Belinda Kirk is one of Britain's most influential adventurers, founder of Explorers Connect and author of the book ‘Adventure Revolution. The Life changing power of Choosing Challenge’. For me this book was an important inspiration for my own book ‘Waar is het avontuur?’. We’ve met a few times at the Adventure Mind conference, organized by Belinda herself, a conference on the amazing power of adventure on our mental health and wellbeing. Both of us strongly believe adventure brings us back our natural, human state of being. “Adventure is such a great antidote against modern life, because modern life has become so unadventurous”, she says. Belinda advocates more adventure in society, in all sorts of ways. ”What I’ve seen time to time again is this transformational, this really positive effect on people. It helped me, it has changed my life, it’s been my therapy, but then I saw over my whole career, it has helped all kinds of people in all sorts of ways. That’s why I spend so much time on it, spread the word out, and why we should rebrand it.” Adventure to her is about choosing challenge, choosing to push yourself out of your comfort zone with an element that has a certain uncertainty, therefore an element of adversity. “You need to feel uncomfortable. The uncomfortable is not what we are going for with adventure. That’s just an element that you need to put up with, it’s the grit in the oyster that makes the adventure so good.” Belinda talks about the importance to have adventures. “Once you go on adventures you learn that the difficulties you put up with are worth it, because there is something greater at the end of it. There is some greater feeling of accomplishment, or some goal.” Self-confidence building, relationship building, learning, and magic. “By doing the same routines and following the same rules all the time, doing the same things that does not enliven us, that does not engage us. That can put us to sleep a bit.” Besides this, Belinda talks about finding meaning through adventure, life changing stories, the importance of resilience for us, the importance of adventure in our modern life and the importance to intergrate adventure as an antidote for modern life, in our cities, schools, health system, wherever we can in our society. A truly inspiring story. You can follow Belinda Kirk here and buy the book of Adventure Revolution here. In de Avontuurlijk Leven podcast komen gewone mensen aan het woord die buitengewone dingen doen - of mensen die je daartoe inspireren. De podcast is een co-productie van reismagazine en online travel community Columbus Travel met Alice goes Wild, het platform dat je inspireert een avontuurlijker leven te leiden. Host is Brigitte Ars, auteur van het boek 'Waar is het avontuur, zoektocht naar een avontuurlijker leven' (Uitgeverij Querido), Columbus Travel editor, oprichter van Alice Goes Wild en de Avontuur Academy en docent aan de afdeling toerisme van Breda University of Applied Sciences. Vind je deze deze podcast inspirerend? Volg ons of abonneer je dan in je podcastapp, of volg ons op Spotify. En zou je de link dan ook willen delen met mensen die hem ook interessant kunnen vinden? Bedankt en avontuurlijke groet! Brigitte