Adventurous Mom

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No I’m not fly­ing south for the winter…although it’s Spring time so I should be head­ing some­where trop­i­cal!  In an attempt to sim­plify life, take back my time and life adven­tur­ously, I have made the com­mand deci­sion to blog only at The Free­dom Ven­ture Project.

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You will still be see­ing tons of arti­cles on Tak­ing Back Your Time, Liv­ing Fear­lessly Free and Hav­ing Adventure!

I look for­ward to see­ing you over there!

Many Adven­tures!!

Maken­zie

If you are afraid of Change…You def­i­nitely don’t want to read this!

I first want to acknowl­edge  all of my friends and my read­ers, and my peers!  You give me such awe­some inspi­ra­tion every­day for my blog posts!  What a won­der­ful week it was!  If you were in Cal­i­for­nia, you got to expe­ri­ence tor­ren­tial down­pours of rain — mas­sive flood­ing and severe weather watches! We are so for­tu­nate that although we suf­fer dis­as­ter on occa­sion, we are well pre­pared and we have never expe­ri­enced any­thing like that of those poor folks in Haiti.  Truly a worst-case scenario!

How much has our soci­ety drilled into us the idea of being well-prepared? The idea of a safety net, the thought that Risk=Danger? We nat­u­rally have learned from our mis­takes, we take pre­cau­tion, we prac­tice safety drills, and we carry 100 dif­fer­ent forms of insurance…and insur­ance for our insur­ance. So no won­der it is dif­fi­cult for some peo­ple to feel okay to take a big risk, or even what they con­sider a risk.

I have been approached by peo­ple that have found out about my story and they think that I am some really brave per­son. How could she pos­si­bly do what she did, she took such a big RISK! They shut­ter at the thought of hav­ing to give up a cer­tain lifestyle, or what peo­ple might think!  “Wow,” they say “I could never do some­thing like that. You’re just good at business.”

Then I sit patiently and wait for it…wait for it…wait for it…and here comes the influx of “I cant’s”.

• You know I’m just not good at business
• Or my hus­band would never let me
• I’ve never been a risk-taker
• I’m just not that smart

…and on and on…  But my pur­pose here is not to belit­tle the “I Can’t-ers”.  My pur­pose is to iden­tify with them because there is an I “CAN’T-er” in all of us, even me (oh yeah, espe­cially me!)

Some peo­ple give it fancy names like “Dif­fi­culty with tran­si­tion” or “Risk averse”, etc… but really what it boils down to is the pri­mal fear of well…. FEAR.

So, I’m going to give you my SECRET for being able to take the L-E-A-P

Lovingly

Embrace your

Adven­ture

Poten­tial

The trick is not to make your tran­si­tion or change or risk seem like some­thing SCARY!  It is really an ADVENTURE! Adven­tures aren’t scary, often­times they’re fun, they’re Inter­est­ing, they’re Stim­u­lat­ing, you learn new things, you grow in new ways.  Every one of us has an Adven­ture Poten­tial!

But what if it all goes wrong Maken­zie? What if my Adven­ture Poten­tial sends me down the deep dark abyss, never to return again?

Adven­tures have a way of some­times send­ing you on the curi­ously long and crazy route, some­times the fun and easy route, some­times the adrenaline-pumping-borderline-heart-stopping route. If you think about Life in gen­eral as an adven­ture, and are along to LEARN, to GROW to EXPERIENCE the adven­ture, then your focus shifts from see­ing that Deep Dark Abyss in front of you, to notic­ing that there is a long vine, hang­ing from an old wiry tree that you can grab onto and swing over the abyss.  You don’t have to get trapped in it.

Does this make sense to you?

I can’t tell you how many times I have said: “It just always worked out!” Because it always did! Remem­ber when it just  “Worked out” for you? When you stop focus­ing on what’s get­ting in your way, or what is stop­ping you, you start NOTICING how you can make it work, or how you can maneu­ver around your obstacles.

Some may call me an Eter­nal Opti­mist, but can you argue with an opti­mist that has man­aged for over three decades to Always Make it Work? And well….obviously my goal is not to fig­ure out how to “just make it work” but my goal is to:

DARE SOMETHING WORTHY!

And how can I dare some­thing wor­thy (all grat­i­tude to Joe Vitale aka Mr Fire for this motto) if I am stuck in Fear of Risk?  I don’t want to do some­thing just so I won’t feel uncom­fort­able.  I want to do some­thing that is a LEAP! I want to Embrace my Adven­ture Poten­tial.  I want to LIVE, I don’t want to be alive and tak­ing up room on this earth!

Can I ask you a question?

Do you think you are meant for Great­ness?  Because I think that you are!  I think that each and every one of us has Great­ness bot­tled up inside of us like a well shaken 2 liter bot­tle of Gin­ger ale, ready to burst.  That’s how I feel when I con­nect with that Adven­ture! (You know that feel­ing you get before you’re going ski­ing the next day, or going on a two week Caribbean vaca­tion, or Christ­mas Eve when you knew Santa was com­ing with cool presents the next day! That feeling!!)

So let me ask you this…What is your LEAP? What is your Greatness?

Are you will­ing to embrace your Adven­ture Potential?

Many Adven­tures to you! Maken­zie

PS – Chances are, if you’re read­ing this arti­cle, you were meant to read it…and it was writ­ten for you!  So when you get through with digest­ing this pow­er­ful infor­ma­tion, feel free to drop me a line; I get really stoked when I hear about new adventures!

