We all share one story. We were born to adventure; it’s in our DNA. Lose that and your potency wanes, along with your relevance in our unpredictable, rapidly evolving world.
Welcome to the Author Hour podcast. I’m your host Hussein Al-Baiaty, and I’m joined by author Mike Boydell. He’s here to talk about his new book, The Adventure Advantage: A Roadmap into Uncertainty, through Fear, and Onward to Your Heroic Life. Let’s live through it.
Hello, friends, and welcome back to Author Hour. I’m here with a special guest, my friend Mike Boydell. Man, Mike, thank you so much for coming on the show. I’m already super excited to get into this conversation. The book is amazing. It’s called The Adventure Advantage. Mike, how’re you feeling today?
Michael J. Boydell: I’m feeling adventurous, Hussein, I got to say. Your enthusiasm is already contagious. So, I’m glad to be here. Thank you for having me.
Hussein Al-Baiaty: I love it, man. I just want to be the number one hype man in the world. That’s my goal in life, you know what I’m saying? So, I got to hype you up and make sure the audience is engaged, because man, it’s worth it. Because here’s the thing, books like yours really remind me of my own journey in life. They remind me of the things that I went through and how powerful they are and all of these beautiful people that come in and out of my life. So, I got to share that with you because having sat with your book, just for a few hours, I was engaged, I was inspired, and completely motivated. This is why you feel the enthusiasm because that’s just how I felt. I just want to be able to share that with you and give that feedback.
But before we get into the juiciness of the book and your story, of course, I really want to share a little bit about your personal background, where you grew up. What was that like for you? Was there someone that inspired the path that you’re on? Or perhaps an event that inspired you? I’d love to go there first if you don’t mind. So, let’s go back in time a little bit and share about that.
Michael J. Boydell: Yes, that’s a dangerous starting point, Hussein. My sons have trained me over the years, “Dad, when someone asks you a simple question, give them a simple answer. Don’t immediately jump into the two-hour answer.” So, I’m going to try to give you the simple answer. And then we can see how it goes from there. I can’t claim real conscious memory of this. But the first trip I took was with my parents. I was born just outside of Boston, Northampton, Massachusetts, and my parents took a trip to Hawaii when I was six months old. Again, I’m not sure they asked me for my permission to do any of that stuff. But just that feeling of travel, the feeling of being on the move, and that concept of adventure was probably planted in me pretty early. From there, we moved up to Canada, when I was just about two years old.
I had a lot of change happen in my life early on. A lot of disruptive change. Divorce happened early on. My father got remarried quite early on, my mom got remarried quite early on and I was really sort of subject to a lot of turmoil. A lot of change. When I say turmoil, I don’t mean it all bad. Just a lot of disruption at an early stage. In some ways, I think I became practiced at the art of navigating change and almost anticipating it, and it’s all those skills we build in our zero to 20 years, really, that so much formulate our operating system or who we are later in life, and kind of who we’re taught to be by our parents or by influential people around us or by our circumstance, by our conditions.
I was certainly taught a lot of lessons around the importance of moving through change and kind of keeping yourself whole or almost reinventing yourself as you move through change. So, lots and lots of disruption in my early life, which in my adult life I come back to look at as really positive influences, and not that they weren’t difficult at the time. But when I look at the whole arc of my story, I’m really happy about the whole thing, given that it landed me in this place today.
Everything Is Perfectly Fine
Hussein Al-Baiaty: So powerful, man. I’m so grateful that you shared that because vulnerability is a strength. It’s one strength that we get to understand later in life, I feel like, but I’m glad you share that, man. Because yes, all of us have this foundation of things that eventually channel us in how we become who we are. I’m grateful that you were able to navigate that world in a way that turned into something positive. But in your book, you talk a little bit about the practicing of “the art of everything is perfectly fine.” Man, I got to tell you that resonated with me so, so deeply, because here’s the thing, man. I grew up in America from 1994 onwards, and I had the privilege of coming from a refugee camp. Before that, it was war, right?
