance. The way I see it, we can’t have enough defenses against cancer.

Nuts

Walnuts and almonds are high in omega-3’s. Sadly the only thing I could remember about omega-3’s was it was the anti-crazy stuff. Not have Omega-3’s in your diet made you crazy. Trying to get information about Omega-3 that doesn’t come from a company selling it seems to be sort of difficult. Omega-3 is a fat, but it is a good fat. The American diet in general lacks this kind of fat but is very rich in Omega-6. The ratio recommended by the FDA is 4 Omega-3 to 1 Omega-6. The normal American diet tends to be 20 Omega-6 to 1 Omega-3. That is rough. Nuts help bring this back into a healthy balance.

I don’t want to forget to mention that nuts are a great source of protein as well.

Fish

I can’t imagine eating fish every day. Even three servings a week would be a push for me for multiple reasons. First, I really think we as humans need to eat more local foods instead of flying fish in from the oceans. Local fish have a higher chance of containing mercury. While I love salmon, I flying it in from the pacific northwest seems like it should be a special occassion thing, not a weekly thing.

Fish is a quality source of protein with a lot of good fats included. It is a complete toss up. I currently eat one serving a week and trying hard to get it up to two servings. I’ve been eating mainly whitefish and cod, which are the blandest more boring fish around. My only other quality source is in the form of sushi.

Now I know some people who are afraid of all fish because of mercury.  I can only point those people to the FDA report regarding fish and mercury and shrug my shoulders if they still refuse to eat fish.  The key part of the report states:

FDA toxicologists have determined that for persons other than pregnant women and women of childbearing age who may become pregnant, regular consumption of fish species with methyl mercury levels around 1 part per million (ppm)–such as shark and swordfish–should be limited to about 7 ounces per week (about one serving) to stay below the acceptable daily intake for methyl mercury. For fish with levels averaging 0.5 ppm, regular consumption should be limited to about 14 ounces per week. Current evidence indicates that nursing women who follow this advice do not expose their infants to increased risk from methyl mercury.

I’m not a huge fan of fish and tend to have it cooked in the worst possible way for you, except when I have it as yummy sushi.  This means I am aware that it is possible for people just to not like fish.  Far better to say that then concoct reasons why you don’t want to eat it.  But if you are one of those people who doesn’t like fish, I really recommend that you sample the fish that is available.  Certain options, like halibut are quite mild in taste and when slathered in butter and lemon, are just down right delicious.

I for one am a huge fan of beer battered fresh water perch… which I think removes all health benefits from the fish.  I am trying to do better.

Coffee, red wine, and water

I refuse to perpetuate the 64 ounces of water per day myth. A healthy adult, in a temperate climate with limited activity and eating an normal amount of food needs only 32 ounces of water. This does not include any water that comes from other sources such as coffee and tea. As activity or temperature increases the amount of water needed also increases. Water is important, no doubt about that, but the prevailing ‘wisdom’ that you need to push 64 ounces of water a day is a bit absurd.

New research shows that coffee has increased health benefits. Beyond the anti-oxidants which we are already aware of, coffee helps relax blood vessels which can lower blood pressure. It helps reduce the risk of diabetes and reduce the risk of gallstones. There are other benefits mentioned, some seem like a stretch in my mind, but there are enough listed that I feel comfortable drinking my daily does of joe.

The other miracle liquid is red wine. Red wine is rich with polyphenols which is an antioxidant. It also recently has shown to limit the negative effects of red meat. Good news for red meat lovers like myself.

But that’s not all!

Red wine also has a chemical in it called resveratrol which comes from the skin of the red grape. This chemical seems to limit the number of fat cells that can develop from stem cells. So not only will red wine help fight the cholesterol but it also helps prevents getting fat. I appreciate that.

Wine is high in calories though, so it isn’t something you want to drink a lot of.

Milk

Milk builds strong bones. Or so I’ve been told. I’ve never liked milk. It moistens cereal just fine and I’ll cook with it, but I’ve never craved a tall glass of cold milk. Cheese, yes. Ice cream? You bet. Milk? No.
This doesn’t change the fact that one of the vitamins in milk may be one of those super aweome nutritional elements that has been underestimated. Vitamin D. Also known as the sunshine vitamin, Vitamin D is responsible for some very interesting biological processes. Low Vitamin D in the blood has been linked to calcium deposits in the arteries which could lead to heart attacks. Increased Vitamin D has been shown to decrease back pain.

