Explore More: How To Create An Exploration Lifestyle

5 min read

Life Quest: An Exploration Lifestyle

Life is meant to be lived, but too often we let life just happen. We walk through week to week without thought, without planning, without purpose. We worry about things that happened in the past and we look forward towards retirement. This leaves us going through the daily cycle without truly being here, exploring what life has to offer, and making the most of this one beautiful opportunity that has been given to us. 

What Is An Exploration Lifestyle?

An exploration lifestyle is one where you actively look to explore more in every aspect of your life. You don’t let life happen to you, you create your opportunities, you embrace the unknown, and you enrich your own life. Exploration doesn’t necessarily mean going out into nature or traveling to far off countries, it means exploring all the little things in your life as well. Explore new interests, explore new hobbies, explore new coffee shops. As we here at Life Quest like to say: Explore Locally. Explore Globally. Explore Within. 

The goal of an exploration lifestyle is to never settle with the status quo. View each day as an opportunity to explore something new. Whether this is learning a new word, taking a different route to work, or meditating on yourself. The goal is to explore every day, no matter how small the exploration. 

Explore Coffee Shops

Actively Plan To Explore More

As Jim Rohn once said, “Either you run the day or the day runs you”. An exploration lifestyle takes active planning. Just like everything else in life, if you want to create a new habit, you have to actively pursue it. An exploration lifestyle doesn’t just manifest itself, you have to plan it out. Through planning and repetition, you can begin to change your mindset to one of exploring more, but you must plan purposefully and intentionally to start. 

At  Life Quest, we recommend doing daily, weekly, and monthly planning. For this, we recommend using a daily journal and a calendar. It all starts with monthly planning. We recommend a calendar or white board. With the monthly view, you want to broadly plan what your month looks like and what you would like to accomplish. Plan some high level tasks and make sure to set goals for the weekends as well so that they don’t slip away from you. As we start planning each week, we begin to get more specific, as we have a better idea of what our week looks like. So for weekly planning, pick one day every week and take 30 minutes to yourself to plan out what you believe you’ll accomplish each day. Finally, we get as specific as possible. Take 10 minutes each night to plan out exactly what you would like to accomplish the next day and how it will fit into your calendar. Pick a new thing to explore that next day. Write it down and hold yourself accountable. 

Build A Habit Of Exploring

Exploring more doesn’t just magically happen on it’s own. Just like building any skill, you need to be proactive.  Healthlinesays It can take anywhere from 18 to 254 days for a person to form a new habit and an average of 66 days for a new behavior to become automatic. And so we need to actively be pursuing our desire to create an exploration lifestyle. Even when you are tired and don’t feel like it, consistency is the key. 

Exploration Doesn’t Have To Be Large

When we hear the word exploration, we often think of the grandeur. A person exploring a new country, exploring into the wilderness, exploring outer space. However, those are not always what we mean by exploration. Sure, exploring a new country absolutely fits into an exploration lifestyle, however most people will find more value in the little things. Taking the time to explore a new coffee shop or exploring a new author or exploring a new type of food. The ultimate goal of an exploration lifestyle is simply to explore more and to explore more often. 

Find joy in exploring the little things. Explore baking a new recipe, explore learning to count to 10 in a new language, explore a new walking path near your home. This makes sure that life stays fresh and new instead of routine and stale. 

Complacency Is The Enemy

Complacency Is The Enemy Of Exploration

Complacency. Comfort. Contentment. However you label it, this is the enemy of exploration. When we become complacent or content with our lives, we stop seeking new experiences. We become ok with the routine. We begin to limit our potential. This is the key battle. Why? Because the human mind is conditioned to seek comfort. Comfort isn’t something that was experienced through a lot of mankind’s history and so the brain seeks it at every corner, because it feels good. There’s no external threats and you can survive. However, this can lead to a cycle of listening to your brains desire for comfort which ultimately limits the amount you explore. Learn to love exploration and difficult tasks and you will find it much more rewarding than comfort. 

Be More Present To Explore More

Being more present can help you to explore more. Why? Because many of us “struggle to find time” to do things. However, the more present and aware you are, the more you will begin to notice time that is actually wasted. Whether on social media, watching Netflix, or simply getting lost on the internet. This is valuable time that can be used towards adding more value to your life. Look into this like meditation and mindfulness to become more aware of time that is wasted to add more time to explore into your days. 

Explore Solo

Ever gone to the movies solo? How about to dinner solo? No? Perhaps you should. So often people often don't want to explore when they're alone, but it can be incredibly rewarding. In addition, it conditions you to not rely on other people for your own fulfillment. This creates more opportunity to explore in your life and to create the habit of exploration. The need time there's a movie you want to see in theaters, don't hesitate to buy a single ticket and watch it alone!

At the end of the day, exploration can help create a live of purpose, a life filled with new experiences, and a life that is worth living. Implement some of the tips above and learn to love exploring more often and work to create that habit, that exploration lifestyle. Your future self will thank you for it.


Are You On Your Life Quest?