Ascent Adventure Consultants, North Carolina’s fastest growing rock climbing guide company, has unveiled a re-branding of the company, as well as a new website.

Apex, NC USA May 1, 2009 — Ascent Adventure Consultants is about impacting people’s lives and setting them out on the journey and adventure of a lifetime: when people experience climbing a cliff face, they are instantly aware of the existence of a whole new world; when people engage their fellow teammates or employees in a team building activity, they realize the greater degree of unity and success their team could be experiencing.

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We have a YouTube Page!

YouTube – ascentadventure’s Channel.

Hey everybody! I hope everyone is enjoying their holiday!

Ascent Adventure Consultants has some REALLY exciting things planned for 2009. One of them is the plan for the blog. We will be following a weekly schedule, having each day be dedicated to a different topic. What are those topics, you ask? Here they are:

1. Mondays- Trip Reports
2. Tuesdays- Fitness and Training Tips
3. Wednesdays- Business and Corporate Training Advice
4. Thursday- Climbing Techniques and Tools
5. Friday- Environmental Issues and Advice
6. Saturdays- Miscellaneous Items that We Want to Write About!

So make sure to check back to read what interests you!

No matter what kind of business you’re in, and no matter how long you’ve been in business for, creating a social media presence is an absolute must in today’s market. If you want to reach the market in the way they prefer to hear and receive information, you need to start your social networking strategy today. I have seen remarkable results from my taking action on this, and I recommend it to you.

Deidre Hughey, founder of The Buzz Builder, is the best resource you can find to get your strategy launched. Check out her website.

Just something fun and interesting!

IPods Get Altitude Sickness IPAS.

This global village that we live in and the people that we now interact with have placed expectations on us to respond to every contact/email/phone call instantaneously, and causes us to place those same expectations on others. In a world where information and resources are immediately available to us, we expect others to be instantly available to us as well.

When you get an email or phone call, do you feel the need to respond right away? When you send an email or call someone, do you get offended if they don’t respond right away? This is the influence that this global village is placing upon us, and it has put undue stress on us.

Of course we have to be responsible and responsive. In fact, I am notorious for responding instantly to emails. However, I personally have found that we need to make time for personal retreats away from the busy routine, and the one place that we still have to escape from the global village is the wilderness. It is there that we experience what the world was originally like…and the only expectation that we have is that we will be refreshed. I recommend that everyone try to get outside and get away from the normal routine of life every once in a while and see how much of a grip these expectations hold on you. By disciplining ourselves to let go of our global village for a few hours or days on a retreat, we can all live much more stress-free lives, and at the same time still be productive. That is the reason we act in these “instant-response” ways right? We fear losing productivity. Well think about the last time you were stress-free. You can think clearer, make decisions better, handle challenges better…and be more productive. Don’t forget to let work go every once in a while and enjoy the creation…enjoy being outside and being refreshed.

If you’re interested in reading more about having a work-life balance, check out the WebMD site.

READ PART 4: Click Here to read “Getting Away from the Normal Routine of Life”

Living in this Global Village, we have grown accustomed to working every waking hour…checking email on our smartphones, blogging on a mobile device, etc. This technology has done things for business that are astounding. I know personally that without them, Ascent Adventure Consultants wouldn’t be what we are today.

There is a negative effect to all of this though. Are there things that you used to enjoy but can’t anymore because of working too much? Do you feel like you are lacking joy because of it? One of the ways to help break the obsessive pattern of work is to get outside to be refreshed and rejuvinated, whether for a lunch break, a day, or a week. It has been repeatedly shown that the outdoors have an incredible therapeutic effect on those who immerse themselves in it. Check out this page on Adventure Therapy on Wikipedia to read some detailed information.

What would it be like for you to leave your phone in the car and live for a day disconnected from normal life? For me personally, I am able to find great joy I’m doing this. I find that when I do get back to technology and the normal pace of life, that I am able to work even more effectively and efficiently as a result.

I can remember one experience I had back when I was a pharmaceutical sales rep. My life had become consumed by work. One day I was out on a Saturday helping bolt some new climbs in Virginia. My friend realized he brought the wrong drill, so I stayed up on the cliff by myself for 1.5 hours clipped into the anchor. In that brief amount of time, I found such peach and joy as I reflected and admired creation. I feel that through that experience, it helped me to remember what is important in life and gave me a new perspective on my job and on life.

Think about this..if we all took time to get outside (even just over a lunch break!), and had this kind of refreshing experience, we could impact so many people with our new found joy because we live in a Global Village and our actions do indeed impact many.

READ PART 3: Click Here to Read “Setting Expectations”

Have you ever heard of the Global Village? This is a term coined by Marshall Mcluhan, describing the way that technology, specifically the internet, has allowed people and cultures all over the world to seemingly be part of “one village.” We can communicate with each other faster than ever before, we can build relationships with people on the other side of the globe, we can do business with companies everywhere. This global village has continued to develop throughout the past century, and will continue developing into the foreseeable future. Who knows what lies ahead that could draw us even closer together than current technology allows!

This is indeed a wonderful thing. But there are a few things can be potentially dangerous about it. Paul Michelman on the Harvard Business Blog has written a great article and started a great discussion on how this has caused us to become obsessed with work and slowly makes us lose our private lives. He says:

“[The] notion is that the M-F, 9-5, three-weeks-of-carefully-planned-vacation work-a-day life is an anachronism in today’s information economy. Most of our work…can be done anywhere, anytime. Why force people to toil within meaningless barriers of time and space? [T]his idea [is presented] in the name of freedom — we should have more flexibility in how we get our work done and how we choose to live our lives.”

Over the next few days, I will discuss the following topics, with a goal of helping us to avoid the pitfall of becoming so obsessed with work that we forget to enjoy our lives.

The Global Village has:

1) Caused us to be focused on work from the moment we wake to the moment we lay down to sleep

2) Placed expectations on us to respond to every contact/email/phone call instantaneously, and causes us to place those same expectations on others

3) Caused us to begin forgetting how to relate to people and build relationships without technology

4) Made it hard for people to escape from the normal routine of life

Ultimately my goal in discussing this is to begin some dialog on how pursuit of outdoor adventure and enjoyment can help us to reconnect to what we have lost as a result of this “villagization”

READ PART 2: Click Here to read “Work/Life Balance”