Well…at Ascent Adventure Consultants over the past few weeks we have experienced a HUGE setback, in that our website went down. But now thanks to our designers, The Infantree (www.theinfantree.com), we are back in full swing. As I was sitting here this morning thinking about what to write to alert everyone that the site is back, I was thinking how climbing has prepared me to handle situations like this.

Climbing has taught me:

Read the rest of this entry »

Do you ever feel like your life is a mix of tasks to get done, and you just jump back and forth between tasks all day, feeling like you never get ahead? Maybe you wake up in the morning and have an idea of what needs to get done for work that day, but as soon as you sit down to start your day, you are overwhelmed by the myriad of thongs to do. Read the rest of this entry »

Have you ever had the thought that your boss is not a good leader, but that they just boss you around? Better yet, have you ever had the thought that maybe you aren’t a good leader, but just bossy? Maybe people follow you because they are afraid, not because you lead well. I found this quote online and wanted to share it with everyone. It compares leadership to “bossiness”: Read the rest of this entry »

One of the things that we heard over and over again on Kilimanjaro was the porters and guides saying “Pole Pole” (pronounced pole-ay pole-ay). The translation is “GO SLOWLY.” Not only was this applicable on the mountain, but in the rest of the Tanzanians lives. Read the rest of this entry »

In partnership with local LifeSuccess Coach Leslie Flowers, Ascent Adventure Consultants is presenting the LifeVenture Weekend Retreat in Cary NC January 22-23 2010.

The weekend LifeVenture retreat begins on a Friday night, lasting until Saturday evening, and combines Leslie’s excellent LifeSuccess teachings, (http://www.lifesuccessleslie.com) with experiential training and application by Ascent Adventure Consultants’ (http://www.ascentadventure.com) professional team building and training facilitators, to help participants learn and apply the principles being taught. Read the rest of this entry »

As the next installment in my ongoing series focusing on “The Climbing Experience Applied to All of Life”, I wanted to take some time to write about how climbing can actually help you learn how to be a good planner and organizer in all of life. I could probably write pages and pages about this, but I wanted to share 3 key points that I believe translate well into personal life and business life.

Read the rest of this entry »

I found a new blog that I love to read….it’s called The Practice of Leadership. I read an article today on The Importance of Creativity for leaders. Make sure to read the article in full. I wanted to highlight one of the points the author makes.

“The leader must be able to travel into an unexplored path” Read the rest of this entry »

A person can teach themselves to overcome learned helplessness and be more optimistic.  As with all forms of mental discipline, from sports psychology to the suggestions below, they seem simplistic and somewhat silly when written on paper.  However such disciplines, like exercise, healthy eating, systematic investing, and others, can have powerful effects when applied consistently and intelligently over time.  They are not magic.  But, they do work.
Is being optimistic an advantage?  People with high scores for the optimistic explanatory style has been shown to have to be the ones “immune” to learned helplessness.   Other significant benefits have been documented: Read the rest of this entry »

Why does one person act in the face of uncertainty or fear while others are passive?  Research has been done to determine why some people appear to be “immune” to learned helplessness.  The answer was found in the concept of Explanatory style.   Explanatory style is how you perceive the world and the events around you.  Formally it is defined as “a psychological attribute that indicates how people explain to themselves why they experience a particular event, either positive or negative. Read the rest of this entry »

I read a great article on Change Management (Read It) this morning.  I will be using principles from it most definitely in leadership training programs that I conduct from now on. The point of the article is that the managers of companies are always excited to implement change, but rarely does that change  become sustained. It usually leads to a period of excitement, and then a reverting back to old habits. One of the main reasons she said this happens is because of a lack of focus on the “soft” side of change implementation. Read the rest of this entry »