And in yet another bit of cancer news, Vitamin D may play a role in telling cells when it is time to die. While that doesn’t sound all that great, when cells refuse to die, they can become cancerous.  I may never get enough milk, but I can make sure I get some sun to let my body produce Vitamin D naturally.

We have a lot of control over our health and environment through our diet. By making conscious choices on what we decide to eat, when we eat it, how we eat it, we are making conscious choices regarding our health. Will I take all of these bits of advice to heart? No, I can honestly say that while I enjoy nuts, I don’t see myself stocking them in my limited apartment storage space for me to snack on. I will make more of an effort to include them in foods I make. Toasted walnuts on a salad are quite good.

It snowed again in Chicago. This winter seems to be going on for a long time. I am not complaining about this but it is starting to make me a bit glum. Spring is still a month away and even then, Chicago is still grayish until June. I need to find ways of chasing away the gloomy feelings that the dark days of winter invariably cause.

The winter blues are easily diagnosed by feelings of lethargy, unusual cravings of carbohydrates, intense feelings of self-deprecation, and a decrease in creativity. The winter blues aren’t to be confused with cabin fever – which is more of a reaction to feelings of being cooped up. Winter blues are more commonly associated with Seasonal Affective Disorder, but usually a more mild case. More severe cases might need to be treated with medical attention.

Here are seven ways to beat the winter blues.

Maximize Daylight

The root cause of seasonal affective disorder is the lack of daylight. Modern American society is one that lives and dies by the clock, not the sun. We don’t wake up with the sun so we miss out on a lot of that restorative sunshine. At work, we may get sunshine from the windows in our office, but if some people, like myself, work in the center of the building and only sometimes get to see glimpses of sunlight from the windows of other people’s workspace. Then when leaving work, the sun has already set.

A concerted effort needs to be made to maximize exposure to sunlight. Waking up earlier, making sure blinds and curtains are open in our living spaces, and getting outside during the day can go a long way to chase away these blue feelings.

Declutter and Enliven Your Living Space

Clutter is usually a symptom of depression, not a cause, but for mild cases of winter blues, clutter may enforce the feelings of depression and lethargy, causing a downward spiral. There is something very restorative in renewing your living space. Just decluttering is not enough, though, we also need to enliven the space. The quickest, easiest way to bring life to a space is to literally put life into it. Two of the easiest ways of doing this is through plants and animals, specifically houseplants and fish. Fresh flowers are an option, but if we aren’t careful, we might end up with dead flowers which look tragic and not very uplifting. Other ways to enliven your living space is through smell. Bright spring scents can go a long way in shifting moods. Other smells also trigger happy thoughts, like the smell of fresh baked bread, the smell of mint, or the smell of fresh laundry.

On a not so cold day, we can open up our windows and doors and let some fresh air into our space to help enliven the space and make it feel new.

Bring Color Into Your Life

Color has a remarkable affect on mood. When our days are filled with gray, it might be hard to find the color we need to enhance our mood, which means we have to take special actions. We need to look around our work space and living space to see what elements of color we are surrounded by. I know my work is blah beige everywhere and at home, my apartment is stale white. I’ve also fallen into the trap of decorating things in a modern style which means blacks, whites, and reds. These colors don’t enhance a person’s mood and in many cases will only help in causing feelings of depression. Yellow, orange, and green colors will help enhance a person’s mood.

This may sound silly, but simply making sure the computers we work on have a brightly colored desktop picture is a good, simple start in adding color. We can make sure our wall calendars are filled with great colorful pictures. Finding ways to add color to our lives during this gray season can be uplifting in and of itself.

Reconnect With People

People may be the source of our greatest annoyances, but we humans are by nature  tribal creatures. Winter months cause isolation due to inclement weather and this isolation affects our moods. Due to the feelings of lethargy that come with the winter blues, we might convince ourselves that is a good thing that we aren’t seeing people because we just don’t have the energy to do it. Because of these feelings, we need to make special effort to reconnect with people. Just spending time with people we like will help remind us that the season isn’t so bad.

