Adventure as a Performance Fuel | Robin Sharma

Hi, it's Robin Sharma, author of the Leader who Had no Title, founder of the Titan Academy, and this mastery session is all about adventure as a performance fuel. So I've been living my life recently under one compelling standard and simply this. Be only with people.

Do only the work. Be only in the spaces and places that fuel my joy. I think life is too short to be depleted. And so I've spent a lot of my life helping people rise to iconic as producers and performers and creatives and entrepreneurs and leaders. And so what I wanted to do in this mastery session is really share with you some of the things I do in my own life to fuel my joy, fuel my energy, fuel, fuel my creativity. And what I'm really speaking of here is adventure. So if you talk to any good neurobiologist, they will tell you that the brain craves novelty. The way we are hardwired is to pursue joy, to pursue novelty, to pursue newness. And that's why so often we start something, but we really don't finish it. We're always looking for that one new thing that will fuel our joy and fuel our ideation, fuel our creativity. It's almost like we've got this inner child within us, constantly longing to see the light of day. And, you know, adults are nothing more than deteriorated children. You never want to lose that connection with that festive, fiery, sparkling, creative, playful inner child. I mean, you know, the more you can connect with that inner child, the more you're going to find your productivity growing exponentially, your creativity firing up, and basically, you're just going out into your industry and out into the world and radiating positivity. So what are some of the things that I do to fuel my joy and to keep that sense of adventure alive so I don't lose the sparkle in my eye traveling. I just love being on airplanes. Fundamentally, I am a nomad, so I love being in Rome and eating the pasta and experiencing the fresh mozzarella di bufala or di bur, watching the way the light falls over the architecture. I just love Rome so much. I love getting up in the morning while the Romans are asleep and running up to Monti and then past the Coliseum and then past Trevi Fountain. I mean, that is one of the greatest runs, I think, on the planet, at least for me. I love going to Mauritius. Why do I love Mauritius? This island paradise where no one can find me and I can immerse myself in creativity and I can refuel you. Talk about adventure. Going to Mauritius and swimming with the dolphins is one of the things you need to do on your before I die list before you die. I just love places like Stockholm. I love Latin America, I love the Middle East, I adore Europe. I love London, I love Switzerland because I love to ski. I love going to India, I love going to Southeast Asia. I love traveling the planet because here's the thing, I don't think there is a better education known to humankind than traveling. Especially when you put away. I mean, what's the point of actually taking your devices with you every single day on vacation or while you're taking a trip, you might as well stay home and check your social feed, you know, and I see people also. They're. They're in different places across our gorgeous planet and they're eating in the fast food chains. Well, you might be able to do that at home, what you want to do on a trip. And I know this might sound obvious, but what is sometimes common wisdom is actually practiced very uncommonly. And when you go to a new country, whether it's Japan or whether it's Mumbai or whether it is Lima or whether it is Toronto or whether it is Chicago or whether it is lose Erin, I don't know where you're going to be going, but try the food of that place. And that is going to fuel the novelty. And you are going to find you are going to have conversations that are unexpected, that are going to give you new ideas that you've never had. I mean, carry your journal around with you everywhere you go on your adventures and you're going to eat this great food that is going to give you these new sensations and these new feelings, and you're ultimately going to have these new experiences that will dramatically or subtly change your character and form a new philosophy. When I'm working on a book, I take a lot of trips, okay? I will go to these interesting places. I will put myself in novel situations. I will talk to the chef and I will talk to the taxi driver and I will actually have conversations with strangers on the street because that's with my boots on the ground. I get a pulse of that city. I get a pulse of that economy. I get a pulse of that country. Then when I go back to my hotel room, if my loved ones are not with me, I will deconstruct. You know, I'm really big on deconstructing experiences. Even if I have a gorgeous meal in a beautiful restaurant, it's not about expensive. It could be a trattoria where the food was iconic, but it was simple and inexpensive. I will Actually deconstruct why that meal was so cool. I will actually, and I do this with a pen. It's old school, because old school allows you to dial in, to have depth of thinking that you just don't get when you're typing it out on your keyboard. So I deconstruct things like world class meal, why? And then I put down, like, five little bubbles. Number one, the room had authenticity. Number two, the service was so human and loving. Number three, the burrata cheese with the olive oil on it was like last meal material. Number four, the way the light fell on the wooden table touched something deeply within me. Number five, I had no technology within me that allowed me to be in a flow moment that experts like Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who wrote a book on flow, allowed me to just be in the present so that it was really outright magical. I guess what I'm sharing with you is, number one. Okay, first principle, really, I'm going to share three of them. But first principle is if you want to fuel that novelty so that you reconnect with your highest creativity and your highest productivity, get out on the road, take these vacations. It's not a waste of time. It's one of the best uses of your time. Number two, novelty conversations. We do become our conversations. The work of Nicholas Christakis over at Harvard, for example, he's written a great book called Connected you teaches us you become your social networks, okay? And so if you are with interesting people, then you will become more interesting. If you have conversations with people like Edison and Lady Gaga, Kanye and Rembrandt through their books, because books are conversations with the people who have written the books. You will fuel novelty. And that's why if you're like me, and I think you are, otherwise you wouldn't be with me. In this mastery session. After you put down a book or after you close your digital device after reading an ebook, you're fired up with this inexplicable energy. And that, again, is because you've galvanized your brain's need for novelty through reading some new and potentially disruptive ideas. So you want to have new conversations. Third way for you to really heighten and awaken your highest novelty and really get that fire in the belly that's there, but often it's asleep. You want to fire it up. The third way to do it is simply this. Have the guts to put yourself in scary places. Now, I'm a skier, and a few years ago, I gave myself a really heroic challenge for Me, which was to go from being an amateur to being a professional. Now, I'm not the greatest professional on the planet, but I gave myself a goal, because vague goals give vague results. So I gave myself a specific goal. Become a level one ski instructor. And so I went to New Zealand to practice, and I went to Latin America. I went down to Argentina to practice. And here's what I did. I put myself in scary places. I put myself in places and on mountains. And yes, I hired a professional to take care of me and to teach me and to make sure it was safe. But I put myself in scenarios, and I allowed myself to even heli ski, which was one of the scariest things I've ever done. I mean, it was a beautiful day in New Zealand, and we were in Queenstown, and I were with these skiers who were so much better than I was. But I put myself in a situation where I got into a helicopter and the helicopter dropped five of us on the top of a New Zealand mountain. Now, I got to tell you, I had very little experience in powder. I'm a non powder skier. And the people I skied with, I don't think they knew that, because when you ski in powder, it's a fundamentally different medium than skiing in the kind of snow that I've skied on for 15 or 20 years. And I put myself in a situation where I'm on the top of the mountain. I'm not a very good powder skier, but I understood that we get stronger in the difficult places. And it's on the tough runs as a skier that you are really brought to your jagged edges of your capability. And here's the key idea. I want you to rewire as a dominant belief, because you're an A player, we get stronger on the tougher runs. You see.

