Flipping the switch: from daily grind to Adventure Mode
- Dave Gallagher
- 3 days ago
- 5 min read
A new mindset for workplace resilience
Written by and photography by Dave Gallagher, CPsychol | Cognitive Neuroscientist & Adventure Psychologist.
Table of Contents
A More Adventurous Workplace
You’re having a bad day at the office. The pressure is mounting. A tough decision looms. There’s risk involved but what if you make the wrong choice? The stress is taking its toll, but how do you keep a cool head and make the right move?
A familiar scene?
Now imagine the same scenario – but your “office” is a small aircraft at 12000ft, and you are the instructor responsible for a team of skydivers. Or you are 300ft under the North Sea on a drilling rig as a saturation diver but time, and air, is running out and a vital task is still to be done. Or maybe you are a mountaineer traversing a high-altitude ridge where the air is thin and a misstep spells disaster.
Some people’s work, it can be said, is more adventurous than others. For those who operate routinely under extreme pressure composure isn’t a luxury, it is vital to success – and indeed survival.
But here’s the thing: you don’t have to be an elite adventurer or a professional diver to adopt this mindset. We can still take a leaf out of their book – without needing to leap out of a plane on our daily commute…
Adventure Mode is a state of mind – and it’s one that can serve anyone, whatever the workplace.
Rewilding Mental Health
As a Chartered Psychologist and Mountain Leader, I specialise in Adventure NeuroPsychology - how the brain thrives on challenge, risk, stress and fear. I believe adventure isn’t just recreation. It is a lifestyle philosophy that we can harness at work to improve resilience, focus and wellbeing. We have lost our connection to this fundamental sense of adventure in the modern day.
This goes beyond box-ticking wellbeing exercises that pay lip service to employee satisfaction. Instead, it encourages being exploratory in our day to day lives, fostering creativity and a sense of play in order to reconnect with our wild heritage.
People who thrive in adventure settings – from mountaineers to round-the-world sailors, BASE jumpers to deep sea divers – do so because they voluntarily engage with stressful situations. We can learn much from studying how they do this (as I indeed do in my research) - applying that knowledge to help us cope and thrive not just in the workplace but in our whole lives.
Adventurers and those who indulge in extreme sports activities are resilient – they find a way through adversity- be it a storm at sea, or when repeatedly rebuffed on a summit attempt by unforgiving conditions on the mountainside. Yet contrary to any notions that these people are superhuman or ‘wired differently’, they experience fear and stress just as the rest of us do. They feel doubt, imposter syndrome, question their motivation and engage in soul searching.
And at the conclusion of this internal conflict, they persevere, jump, climb higher, dive deeper, find calm and composure, overcome obstacles, and strive to loftier goals.
That mindset is golden. So how can we get some of that secret sauce?
Who Dares...Takes Control
The first thing to acknowledge is that adventure challenges us (in whatever form that happens to take – from a walk up a local hill, to skiing the South Pole). It provokes a stress response. Stress tends to get a bad press but it’s not inherently negative. It is a psychobiological response signalling a shift from comfort to stretch. Often, we interpret this as negative and become distressed. However, if we choose to frame it in a positive light, it becomes a source of energy and focus. There is a term for positive stress: eu-stress (from the Greek ‘eu’ meaning ‘well’). When all is said and done, being comfortable never really helped anyone succeed at anything significant.
The key is how we interpret stress signals in mind and body:
When we see it as a threat, we react – shutting down higher functions, reducing creativity, and narrowing our thinking
When we see it as a challenge, we engage – accessing energy, strategic thinking, and executive control
Make challenge not threat the default response – offsetting a path otherwise towards ill-health and even burnout.
Adventure Mode is about leaning into stress, and also fear, and risk - and opportunity - harnessing a purposeful mindset that uses stress as fuel, not friction.
A BASE jumper stands on the cliff edge and hears the voice of self-doubt, but recognises that he has arrived in this position through long experience, careful judgement and good decision-making. He accepts the fear and determines to work through it with technical knowledge and a calm disposition. The voice subsides and he trusts the process, leaping into the unknown.
There are parallels in facing risk and uncertainty in the workplace. We need to remember that we got to where we are through hard work, good judgement – we are good at what we do. It just needs a moment of calm composure to remember this, to make the final checks and to reconnect with purpose – feeling anxious about the unknown ahead is perfectly natural, but it is an opportunity to put what we have learnt so far to the test.
Turn On, Tune In, Get Excited
In my talks, workshops and outdoor sessions I show how high performers in adventure and extreme sports manage fear, adapt to uncertainty, and purpose risk to achieve success. I use these stories, backed with psychology and neuroscience to illustrate the same mechanisms we need to draw on in corporate, clinical, or creative settings.
Integrated into these interactive sessions are science-backed techniques and concepts:
Paced breathing to balance the nervous system and maintain composure
Executive control strategies for focus, decision-making, and emotion regulation
Micro-goals and movement practices to overcome paralysis and build momentum
Purpose mapping to reconnect with mission and motivation during times when the going gets tough or drive is lacking
These sessions can take place indoors (in the workplace) or outdoors (in the wild). Either way, the result is the same: equipping participants with a new framework for facing challenge – and tools to flip their Excitement Switch when it matters.
Reignite the spark
The goal isn’t to turn everyone into a skydiver or mountaineer. It’s to help people think and act more adventurously – to approach risk and uncertainty not with excitement, composure, and direction, repurposing stress and fear as fuel to succeed.
Next time you are having a bad day at the office, try viewing the situation as though you are about to jump out of a plane. Are you going to react to the pressure and shrink back in a state of fight or flight, or are you going to check your ‘chute, brace in the doorway and launch out into the great unknown excited and delighted to be in control of your life?
Want to activate Adventure Mode in your workplace? Let’s talk:
Email: cognitvexplorer@gmail.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cognitvexplorer1/
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