The Wilderness Classroom

Nature is the oldest and most influential teacher there is. The Trainers at Training Impact are strong believers in the veracity of this claim. Those who congregate with nature have a much more fulfilled and content life. Nature and the wilderness in many ways has aided man throughout his journey on this earth. Human beings by nature are structured to withstand and grapple with the rigors of nature, coming out wiser if they win or lose against it.

Benefits of Wilderness

There is a reason why people who have gone through trauma, are troubled or have gone through a physical ailment are advised to congregate with nature more. There are whole wellness centers created in the heart of mountains or oasis to provide and facilitate people with the experience of nature and wildlife. The symmetry, cyclical nature and continuity of the outbound gives a person the feeling of belonging and connectivity. You tend to see in perspective the most important things in life. You realize the beauty that surrounds you in its simplicity.

It is the strong belief of Training Impact that people who are more in connection in nature and use it to learn lessons are much better physically, emotionally, intellectually and socially settled in their lives. They do not forget the importance of the most essential things in life. The wilderness teaches humility and at the same time strength of character; confidence. But most important of all it teaches how to always find the middle ground in life and be content with what you are granted. It teaches you how to make more out of the resources that are allocated, it forces you to be creative about solving unsurountable dilemmas, it teaches you resilience and how to accept defeat manfully without spreading grievances.

Best of all, the wilderness is a great stress reviler from the pressure cooker that is most of the lives of the people in cities. People experience how to relax and chase away anxiety by taking something as simple as a stroll through a densely forested area. Or how to connect with loved ones or colleagues in the uninterrupted solitude that the wilderness has to offer.

Sadly, most of us in the urban setting have disengaged or disconnected with that beautiful relation of Nature. We tend to run after what we perceive as more important and forget the essential. We barely look at the greenery on the green belt in cities; not to mention having the time to go to the regimented nature of parks. Corporate life has even more so divorced itself from the beauty and lessons of wilderness. We fail to see the many connections that could be made between man batting with nature and man battling in the jungle of the business worlds.

Wilderness based Programs

The programs by Training Impact are constructed and structured in such a manner that they provide all the above-mentioned advantages and lessons throughout the duration of the wilderness courses. By using the many ways people can traverse through wilderness as an experience that could help them traverse the very rocky grounds in their professional and personal lives. This is made all the more powerful because the projects, activities and methods used are connected through reflective discussions, scenario comparisons and critical analysis, with the troubles, issues and situations people face back home in the supposedly benign settings of their urban corporate lives.

The rigors of wilderness used by the team and trainers at Training Impact, bring back to stark life the importance of the right decisions, resourcefulness and a positive attitude and outlook. The trainers make sure that everyone has a holistic experience as part of a team and an individual in the great wide beyond. The debriefs that follow are on the behaviors and actions exhibited by the participants in the settings, they evaluate and find the root cause of theirs and others behaviors. During this time, not only is there much food for thought what is cause enough for reflection but there is also a lot of deep camaraderie among the team members that develops.

The participants’ mettle is tested in the thick of hard situations. When they come out successful or with lots of mistakes along the way; they bond with each other. This is because they are in a way privy to each other’s demons and weaknesses. The rigors of the situations melt away any embarrassment and the veneer of gentility and brings man (and woman) back to the very basics of existence and humanity. People react in ways that they generally do in tough and stressful situations, regardless of the fact that this stress is caused by a rocky pathway and not by the boardroom agenda. All stress translates to the mind similarly, only varying in intensity. Those behaviors are analyzed and at times people find themselves off-guard with the revelations they have to face among their fellows.

Training Impact, throughout the program urges the participants to emotionally accept themselves as they are, face the challenges head on and have the temerity to look themselves in the eye after the experience has concluded. Because looking at a new self that emerges out of those situations is the hardest and most winning feat. It is the solely most important lesson that one has to take away from the powerful programs that Training Impact has to offer. Previous participants have purportedly been heard saying that they feel they have been rejuvenated and even reborn as a result of their time and participation in the program. And in many ways, they are reborn because it is the birth of a fresh new perspective to look at challenges and complexities that we face in our daily life. After the program, more often than not, participants reportedly show and mention how they were able to deal with a problem that seemed outside of their realm of understanding and control, or how they had more patience and resilience in the face of adversity (or an angry boss/colleague). Their time in the wilderness programs provides them with a lot of benefits and insights into how to resourcefully deal with difficult situations.

We, Importers, believe that learning is best embedded through hardship and a particular level of pain. Afterwards, the memory of the painful discomfort fades away but the lesson remains intact for long-term impact and applicability. The skillful handling of the VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous) environment by the trainers shows that they are seasoned veterans who have grappled with nature and the wilderness and are now more the wiser. They purportedly state that each time they go for the programs they find out new things about themselves and about human nature as a whole. Each time they are filled with humility and gratitude that they have been the vessels through which such stirring knowledge has been passed on to the change leaders of our society.

Wilderness Takeaways

Many people after the program are predisposed to become better leaders and more proactive team players. Individuals go through processes that more often than not give rise to characteristics of a leader and a leader follower to emerge after the conclusion of the program. Namely, empathy, humility, regard for others, resourcefulness, strategic thinking, Teamwork, patience and many others depending on the level of hardship that one had to surmount, the decisions one is facing in life and the personality of the person. People find out more about themselves in the four to five days they spend under the tutelage of the facilitators than they do in many years of corporate experience. The experience of the wilderness packs the leanings and insight, probably extracted over a life time, into a few days which gives people much to introspect about.

Wilderness and Training Impact Team

The team at Training Impact is uniquely in sync with the wilderness, against the odds put forth by the modern industrial society. From the Trainers, facilitators to the operations team, everyone is well versed in the art of rugged survivalist living. The trainers specially are certified mountain climbers and camp counselors. Many in the team have won medals for mountain climbing, trekking, snow-skiing and many other sports in conjunction with the wilderness.

Our team has many time contested with and more often than not won against the adversity of nature. Those few times that nature won it gifted us with hard won lessons that made us wiser, way beyond the many years of an old corporate fellow who had never stepped out of the comforts of their boardrooms and cushy offices.

Wilderness and Adventure Safety

The experience provided by Training Impact is controlled (as much as absolutely possible in the dynamism of nature) to provide clients with leanings through tough situations whose security is planned well in advance. The team has a whole squadron of adventure safety specialists, doctors and more recently security guards who are present along the parameter of the participants contingent to save them from a mishap and prevent them from any form of harm that the uncertainty of wilderness is bound at them.

Connectivity with nature is the saving grace of a country whose people are mired in the mundanes of daily life and the demands of a materialistic society. These programs go beneath the surface and dig holes into the depths of an individual’s being, plumbing out the real person underneath all the trappings of modern decorum and society. It wakes people up from the uninterrupted sleep and autopilot mode many of them are living their life through.