So, for me, my experience was visceral on so many levels. But I was blessed, man. I had a good mom and dad who – they weren’t just good, they were great, right, and an amazing set of brothers and sisters, that, man, literally helped me become the man I am today, in so many ways, right? I’m forever indebted to them.
However, those experiences truly shaped who I was to become, and I had to lean on those experiences, and my mentors, my father, my mother, to really understand who the hell I was because I was trying to figure out my identity growing up, right? Growing up in America, I had to like fake being perfect. Meaning, I had to kind of dress like my friends and talk like my friends and act like I didn’t live in the neighborhood that I lived in, which was like just a poor neighborhood where we could pay cheap, cheap rent. Things that you had to do to kind of cover up what was inside. For me, I had to cover up the fact that I was a refugee and the ugly stuff.
So, you talk about this in a very unique way. Can you share a little bit more about what it’s like to live in this idea of the art of everything is perfectly fine? Tell me more.
Michael J. Boydell: Yes. That’s sort of a choice, I think, that we’re all invited to. But it’s hard to jump at that and make that an easy part of your day-to-day, the art of practicing everything is okay. I think if I just pick up a bit on your story, and I might ask, so I can give this some context, what age were you, Hussein, when you came over?
Hussein Al-Baiaty: I was like nine years old, like eight and a half, nine years old.
Michael J. Boydell: I’m a big fan of really looking at those zero to 20 years, in the influences and so forth, and thinking about all those stories that we’re taught, who are we, what’s important in life, our relationship to money, our relationship to work, our relationship to change, like all these kinds of things. But they do kind of formulate a story that we all take into our 20s, and part of what I have such passion for is just talking with people about their own story and the journey through their own kind of arc. But we often hit that stage in our early 20s, where we’re ready to take on the world and we’re kind of ready to put ourselves out there. We either have a point of view that the model we grew up with was really good. The values were right. I’m going to follow the path that was set. It’s my responsibility to carry on the family tradition, whatever.
In which case, we’re not actually that independent. We’re just living off somebody else’s script of who we’re supposed to be. Or we come on into that world saying, what I grew up with didn’t work for me. It’s my job to change that. I don’t abstract to those values. I don’t want to repeat those things. And I’m going to change it. In which case, we’re still not really living our script. So, often in our 20s, we’re making big, big life choices without even realizing it, right? Education, yes or no? Pursue work, yes or no? Where are we going to live? Are we dating? Are we getting married? Big, big decisions get made to sort of formulate a path. Somewhere in our kind of late 20s, early 30s, we’re sort of invited to that question about, is this the path that I want to be on?
That’s kind of a scary question when you start to feel like you’ve got something to lose. It’s one thing when you’re out there and you’re playing with house money—you got nothing to lose. But when you started to accumulate, when you started to be in a relationship, when you started to have a reputation or a career or what have you, and it feels like your identity is attached to that, it gets a little harder to approach that question of, who am I really?
So that notion, coming back to your original question of everything’s actually okay, that takes a while to get to that place of not yearning, not ceaselessly striving, not seeking, just to be comfortable where you’re at in this moment and know that there is an adventure path that you’re on.
I would want to share just as super quick story about someone who was very meaningful in my life and in the lives of a lot of people. His name was Mark Alessio, and he was a teammate of mine in college, played on the same basketball team. For me, he was this adventurous man. He traveled around the world. He rode a motorbike. He taught English as a Second Language everywhere in the world. And his life very sadly came to a tragic end when he was living with his partner in Madagascar. Hears a break-in downstairs, some noise, goes downstairs, and is confronted by some burglars, and he is shot and killed instantly. It was such a senseless, tragic, random seemingly loss of life.
But before he passed away, he put out this little video vignette, which I still have to this day. I watched frequently. I use it with clients or all kinds of situations. Just out for a walk, and he notices there’s some graffiti and it says, “Everything’s not okay.” And he just kind of says, “That’s an interesting thing. What does that mean? Everything’s not okay.” He just sort of contemplates a little bit, and then he comes back the next day, and the knot has been spray painted out. He says, “You know what? Everything’s okay. Everything’s okay.”