Usually connecting with people also involves activity, whether it is watching movies together, playing games, going to concerts, or simply sipping tea which energize us. Often all we need to do is remind ourselves of good things. During the winter months, life can become monotonous and our schedules look more like ruts. There isn’t any reason to turn our lives upside down to break out of the rut – instead we just need to reach out to people that we are close to and spend some time with them.

Do Less

I know, I just said we need to be more active. Doing less means we don’t have to maintain a hectic schedule. The stress of trying to maintain a hectic schedule can make everything seem more difficult. It is okay to pull back on our schedules. Pulling back on the stress we cause ourselves in our daily lives will enable us to focus on our mental health and won’t let gloomy moments spiral out of control.

Not being able to have time to ourselves only makes us feel drained and that feeling of being drained makes us feel like we aren’t working to our full potential at all times. When we feel this way, we tend to start beating up on ourselves.

I had a neighbor growing up who made the comment that we shouldn’t spend too much time kicking ourselves in the ass because there is a whole world filled with people willing to do it for us.

Exercise, Eat, and Eschewal

Okay, I was trying to get fancy there with the forced alliteration but I wanted to cover three elements together. Exercising, eating, and eschewal (which is just a $10 word for temperance/avoidance) are elements of maintaining the ‘body temple’ as it were. I make no bones about being a hedonist. I believe life is pleasure and should be pleasurable. This means enjoying good food, good times, and good wine. Yet, when we are feeling blue we tend to overeat or eat the wrong things. Carbohydrates give us a boost in seratonin levels which does relieve feelings of depression but overdoing it leads to other problems. Choosing complex carbohydrates over sugar is a better option. We can’t forget exercise. Exercise is another way of increasing those chemicals in the brain that makes us feel good. Yes, oh my god yes, I completely understand that trying to get the motivation to exercise is near impossible in the winter. I’m already cold, I don’t want to go outside and run. The effort has a huge psychological payoff though. Getting some exercise seems to clear away the cobwebs in th brain and the body. Nothing chases away feeling of self-deprecation faster than a thirty minute jog. Hey, if I can exercise, then I must not be wasting away.

So what about this ‘eschewal’ I mention. Well, be very aware that alcohol is a depressant. It is funny that when I am feeling the winter blues, I tend to want to have a drink… which only further contributes to the winter blues. It becomes vitally important that when we are feeling the blues that we don’t attempt to self-medicate the problem with alcohol. When in doubt, opt out. Again, this is not my normal advice since as a hedonist, I do believe in the power of the social lubrication alcohol provides… yes, the key word there is social. Drink with friends, not alone.

To wrap it all up…

I feel the need to restate that clinical depression needs to be addressed by medical professionals not through blog entries. Anyone who is suffering from long term cycles of depression, even if there are good days where the depression isn’t overwhelming, need to seek out medical assistance. This is one of the reasons why I am trying to use words like glum, gloomy, and blues to differentiate these moods from actual medical conditions.

I haven’t written much about dating, relationships, and sex and there is a reason for that. I can’t say that I have a lot of great advice to offer in these areas and planned to collect the advice of others and present it here as a clearinghouse.

Dan Savage’s Savage Love Podcast has been the best source of information on all things sex – not necessarily all things dating and relationships, but definitely the best source of realistic information regarding sex.

In Dan Savage’s latest podcast Episode 64, dated 1/8/2008, he is helping a woman deal with her boyfriend’s porn collection when he makes the following pronouncement that made me pause. Sometimes it is hard to see the forest for the trees when you are in the thick of it.

The world is stacked against guys. Male sexuality, heterosexual male sexuality in particular – they get the raw end of the stick because male sexuality is pathologized. It’s not healthy, it’s not good to want to fuck a million people. It’s not healthy, it’s not good to want to look at pornography. Or want to not be monogamous. Guys are derided for having standard issue heterosexual male fantasies like a threeway with two girls. Guys can’t seem to catch a break. Guys are told that love is not wanting to sleep with someone else, when actually love is refraining from sleeping with someone else.

