Alastair Humphreys - Fear is an adventure

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/