So, whether we think about that little video vignette from my dear friend, Mark, or whether we think back to Shakespeare’s writing and talking about the choice to be happy or not to be happy. To be or not to be. These are the existential questions. But at the end of the day, we’re all invited to choose. Do you want to see everything is okay? Or do you want to see everything is not okay?
Hussein Al-Baiaty: That is so deep and so powerful. I love that. Sorry to hear about your beautiful friend and the tragedies that feels like takes away the human beings that we connect to the most. I can resonate with that deeply. I’m glad you went there because I feel like this idea of creating this identity of a perfect, fine life resonates because we are tethered to, like you said earlier, what society wants for us, and how we should portray ourselves. How we should show up “professionally” or not, or whatever.
Dude, for a long time, I didn’t even like my name, bro. My name is Hussein. And before 9/11, and after 9/11, brother, you can see where I’m going with this. You know what I’m saying? Sadly, I would come to my dad, man. Like your friend, my dad was that confidant. He was a remarkable human being. After he passed, it was like, everything he had ever said to me was in front of me. It was vivid. It was colorful. He always used to remind me. He said, “It’s not that your name is Hussein, and then that’s what people are afraid of. It’s what your name stands for.” I’m like, “What do you mean?” He’s like, “I named you after a beautiful human being who was heroic, who stood for righteousness, who stood for freedom and free thought. He was like a revolution.” He’s talking about the grandson of Prophet Muhammad. He’s a huge character in Islamic world.
The way he defined this personality, he said, “My goal with naming you that is that you would live some of those attributes in your life, and that your name is a constant reminder to how great you can be.” With that mindset, it makes that shift, right? It’s a shift of going from negative to positive. That has always been empowering, and God bless his soul. Those are the things that I’m always reminded by, not only his beautiful art that he left me but his beautiful messages that will always live with me. I just appreciate that you shared that story, and I’m so sorry about the tragic loss of your friend. But it’s funny how they live with us continuously, and here we are talking about them, right?
Michael J. Boydell: You’re giving me so much good stuff. I want to riff off that a little bit because the idea of the name that you’re born with, I know I talked about this in my work a lot, is that we don’t even get a choice in that. We don’t get a choice where we’re born or gender, like age profile, socio-economic status, birth order. We don’t even get a vote on our name, and yet it’s this thing that’s just been kind of imparted on us. To me, it’s such a part of that journey to make it your own. Again, just to share a similar quick story back, the name on my birth certificate is Michael Jess Boydell, and the Jess is named after my grandfather, and I can trace our lineage back to the 1100 and see Jesses and Johns and James. So, it connects me back to that.
But have always had in my mind, Michael, is the name that my mom called me. Mike is the name my dad called me. Always in my life. Because I had this split in my family very early on, and my mom moved away, and my dad was still with us, still very close to my mom, but she was in a different part of the world. But it meant that I almost had this identity split. Mike meant one thing. Michael meant another thing. And it wasn’t until recently, in my adult life, people would say, “Well, are you Mike? Are you Michael?” It was like a confusing question to answer because I hadn’t really come to my own sense of closure and identity with that. I flipped back and forth and, “Let me try Michael. Let me try Mike.”
I really get what you’re talking about with that name, Hussein. Mike, Michael is a fairly easy one relative to the weight of what you’re talking about. But how cool that your dad kind of man to man, sort of invited you to really see it in a different context and make it what you wanted it to be at the end of the day.
Hussein Al-Baiaty: Right. Exactly. Yes, man. There’s always those beautiful individuals, right? Whether it be my father or your friend or our mothers, whoever, that sort of remind us that we are more than what our society, our context wants us to be. We are more of what we want to create out of that. He said, “You can avoid it and change it or lean into it and embrace it.” I chose the leaning into it. It made me unique. It made me stand out. And it was just like, again, do you lean into that? Or do you fall back?
