I promise the blog will start to move away from a personal journey and towards career and work related stories. What I might ask is to try and see where these stories might inspire a look at both - personal or career. And, believe me these are not intended to have me teach you something. I am merely wanting to share. If we all shared ourselves more I think we all would be in a much better place.
The image above was taken while on a 3 day canoe trip through the Red Deer river valley. My family went with our friends. A family we have shared a lot of experiences with and become very close. Our kids get along amazingly well.
I am not a big camper. I definitely am one who would choose not to sleep on the ground in close to zero temperatures. I do love the outdoors, immensely, and canoeing is an almost cerebral thing for me. It was the closest thing to meditation as I had previously experienced. But I like to sleep in comfortable conditions. Wimp.
Anyway, we almost cancelled this trip. The weather was looking awful and even the most enthusiastic of us felt there was a point where it might not make sense. Lo and behold the conditions started looking more favourable and off we went.
The trip comprised of 4 days canoeing from Big Valley to Drumheller. We would have three stops along the way. We averaged about 5 hours of canoeing per day. And, we had an awful wind against us more than half of the way. My friend and his daughter were dumped in the water on one occasion. Frost hit us overnight. It was a challenge.
However, we persevered. We almost quit once along the way. And we heard after, from our outfitter, that he had several calls that weekend, from younger, fitter folks tapping out.
Upon our return I looked my pictures and saw this one. Loved it. And it really captured our victory well. A crisp morning, up before 6 am and opened my eyes to this. A heavy mist over the river, sun peaking out over the hoodoos and our vessels strewn out on the bank.
Find a way to recognize your victories and attach something to them so you will have them in your memory banks. This image will help me as will having shared the experience with friends and family. I will try and leverage this tough journey when I am working for someone and we are facing some challenges. We will find our victory, we will just have to recognize when it happens and then celebrate.