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.

In the final part of the mini-series on Escaping the Global Village, I wanted to review what we have discussed so far. The Global Village that we are a part of is a result of technology and transportation bringing this world so close together, that it’s almost as if the entire world lives in one village. Everyone is accessible to everyone, and we are expected to always be available. This indeed is a wonderful thing, as it provides opportunties for business, relationship building, friendships, learning, and many things that never existed before. However, it also has several downfalls. As a result of this global village, it makes it hard for us to have a work life balance, and causes others to place undo expectations on us. Our lives, as a result, become stressful and dominated by work, and the more we continue in this pattern, the worse it becomes. We simply must do something about it. 

In this final part, I wanted to discuss some practical ways that you can break free from the normal routine of life and get the refreshment and restoration that is needed. Following are 5 practical, easy things you can do to make retreats from the daily routine a part of your life.

1. Be an organized person. One of the things that technology affords us is the ability to be an organized person. You may be thinking….wait a second….I’m supposed to use technology to get away from the stress it causes? Well…yes. I recommend developing a good organizational system, such as the one developed by David Allen in his book  “Getting Things Done.” Read the book, work hard at developing an organizational system, and you will be TRULY AMAZED at how much stress is removed from your life. The idea is, if everything that you are keeping track of in your mind is organized on paper or electronically, then you no longer have to think about it. Let’s say I’m trying to keep track of 20 things that have to get done over the next week. If I don’t organize them in some form, I will be doomed to dwell on them all week and have an incredible amount of stress. However, if I organize them, I don’t have to worry about forgetting what has to be done, and I can think about other things, knowing that I have organized my “action items.” I strongly recommend doing this because it will free up your mind to think about non-work related things. Give it a shot. Buy the book and make the effort. I also recommend, for Mac users, that you purchase the program called OmniFocus.
2. Be a Disciplined Person. Do you want to have a better work life balance? Be disciplined and do NOT allow yourself to work or think about work all the time. Schedule time for yourself every day where you do something that you enjoy, even if it’s just for 30 minutes.
3. Be a Hard Worker. When you are at work, WORK HARD. Not working hard and being lazy at work will cause you great anxiety and stress. Read this Proverb (26:14) “As a door turns on its hinges, so does a sluggard on his bed.”
4. Aerobic Outdoor Exercise. Taking time to care for yourself by exercising greatly reduces stress and forces you to get outside and enjoy the creation. Listen to music as well. It will help keep your mind off of work.
5. Be an adventurous person. Nothing breaks the bonds of the daily grind like outdoor adventure can. Pushing yourself to confront fears, getting that rush of adrenaline, doing something you never thought possible…what a delight it can be. I know for me personally, nothing brings restoration, focus, and perspective like being outdoors away from the normal routine.

I hope that you all found this mini series to be helpful. I hope it can impact your life and make you enjoy your life to an even greater extent!

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”