“My thoughts first turned to adventure 10,500 days ago today. The idea of adventure for me at first was simple and uncomplicated. It was the prospect of excitement, fun, and novelty that were pulling me forward, and the push of escaping from the grinding treadmill of everyday life that pushed me from behind. I leapt into the opportunity with little doubt or questioning. I was 18 years old, and the opportunity to spend a year living and working in a tiny, remote, obscure dusty forgotten corner of Africa was an exciting privilege that I never gave much thought to or contemplated turning down. It was, perhaps needless to say, the best year of my life. It opened up my eyes to people and places and possibilities far beyond my very sheltered sleepy childhood of school and village life.

I returned home hooked on adventure. I began for the first time to read voraciously the stories of people who had gone before me, crazy men and women doing mad and marvellous journeys. I read about all sorts of wonderful corners of the planet and firstly began trying to work out ways to get to all I wanted to go. I wanted to go everywhere, see everything. It was a deliciously exciting time in my life.

Running parallel to this newfound appetite for seeing the world was the discovery of the pleasures of pushing myself hard physically, learning about perseverance and type two fun, and the strange pleasures of deliberately having a miserable time because it feels really nice afterwards. These two worlds gradually overlapped in my life. And I began to think more seriously about committing to chasing some seriously big adventures. I decided to try to cycle around the world.

I think this was partly driven by the audacity of youth, as well as by a niggling sense that my life had been very ordinary so far, and that I had done nothing remarkable, nothing for anybody to remark on, and nothing for me to feel proud of myself. And so I dared myself to dream big.

It was easy to dream big in those days, or easier, at least. I hadn’t really experienced the adult world of doubters and people pouring cold water on any plans that veer away from the mainstream or threaten them because they are too exciting and bold for them to consider themselves. And so in the early days of wandering about cycling around the world, it felt relatively easy to set a big, hairy, audacious goal. It’s important to make it clear at this point that taking large leaps in life is much easier when you have fewer ties and commitments, and you have the privileged safety net beneath you have alternative options if things don’t work out. I knew when I set off to cycle around the world, that if everything went wrong, I could easily come home and get a normal job and a normal life, like all my friends were doing. Indeed, that was very much what I expected that I would do after the adventure. I envisaged the journey as a phase in life, a wild fling before settling down to the prospects of a perfectly happy, ordinary, conventional life.

When I set off to cycle around the world, I didn’t really give much concrete thought to whether I actually could complete such a big undertaking. Indeed, when I said to people that I was going to cycle around the world, I didn’t really mean that. What I really meant was that I was going to go for a long bicycle ride as long as I could manage, and then I would keep going until I ran out of money, or courage, or chutzpah, or enthusiasm, and when all those things ran out, I had to come home and do something else instead. But that’s a long-winded and not particularly interesting explanation. So, far more exciting to declare to the world and declare to myself that it was the whole planet I was shooting for. And I didn’t realise it at the time, but the great upshot of setting a big target beyond what I realistically thought was possible in the private, doubtful recesses of my mind was that I am capable of more than I realised. We are all capable of more than we realise. And if you shoot for the stars, though you might miss, you will probably hit higher than if you had aimed for something perhaps lower but more realistic.

The final lesson that feels important, looking back on those four years I spent cycling around the world, was that whenever I contemplated the enormity of the whole project. If I cast my mind forward to the dozens of countries I still needed to cross, the thousands of strangers and unknown interactions I still needed to cope with, and the tens of thousands of miles of lonely cycling that still lay ahead, when I consider those sorts of things, the whole trip felt overwhelming. And yet, if I just thought about today, to wake up in my tent, to eat breakfast, to cycle for a few hours, to rest and eat a banana sandwich, cycle for a few hours, to rest and eat a banana sandwich, to cycle for a few hours, and then to find a place to

put up my tent and go to sleep, then that felt doable. Cycle today and worry about tomorrow, tomorrow. Small steps lead to big goals.