So, that ultimately defines your character. So, that’s the beauty of those kinds of elements. You talked a little bit about, of course, the whole book is about this idea of advantage. Let me tell you something, man, going on adventures and traveling has dramatically changed who I am and how I see the world in so many ways, and the opportunities that I’ve been able to have growing up in the States, not just traveling in the States, but travels to India, and those kinds of things. Those are just adventures of life. But what is adventure advantage mean to you? What exactly does that mean to you?
The Adventure Advantage
Michael J. Boydell: It’s sort of the penultimate question. It’s, okay, what is the adventure advantage? I would start my answer off by saying, as kids, we know what it is. As kids, the idea of adventuring is built into our DNA. We all have stories, and it’s a fun one to ask people. What’s your first memory of adventure? What was your first adventure? I’ve got a bunch of mine, and I’m sure you’ve got a bunch of yours. But they generally tell the story of what adventure is all about. I’m going to go off into the woods, or I’m going to go climb a mountain with some buddies, or I’m going to try to do a handstand on my bike. All these kinds of crazy things that we do as kids, without realizing it, we’re adventuring. And we’re not thinking about it. We don’t need a book to tell us what to do. We don’t need a method. We don’t need a coach. We don’t need – we just do it.
Again, as we get later in life, we kind of forget that stuff because we’re chasing something. So, really, the adventure advantage, and this is the way I like to kind of frame all my work. It’s right in the book, in base camp. Let’s just start with base camp and understand, really the three elements of what the adventure advantage is all about. The first is understanding the anatomy of adventure. Really, what does adventure mean? It’s not about swimming with sharks and climbing Kilimanjaro and all that kind of stuff. Adventure is an inside game. It’s an inside job. It’s your relationship to change. If you can see change is something that happens for you, as opposed to if that’s happening to you, you’ll have an advantage. That’s the first piece of it.
The second piece of it is really understanding the arc of adventure. The phases that we go through on any journey of change. There’s been lots and lots of people that have written brilliant work on this and have done great work on it. The grief cycle comes to mind immediately, and so many people that have been through real challenging, difficult change know all about the grief cycle. But to me, that arc of adventure starts with some kind of disruptive spark. That’s the first stage. It puts things into a complete emotional mess. We work really hard to fix the mess quickly by making some mental meaning of it. But that usually keeps us stuck in the past, a past version of ourselves. And then after that, it’s a choice to move into something new, to something uncertain, or stay stuck. But those that take that choice to move forward have an advantage. If you understand the stages of change, if you understand how to keep yourself moving through them, what to predict along the way, you’ll have an advantage.
And then the third and final piece of it to me brings it all together. When I ask people to share their adventure stories, they always have four elements in mind. There’s some sense of vision or possibility, some belief in some new thing that might be possible. There’s some sense of focus and presence with everything that’s in front of them. There’s like a sharpness to things. There’s a sense of emotional flow, and then there’s a sense of bravery and risk taking. So, I think of the third piece of the adventure advantage is understanding the axis of adventure, that there’s an altitude to things and maintaining a line of sight between vision and presence, future possibility, and what’s clear and in front of you right now. What’s real right now.
If you can maintain a line of sight between those two things, you’ll have an advantage. Equally, if you think of this as kind of an east–west axis, you’re able to maximize your impact and your attitude in life if you can balance empathy, consideration, understanding emotional flow in yourself, in others, in surroundings. Balancing empathy with bravery, risk taking, moving into the unknown, being assertive, protecting boundaries. If you can maintain that kind of counterbalance between empathy and bravery, you’ll have an advantage. I believe that all of that stuff is already baked into our human condition. Male, female, or any gender in between, we have access to those kinds of four elements.
I’ll stop there because I could go off on how those have been around since the beginning of time. But that’s really the adventure advantage. Understanding the anatomy, understanding the arc, and understand the access. If you’ve got that stuff in your adult life, you’ll have an advantage.
Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yes. It’s so powerful. I love that. What an amazing sort of in-depth explanation of that. Because, I think for me, when I think of adventure, I guess for me, it was like this unknown. Unknown in two ways. I don’t know what’s going to happen, and I don’t know how I’m going to respond. I’m excited about it. The first time I got on a roller coaster was with my wife, and dude, I was scared. But it was an adventure, and I’m living this adventure alongside her. I was telling myself like, “Man, this little girl in front of me is eight years old. She’s like, a third time going on his roller coaster. I got to step my game up.”
But those are the kinds of adventures I feel like because it arouses fear. It arouses insight. I feel like for me, as I got older, the adventurers were really a reflection of who I would potentially become because I’m learning about myself through the reaction and response. I’m learning about the world around me and the people around me. I think that’s really powerful. Because the coolest adventure is one that’s memorable, of course, and in the fact that it’s memorable. It’s created an experience. That experience, obviously, has created some sort of transformation. Now, for me, I still get like that fear, I guess, the arousal of fear when I think about a roller coaster, and my wife’s like, “We’re going to Disneyland and we’re killing it.” I’m like, “Okay, cool.” But in my back of my mind, I’m like, “I hope to God that roller coaster is off when we’re there.”
But it’s funny because it’s like, I’ve gone on. Everything’s good. But that experience of the unknown is still there, which is really interesting. I don’t mean to oversimplify what you’re saying. But at least that’s how I’ve experienced adventure. You know what I mean?
Michael J. Boydell: To your point, my whole premise is to simplify it. Part of my motivation for taking all this kind of 54 years of lived experience, and what I’ve been doing professionally for the last 10 plus years, and putting into book form was to simplify it for people. All of these complex things that we all feel like we’re going through individually, there is a pretty common, fairly simple human story to it all. Even when we take – I love your roller coaster example, that’s the first stage of any adventure, that disruptive spark.
The disruptive spark can be something that happens to us, right? Fired from a job, walk in on an unforeseen event, a global pandemic. Or it can be something that we initiate. We quit the job, we get a new hairstyle, we decide to go on a roller coaster. That’s the start. Start a business, right? Do a podcast, write a book. That’s it. And you can initiate that spark. But as soon as you’ve initiated it, expect things to get messy, right? So, your emotions, your heart rate, going up that, clink, clink, clink, clink, clink, going up that roller coaster, it gets messy.
And then, the brain kicks in, and it wants to lock stuff down. That’s really the ego saying, like, “I want to keep you safe and protected, and maybe I’ll come up with some reason why I just really can’t go on the roller coaster today.” Whatever it is. But if you step into it, and you choose, you know, to trust yourself through that, trust your vision, trust your presence, trust your empathy, trust your bravery. You’ll make it to the other side changed, and then you’re building that kind of muscle memory for the next adventure that comes your way. The more practice we can be at that, the better we are at navigating uncertainty in our life.
Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yes. That’s so powerful, man. I love that. The part of uncertainty, obviously, raises a lot of emotions for people. I think you encapsulate that in so many stories in your book, and I thought that was really powerful. I won’t get into all of them because I really want people to go and hunt down your book and really reveal it for themselves. But in your experience, can you tell me a little bit about maybe like one of your most memorable adventures that you’ve had the opportunity to go on? Maybe what’s one thing you learned from it?
Michael J. Boydell: The opportunity for me to make a choice because when asked questions like that, we’re all immediately drawn to tell you the big adventure story that looks great, that looks sexy. That’s like, “Oh, I went to this place. I went to swim in the Great Barrier Reef. Climbed the mountains in Costa Rica. Blah, blah, blah.” That’s, of course, where the ego wants to go first. So, as you’re asking me that question, my mind is already saying, “Oh, yes, tell him that story. That’s a good one. People will love that story.”
