364 Holly Worton – Personal Growth Through Outdoor Adventure

Transcript

Holly: Hello and welcome to the Into the Woods podcast, episode 364. This is your host Holly Worton and I am back with another solo episode. Today I am talking about personal growth and personal development through outdoor adventures, particularly solo outdoor adventures.

So this is a really important topic to me because as you know I spend a fair amount of time in the outdoors and I love hiking long-distance trails and I love just being in the woods and being in the outdoors and going camping and walking and I love all that stuff. So I had never really thought about how much my outdoor adventures had contributed to my personal growth, and my personal development, in the last ten or so years, but I think it really has; and I wanted to have this conversation with you today because outdoor adventures are fun and exciting, they expand us out of our comfort-zone, they help us grow, they help us evolve as people. And I think that maybe, for some people, if we looked at it from that perspective and if some people really realised just how life-changing this can be, not just walking a long-distance trail, but just getting outdoors and doing things, particularly alone. If a lot of people realised how much that can contribute to your personal growth and your personal development, I think people might be more inclined to do them more. It is not just fun and exciting; it is also great for your personal growth.

What are you going to learn today?

I am going to talk about how getting outdoors can also be part of our inner work and our personal growth. I talk about the life skills that you could improve through being outdoors, particularly on your own. I discuss how it will give you the time and space for reflection and to do that inner work. I talk about facing fears and how this can help you to let go of your fears. And finally, the obvious things like improving your physical fitness, your mental health, increasing a greater respect for the environment. There are lots of practical, obvious, things that outdoor adventures can give you.

Let’s get into today’s episode. I had a couple of episodes lately that probably helped me get to this point, so episode 354 with Stephen Marriott, we talked about the life-changing magic of walking a long-distance trail and how life is often “before” and “after” walking a long-distance trail, because it can be such an important part of our growth and such an important part of our personal development, and then a few episodes later Adam Wells came on and we talked about how to prepare for your first long-distance trail and we also talked about how being on a long-distance trail can create a kind of liminal space, outside the normal realm of normal life and create that space for personal growth and development. So those are a couple of good conversations that I have had with other people which I think are complementary to this episode and it definitely led me to think more about what happens on the inside when I do the outer work of walking a long-distance trail.

I think the important thing here is that getting outdoors and having outdoor adventures doesn’t necessarily mean walking the Camino Santiago or walking the South Downs Way or walking the Ridgway or doing something that requires walking days on end on your own, I think that is an excellent way to grow and to develop but I think you can also learn a lot by just getting out on a day hike or going camping or doing a shorter adventures.

I have been blogging a lot lately about outdoorsy stuff, I know that is going to be one of my the main things I am going to be focussing on is outdoor adventures, personal growth through outdoor adventures and what it can give you. So I have got several blog posts relating to this which I am probably going to mention through this episode, and I will link to them in the show notes. But let’s get into the topic.

What is this concept of personal growth through outdoor adventure?

I have learned so much about myself through hiking on my own, camping on my own, walking a long distance trail on my own and I think to me doing this stuff alone has really ramped up the intensity of what I have learned through my outdoor adventures. Yes you could absolutely learn from doing this stuff with other people and if you don’t feel comfortable having outdoor adventures alone, then definitely start by doing them with other people and then hopefully at some point you will safe enough and confident enough to have these adventures on your own, because I really think that is kind of a next level thing if you are looking to grow even more.

Staying Safe

And a lot of women that I talk to are really concerned about is it safe to go hiking on your own, is it safe to go camping on your own? And I recently wrote a blogpost about that called Solo Hiking For Women, Staying Safe in the Outdoors and I will link to that in the show notes. Most of the article is about how to be safe in the outdoors as a human being, different things you need to learn, different things you need to be aware of, and I also do address the thing that I think is number one, fear of going hiking or camping alone and that is the two-legged predator, or being attacked by another human being. This doesn’t happen very often, especially the more remote you get in the wilderness or outdoors the less likely that is to happen. Most people who are looking to attack women are not going to spend hours or days hiking to get to a remote location to see if a woman happens to come by on her own that they can attack, yeah you are probably going to be safe from two-legged predators. I don’t think it is something to be worried about but it is something that I address in the blogpost and I think there are a lot of things you can do to help you be more confident about being outdoors on your own, because I really do think that it is an important experience to have and it is something that can ease you outside of your comfort zone.

