Live An Adventure Podcast

The rewarding experiences one gains from living life overseas can sometimes be crowded out by the inevitable struggles that come with the full, expat-life package. But it’s through those struggles and challenges that you discover more about yourself and the world around you. You embrace lessons learned and broaden your horizons. If you’ve ever lived for an extended amount of time somewhere other than your home country, then you’ve probably experienced some if not all of these changes while living abroad. 1. You are constantly learning and unlearning language. I’m no expert on the brain, but I have a suspicious feeling that my brain regularly shuts the door on certain native-tongue-vocabulary words so that my search will lead me to the word I’m looking for in my newly acquired language. That’s all fine and dandy; that is, unless I was really hoping to find the word in my native language. It’s one thing to feel a little embarrassed when you don’t know the word for something in t...

When it comes to experiencing positive emotions, Latin America may have the rest of the world beat. A new report from Gallup shows that nine out of the top 10 countries with the highest percentages of residents experiencing positive emotions are located in Latin America. Paraguay came in No. 1, followed by Panama, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Costa Rica and Colombia. Denmark was the only country in the top 10 not located in Latin America. Experiencing positive emotions was defined as smiling or laughing, experiencing enjoyment, being treated with respect, feeling well-rested, and learning or doing something interesting in the previous day. Survey data from about 1,000 residents in each of 138 countries was used for the report. Meanwhile, Syria had the lowest percentage of residents reporting positive emotions, followed by Chad, Lithuania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Nepal and Belarus. According to the Gallup report, just 31 percent of Syrians reported feeling we...

What is the connection between happiness and gratefulness? Many people would say, well, that's very easy. When you are happy, you are grateful. But think again. Is it really the happy people that are grateful? We all know quite a number of people who have everything that it would take to be happy, and they are not happy, because they want something else or they want more of the same. And we all know people who have lots of misfortune, misfortune that we ourselves would not want to have, and they are deeply happy. They radiate happiness. You are surprised. Why? Because they are grateful. So it is not happiness that makes us grateful. It's gratefulness that makes us happy. If you think it's happiness that makes you grateful, think again. It's gratefulness that makes you happy. Now, we can ask, what really do we mean by gratefulness? And how does it work? I appeal to your own experience. We all know from experience how it goes. We experience something that's va...

C. S. Lewis is one of the most quoted authors online. These are his 100 most popular quotes.  1. “Since it is so likely that children will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage.” 2. “Joy is the serious business of heaven.” 3. “We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.” 4. “There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him.” 5. “No one ever told me that grief felt so much like fear.” 6. “Each day we are becoming a creature of splendid glory or one of unthinkable horror.” 7. “Jesus Christ did not say, ‘Go into all the world and tell the world that it is quite right.’” 8. “The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts.” 9. “The homemaker has the ultimate career. All other careers exist to support it.” 10. “What one calls interruptions are precisely one’s real life.” 11. “The future is something everyone reaches at si...