Why You Should Spend Money On Adventures | Vishen Lakhiani

In this deep dive, we're going to talk about designing adventure into your life. Adventure is one of those things that is so important to me. There's a famous study that shows that if you have a certain pool of money, it is better to put that money into buying experiences, adventures, than buying objects. And there's a really interesting reason for this. When you buy an object, adaptation is the enemy of happiness. When you buy an object, you get an instant level of happiness. But after a while, for some reason, your happiness adapts to it and your happiness level starts to drop. So putting money into objects is never a best use of your money. But putting money into experiences, into adventures, completely different thing. Adventures are thrilling. They fill you with happiness. But the memories that they produce stay with you. The learnings help you grow. Adventures help shape you. And this is why, to me, one of the best things you can do is to create visions for yourself in terms of the adventures you want in your life. These adventures could be traveling to exotic places. It could be something crazy, like bungee jumping. It could be something simple, but happening in your local neighborhood. One of my friends, for example, recently told me about this beautiful adventure she had with a restaurant called Dining in the Dark, where you go and eat food in pitch darkness. Waiters serve you, but because all your other senses are shut down, you truly get to experience things through your sense of taste. It didn't cost much, but it was an adventure. So the idea behind this particular deep dive is to get you to think about adventures, beautiful things you can bring into your life that are going to create amazing memories. And here's why adventures are so important. Well, firstly, the scientist Thomas Gilovich studied this, and what he said is, adventures are better use of your money. Adventures, firstly, not only do they help you grow, but you get to do them with friends. Most adventures are done with friends. You might even meet new friends on an adventure when you set out by yourself. And these friendships often stay with you. Secondly, even if the adventure ends up being bad, you decide to go to Yosemite to hike the mountain. It rains, you get stuck in the mud. At least you have a good, really funny story to share with people. And thirdly, you can't compare experiences the way you can compare objects. If I have a TV and you have a bigger tv, my TV certainly doesn't fill me with as much satisfaction. There's a study that shows that after someone wins the lottery, their neighbors actually end up going in debt trying to keep up with the lottery winners. It's crazy how objects do this. To us. But adventures don't have a value to it except the value we assign to it. And therefore, it ends up being so much more enriching. There's no competition when it comes to it. For all of these reasons, adventurers are supremely important. And you want to cultivate adventure in your life. So I recently tried an experiment. I tried to think back to some of the happiest moments of my life. And the happiest moments in my life were never things such as founding my company and hitting a particular milestone. It wasn't even my first paycheck or the new car I bought myself. My happiest moments in my life were unique, specific adventures. One of the happiest was when I was a sophomore at the University of Michigan, and the school had this program called Alternative Spring Break, where rather than go and say, party in Cancun for spring break, kids would sign up to go volunteer. I went to volunteer at a boys and Girls club in New York City. It was my first trip in New York. I remember it was a group of college students with not much money. We slept on a floor in a local church, and in the mornings, we would volunteer with these kids. And to this day, it was one of the happiest, most rewarding weeks of my life, spending time with the kids in this boys and girls club. Another one of the most remarkable months of my life was when I was 21 years old, didn't have much money. I decided to backpack around the Balkans, in Eastern Europe, sleeping on park benches and train stations. I did this for seven weeks, traveled to 13 countries. I met some of the most incredible friends of my life on that trip. It shaped me. It changed me. And to this day, it is one of the greatest moments in my life. And you know what it cost me? 3 grand. That's all the entire trip cost me for a lifetime of memories. So, again, I've always found that when you can find the right adventures, it doesn't take much money, but you can create huge bursts of happiness, huge memories, profound transformations, new connections, all by understanding just how beautiful, crucial adventures are to your life vision. So what we're going to do here is set a timer, and I'm going to have you start listing down incredible adventures that you want to have in your life. So first, before we begin, let's look at some of the rules of the culturescape that hold us back from living an adventurous life. Do you believe that spending money on adventure is frivolous? Some of us have that rule because of the families we grew up In. Well, I can tell you it's not. But that's up to you to discover. Do you believe that it is a waste of time to spend money on adventure when you could be investing in, say, your family or your education? Well, maybe