What if you had too many incredible ways to live? And it resulted in a distracted life instead of the one you always envision?

I easily get wrapped up in inspirational concepts, big ideas, and want to throw my energy towards many different things many different ways. All often in a short amount of time.

Then I spread myself too thin because I am a multi-potentialite who is interested in too many hobbies, global policies, and much more. It’s joyful but once I hit the tipping point it is a zero sum game to be able to win. And I back off, scale way too far down, and repeat the cycle :). Until recently at least.

Within the last year I read an older book from Brene Brown titled Dare to Lead. Brene is a thoughtful and extremely talented writer/speaker/business owner and she laid my problem out for me with a simple exercise on one sheet of paper!

Brene showed me how to identify a Two Pillar Approach To Your Life.

What the exercise in Dare to Lead did was force you into picking, and then hopefully, utilize two pillars that are guiding your chess moves in life.

The page in the book had so many different and brilliant options (as I mentioned before I am a multi-potentialite!)

However I ultimately settled on Adventure and Service.

The idea then is that everything goes back to these pillars and they are your guiding principles for what you do. She makes the point that we all often have too many and it pulls us in too many directions and we wound up not doing anything, while being excited about doing everything. I related immediately!

For instance, should I volunteer at the animal shelter? Donate money to a human rights organization? Teach and guide the powerful practice of yoga? (Service.)
For instance, should I hike 500 miles on the Arizona Trail? Learn to surf? Go on a new weekly hike? (Adventure.)

Adventure. Service. Thank you Brene!

It was already obvious, because these were the two from Brene’s list that light me up the most, I return to again and again to spend my time doing, and are the most fulfilling ways I feel that I am able to impact the world.

The reason this approach has been beneficial is it’s helped me determine when to take on projects, hobbies, and even errands and when to pass.

If it’s not Adventure based, and not Service based, then it might not be the best use of my time. (Of course there are instances when that’s not the goal. Grocery shopping, vacuuming, and meditation probably aren’t adventure or service in my life. But they are necessary for the most part. At least to me, same with morning fetch with my dog.)

Adventure and Service is pretty much what I discuss and write about on my website. Brene’s exercise helped me gain clarity in this. This is what is interesting to me, what I am good at, and what I should be focusing in on.

If you get stuck in taking too much on and feeling like it gets cloudy as to what you are trying to accomplish maybe this exercise from Brene will also support you!

Thanks for reading and I’m excited to share more examples of adventure and service.

Om Shanti,
Mike