To my great surprise, I successfully managed to cycle around the world, returning home having learned that the world is a better and kinder place than it looks on TV, and having gained some confidence and momentum now through setting a ridiculously big goal, through daring myself to dream big, and through plodding away little by little because small steps lead to big goals. I think I’d imagined that cycling the whole world would get such nonsense out of my system, that once I’d seen the world, that would be enough. And yet, the more places I went, the more miles I cycled, the more of our planet that I saw, the more I realised how little I’d seen, how much there still was to see, and that one lifetime was never going to be enough to truly see the world. And so I returned home, not with my adventures’ thirst quashed and quenched, but rather raging, reaching for more, for more adventures, for more experiences, for more challenges, to push myself harder, to see what else I might be able to achieve now that I’d learned that daring yourself to think big isn’t too frightening, and that what really frightened me now was not doing these things and missing out on the wonders of the world, the joys of living a life as large and colorfully as you dare to do within the confines of your circumstances. And so I set about chasing more adventures around the world. I didn’t want to do any more cycling; one can have too much of a good thing, perhaps. And so I embraced being a beginner, something that I’ve enjoyed ever since taking up something new, being terrible at it but enthusiastic and willing to work hard and look like a fool and listen and learn and ask questions and practice and keep going until you acquire some semblance of competence, at least enough in my situation to complete whatever journey I set myself next.

Over the next years, I relished diving into the world of expeditions, adventures, and travel, with all my different projects oscillating between the nuances of those different specific words, but the core essence of much of them built upon my two motivations for adventure so far. The sheer fun and excitement of travelling the world that encouraged my first journey, and the challenging myself aspect of cycling around the world. These are wonderful times, doing all sorts of trips that I will ever be grateful for.

I was becoming more confident and more competent, and yet in one important aspect, I felt like a bit of a fraud. In all these books I read of great explorers, being big and brave, none of them ever seemed to be filled with the doubts that I faced. When I set off to walk across southern India, for example, I arrived in the country and made my way to the coast where I was to begin my journey, and far from being filled with the joyful excitement of being in a new country at the start of a new journey, I felt more like a condemned man. Why was I so reluctant to begin this adventure, which loads of people would love to do? This feeling was the same at the start of every trip, a fear of lethargy, a sense of dread, and a deep wish that I could give up the whole stupid idea and just return home to lie on the sofa, watch TV, and eat ice cream. But once I began the journey, then I loved it, and this too was true on every journey that I made. So why was I so fearful and doubtful before the trip? I worried that it was because I was a fraud, because I was weak, because I wasn’t as adventurous as I liked to imagine. And then one day, I learned a Norwegian phrase, ‘Dørstokkmila,’ which translates into English as ‘doorstep mile.’ The concept is simple, and one we’ve all heard many times before, but the essence of it is that in Norway, they say that the doorstep mile, the first crossing of your door, of leaving your house and beginning, is the hardest part of any journey. Merely stepping out of your home and beginning is the most taxing part of any adventure. I think we all intrinsically understand this: the longest journey starts with a single step, just take it one step at a time, and so on. Yet, being able to articulate those feelings so succinctly into one phrase, the doorstep mile, proved extremely helpful for me. Of course, I was worried about walking across India; it is quite a scary thing to do. Of course, rowing the Atlantic Ocean was making me anxious; it’s not a walk in the park. And so I shouldn’t give myself such a hard time about those feelings, and instead, I should accept that the hardest part of any adventure is the doorstep mile, accept this, embrace this, begin, and the rest is much simpler.

During those years

of big adventures, I roughly tried to alternate doing a journey by myself and then a journey with somebody else. And there are so many pros and cons of adventuring alone but travelling with other people, and particularly rowing across the Atlantic Ocean with three total strangers, taught me one more lesson that has been invaluable going forward with my life. I suspect that anyone considering a long journey would think that they needed to be tough and resilient. And if you were travelling with another person, then it would be common courtesy and common sense that you should try to be kind and decent to the people you’re on the road with. That goes without saying. What I learned whilst rowing across the ocean, however, was the next step in this process. For whilst I felt that I was very good at being empathetic to the needs of my teammates and trying my best to help them, I was completely incapable of accepting their help. Take, for example, a scenario where I’m rowing along in the middle of the night. I’m exhausted, homesick, very sick, and generally feeling terrible. One of my crewmates might say to me, ‘Old chap, you are looking weak and sad and miserable right now. You’re not rowing very well or very effectively. Let me help you. Why don’t you take a break for a while, and I’ll row for a bit?’ My instinct at this point was to bristle and bridle and protest. No, I wanted to cry. I am not weak. I am not feeble. I am not slowing the boat down. Look how tough I am. I will not let anyone down. I will not let myself down. I will row myself into a frenzied, furious standstill. That sort of pigheaded attitude had been very helpful for making me persevere around the entire planet on my bike, but it certainly wasn’t helping the rowing boat go more quickly. If I wanted our journey across the Atlantic Ocean to be as smooth and successful as possible, then I needed to accept the help, to admit my weakness, and to say, ‘Thank you. You’re right. I am feeling terrible right now. I accept your invitation of help. Thank you,’ and then head into the cabin and get some sleep, knowing that the boat would be moving faster with somebody else rowing it for a while, and that, no doubt, over the course of the voyage, there would be many opportunities when I could repay that kindness by returning the favour. And so the key to successful adventuring is not merely to be tough and to be kind, but also to acknowledge your weaknesses and to accept kindness. I was a lucky man.