I can’t speak for women, I can’t speak for homosexual or bisexual men, but I can speak as a heterosexual male that I understand this statement so well. If a man wants to have sex more often than his partner, then there is something wrong with him. If a man doesn’t want to have sex as often as his partner, then there is something wrong with him. If a man wants to do something kinky, he is a pervert. If a man doesn’t want to indulge his partners fantasies, he is a prude.

Yes, I am certain that women also feel these constraints, yet women exploring their sexuality is generally encouraged by men. Men again are just considered perverts.

There isn’t much here other than a general recommendation of Dan Savage’s podcast for quality raw information about sex.

How to Have Less Awkward Conversations, located Postivity Blog and found via Lifehacker attempts to give a bit of advice in making daily interactions a bit less stressful and a bit more rewarding.

Assuming rapport. This is definitely one of the best social skill tips I have ever learned about. Unfortunately I’ve forgotten a bit about it lately. Maybe you have too. Or missed it altogether. So I thought I’d bring it up again.

Now, what is assuming rapport?

Basically, instead of going into a conversation or meeting nervously and thinking “how will this go?” you take different approach. You assume that you and the person(s) will establish a good connection (rapport).

How do you do that? You simply pretend that you are meeting one of your best friends. Then you start the interaction in that frame of mind instead of the nervous one.

I am a bundle of social anxiety often, worrying about how others are judging me, what kind of impression I am making, and whether my breath stinks. This concept of assuming rapport, convincing yourself that you are meeting a friend, and essentially many of the other ‘tricks’ that revolve around telling yourself a lie are doomed to failure. I’ve been in situations where someone begins treating me like we’ve known each other for ages. It is creepy and too much like glad-handing. I know that isn’t what this article is asking people to do and does further clarify later by asking people to just be themselves and be positive which is to act naturally and approach the encounter in a positive frame of mind.

I believe at the core of this is self confidence, on of the most elusive personality traits that goes all the way back to the ancient Greeks: gnothi seauton – know thyself. While I am not supporting the view of having less awkward conversations by making assumptions about the non-existent relationship, I do support the view that no assumptions should be made and a positive outlook should be used.

A midday nap really gives your brain and body a boost if done correctly. There is a way of getting even more out of a 15 minute nap, according to Wired’s How To Wiki article (by way of Lifehacker.com) Cheat on the Need to Sleep.

Experiments performed at Loughborough University in the UK showed that the sleep-deprived need only a cup of coffee and 15 minutes of shut-eye to feel amazingly refreshed.

I’m a huge advocate of naps. I try to take a twenty minute nap at lunch every day. I do find that it helps control my appetite and really helps me stay calm and in control while at work. I’m also a huge caffeine addict and I don’t make any excuses for it nor do I complain. I like the effects of caffeine, I love the taste of coffee, and the downside for me is minimal.

I love this idea of combining a dose of caffeine with a nap to then have a temporarily supercharged mind and body. As the effects of the caffeine wear off, the benefits of the nap will remain. Normally, when using caffeine to counteract lack of sleep I am left feeling really drained once the caffeine wears off. That isn’t a complaint, it is just an observation.

I never would have thought of this if I hadn’t read How to Be Boring over at I Will Change Your Life.  I spend a lot of my time trying not to be bored, but I never thought that maybe I am boring.  Now I won’t say there is anything wrong with being boring, but complaints of being bored while being boring are no longer valid.

Boring people are inactive people.  Peter’s post highlights this by telling us that if you want to be boring, be a fence sitter and be lazy.  Indecisiveness and inaction are boring, possibly because both maintain the status quo and the status quo, if held for too long, becomes boring.  Change is exciting.

We also need to pay attention to the fact that boring people aren’t fun to be around, thus when we find ourselves with nothing to do, we have to consider the possibility that we’ve become boring.

On NPR this morning, there was a story about weight loss and behavior modifcation.  One of the methods discussed was carrying around a list of benefits of losing weight.  The list was the essence of why the person wanted to lose weight.

