How to Expand Yourself Through Experience

This week’s SoulPancake & Unmistakable Creative instalment features Dave Vanderveen.

The human experience is a wonderful adventure. In this video, Dave Vanderveen encourages us to step outside of our comfort zones and challenge ourselves daily. In doing so, we may just find the answers to some of our big questions.

Transcript

If there is this great power of the universe that exploded the singularity into the constantly expanding universe we live in, it’s really nice to align yourself with that power and participate in it, but it probably doesn’t need you to be successful. I think if you really embrace that, it gives you this great relief, that really, all you have to do is find and figure out how to harness that energy and your life can be an amazing dance that teaches you everything you really need to know.

We have to learn to scare ourselves a little bit every day and embrace that. Right? Really actually enjoy the fear. Draw that circle of whatever your comfort zone is and just push yourself outside of that every single day.

My dad says to me, “Every day, change things,”. He goes, “I shave on a different part of my face to start every day,”. He said, “I drive home from work a different way every day,”. He said, “We have to keep changing those channels in our brains because if we don’t do that we’ll get stuck in rhythms that we don’t necessarily want.”.

Do something that you’re like, “Uh I don’t know if I should do that,” and do it anyway. You know, not something that’s gonna kill you, but something that’s gonna just push you over the edge of what you think is possible.

We are capable of so much more than we do and we all know it. The fact is, we’re mostly afraid of what might happen if it doesn’t work. But at the end of the day, we rarely meet somebody that was like, “Man, I, you know, I just, I just did way too much stuff in my life,”.

Most people are like, “I wish I would have done this stuff. I wish I would have acted, there was that girl, there was that business I could’ve… , there was that investment, I really wanted to dance, I wanted to paint, I wanted to learn to play a ukulele or a violin or play hockey. Whatever that is. I want to learn to surf.

Do it.

Naturally the brain will go, “Well yeah, but you’re 46,”, [or] “Yeah but you’re 25. People have been doing this for years – are really good at it and you’re not.”. Doesn’t matter. It’s not about them, it’s about you. It’s about expanding yourself.

And I think that ultimately, it’s really all about why are we here? What is my relationship to whatever the power is that created that singularity in this constantly expanding universe that we live in?

I don’t think there’s easy answers to hardly any of those questions. But to me, it’s the wrestling with those questions that makes life fundamentally interesting. That’s why I really favour this whole philosophy of experience. It’s wrestling with those questions that ultimately give us answers that are worth talking about. And it’s not about being right. Right? Those answers will hopefully change over time. Hopefully there’s a progression of truth that happens in your life. But it’s the wrestling with them that forces meaning into your life. And even though the environment may change, even though the environment may be chaotic, it’s our ability to put meaning into that chaos and destruction that creates order in the universe. And I think that’s why we’re here.

I think that’s what humans are for.

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Dave Vanderveen is the co-founder of XS Energy Drinks. He lives in Laguna Beach, CA and can be found surfing in his spare time. Find him on Twitter| Facebook | Instagram