My life was filled with adventures and travel. I was earning a living, doing something that I loved. I couldn’t have asked for anything more. But an adventurous soul should see these times when everything is going very smoothly as an opportunity, not for complacency, but to dare yourself to pivot, to shake things up, and to keep yourself on your toes.

I had been originally inspired towards a life of adventure by reading of the exploits of explorers and adventurers. Like them, I wanted to push myself hard, to see what I was capable of. I wanted to laugh in the face of danger and risk failure, gambling that the slim prospect of success was reward enough for those risks. I wanted uncertainty and novelty and surprise, and I got all those things. However, by now, I’d been travelling the world for a long time, and it’s fair to say, this really is not rocket science. All I needed to do, really, on any of these projects, was to keep going, to not quit, to tolerate sleeping in uncomfortable places, to accept being smelly, to eat dull food, to commit to a monotonous, repetitive routine. And if I did those things for long enough, then I could get to the finish line, down a delicious cold beer, relish in a hot shower, and then upload my heroics to the internet in pursuit of the dopamine hit of likes and compliments. So far, so good. But another way of looking at things was that by becoming experienced and competent at these journeys, it meant that when I set off on a trip, I was probably going to finish it. I mostly knew what it would be like. The uncertainty, the novelty, the surprise, the doubts, the fears of failure, they had all receded enormously. And so, if I was being honest, was I actually just cruising along in a comfort zone? Were these adventures not actually adventures at all, but a complacent and unquestioning routine and rut, the very things I had been hoping to escape by choosing this path in life? I needed to look differently at what living adventurously meant to me.

When I first started chasing adventures, I was wanting to prove myself to the world and to myself. I wanted to try to become tough. I wanted danger. But I was a lot older these days, wiser – possibly – more comfortable in my own skin, yes, softer and lazier, absolutely. And so the notion of living adventurously was different to me now.

How could I approach my life now, in order to get the challenge, the uncertainty, the risk, the fear of failure, the reward of unexpected triumph, the personal growth, the excitement, the fun?

And the answer to all these questions, to my surprise, terror, and eventual delight, was learning the violin.

The month I spent walking through northern Spain with no money and only my violin to pay for my next meal was no great adventure by the definitions I’d have laid down when I first dreamed of cycling around the world. A mere month, a paltry 500 miles, a comfortable, soft, and easy country like Spain, I would have scoffed at the prospect of that being an adventure. And even now, I didn’t consider that the adventure, though. Walking a long way, sleeping in the hills, cooking basic food on an open fire, that’s my day job. That’s routine. That’s my comfort zone. The adventure here was playing the violin, extremely badly. It was frightening, embarrassing, and I felt incredibly vulnerable. It was without a doubt one of the most terrifying, thrilling, and adventurous things I’ve ever done in my life. It was about daring myself to pivot, embracing vulnerability, and being willing to look like a fool. The reward for daring was the kindness of strangers, the thrill of succeeding at something difficult, and the far broader, more inclusive, and more interesting definition of what living adventurously meant.

