by Oli Anderson, Transformational Coach for Realness
How to Live as an Adventurous Spirit in a Spiritless World
Let’s be honest: a lot of people these days feel like something’s missing.
Sure, their lives are safe, predictable, and secure but deep down, there’s a dull ache that permeates everything they do – a quiet yearning, a craving that they might not always be able to name but that they can definitely feel (on this site, I often call this The Void).
In this article, we’re gong to talk about how this is often a hunger for adventure in a world that’s lost touch with the real human spirit.
Feeling this hunger is no accident – it’s not a midlife crisis, existential crisis, or any other label you might want to give to a crisis:
Instead, it’s the natural result of a life dulled by emotional suppression and social conditioning; when we cave in to shame, guilt, and unresolved trauma and buy into the cultural blueprint of safety at all costs and eventually end up building a life that looks stable but feels hollow.
Let’s dig a little deeper:
Craving Adventure: Table of Contents
- How to Live as an Adventurous Spirit in a Spiritless World
The Comfortable Cage
Most people don’t even realise they’ve traded adventure for approval because it happens slowly – in increments, day-after-day over a number of years:
You get the job, you get the house, you follow the rules, and then – at some point – you stop questioning it because you’ve started to identify with it all (i.e. it becomes an extension of your ego and what feels ‘familiar’).
It’s the path of least resistance, and everyone applauds you for walking it.
As the years go by, though – and the spark fades – you start looking back on your youth like it was the “best time of your life”:
Your job doesn’t challenge you. Your relationships don’t inspire you. Your creativity is drying up. You begin to wonder if this is really all life is.
The answer is “no” – there’s definitely more to life than this but – in order to get it – you have to stop lying to yourself. What’s missing isn’t just excitement. It’s realness. You’ve become disconnected from the part of you that thrives on risk, stretch, growth, and meaning – the part that wants life to be an adventure.
Adventure Isn’t Optional – It’s Human
Adventure isn’t about jumping out of planes or quitting your job to live in a van (although it could be if that’s what you want):
At its core, adventure is about riding through uncertainty – it’s about leaning into life instead of only ever attempting to control it to try and make it conform to how you think things should be. It’s about staying open to possibility and being willing to change – not just your circumstances but your self as you surrender to the adventure and let it transform you by showing you what’s unreal and what’s REAL.
Here’s something really important to remember:
The ‘part’ of you that longs for adventure – the wild, risk-taking part – isn’t broken or reckless.
It’s an expression of who you REALLY are that’s been long buried in the shadow self – that part of you that got shamed, silenced, or pushed aside so you could fit in and be ‘acceptable’ in some way.
Until you reclaim it, you’ll keep craving adventure like a thirsty man craves water and your life will never feel like ‘yours’ because it won’t be…it’ll be your life according to whoever you let send you into hiding in the first place.
The Shadow and the Void
The reason you crave adventure is because you feel the Void – the sense that something is missing because you’ve become disconnected from the truth about yourself.
Most people attempt to try and fill this Void with external distractions:
They travel constantly, chase dopamine, sleep around, binge on cacao ceremonies (which, let’s face it, is really just hot chocolate), or spend thousands on spiritual retreats hoping to ‘find’ themselves (when, really, there’s nothing to find because it’s already there).
Some of these things can help temporarily but if they’re driven by ego – by the desire to keep hiding the shadow and to escape rather than integrate – they’re just more noise. When the distractions end, the Void gets louder and that’s when the dark night of the soul begins (when they reach the end of one version of themselves and lose it suddenly as reality crashes back in).
What you’re actually searching for isn’t out there: it’s within.
And the only way to stop feeling empty is to stop being fake – which, in this case, means to start living with more ADVENTURE.
The Real Adventure Is Within
You don’t need to do something wild to feel alive and to bring more adventure into your life – you need to do something real and real often feels like chaos at first because it goes against the script.
Even so, this kind of chaos is sacred because it’s the birthplace of change and growth:
You have to be willing to break the pattern if you want to feel whole again.
That could look like quitting your job but it could also look like telling the truth in a relationship, trying a new class, learning a new skill, or moving your body in ways it’s never moved before.
It could simply mean feeling your emotions instead of suppressing them.
Whatever it means to you, these are all adventures because they all push you beyond the safe and familiar identity of the ego and take you into territory you’ve never really explored before.
Remember this one:
Life doesn’t stop being uncertain just because you try to control it – it just stops being real.
Adventure as a Path to Realness
Your realness isn’t something you ‘find’ out there in the world (because the world is unreal) – it’s something you reclaim by letting go of everything that’s not authentic and aligned with the truth about yourself, the world, and reality..
Adventure is the vehicle that helps you do that:
It stretches you. Tests you. Forces you to adapt.
It exposes your fears and shows you who you really are underneath them and what potential you have to realise away from whatever BS and illusions this fear shows you (because most fear is F.E.A.R: “False Evidence Appearing Real”).
When you start living this way – when you let your natural sense of adventure become your teacher – you begin to feel something sacred stirring inside:
The purpose, joy, vivacity, and wholeness that comes from being REAL.
Practical Ways to Bring More Adventure Into Your Life
Here are some grounded, real-life ways to make your life more adventurous without running off to the jungle or blowing up your whole world overnight:
1. Do At Least One Thing That Scares You Every Week
Not recklessly but intentionally:
This could be anything from public speaking to posting something honest online to going on a solo walk somewhere new.
Adventure is a muscle and the more you train it, the more real your life becomes.
2. Stretch Your Body, Stretch Your Life
Your nervous system is the gateway to realness:
If you’re stuck in comfort, you’re probably stuck in a sympathetic (fight-flight-freeze) loop and so you might need to shake things up a little with cold showers, new movement patterns (like dance, martial arts, or trail walking), or anything else that gets your body into a regulated yet alert state.
In short, the more you learn to stretch your body and equip your nervous system for resilience, the more resilient you’ll be in life and the more of an adventure it will become as you start stretching yourself beyond the comfort zone.
3. Turn The Mundane Into Magic
Travel isn’t the only option you have when it comes to feeling adventurous – all you really need to do is to act like a tourist and try something new or to go ‘sightseeing’ where you already are:
Try something new today like a new café, a different route home, reading book outside your usual genre, or even just asking deeper questions in conversations in order to learn something NEW about the people you already know.
4. Face the Thing You’ve Been Avoiding
Real adventure starts when you stop running from the parts of yourself that you don’t want to look at and when you enter the unknown territory that’s been calling to you:
What conversation, decision, or truth have you been avoiding?
Go there and see what’s waiting for you.
As Joseph Campbell said: “The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek” (this applies to facing your shadow in general too).
5. Create Something Real
Write. Paint. Build. Speak. Design. Cook.
Use your hands and heart to make something that didn’t exist before – that’s real adventure:
Birthing form out of the formless and ideally learning about yourself and life in the process.
6. Ritualise Challenge
Challenge creates growth so make it a habit.
Monthly goal? Weekly stretch? Daily discomfort practice?
Choose your own adventure but make it intentional and keep it consistent so you keep growing daily and allowing the real you to keep emerging.
Craving Adventure: A Final Thought
If you feel like something is missing from your life, it’s probably is: YOU.
Not the superficial, surface-level you; not the socially acceptable version of you – the real you:
The one who’s unafraid to feel fully alive, to make bold choices, to lean into growth, and to embrace uncertainty as a sacred path to wholeness.
Don’t wait for an adventure to find you when you can live as one.
Stay real out there,
P.S. If you’re ready for more adventure in your life and you’re interested in coaching then book a free call with me and I’ll help you figure out what your next real action to take is (and keep you accountable for taking it)
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