So what can get in terms of inner work from outdoor adventures?

A lot of people think: oh I am going to go hiking, it is great exercise, I will get outdoors, I will get some sunshine, it is good. And it is, but it can also help us grow inwardly, personal growth kind of thing. It can help us increase our self-trust, increase our self-awareness, our self-knowledge, our self-confidence, our self-reliance. This is because when we get outdoors whether that is with someone else or alone we come across situations that we don’t come across in our usual life, unless you live in the woods and you have a very rustic lifestyle. You are walking on trails, you might come across unexpected things like mud, or cliffs, or slippery trails, or inclement weather, stuff that you don’t normally come across when you are sitting at home, or at your office, or wherever it is that you experience indoors, or wherever you are indoors.

So by getting yourself out there into the outdoors and having an adventure, you are increasing your self-confidence and your self-trust by getting out there, having these new experiences, surviving them, and then having more confidence to do them again.

And also self-reliance. Now obviously if you go on a guided walk or hike or camping trip or other adventure, with someone else or a guide who is facilitating the experience, a lot of times we tend to kind of let go our sense of personal responsibility and place that responsibility on the leader or the guide. I am actually, as I record this, earlier today, I was just getting ready for a course that I am on with the Woodcraft School, and I will link to that in the show notes, but I am doing a course on wildlife identification and tracking and I am super-excited about this course, I signed up for it last year, and it was supposed to start in April and of course, because of COVID it kept getting pushed, pushed, pushed and now this weekend is the first weekend that we are having it.

So I am super-excited about that because this is an adventure, through a school, and it is going to be guided by a teacher and I know who he is, I have already realised that I have kind of let my guard down in terms fo packing. I was packing my first aid kit and I thought: do I pack just the little one or do I pack the big one? And I am packing the little one because I know he is going to have a gigantic outdoor first aid kit, and I can rely on that. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, if you know that someone else is going to be carrying a lot of gear that will duplicate, you don’t want to duplicate your own gear, that’s not necessarily a bad thing so I am aware of the fact that I am relying on him for certain things, that if I were going alone, or if I were the leader of the group I would definitely be carrying a bigger first aid kit. So self reliance is another thing you can learn, because when you are alone in the outdoors, or whether you are with someone else in the outdoors, if it is a friend or a peer or a family member, you are more likely to have to deal with stuff on your own, there is not going to be the teacher or the guide to handle things for you. So I think that is an important part of growth.

Self-knowledge

Self-knowledge, when you are out on a trail, you learn things about yourself, especially when you are alone, especially when you are walking a long-distance trail. I have learned so much about myself, about how I like to pace myself, how often I like to take breaks, how often to eat, or not eat. I learn a lot about myself and how I like to plan my adventures for the future, but I also have a lot of time for reflection and I learn about myself on the inside. If you have read my book, Alone on the South Downs Way, I have got a new release this year where I share both of my journeys, my 2015 journey, and my 2019 journey, on the South Downs Way.

On the first one, it triggered so much of my crap and my irritability and my fears and my stuff, and I talk about that a lot, especially on the first day, getting yourself outdoors and in these new environments can really trigger stuff for you and I think that is a good thing because they bring stuff up to light that you can then work on. So that is a really, really, good aspect of learning.

Also, it increases your sense of personal responsibility and I think this is a really, really, good thing. Personal responsibility is something that I never really thought about until I got into the coaching world about nine years ago and I started thinking more about the importance of this, of taking responsibility for your own life. I really feel like, for the first part of my life, I just let things happen to me, I didn’t necessarily plan to have the experiences that I wanted to have, and I also blamed things on other people. I think that when you have outdoors adventures, you have got to take responsibility for your own experience, especially if you are not going something that is guided by someone else, if you are planning the trip, whether you are alone, or you have got a friend or family member with you, you have got to plan and take responsibility for the experience. If someone gets injured, you have got to deal with it. If you got to bring a lighter to light your campfire, that’s your problem, that is 100% on you. So you have really got to learn to take responsibility for your actions if you forget the matches or the lighter that is no one else’s fault but yours.