To do justice to the book and to justice to the work, I’m inclined to tell you a more challenging story of adventure. I would point to a time in my late 30s where I had worked really hard. You’d kind of talked about moving to America for the first time. And it’s like chasing that American dream. It seems like there’s a playbook, almost. If you follow these things, if you do these things, you will be successful, or you’ll be powerful, or you’ll be whatever. I was certainly on that playbook in my 20s and 30s, chasing the right job and the right house on the right street and the right cars, and that sense of external validation was something I was really hotly pursuing. My real kind of life-changing adventure started, and I had some signals. This buddy of mine, Mark, I mentioned, he was killed in and around, I think, I was about 38 at the time. I had also lost another close friend, Eric Eolis, to brain cancer right around that time. There’s that sort of invitation to really, like, what does that mean? What’s the meaning of that to me? Or, just skip over it.
But I went through pretty, pretty lonely period where everything on the outside of my life looked amazing. It looked like success. What’s this got to be worried about? I had one real lonely morning, like morning, morning, like 3 a.m., or something, where I woke up after a long business dinner, and I was traveling; I was in the UK. And I just had a real long look in the mirror, and I just didn’t like what I saw. It was like, I was just pretending to be something that I wasn’t.
I had a couple real close friends at the time. We have these people that show up in our lives, kind of when we need the most, who really kind of challenged me to say like, “Are you living the life that is yours to live? Not somebody else’s definition.” That started me on a pretty big adventure, which is not the kind of one that you would be putting on your trophy wall. It was the kind of adventure that had me really digging into first career. I’m pursuing this type of work. I’m a tech company CEO. I’m traveling around the world. There’s a lot of great things that are happening here, but I’m somehow being called to do something different. I think I want to bring out my psychology background and combine it with my strategy background and combine it with my experience leading teams and leading organizational change.
I think I want to open my own business as a coach, and that’s like the last thing that you’re supposed to do when you’re around 40 years old. Every recruiter in the world is telling you these are your prime earning years. You’re insane. You do that when you’re 60. So, there’s those kinds of adventures that, for me, where the real go down and in, and have a long, deep conversation with yourself, and part of the challenge of that kind of adventure is you can start it but you don’t really know where it’s going. You don’t really know where it’s going to end up, and it’s hard when you’re surrounded by people that are pursuing the life that you used to have.
So, I was really lucky to have, as you say, your father. I had a couple of very close sort of mentors of mine, a couple of real close friends that didn’t care about the status, or the title, or the money. They just cared about me. I have to say, both of my parents—I actually think of myself as having three parents. My dad, my stepmom, who I call my mom today, and my birth mom, all three in their own way were instrumental in just believing in me through that period. I had to face a couple real tough choices about how I was identifying with professional reputation, the meaning of money in my life, the meaning of status, and I had to make some real bold choices that involved being real clear on who I was and the feelings that were important to me at the time. I came out the other end of that, and I’m going to call that sort of a four or five-year journey, Hussein. This was not a two-week off-site exercise on vacation somewhere.
But I came out the other side of that with a profound new sense of freedom. I knew who I was in the world, and I wasn’t playing by an email to script. I had a sense of purpose, and I was ready to take that into the world and build interdependent relationships, professionally, personally, and that really launched me, you know, in a completely different life trajectory that I continue to enjoy today. But that would be one of those adventures that was kind of born out of real loneliness, real kind of a disruptive period in my life, and a long, lonely road. But I had some great mentors, great friends along the way, and couldn’t be more happier in terms of how the story ended up.
Hussein Al-Baiaty: Yes. What a transformation. I love how you channeled this energy into an adventure for yourself. An adventure going inwards and bringing out the gold from within. When you said freedom, I knew you connected the dots, right? I just knew it because here’s the thing, and this is why I relate so deeply. I was building my business, I was doing well, I was out of college, and I’m hungry, I’m young, and I was building my little t-shirt business. I had five employees, then 10 employees, and 15 employees. I was like getting contracts with Nike. Man, I was at the top of my game, feeling sharp as ever. But guess what, I was working 100 hours a day, you know what I mean, and like, just looking out for the next thing.