PPS-I know some of you that are tee­ter­ing on the edge of tak­ing that LEAP! Trust me when I tell you, I have no regrets, I will never look back…I am free!

Are you still try­ing to decide what to be when you grow up? Regard­less of what you con­sider grown up: Are you doing what you want to right now? How did you get here?

When I blasted out to my Face­book friends ask­ing them about “What did you want to be when you grow up?” I got var­ied responses and some said they are still try­ing to fig­ure it out. But one good friend sticks out in my mind when she said: “I cer­tainly didn’t want to be a Dish Washer when I grew up.”

Your story is dif­fer­ent from my story but what might be the com­mon thread is that you may be in a life that you feel trapped or it is in con­flict with your val­ues. What I mean by this is not that your boss may be ask­ing you to steal….but per­haps you have a strong value for cre­ativ­ity, and you are audit­ing spread­sheets every day!! Ugh!

Are you really hear­ing that voice inside of you that is dis­sat­is­fied? Is your value free­dom? Free­dom from feel­ing trapped by a job? Or is your value secu­rity? Do you like hav­ing a secure job? None of these val­ues are wrong, they are yours and you should own them.

YOUR PERSONAL MISSION STATEMENT

Some are strug­gling with clar­ity about what is their true call­ing in life. I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up!!! And let me tell you that this is okay too because no one needs to decide right now. But when you find that call­ing, you will know it because you will stay awake all night and be excited all day to bring into fruition your new found occupation.

Per­haps also, we should view this from another angle: Instead of decid­ing what you want to DO every day to cre­ate money (which is what so many peo­ple fall prey to) What do you want to BE???

One tool that I use to deter­mine what I want to be is a per­sonal mis­sion state­ment. It is sim­ple to write a per­sonal mis­sion state­ment here is mine.

My per­sonal mis­sion state­ment defines what I want to be:

• I want to be a cre­ative entre­pre­neur that makes pas­sive income allow­ing me time and money to spend with my fam­ily, to also have adven­ture, and help oth­ers lead suc­cess­ful lives.

No where does this say what indus­try I will work in, nowhere does this exclude me from cer­tain things. This is impor­tant because your mis­sion state­ment should be flex­i­ble to allow for a change of mind, yet be struc­tured enough to give you a roadmap. This mis­sion state­ment out­lines your per­sonal val­ues, what you want to BE and what you WILL achieve by being this per­son. My per­sonal val­ues are tightly linked to free­dom, time and help­ing oth­ers. What are your val­ues? Hon­esty? Power? Fam­ily? Love? Adven­ture? Etc…

What val­ues do you think are impor­tant to you? What do you like doing and as a result, what might you like to be?

I found great sat­is­fac­tion in work­ing as a Para­medic because I was able to both have adven­ture and help oth­ers. Yet, it ended up not being totally ful­fill­ing because it did not allow me the time with my fam­ily that I needed.

Exper­i­ment with your per­sonal mis­sion state­ment. I would love to hear it! What’s hold­ing you back from Liv­ing your Dream?

Rec­om­mended Reading:

The Monk and the Rid­dle by Randy Komisar

Crush It! Gary Vaynerchuk

Refuse to Choose by Bar­bara Sher

It has been an incred­i­bly dif­fi­cult past cou­ple of weeks for our fam­ily and for our extended fam­ily. We lost four won­der­ful, heroic police offi­cers in the line of duty on March 21, 2009. Two were Motor Offi­cers, and two were SWAT offi­cers. I admit that as the wife of a deputy sher­iff, I had an incred­i­bly dif­fi­cult time pro­cess­ing the events and I was very, very sad. I was also sur­pris­ingly sad for the young man that lived in so much fear of the police that he felt his only choice was to kill or be killed. Our soci­ety is very sick and the sick­ness is show­ing in the way that some of these poor chil­dren are being raised.

What I have taken from this mes­sage of death is that our life should be lived as if we were dying. For those of you that are coun­try music fans, this is a fan­tas­tic Tim McGraw song from a few years back that goes a lit­tle some­thing like this:

“I went sky­div­ing
I went rocky moun­tain climb­ing
I went two point seven sec­onds on a bull named Fu Man Shu
And I loved deeper
And I spoke sweeter
And I gave for­give­ness I’d been denyin’
And he said some day I hope you get the chance
To live like you were dyin’”

Okay, I’m a lit­tle country…and I love it. But seri­ously, this was my theme song a few years back and it is funny how quickly we for­get the things that shape your life. This song was instru­men­tal in my per­sonal vision of liv­ing each day fully. Hor­ri­ble events such as this recent one with our brave police offi­cers also shape our lives. It can help us to remem­ber that our days are num­bered, and every expe­ri­ence on this earth is here for us to learn from.

So when we remem­ber our friends that gave their lives so oth­ers can live in peace, let’s not let their sac­ri­fice be for naught. Remem­ber their brav­ery by cel­e­brat­ing your life. When you’re being both­ered by those small stres­sors in your day, or you want to com­plain about your neigh­bor, or you want to be grumpy.…is this the best use of your time here? Our time is meant to be lived with pas­sion, with hap­pi­ness and fully. I picked a pic­ture of me hold­ing one of my favorite bot­tles of wine (Bode­gas Aguirre Caber­net) because I truly love drink­ing wine! That is one of my pas­sions and what brings me joy. So I’d like to raise my wine glass and toast our fallen officers.…your mem­ory will not be for­got­ten, and I promise to live each day as if I were dying!