The thing about a master is they always want to put themselves into situations like a beginner. And what I'm suggesting to you and actually asking you to do today as a result of this mastery session, if you really want to breed novelty, high energy, great creativity, more productivity, you want to put yourself in scary places. What is your metaphorical mountaintop? What is the project that you are most resisting because that is the one that contains your greatest growth? What is the conversation you're most avoiding with a teammate, with an intimate partner, with another family member? Because there your growth lies. And the whole journey of mastery is not about ease. I mean, the society says do the easy things. But you know what? Every victim, every 95 percenter, every average producer loves doing what's easy. They watch the tv, they have the easy conversations, they take the easy projects, they live an easy life. And that's a recipe for disaster when you get to the end of your life. Because few things will so destroy your spirit as a life minutely lived. And if you really want to awaken your best self, if you really want to be a titan of your field, and if you really want to rise to personal mastery, then you absolutely must, on a daily basis, at least once every few days, put yourself in those scenarios where you get frightened. Right? And I'm here to tell you, being scared is not a sign of being weak. Being scared is a sign of your highest growth coming to get you. It's very brave to be in places that allow your insecurities to come up. Because as your insecurities come up, you can deal with them. And here's the real key. You get really good by practicing going to the places that terrify you. The pain and fear and insecurity starts to get smaller and you start to grow.

And that's how you become braver. Okay? So I hope you've really enjoyed this Mastery session. I sure have loved being with you. I want to congratulate you because, you know, we have now millions of people watching these mastery sessions from probably 90 plus countries. And the very fact that you are here with me shows me, you know, you have this heroic ambition within you and you are doing what it takes to make that real. And so I look forward to seeing you in an online course. I look forward to seeing you in the social media. I look forward to seeing you in a live course with me. Because let's keep this conversation going. I'm here to serve you. I want to get to know you even better. I want to help you fuel your rise from where you now are to where you want to be. Because my mighty mission is to help as many people as possible live this material. Because if you grow, the world grows. As you get better, the world gets better. You start to become a shining example of possibility. You elevate the lives around you. And then I've done my part to make the world a better place in my own small and hopefully authentic way. Okay, I'm sending you lots of love, lots of encouragement. I hope you feel my fire to help you fuel your rise. I'll see you in the next Mastery session. Hi, this is Robin Sharma. I hope you received great value from this mastery session. If you'd like to receive potent training videos, blog posts, learning tools and information on my two live events, Personal Mastery Academy and my flagship four day experience, the Titan Summit. Go ahead and visit robinsharmer.com.