Today I went on an adventure with my partner, North on the the Blue Ridge Parkway past views of high mountains and low valleys from Brevard to Asheville to Little Switzerland and Emerald Village and back. The mountains are ancient and still while the life that lives within them is forever evolving. To be able to walk quietly among the trees and the rivers is a gift I will never take for granted. On trips like this, I usually take my journal with me so that I can keep notes on what I did that day, things that I noticed and thoughts that I had so that later I can reflect on them.

As we were driving, I started to think about why I always journal and reflect and why its important to me. I could easily just say that its because Im a WLEE kid (Wilderness Leadership & Experiential Education) and that's just what we do, but I feel like there's more to it. I don't reflect on my day to day happenings just to log events - I reflect so that I can grow from my experiences and start to better relate to the world and people that I meet along the way - this teaches me empathy and acceptance towards other humans and to nature. Writers like Henry David Thoreau and John Muir used a method a lot like this to document their own adventures so that they could better reflect on nature and it importance in the lives of humans.

This adventuring followed by a focused reflection is a tool that experiential and outdoor educators live by. Experiential Education is all about allowing people to experience new things - things that might make them uncomfortable or challenge them and to teach them something new whether that be skills or personally. These experiences are then followed up with a focused reflection to glean the knowledge and personal discoveries from it.

Focused reflection is not about simply listing what you did and what you learned. To really use this tool to its fullest potential, you must reflect on what you did, what you learned, and how it changed you as a person. With every life experience, you cant help but be changed by the world and the people around you. Acknowledging these changes is a huge part of opening our hearts and minds to growth.

You don't have to be an outdoor educator or part of a program or even a great writer to write and reflect on your experiences and grow from them. This is an incredible tool available to anyone that experiences life and can make notes about their experiences - that means that anyone can do this. This is something that I have been taught that has been life changing for me - so Id like to challenge others to try it as well.

Next time you go outside for a hike or stroll around your neighborhood, take a pen and a piece of paper and jot down some quick notes about the things you see, the thoughts you had, and how you felt about those experiences. Notice the details, use your senses and allow your thoughts to drift. When you get back home, take a few minutes to read back through your notes and turn them into a short journal entry. Reflect on your experience by noticing the small changes in yourself from looking at the world from an objective point of view and focusing on how you personally felt or related to those observations.

I cant tell you what you are supposed to get out of this experience, each person has and will have a different life experience that will cause them to grow and evolve in different ways. But I can promise you that you will only gain from this act of slowing down and taking in all the experiences big and small that life has to offer you.

For an example of focused reflection in action, check out my first article here.