Planning my escape @ World Escape Day

Last night I attended Escape the City's World Escape Day event in London and what a night it was! Escape the City are an organisation that help people to find work that enables them to fulfil their potential.

Life is short. Do work that matters to you.
- Escape The City

For the last 6 months I've been struggling to feel excited about my job and it's not the first time I've felt like this in the last 5 years. Surely there must be more to life than sitting in an office and making money for 'the man'??? World Escape Day was the start of the answer for me and an insight into what it would take to start the ball rolling on a finding my ideal career.

Adventure means living the life you have always imagined
- Alastair Humphreys

I was very excited to see that one of the speakers for the evening was Alastair Humphreys as he was the inspiration for my microadventure challenge which was a New Years Resolution that a friend and I decided to embark on whilst having a few pints in the pub. His talk was titled The Doorstep Mile and was a funny, motivating and inspiring mix of his experience in 'escaping' and becoming an adventurer.

So, as I'm due to die on Saturday 20th October 2063 (according to the death clock - fun!) I realise that it's time to make a change and step into the unknown. This was compounded by hearing Happyologist (yes, that is a job title apparently) Susanna Halonen talking about how she found her passion in life as a happyologist and how she now helps others to find theirs.

Stop waiting for life to happen. Take control now.
- Susanna Halonen

In her talk she raised the following questions that we should all try to answer on our journey to unlocking our passion:

  • What do I want out of life?
  • What values do I want to live my life by?
  • What do I want to create or contribute to that makes the world awesome?
  • How can I embrace life as a journey of learning?
  • What are my best traits and how can I use them more?

Easy, eh? Erm, nope! I'm still working on answering the first one but am definitely aiming to answer these over the coming weeks in order to really understand what it is that I'm trying to achieve in changing my life - thanks Susanna!

I think that my highlight of the night had to be a question from one of the hosts of the evening, Ben.

If you could do (as a job) anything that you wanted and someone told you right now that you couldn't fail, what would you do?

It's strange how one simple question can give you more answers than you thought you had. For me this had only one answer, 'I'd become an adventurer', yet if I'd told people that this was what I wanted to do then they would just laugh at me. In this envrionment surrounded by like minded people all trying to find their way, it didn't feel like a stupid thing to say or think and I'm hanging onto that. I know that it's unlikely that I'm going to become the next Alastair Humphreys or Sean Conway but for me it is a massive step towards realising what is important to me and the direction that I would like to aim towards in order to unlock that passion that Susanna was talking about.

Another massive thing that I took away from the event last night is that it's all about small steps - doing small things that help you on the way to fulfilling what it is that you want to do in life. So small step number 1 for me is to go out on a solo microadventure. I'm rather a nervous person in the dark and have never bivvied or camped alone but it's a necessity if I'm to go off and have crazy adventures as there won't always be someone else who is crazy enough to join me, so that is my first small step.....watch this space!