A few years ago Mr K and I went on holiday to Thailand. It was our first overseas trip together, and we were lying on a beach on Ko Phi Phi for the third day in a row. We were a bit bored sunbathing, and it wasn’t very sunny anyway, so when Mr K said “What shall we do today” I said “Let’s go to Hong Kong!”
I remember him laughing out loud and saying “I thought you might say ‘Let’s get a massage’, or ‘Let’s go for a swim’, not ‘Let’s get on a plane and go to another country’…” But why not? We were half way round the world anyway, and I thought it would be fun to see the place where Mr K spent much of his childhood. So we went to an internet café, booked the plane for the next day and went. We had a brilliant time.
To me this was kind of normal – it’s just the way I do things. But over the years I have come to understand that this isn’t necessarily ‘normal’ at all… I like doing random things, taking myself and others by surprise and not knowing what the outcome is going to be, but I have come to discover that not everyone does. I think this openness to the unknown is really helpful when it comes to strengthening your capacity for risk taking, so I’d love to encourage you to try it now and again if you don’t normally do ‘random’ things.
In one of the Do What You Love classes a couple of years back I challenged the participants to do something random, and one of them went up to a sad looking old guy in Walmart and gave him a hug,just because. It turns out the man had lost his wife the month before, and it was “the nicest thing that had ever randomly happened to him”. Love that.
Why don’t you do something random today? Surprise someone. Surprise yourself. Mix it up. Make your day more interesting…
We’d love to hear what you get up to! Feel free to share on Facebook or Twitter.
Beth and the team
