Loon lake post (the second time around)

Hello readers, and welcome back to the blog!

Today’s post is about our first field study of the year at loon lake. We spent 5 days at “looner”, which for some reason, felt like 5 months…

This field study was centred around leadership, and effectively working with others. Most of this trip was run by “Pinnacle Pursuits”, a company that values people, passion, and performance. The guy who was running it was a man named Jonathan willcocks:

 “Johnno”, as we called him, was our leader during this experience, and had us learning at all times. 

We began our loon lake journey with a freezing cold bus ride into the wilderness. I want dressed the best at that moment…..

Here’s what I looked like: 

Once we got there, we were introduced to Amber and Johnno from pinnacle pursuits. We did a few “icebreaker” games, and we needed it, (it was pretty cold). The rest of the day was spent inside, doing some start-up activities. Coming into this, I didn’t have the best of attitudes, for several reasons.

The next day, we woke up at the crack of dawn to start our day. The second day was all about defining who we were. We did this activity, where a partner would constantly yell: “What do you love?”. And we would spit out things we loved, which we later wrote down in our workbooks.

Here’s what I love:

One thing that I realized from this activity, was that I remembered other peoples “loves” better than my own. 

We also did an activity regarding our strengths and skills. It was slightly different from the “love” activity, as we just wrote down our strengths and skills. I really had to dig deep to uncover my skills, as I didn’t really know at first.

Later during the second day, we did a creative activity. We drew a collage, of the things that we love, and are interested in. Here’s what my drawing looked like:

I’m a really sporty guy, so I had a few sport related sketches in there. Also, I showed my “hidden” music side of myself, with the music notes. 

Once we had finished our drawings, we put them up on the wall around the room. 

At the end of each day, we would go around the room and write compliments to people, on how they did in certain activities. As you can see, my page was pretty full.

Another important piece of this was our “credo”. A credo is a short description of what you value, and who you aspire to be at all times. While working on my credo, I found better language to describe myself, more positive language. I also got peer critique from Johnno, and members of the PLP 10 team, which was really helpful.

Here’s a photo of my Credo:

After finishing our credos, we put them into a wallpaper:

We also created a “personal logo”, that defined us a whole. We went into keynote, and used shapes to show our interests and values. Here’s my logo:

 

I chose the balance shape, cause I’m always balancing things in my life, from sports to music. I chose the Fire shape because I’m always heating up, by improving in different skills. And the boat, because I live waterfront, and that defines who I am.

 

The last few days were the most defining for me. From doing new activities, to going out of my comfort zone. We went from having lots of fun, to the polar opposite. 

On the Thursday of that week, we went straight to the lake that morning, After a short discussion, Johnno encouraged us to “wash our faces in snow”, as a way to feel energized. Which for me, worked really well. 

We then went up to the high ropes course, and we all shared our goal for that day.

Then, the real fun began…. My group started with the “trustfalling” activity, something that I had never done before. We gradually worked ourselves up from smaller falls, to bigger ones. I felt really confident during this entire activity, and I had trust in my peers to catch me. Once we got near the end, Johnno really stepped up the activity. He placed a chair on top of a table out on the deck. At first we were confused what it was for, and when he said we had to fall off that, we all said “no shot”! I went 2nd, and I did it pretty easily with no hesitation. 

The 2nd wild activity of the day was the High ropes course. Accomplishing this course was part of my goal for the day, so I was set on fulfilling that. I also did a milk carton stacking challenge, where we would have to stack as many cartons as possible, without them tipping over.

Later that night, the heavy stuff came…..

After dinner we did this activity called “crossing the line”. In this game, if the question asked resounded to you, you would cross the line. At first, the questions were pretty straightforward, and almost everyone crossed the line. Gradually, the questions got deeper and more personal. Things such as, “do you have a relative that’s died of cancer?”. And as things progressed, the emotions ran higher and higher. And for me, emotions were high as well, to see other struggle with different things really got me……

In conclusion, Loon Lake was a rollercoaster of a ride! We went from being excited, to being in straight tears. One thing I noticed from this experience was how my mentality developped over time. At first, I wasn’t all that excited about Loon Lake, and had a pretty negative attitude. But, at the end, I felt changed in a good way. Through Johnno’s teachings, and the activities, I was able to take control of my own life, and uplift others in the process. As I mentioned earlier, this trip felt like months, which is a good thing. 

Thanks for reading!

 

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