And I don’t think it is…I think it is important not to blame yourself but to learn to take responsibility: oh I forgot this thing, I am not going to forget it this time, I am going to add it to my packing list. I have very elaborate packing lists for each different type of outdoor adventure, and I will link to those in the show notes. You can get those, you can download those, there is no opt-in for them. I have written several blogposts on the exact gear that I use, and I also include the checklists and they are word docs so you can download them yourself and tailor them to your needs. These are checklists that are always a work in progress for me, I am always changing and adding and adjusting new things.

So again, personal responsibility is a really important part of life and it is important aspect of creating the life that you want and having the experience that you want by taking responsibility for what you do, what you don’t do and the mistakes that you make and learning from your mistakes so that you don’t make them again. So there is a ton of, there are so many things you can learn from having these outdoor adventures and again you can learn this stuff from just a day hike, because if you forget your gloves and it is a winter hike, and your hands are freezing and you have to walk all day with your hands in your pockets you are going to remember that and you are going to add gloves to your checklist for next time. Or you are going to create a checklist so that you have this stuff and you don’t forget it.

And I think that creating that sense of personal responsibility within the context of outdoor adventures will also have a ripple effect in other parts of your life, you will start to take more responsibility for other parts of your life. Because I think that personal responsibility is an attitude that a lot of people don’t have, and it is really good to cultivate. It is like your comfort zone; you expand your comfort zone in one area of your life and it naturally expands in all areas of your life. I think personal responsibility is like that as well, once you start taking responsibility for yourself in your outdoor adventures you will start taking responsibility for yourself in all areas of your life, it is like a muscle that you develop.

Next, you can improve life skills. So goal setting, achievement, one of the things you can do is set a goal for how many miles you are going to hike. So if you plan your hike in advance and you download a GPX file or you create your own GPX file and follow that route on your own, or you say: I am going to go out hiking for six hours today, or whatever, you are setting a goal for how long you want to be outdoors, how long is your route going to be and then achieve it. Now the thing like stuff like this, goal setting in the outdoors, you have got to achieve your goals. It is like when I am walking the long-distance trail and I am walking the South Downs Way, in Eastbourne, let’s say I am starting in the East, and I am going to get to Alfriston at night, I have got to get there, there is no other option because that is where I am staying the night. And it is a ridge, well it is not necessarily a ridge and you are in the middle of nowhere and there aren’t a lot of escape routes, if you are not injured you have got to keep going. You can’t just call a taxi and have it pick you up on the trail, if you do call a taxi it is probably going to pick you up at least a mile or two or three off the trail, so you have got to achieve that goal, again, unless you get injured. The same thing goes with a hike, if you plan a circular hike near your area, you do need to be aware of escape routes and what to do if something goes wrong, but you are going to have to get home, because you are probably going to be in the middle of the woods away from a road, away from a place where you can call for help. A lot of times there isn’t mobile connectivity, so you need to achieve your goals. You need to in most instances.

What other life skills can you improve through outdoor adventures?

Planning skills, planning your route that you are going to walk on. Planning your hike, planning your stuff that you are going to bring with you, especially if you like wild camping or even car camping, if you forget something that’s going to really put a damper on your adventure and it could even potentially be dangerous – so you really need to heighten your planning skills when you are doing outdoors stuff.

And you can learn new skills like navigation, how to use a map and compass, how to do wild camping, how to walk a long-distance-trail, you learn all kinds of stuff throughout these adventures. And also problem solving, stuff can always go wrong when you are outdoors, and you are going to have fewer resources at your disposal. So if you get injured you are going to need to know, where is the nearest escape route, how to get off your trail, how to get off your route, and how to get help that you need. If you are in a lowland area you are probably not going to have mountain rescue available to you. And you probably won’t have people available to come and evacuate you, so you are going to need to figure out how to solve that problem on your own.

