Tradin’ Heels for Hiking Boots
Ah the joys of the corporate world. You wake up every morning at an ungodly hour, you dress in extremely uncomfortable clothes- not to mention high heels made by the devil that just look too dayum good with that skirt to ignore – and you hit the road. Breakfast? What is that? If you’re lucky you can grab an apple on the way down or even more fun is starving until 12pm when you then enter a competition with yourself for the fastest way to consume the most amount of junk. And you win every time – score.
The day drags on and you resist the urge to repeatedly bang your head against your laptop, or create a noose out of the endless paperwork you have to go through. Then you go home to bum in front of the TV and sleep.
Wake up.
Repeat.
It’s dangerous, it’s life threatening and it’s the life that many people are leading today as they hum and drum their way up the corporate ladder.
What if I told you that life-threatening and dangerous can actually mean a good thing and that the adventure we embark on everyday to just get ourselves out of bed can actually be replaced with a real adventure – something truly life changing and quite easily attainable.
For most people when they hear ‘adventure’ they imagine being chased down by lions, tigers or bears, or sleeping in the great outdoors and being eaten alive by creepy crawlies. Or they imagine having to poop and pee in random locations throughout the experience, and even worse, they have to wipe their ass with leaves or the carcass of a rotting animal nearby.
When most people hear the words ‘adventure travel’ they imagine all of the above combined together plus a plane (or a bus with a smelly, curious goat in it) and they automatically say ‘not for me, but maybe one day’.
I’m here to challenge all of that. To challenge pre-conceived notions on what adventure travel actually means and to show you how trying one trip can be exactly what you need right now – because the preconceived notions of Adventure Travel mentioned above couldn’t be further than the truth.
I was once a corporate slave – yes I said it. Slave. My social life was slowly gasping for air, mostly because I was too tired to even attempt to bring it to life and my definition of a good time was spent doing absolutely nothing, a welcomed change from my brain-numbing career. Then I decided to try something different. I stepped outside my comfort zone, I obliterated my definition of a ‘good time’ and I ventured where I had never gone before into completely unknown territory. I went from happily smoking 2 packs a day with the idea of exercise being pressing the elevator button, to deciding that I was going to summit Kilimanjaro- the highest mountain in Africa
I traded my designer heels for hiking boots.
Sounds crazy doesn’t it? Well that’s exactly how I felt – crazy.
3 months later I proudly stood on the summit of Kilimanjaro and apparently I left a part of me at the summit sign because by the time I made it off the mountain – I was a completely different person. It was almost like every step I took down that mountain stripped a piece of me with it so I came down feeling lighter, better, more motivated and more importantly, I was inspired.
The change was so drastic that it allowed me to apply the same level of change to literally everything I wanted from then onwards. I was miserable at my job so I quit! And dayum that felt guuud! If your still a corporate slave – please don’t hate. ..celebrate.
And this part is for the ladies: when I told my mom I was going for Kilimanjaro, do you want to know what she said?
“Now no one will ever want to marry you!”
You want to know what happened? I met my husband on that mountain. Mmhmmm. Trust me I remind my mother of that everyday..
In the fast-paced digital world that we live in today, it’s so easy for us to lose track of what’s real and what really matters. Sometimes we owe it to ourselves to break away, to unplug and to kick our own ass into trying something new. Its time we step away from our laptops, ipads, i-phones, and blackberries and touch real fruit, speak to real faces, and try new experiences that are not based on apps.
Get back out to the world and see what it has to offer, trust me, you will be surprised with you find out there and more importantly, what you will find within yourself.