adventure is an education. Maybe adventure with your family is how you would resolve that. There are some people who believe that you wait till retirement to then lead that adventurous life. I think in today's modern world, that doesn't apply anymore. We shouldn't wait for retirement. In fact, retirement is a brule. We should live lives and have careers where we have the flexibility to truly enjoy the world today. Do you believe adventures are expensive? Again, not true. Because with the way the world is evolving from Airbnb to to budget airlines to ride sharing apps, we can now have adventures that cost practically nothing. You don't even need to find a hotel room if you can afford that right now. There is such a thing as couch surfing. The world is changing and the cost of these unique human experiences is falling very rapidly. So as we do this exercise, I'm going to share with you a couple of ideas of adventures you could put down. And again, we're going to give you three minutes and and you're going to deep dive into designing adventure into your life. Let's get started. So at this point, you should have your three most important questions sheet out on a notebook or a paper and you're going to start writing. What adventures do you really crave? Think about people you know who have come back from incredible vacations. Maybe articles you read that inspire you. Feel free to write down the ideas for adventures you get from these learnings. Perhaps it's a new city you want to travel to. And again, as you're traveling to a new city, keep in mind that you don't have to do the usual touristy thing. I once went to Sarajevo in Bosnia after a war as a photographer to take black and white photographs of a city to do an exhibit in Michigan on why war kinda sucked. And that was one of the most amazing adventures I had. Perhaps it's something such as skydiving or bungee jumping. Maybe it's exploring a rainforest in Malaysia or the Amazon. Perhaps it's a camping trip. If you live in the United States, one of the greatest things about the US are national parks. And I love adventures in Yosemite and Yellowstone and all the other incredible national parks that exist in the country. If you live in Europe, you have so many beautiful opportunities for adventure by being able to hop on a train and travel in between countries. As I mentioned earlier, I've done 13 countries in seven weeks. And if you live in Southeast Asia, there is Air Asia that allows you to hop around all across one of the most exciting places on earth and visit everything from the ruins of Angkor Wat to Bali to the beaches of Malaysia or the Philippines. All for often less than $20 a flight. So write down the adventures that you'd want to experience now. Also keep in mind that you can have local adventures in your city. Every city has its own beautiful little restaurants or bars or parks or nearby day trips that you can go on. Also think about as items to write down how often you want to have these adventures. For example, I try to do a one week long vacation with my family, my wife and kids, sometimes my parents, sometimes my in laws, at least once every eight months or so. And they are often some of the most beautiful adventures for me because I get to see someplace new but. But I also get to connect with people who are really important for me. Can you do adventures with your colleagues? As a company at mindvalley, we sometimes take our entire team out to incredible island adventures team retreats where everybody gets to bond. And it's one of the most exciting weekends of my life when this happens. So make a list of the trips, the adventures, the beautiful experiences you want in your life. So now time is up. You've deep dived into your adventure list and helped design the adventures you want to bring into your life. And again, if you are doing the three most important questions exercise within your company, it is a great idea to put this up on a giant board because you get to see what adventures other people want and you get might find a buddy or, or a partner or a travel partner that you could rope in to go on this adventure with you. And you know what could be cooler than that? Now your next step is go ahead and try to carve up the time, ask for some time off, schedule your vacation and go ahead and make it happen. One of the things I've always noticed about adventures is that we often set an intention to go on adventure. Then we forget about it, we start second guessing ourselves. You know, maybe New Zealand is a bit too far, maybe we'd go to to Spain instead. But the thing is, every time I've done an adventure and you've probably noticed the same thing too, we never regret it. So I always like to just set the intention, make it happen, go in fearlessly. Because I've never been an adventure that I regret it. So I'd love for you to do the same. Make an initiative today if you can, to carve out the time, decide the adventure, mark it down in your calendar and look forward to it. And if you have ideas for new adventures or pictures you want to share, please share it in our tribe so you can inspire other people to take a step into an adventurous life and inspire them with new ideas on what they can do. And if you know of any local adventures that you're doing in your home city, recommend it to people. I'm sure others would love to know what you're thinking about. Go ahead and comment in the tribe below. Thank you and I'll see you in the next session. It.