Having said that, if you are going to have any outdoors adventures, it is really useful to have learned outdoor first aid and that is one of the reasons that I carry such a big first aid kit with me; especially when I was walking with groups, because I am very aware of all the stuff that can go wrong, and to be honest I wasn’t even aware of all the stuff that could wrong before I took outdoors first aid for the first time! I have done that twice now because you have got to renew it every three years. Even if you are not guiding groups and you are just going to be going outdoors on your own, if it is something that you think you are going to be doing a lot of, it is a really good skill to have, outdoors first aid, it is a two-day course, I think it is 16 hours, 8 hours each day, and you will learn a lot of really practical stuff. That’s another skill you can learn, outdoors first aid and it will also help you with your problem solving if something goes wrong.

So problem solving is a great life skill, like I said, if you can solve problems with limited resources in the outdoors that is going to help you to think creatively to solve problems in your every day life and in your workplace, so that is another great skill to have.

Time and space for reflection

Going outdoors can also give you that time and space for reflection. You are alone, not necessarily alone, but let’s assume that you are going to be alone because at some point I would love for you to get outdoors alone and do something on your own, whether that is hiking, camping or walking a long distance trail.

It gives you the time and space for things to come up, stuff that might trigger you, stuff that you are going to have to work through, you will have the time and space to have these difficult conversations with yourself in your mind, that you might not have if you are really busy in your everyday life, as most of us are. A lot of times we are just so busy getting through each day and doing the work that we need to do and that we don’t have time for this stuff to come up, but if you are alone on a trail, that stuff will come up. It might take a couple of hours but it will probably come up and I think that is one of the great benefits of walking a long-distance-trail on your own because you have got many days on end for this stuff to come up and to deal with it and to work through it and to grow through it. I often say that walking alone is like mobile meditation because I am walking and putting one step in front of the other and I am meditating on stuff, I am not walking and doing mantras, usually, sometimes I do, it gives you that space for stuff to come up and I think that is really, really, valuable and I think a lot of us don’t give ourselves that time and space for reflection on life, on work, on what we want to be experiencing in this lifetime.

Overcoming fear and developing resilience

Outdoor adventure can also give us an opportunity to face our fears and to let go of them. I used to be super-fearful about walking on trails, I used to be so afraid of walking uphill, downhill, especially walking downhill, I used to be so afraid of slipping and falling, and getting outdoors has really helped me to face that fear and to let go of it.

It has also helped me face the fear of being alone, I used to be super scared of walking alone in the outdoors, I used to be afraid of people, weird people coming and attacking me, I used to be afraid that something would happen and I wouldn’t be able to deal with it, I used to be afraid of so many things! I used to be a very fearful person but getting outdoors alone on a regular basis has really helped me to stretch out of my comfort zone in terms of what kinds of outdoors adventures I will have. As I said, when you stretch out of your comfort zone in one area this will expand in all areas of your life. It has expanded my comfort zone in other areas of my life: both work and other stuff.

It has also helped me with resilience. When you are hiking, and you know that you have to get to a certain destination… you have got to get there! You have got to push through the pain sometimes and sometimes you take an ibuprofen or two or three or four and it gets rid of the pain and sometimes it doesn’t and sometimes if you are walking a long-distance-trail you might have physical pain day after day after day. So, assuming you are not injured, it is just foot pain from carrying too much weight or whatever, or maybe your body is just not used to carrying a pack, it increases resilience and it increases the resilience muscle which again will help you with resilience in other areas of your life. This is so great, there is so much you can get from outdoor adventures.