When I look back on all the different journeys I’ve done, in deserts or ice caps, oceans or mountains, different landscapes, different cultures, different continents, the things that I was looking for in these disparate various places was always quite similar. And what this means is that much of the pursuit of adventure takes place inside your head and your heart. The geography of adventure matters less than the mindset. Where you go on your journeys and voyages matters far less than the attitude with which you head out. And so, if this is true, if you can find adventure and challenge wherever you happen to be, then surely it should be possible to find adventure anywhere. I decided to put this hypothesis to the test by trying the most boring adventure in the world. I asked myself a question: Where do I really hate? I’ll go and have an adventure there. The answer seemed obvious: the M25. The motorway that is the epitome of humdrum, boring frustration, a traffic-snarled snail’s pace creep around the uninspiring landscapes and commuter towns of London. If I could find adventure here, I reasoned to myself, I could find adventure anywhere. Walking a lap of the M25 turned out to be one of the great adventures of my life. It was ridiculous, of course, a silly project, a bit of fun. But time and again, as I tracked alongside that busy road, the thought occurred to me that this was exactly like cycling around the world. Not quite as far, of course, not so exotic, definitely. But still, it was taking me places I’d never been, it was a circular journey, a physical challenge, I was visiting new places and meeting new people, all the experiences that you have on a much longer project. So, this wasn’t a big adventure, of course, but it was an adventure. And so I decided to call it a microadventure. I chose that word because micro means small, really small. And something that I’d noticed was that people often dismiss their own experiences and adventures as not being valid because they make the mistake of comparing them to others. ‘Oh, I’ve done such and such a trip,’ people often told me after my speaking events, ‘but it was nothing compared to what you’ve done. My adventure doesn’t count compared to the big things you’ve done.’ And that’s complete nonsense. If it feels like an adventure to you, then it is an adventure. An adventure is a mindset, first. That first microadventure marked a huge change in direction in my adventuring life. In the outset, I had very much been attempting to do bigger, bolder journeys than other people could do, to win recognition and attention and affection by impressing people and trying to stand out from the crowd. Microadventures was very different. It was about making adventure more inclusive and less elitist. It was about opening wide my arms and embracing anyone into the fold of adventure, reminding people that if it feels like an adventure to you, then it is an adventure. It is always better to do something adventurous than to do nothing at all. And this was one of the other great revelations to me of starting to pursue microadventures. The notion that it is always better to look for the opportunities for adventure that are available rather than bemoaning the constraints and the problems. You might not have enough time

to cycle around the world, of course. So that then leaves you with two options: to either feel sorry for yourself and do nothing at all, or to try to squeeze in as much as you possibly can in the scraps of free time that you do have around the margins of your life. Or you might like the idea of rowing an ocean but don’t have the luxury of enough money for such a project. So again, you can either do nothing except regret not being able to afford that grand adventure, or you can try to do what you can with what you have and do it now. Nine to five life is a necessary and hopefully rewarding part of life. But there’s no denying that it probably gets in the way of quite a lot of hopes and dreams and adventures. But it’s an unavoidable reality of life. It’s like moaning about gravity. And so then we have a choice, once again, to grumble that the nine to five gets in the way of adventures, or to flip that round and question the five to nine. When we finish work at 5 pm, hypothetically, we have, theoretically at least, 16 hours of freedom until we need to be back at our desks by nine o’clock the next morning. You can either respond to that sentence by pointing out the obvious fact that you work longer hours and you have other commitments in your life, or you can look at that sentence of flipping the nine to five into the five to nine and wonder what opportunities for living adventurously you might be neglecting in your life. I’m not suggesting that every night of your life you can swan off and sleep on a hill, but perhaps one warm summer’s evening, you can make arrangements to head out after work to somewhere you’ve never been and do something you’ve never done before. It’s not an enormous voyage, it’s just a microadventure. But I can assure you that it is an evening you will remember a year from now, once all those weary flops on the sofa in front of the TV have blended into one forgettable blur. Adventure is a mindset, opportunities, not the constraints.