I immediately saw a wider benefit to this method in application to other things.  One of the important aspects of developing a list of 8 reasons is I will be able to determine if this is truly something I want to do or if it is something I think I should do.  The difference is important.  Right now, I think I should do a lot of things, but I have little motivation to do them.  Part of being motivated to do something is understanding why I am doing it.

One of my most troublesome issues I have is exercise.  I know I should do it for general health reasons and to help lose weight, yet I lack motivation.  When the opportunity presents itself to go running, I don’t.  Part of building the motivation to exercise would be consolidating my reasons.  Create a list of eight reaons why I want to exercise.  Once I have developed that list, when the time comes to go for a run, I can use those eight reasons to push myself up off the couch and out into the world for a jog.

Whether it is saving money, networking, dating, or changing other elements of my life, of your life, sit down and write out eight reasons why you want to do something that you currently aren’t doing.

Why do you want to network more?  What benefits will you derive from exercising?  Why should you be more extroverted and ask more people out for dates?

As a practical example, here are my eight reasons why I want to exercise:

1. Stamina.  I want to be able to have more than twenty minutes of physical activity before becoming completely winded.

2. Improved self image.  While I’d like to lose weight, I’m more interested in toning my muscles.  I have no reason to look like a Spartan from 300, but I’d like to at least lean more in that direction in regards to my physique.

3. Improved mental ability. Exercise and mental acuity go hand in hand.

4. Enjoyment of food. By exercising regularly, lapses in what I eat aren’t as detrimental.  I encourage hedonism as a lifestyle, not as a form of slow suicide.

5. Better clothing options. When you have a gut, certain clothing choices aren’t very flattering.

6. Dating potential.  Being lean and more athletic increases dating opportunities.

7. Vigor. Exercise will improve my overall health, increasing torso strength, forestalling ailments associated with aging.

8. Disciplined escapism.  Exercise routines will add an element of discipline in my week where I disconnect from all the electronic media, and focus inwardly.

Worrying about things does have its place, but sometimes it is too easy to get caught in a cycle of worry. Worry then shuts down action. Without action, nothing can change.

Over at the Ririan Project, the post See How Easily You can Overcome Your Worries addresses the concept of worry in life. What I like about this article is it doesn’t say ‘don’t worry’, instead it attempts to point out the difference between productive and unproductive worry.

This method allows those of us (me) who tend to overthink and worry about things to engage in a small amount of that, but then provides a way of shutting it down. One of the points made really resonates:

8. Reclaim your imagination.
Creative people are usually particularly prone to worry. If you think about it, worry takes a lot of imagination. It’s as though your “inner film director” is running amok, churning out paranoid thrillers or ghastly horror movies about all the awful things that could happen to you. But instead of trying to ignore these internal images, why not “re-direct” them as different genres (comedy? romance?) and add a happy ending for you to look forward to? Imagine your current situation as just one chapter of an inspiring story about overcoming challenges – how does that change the way you feel about it?

This point ties into something else that I know works but haven’t been focusing on very much… positive thinking and positive visualization. Nothing succeeds like success and oddly enough the human mind has a hard time differentiating between actual moments of success and visualized moments of success. So essentially, to use the example provided in the Ririan post, there is no reason to worry about getting lost in Paris if time was spent visualizing successfully using maps and asking for assistance.

On one hand it sounds a bit hokey and I have a hard time accepting hook, line, and sinker, but when I see positive results to positive visualization, I have a hard time maintaining my cynical reaction to it. The really odd thing is I know I do this already. I day dream a lot about certain activities, like downhill skiing. When I finally get on the slopes, even though it may be a full year since I had been skiing, it is all second nature to me. I visual success and success happens.

Work dominates most of our lives. Not only do we spend 7.5 to 8 hours at work, we spend time commuting to and from work and time preparing to go to work. For those inidividuals who work longer hours, work represents even a greater time investment. This time spent on work is a good enough reason for you to be happy at work.

Here are Ten Ways to Be Happy at Work.

My favorite happens to be the following:

4) Take Responsibility for Knowing What Is Happening at Work
People complain to me daily that they don’t receive enough communication and information about what is happening with their company, their department’s projects, or their coworkers. Passive vessels, they wait for the boss to fill them up with knowledge. And, the knowledge rarely comes. Why? Because the boss is busy doing her job and she doesn’t know what you don’t know. Seek out the information you need to work effectively. Develop an information network and use it. Assertively request a weekly meeting with your boss and ask questions to learn. You are in charge of the information you receive.