Taking Risks

Finally, and I think this is also exciting and important, it can help give you a higher tolerance to risk. I think that risk is a good thing, I maybe have been better at risk than the average person, just because I have had all kinds of adventures in my life but then, like I said, I have also been a fearful person, but getting myself outdoors and getting myself facing my fears, and getting myself into risky, mildly risk stuff, in the outdoors has helped give me a higher tolerance for risk. Again it is a like a muscle that if you have got a higher tolerance to risk in the outdoors it will also give you a higher tolerance to risk in the indoors and other aspects of life. Again, I think that is a good thing, because I think a lot of us will stay stuck in certain areas of our lives because we are scared of the risk that come from making changes.

Great respect for the environment

Finally, and I am only going to touch on this very briefly, getting outdoors will give you greater respect for the environment. It will help you to value the beautiful things that we have, the access that we have to woodlands, to streams, to rivers, to lakes, to ocean…to all the beautiful things that our planet gives us and makes available to us. When we exposed ourselves to these beautiful outdoor adventures, it will have a ripple effect in how we live our lives, back home, indoors. Maybe you start to reduce plastic in your life, maybe you start recycling more, maybe you start paying attention to where your products are produced. I don’t know, it is going to be different for everyone, but getting outdoors will increase our respect for the environment.

Improving physical fitness and mental health

Obviously getting outdoors and going on a hike will improve our physical fitness, especially if you do it on a regular basis, it will help you use muscles that you don’t use in other aspects of your life and it will help you be more fit physically and that is always a good thing. But it is also good for mental health, like I said getting outdoors, especially on your own, will give you the time and space to focus on things that you may not be focusing on and that will help you make better decisions in your life, it will help you do different things in your life, have different experiences, have the experiences that you want to have in your life. It will help you to create the life that you want to be living rather than life that you just fell into because you weren’t really paying attention to what was happening.

So are you excited about planning your next outdoor adventure? I really, really, hope that you are. So I am going to point you to some resources on my blog that I have written in the last few weeks that should help you with this. So like I said, I have got that Solo Hiking for Women Staying Safe In The Outdoors blogpost, and if you have any fears about getting outdoors alone, please read that. I also have, and I am really excited about this blog post, it is called Hiking With Autism, How to Get Outdoors When You Are On the Autism Spectrum, if you have been listening to this podcast for a while, you probably know that I have Aspergers, or high functioning autism, and I think that getting outdoors when you are autistic can really, really, help with some of the challenges that come with being autistic, but I think there is a lot of stuff that you need to think and plan in advance before you get outdoors, that will help you feel safer. And that might even be really useful to people who want to get outdoors, don’t have autism, but maybe they are extra fearful, because that blog post includes a lot of things that you might not think about that will help you plan, so check that one out. And again, I am linking to these in the show notes.

Then I have got my personal ultimate gear and packing lists, my: Ultimate Gear and Packing List for One Day Hikes and Walks, my Ultimate Gear and Packing List for Multiple Hikes and Walks and then I have got my Ultimate Gear and Packing List for Backpacking and Car Camping and I really am very happy with these lists, an dI think they will be really helpful in helping you to plan your own outdoor adventures and to make sure you bring everything, because I have forgotten things sometimes.

Finally I have written two really exciting blog posts, one is called Walking the South Downs Way, Planning Your Adventure and then Walking the Ridgeway, Planning Your Ridgeway Walk. And both of those help you to plan a long distance adventure, either on the South Downs Way or on the Ridgeway. I think I am probably going to do a generic one on how to plan a long distance walk because I want to make a resource that people can use and apply to any long distance trail, to give you an idea.

If you have any questions about planning your first solo adventure or with other people, please drop me a line and let me know you can email me at: [email protected] and I am happy to help if I can.

So that is it, I hope you found this episode interesting and useful and I hope that it inspires you to get outdoors and have your own long distance adventures because not only are they good for your body and your mind, they are also good for your personal growth.

Thank you so much for listening and remember to visit: http://HollyWorton.com/364 for the show notes on this episode.

And remember in a couple of weeks I will have the transcript for this episode live, and on the website, which means that if you want to refer to it, you will have that available.

Thank you so much for listening, have a great week and please let me know about your long-distance adventure. If you were inspired by this episode to plan something new and exciting let me know, I would love to hear what it is! Thank you so much.