My father used to come into my shop and hang out with me, and he had a little desk that I put up for him, and he would just paint. He was retired. He was on Social Security. He was just sitting there hanging out, painting these beautiful Islamic quotes from the Koran or whatever. He would hang out and always talk, and he folded t-shirts with me, whatever. Pops, man, taking care of me. But I got to be honest with you, man. When he passed, he traveled back home to Iraq as he did. You take a few months off and just got to go hang out with his buddies and visit home, especially around 2014, ’15, ’16, when things were a little bit better, where he could visit and rebuild his home. That’s exactly what he did. He knew he was going to go back. He always sounds like, “When I’m gone, that’s where I want to be. I love my country. I love Iraq. It’s the home of every human being.” He has such a beautiful connection, and I love that about him.
When he went there, he unfortunately passed on his prayer rug, which is exactly how he wanted to go. But here’s the thing, man. It’d hurt me so much. I felt like that was his reward of living such an incredible life. But for me, in a weird, weird way, after I kind of got a little bit out of grief, in the months after, six, seven months. I felt freedom. For the first time, I felt freedom. Because here’s the thing, I realized in the moment that when we were putting him in the ground and burying him, I knew in that moment I would be there eventually, and that my journey is actually that – he always said, “You’re from paradise, you’re going back to paradise. You just got to follow the way. You got to figure out the way.” And the way is being a good human. Just practice being a good human. This practice, it’s not going to be perfect.
Like I said earlier, those messages really resonated with me because I felt free. At that moment, that shop didn’t matter. The money didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. It was more like I’m on a new adventure now. I’m a completely different person, meaning I’m going to chase something different and not chase it, but more like have it come to me, in that I’m letting go of all these ridiculous, ridiculous ideas and really living out the adventure I’m supposed to be on, which is self-discovery.
The more we discover ourselves, the more we discover our truth, the more we connect with divinity, the more I connect with my father. Today, all I want to do is be like him, which is sit down, chill out, paint, you know what I mean? And just go there. I’m like, I get it now. I totally get it. It’s so freeing. Unfortunately, it happened at the time, and that’s how you become a warrior, right? In the sense of like, when you experience someone saying goodbye to you in a very unique way, you realize that you too have that short amount of time, and what are you going to do with this time? And what are you going to do with this journey? And it really is up to you. I love that. And I feel like that was the advantage that I needed for the adventure ahead. And you put it so beautifully, and how these major life things that happen.
Looking Back On The Adventurer Inside
Hussein Al-Baiaty: I got to ask you this, and I’ll let you go after this. I know I’ve taken a lot of your time because it’s such a beautiful conversation. When we talk about the journey of life, it resonates with me deeply, man, I feel like I’ve been on a huge, long journey. But many journeys within. You know what I mean? Which I’m sure you can relate. What’s your hope for the reader when they’re done reading your book and having put it down? What does that feeling you hope that they walk away with?
Michael J. Boydell: Yes. That’s a great question. I put a lot of thought into trying to answer that question, and I love what you talked about with your dad, just doing some art. And I’m already connecting to the name of your book, that art of resilience. For me, I really tried to take not just on author’s approach, but an artist’s approach to how would I engage someone in a one-on-one conversation, which is most of my work is really just engaged, just like we are now, just in a real conversation.
So, I tried to structure the entire book, even though it’s challenging when you’re not getting any feedback, right? You’re just looking at the screen or looking at the words on the page. But I really tried to invite a one-on-one conversation and take away as much of the noise as possible. There’s lots of great books out there that have quotes from all kinds of people or have case studies throughout, so you can get a sense of yourself relative to other people.
I wanted to write a book without either of those things because I wanted the reader to just have their own completely immersive experience. I start the book out like I start out my work, and like you invited me to, today, just by telling a bit of my own story to invite the reader to get comfortable with their story. What I hope is that they would see their own story in that adventure advantage notion, right? They’d get us in, yes, my sense of vision, presence, empathy, bravery. But when they get into the meat of the book, in the freedom adventure, the courage adventure, the power adventure, that they would find a natural starting place for themselves. For me, if you’re starting somewhere, start at the freedom adventure, right? That’s the place to go. You talked to all about this in sharing some of your story.