Communication, as it has been since the beginning of time, is a two way street. I’ve discovered that a good sense of curiousity – curiousity not nosiness – allows me to have a better grasp of what is going on in the company as a whole. When someone complains about lack of communication, the first question they should be asked is how much communication do they initiate. If everyone is waiting to be communicated to, no one will be communicating.

Whether these ten items will actually make you happier at work assumes the job you are doing is one that even has the potential to make you happy. Sometimes the best we can hope for in some situations is to not be miserable at work.

In your chest beats the heart of a great adventurer.  You are a person who wants to explore, discover, conquer, and experience amazing things.  The only thing holding you back is your sense of responsibility.  You can’t drop your jobs in order to climb a mountain.  You’d be laughed at if you told people you were going to go find some lost city.  Rents, mortgages, and student loans still need to be paid.These obstacles don’t have to stand in your way as you seek out adventure in your life.  There is adventure even in the mundane.  Below are four ways to add adventure to your everyday life.

The Road Less Travelled

One of the most mundane events in life is the commute to and from work.  The radio seems to play the same things every day.  Announcers have the same jokes.  The same commercials.  The view is the same.  The people on the train are the same.  It begins to wear on you, beating you down.  You can almost see the ruts you’ve created on your daily journey.

Now is the time to try something different.  Break out that road map and plot a different path.  Will it take longer to get home?  Probably.  So you’ll miss your favorite sitcom… it will re-run, I assure you.  If you take the train, bus, or some other public transportation, maybe you need to take it at a different time.  Leave an hour early for work, ride the train with different people, and have breakfast at a restaurant near your work.

Maybe today is the day you ride your bicycle to work or walk home instead of taking the bus.

Be the Tourist

You know your city like the back of your hand.  You know what restaurants you like, you know what clubs you like, and you know where you like to spend your time.  Forget all that.  Go to the bookstore and grab a guide for your city.  Look at all the things it suggests for tourists to do.  Now plan a day as if this was your first time in your city.  How would you want to spend it?  Museums, zoos, sporting events, and theater all wait to be rediscovered.  Avoid going anywhere you normally go.  Take tours of your city.  Strike up conversations with the other tourists and find out why they’ve come to town.  Ask them to share their favorite places, their discoveries, and use that to guide what you do for the day.

At times you may feel a bit foolish, but don’t let that stop you.  Live in the moment and experience the thrill of truly looking at a landmark building that you walk by and ignore everyday.

Food Exploration

When you can’t get away from the ordinary, you can bring the extraordinary to you through food.  Adventure in dining is well documented.  You can go to new restaurants all you want and that is great.  Greater adventure is in the preparation of the food.  This may start with a cookbook or a cooking show.  Maybe a friend has this great Swedish meatball recipe.  Whatever you use as a jumping off point, the idea is to learn how to cook a full meal of a culture foreign to you.

The process might include taking cooking classes or contacting clubs and service organizations associated with the culture for help in locating recipes, ingredients, and advice.  You can read how to make Irish soda bread all you want, but it is entirely different to actually make it with someone who has been making it for many years.  There is a lot to learn by studying someone’s technique first had.  You will feel like a true adventurer as you seek out specialty markets to find authentic ingredients.

New Skills

Adventure comes from breaking routine.  One of the easiest ways to break routine is to develop new skills.  Take those improv comedy classes, sign up for piano lessons, sit down with a book on figure drawing, or join a discussion group.  The idea here is to get you out of your daily routine.  It will force you to have new experiences, meet new people, and have completely different conversations.

Some other ideas of skills to explore are pottery and ceramics, gardening, writing workshops, and sewing.  Learning a new language is a fantastic way to break out of the mold of your daily life.  Even the same old conversation you have every day takes on a new level of excitement when spoken in a different language.

Adventure, as dictionaries define it, can be an exciting and unusual experience.  There is no reason why you can’t have an exciting and unusual experience every day of your life.