This past week (plus the 2 to follow this one) I have participated in the annual Challenge Course training at Outdoor Adventure at UCF. Perhaps some readers may be unaware, but one of my many various jobs is the role as head facilitator for this specific ropes course (that title basically means a course manager or lead instructor). So this past week has been a fun, exhausting, and thought-provoking experience as I was now the performer of all the activities I so often instruct, becoming yet again the learner instead of the teacher.
The goal of this program is to train college organizations, business professionals, aspiring military personnel, and athletic teams to become more cohesive units through developing their leadership, communication, and team-building skills through various mental and physical challenges. It takes them out of their day-to-day mindset and puts them in a environment where they travel through a set of scenarios or activities (which they would most likely never do anywhere else) so they can see how they genuinely react to situations with their team, most likely out of their comfort zone. By offering them tasks that are unusual to perform, they gain a different and perhaps more genuine angle to see their (and their team members) strengths, weaknesses, comforts, fears, personality traits, etc.. It's then my job as the observer to quickly evaluate this and choose/manipulate activities to reinforce strengths and overcome weaknesses on personal and communal levels. After the course has been completed, we then analyze and process all the events of the day and relate/compare them to their daily responses to daily situations.
I don't know if I paint a good enough description for you to visualize what can happen to people's mindsets during our some of our program days, but the transformational perspectives people gain through them would blow your mind (it blows mine anyway). This is one thing I've come to significantly value: to see or help people overcome challenges, to understand others better, and to develop or encourage their strengths. I think most of my friends when asked to describe me would be quick to share with you that 2 of the things I'm most passionate about personally are 1, adventure, and 2, overcoming challenges. This position has tremendously reinforced both of those aspects in my life and helped me grow significantly in the 2+ years I've worked here. It has been a blessing indeed.
I simply have the most awesome staff to work with at OA, so to coin the phrase of our Argentinian director, "it was super cool" to reap the benefits of having this fun interactive learning experience with them. We often discussed together about working and living in areas apart from our comfort zone, taking risks, and how the steady challenging of ourselves through levels of ascending difficulty at work, at home, as students, as friends, etc. will keep us ever in the mindset of learning, growing, and maturing.
A good reminder for me, this was... inspiring even. "For we are either progressing or retrograding all the while; there is no such thing as remaining stationary in this life." "Exert your talents, and distinguish yourself. Don't think of retiring from your mission to the world, until the world will be sorry that you retire."
