Sunday, March 22, 2015

Expand! The Adventure of a Lifetime

By Andrew McGunagle

When the lease for my ungodly expensive room in Palo Alto finishes at the end of March, I'll be quitting my personal training job and embarking on a solo road trip across America at the end of April. I may spend as long as a year traveling. Why? Well, when I was considering my goals for 2015, I could think of only one word:

EXPAND.

I've spent most of my life nestled in my comfort zone. Sure, most of us do to a certain extent, but I'm particularly prone to routinely avoiding risk. I'm the guy who once spent a few hours looking over the edge of a twenty foot jump into a lake while prepubescent children giggled as they jumped off the cliff multiple times. The first time I ever met a girl for a coffee date, I nearly burned a layer of skin off my tongue nervously sipping my drink as I waited for her to show up. What's more telling is that this was the first real date I ever went on, and it was my senior year of college.


While I've since jumped off that same cliff multiple times and gone on many more dates, I still feel like I'm stuck in a bubble of limiting behaviors and beliefs. I've read many self-help books over the years, but I've come to find that true self-improvement isn't enacted by words on a page. Instead, in my opinion, change stems from three things:

1) Acquire new experiences, connections, skills, and knowledge.

2) Work on your habits (one at a time).

3) Don’t sit in your room ruminating (Or, in the words of Dan John, "show up.")

So, in an effort to take my own advice and move past my perceived boundaries, I plan on exploring America, visiting successful gyms, meeting and learning from great coaches, and being open to the opportunities that arise on the road. Are the answers out there? Who knows. In the words of Social Distortion, "wherever I have gone, I was sure to find myself there." However, the novelty and challenges of the trip will surely spur growth, and that's my goal.

Join me on my journey by checking out the articles I post along the way both here and on Instagram. Also, I will be supporting myself by doing online coaching along the way. So, if you're interested in my services, shoot me an email: amcgunagle@gmail.com

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