Really take the time to explore the meaning of your past, the meaning of the lessons your father taught you, your mother taught you, caregivers taught you, and choose which ones to take with you and choose which ones to, with love and respect, leave behind. And then really take the time to explore mastery of your own strengths and mastery of your own fears. And then come up with a mantra for yourself, as if you were the only person in the world. When you go through those stages, that’s really what has you completing the freedom adventure at the end of it, and then you come away with this beautiful sense of independence. You’re your own person at the end of that freedom adventure. And then, you can move into the courage adventure, which is all about interdependence. How are you going to be in relationship to other people, other places, other things. And then, the power adventure finally is about that renewal of vitality, intellectual vitality, emotional power, spiritual power, physical power.
So, my hope for the reader is that they find a starting point for themselves, and that there’s something in there that they can feel connected to, a little less lonely, and connect back to the adventurer that’s already inside them. Whether they pick up some of the suggestions or tips and stories that I tell, or whether they create their own adventure that they just sort of believe in themselves and get back in the world. I think the world so much craves adventure right now. We’ve been through so much with socio-economic changes, global turmoil, and war, and pandemic, and existential questions about work and workplace, and gun violence. This stuff is just daunting to live through. So, if I can inspire people to just reclaim that inner sense of adventure, get on the life path that they want to be on, pass that on to those around them, that would be a thrill. I would sleep very, very well at night if I felt like I could make that kind of difference to the reader.
Hussein Al-Baiaty: Well, what I love about your response here is that you are living in that, I feel like, right now, in making a difference in the people’s lives that you work with, that you share your story with. Of course, now, through your book, it’s a remarkable story unfolding, and it continues to unfold, and I’m glad you take on – I’m glad you took on that adventure of leaning into the coaching and helping others sort of not only find their adventure but really find themselves, find their truth. I think that’s the most powerful thing we could do on Earth. I think it’s the number one thing.
I always used to ask my dad like, “Why? Why are we here, man? What are we doing?” It’s like, you got to discover yourself. That’s the ultimate thing. If you can do that, you live free. He left me with something really beautiful, and you share that. That’s why I’m like, we can continue talking forever because it really ties into all of the things that I feel like these beautiful human beings have left us with. Mike, you are –
Michael J. Boydell: Hussein, we got to take your show on the road. We got to go on the road.
Hussein Al-Baiaty: This is what I’m saying. This is what I’m saying, man. I love it. Mike, you and I have a definitive connection, my brother, and I just appreciate you coming on the show. Your story’s remarkable. Your book is amazing. I know you’re super excited because I know that book is sitting in your hands right now, and it’s powerful, and it’s going to resonate deeply with so many people, like it did with me. I’m beyond grateful and honored to have had you on the show. I know our continued brotherhood and friendship will continue on because that’s a new adventure for me.
The book is called The Adventure Advantage: A Roadmap into Uncertainty, through Fear, and Onward to Your Heroic Life. So, besides checking out the book, where can people find you and connect with you, Mike?
Michael J. Boydell: Yes, we’ve got a few places for people to reach out. I mean, the book itself is one. You can get it on Amazon. On the back of the book, you’ll see a QR code for those that are technology literate on such things. Click on the QR code, it will take you right to theadventureadvantage.com, and that will tell you a little bit more about the book, but it will also introduce you to some of the programs that we offer. For those that just really want a taste, almost a primer, the book is probably enough.
But for those that want to experience it, we run three to four-day adventure programs where you learn the content that’s in the book, but then you get out into nature, and you get to experience it. Also, I do keynotes and learning seminars for larger kind of audiences. I’m not all over social media. I kind of concentrate on LinkedIn. So, you can certainly find me on LinkedIn, and you can also find The Adventure Advantage group page on LinkedIn, which is really just more of a community for people to share their adventure stories.
Hussein Al-Baiaty: I love that, Mike. Thanks again, brother. I appreciate you coming on. It’s an honor. Congratulations on your beautiful new book.
Michael J. Boydell: I appreciate you, Hussein. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me today.
Hussein Al-Baiaty: Absolutely, with honors.
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