Living adventurously has been an excellent compass direction for me to pursue in helping me to live a life that is interesting and personally fulfilling. Those both feel like worthwhile objectives to pursue in our one wild and precious life. But there is more to life than that, particularly for those of us in the world privileged to live in a society with a fair degree of health and wealth and freedom. It feels important to me that those of us with such privileges should strive to not only live adventurously but also with purpose. Adventure plus purpose is the equation, adventure plus purpose is the recipe I’m driving for these days. It’s something I’ve been mulling over a great deal, particularly during the project that I recently committed to for an entire year. I love the world’s wild places, but jetting off to so many far-flung locations has a terrible environmental impact, and the sad and the cruel irony is that adventurous people like me, who love the world’s wild places, are responsible for harming those wild places the most. If I loved the planet so much, I asked myself, was I willing to restrict my travel in order to try to help it? At the same time, I realised that whilst I have been to all sorts of incredible destinations, the scenes from David Attenborough documentaries, I’d never been to that wood which I see from the train window every time I go into the city. And although I’ve cycled through Cairo, and Tokyo, and Los Angeles, I have no idea what that town just off the dual carriageway has to offer. Could I honestly call myself an explorer of the world if I had no idea what was in my backyard? And whilst I love trying to encourage anyone who gets the opportunity to strap a tent to the back of a bicycle and cycle off into the sunset, and to try to urge everyone to spend more time camping and cycling in the countryside, I’m well aware that all these things are still relatively difficult to do for busy people in busy lives. And so I began to ask myself whether it might be possible to put nearby nature into everyday lives by searching for wildness closer to home.

And so I bought myself the local map for where I live, an uninspiring, unexciting, extremely ordinary stretch of suburban land and forgettable farms. And I dared myself to curb my wanderlust and to spend an entire year exploring only my local map. Part of me thought this was a great idea, and a large chunk of me feared that it would be terribly restrictive and boring. To my surprise and relief, it turned out to be one of the great travel experiences of my life. I can’t pretend for a moment that it was an adventure, but it was certainly a journey. And I discovered beautiful, interesting places on my doorstep that I never knew existed. I connected with my community more than I’d ever done before. But I also

learned what I knew but chose to ignore, which is that nature is in a terrible state. The way we use our land takes a terrible toll on nature, the environment, and the climate, and the way modern society lives life means that more of us are becoming increasingly disconnected from nature, with terrible implications for our physical and mental health but also our attitudes towards conservation and the environment and clean rivers and the planet. The way we use our land, the loss of nature, and the disconnection from the wild world are problems that are deeply intertwined. But the solutions are also interlinked. I could look at the problems and the barriers, or I can look at the opportunities and feel hopeful.

My year of exploring my local map was a deep dive into curiosity and noticing, learning to pay attention more than I’ve ever done before. The more you are interested in the world, the more interesting it becomes. By closely observing the land that I live on, I saw how many problems it has. But I have been more motivated than ever before to set about seeking solutions. If each of us fixes our local map, we will surely fix the world. Living adventurously and with purpose is what the last 10,500 days have taught me. Here’s to the next ten and a half thousand.”

Here are the key learnings and messages distilled from the narrative:

1. Embrace Big Dreams and Start Small: The speaker emphasizes the importance of dreaming big and taking the initial steps towards those dreams, however small or uncertain they may seem. This is relevant for leaders setting audacious business goals.
2. Resilience Through Adversity: Through various adventures, the importance of perseverance, resilience, and embracing discomfort for growth is highlighted. Business leaders are encouraged to see challenges as opportunities for development.
3. The Power of Micro-adventures: The concept of micro-adventures underscores that significant experiences and learning can come from small, local endeavors. This teaches leaders the value of appreciating and maximizing small opportunities and innovations within their businesses.
4. Learning from Failure and Vulnerability: Accepting help, acknowledging weaknesses, and learning from failures are portrayed as strengths, not weaknesses. This mindset fosters a culture of support, learning, and continuous improvement in business environments.
5. Adventure as a Mindset: The adventure mindset—embracing curiosity, stepping out of comfort zones, and finding joy in the journey—is applicable to business leaders seeking to innovate and lead with enthusiasm and vision.
6. Purpose Beyond Profit: The narrative ends on the note of combining adventure with purpose, suggesting that businesses should not only pursue financial success but also consider their impact on society and the environment.
7. Local Impact for Global Change: The speaker’s year of local exploration serves as a metaphor for businesses to focus on local impact and community engagement as a pathway to contributing to global change.

In summary, the talk inspires business leaders to adopt an adventurous mindset in pursuing their goals, embracing challenges, valuing small beginnings, learning from setbacks, and leading with purpose. It encourages a holistic approach to leadership that balances ambition with humility, innovation with sustainability, and individual achievement with collective well-being.