We chatted to Alastair at the British Library. He talked to us about:
- His natural personality of nervousness, stress and hate of late
- Coaxing himself to become more curious, more spontaneous, more relaxed and more adventurous
- Differentiate between the things where you have control and those you don't i.e. don't get frustrated with the waves because you can't change them
- Confidence is built from doing things and the trick is to keep the momentum going
- The impact of his adventures on his life - and becoming more of the person he wants to be
- Learning to focus on what matters in life
- The power of laughter when things aren't going so well
- Cycling 46k miles around the world which took him 4 years, through 60 countries and 5 continents - all on a total budget of £7k
- Cycling around the world when you begin to understand how little of the world you've seen
- Walked across India and Iceland
- Ultramarathons and expeditions across oceans, deserts, the Arctic and Greenland
- On wanting to become a tough guy like Ranulph Fiennes
- Summoning up the guts to take on an adventure when normal guys like him don't do adventures - they live normal lives
- The moment he committed to his first adventure - when he wrote a letter to Mr Walker saying thanks but no thanks to the offer of a job as a Science Teacher
- The power of writing a letter to tip his head full of daydreams and insecurities into action
- Why cycling is the perfect way to travel
- Wanting to break free from ordinary and do something extraordinary and difficult for the first time in my life
- The chip on his shoulder at being so ordinary and average
- His habit of getting his school work done immediately and then relaxing
- His spur of the moment decision to join the Territorial Army and why he enjoyed the experience
- Underestimating the horribleness of the adventure and craving a normal life
- The uselessness of using the finish line as motivation because it's so far away
- When during the 3rd year of 4, he finally started to enjoy his trip
- Solitude and Loneliness being two sides of the same coin
- When he came back, noticing that his values hadn't changed but his focus had - he was far more aware who he was and what mattered to him
- The two years he spent talking in schools about his adventures
- Ditching his planned South Pole trip with a mate in favour of time with his son
- The routine of the school run
- Learning to make a living from adventure writing
- Becoming a brand
- Switching from a few big adventures to many small adventures
- Being motivated by the opportunity to become self-aware and not the finish line
- Understanding that the reasons he started his adventures were no longer relevant and he needed to find a different way
- How he used the violin to bring fear and excitement back into his life
- Why travel doesn't have a monopoly on adventure
- The benefits of becoming more childlike in his approach
- Not coping with the routine of being a father
- Designing short meaningful adventures for others
- Learning the violin for seven months (and still being rubbish)
- Walking 500 miles for one month through Spain with his violin, no money and no credit card
- His No.1 rule of spending the money earned each day from busking (120 Euro's in one month) - he spent it all so he'd be back to no money and a state of fear
- Looking for the opportunities to have micro-adventures in nature
- Scheduling a tree climb once a month into his Google Calendar
- Learning that it's more important to have a lifetime of small little adventures than it is to do a few big adventures
- The ongoing wrestling match he has with himself
https://www.alastairhumphreys.com/
Living Dangerously by Ranulph Fiennes
Seth Godin Blog
Do Something Different
My Midsummer Morning
https://www.nicolabenedetti.co.uk/
