I’ve been really busy the last 2 weeks, hence why I’m writing two weeks together and a bit late!

I’ve had a busy few weeks networking with people. I met a fellow coach who recently started her own business for coffee and we exchanged marketing notes. I then met with Lee Peyton from Breaking Strain Events, and discussed the possibility of me joining their leader team for treks in the Arctic next year, which was very exciting! Stay tuned for more details. I also met with my coach Steve Quinn, who has been supporting me since I started my own business, and he introduced to me to the new director of a company called Coachmatch (who I have already done some work with) – we discussed some exciting possibilities of where my retreats and walking-coaching concept could be used in Scotland.
​
The weekend before last saw a trip to Kinloch Rannoch to reccy some walks for my upcoming Wellbeing Retreat. Matt came along for the weekend, and we met up with Lindsey, who I am co-hosting the retreat with. We were blessed with fresh snow, blue skies and sunshine and enjoyed a lovely weekend – one of those experiences that is really soul-enriching. If you’d like to experience some of the same, you can find out more about the wellbeing retreat at www.reachthepeak.co.uk/wellbeing-retreat. We stayed at the Red Brolly Inn, and sampled their restaurant, so that counted as a new establishment for the challenge. 

I wrote a couple of letters this week too – firstly a much-belated thankyou letter to my Grandma, who sent me some money to ‘treat myself’ with after my operation. I also spent an evening writing limericks in a bid to cheer up my aunty who has been having a difficult time recently.

Through advertising my retreat, I’ve also been offering free phone-coaching sessions to people that express an interest, so that they can find out more about what coaching is. I therefore did 2 free coaching sessions this week – one with a lady who wanted to start cycling more and getting outdoors more often, and one with a lady who was at a decision point about her life and career and wanted to explore her options.

My weight is still very slowly creeping down overall, although it has been following a pattern of loss during the week, then putting on over the weekend as I climb mountains, go walking and overcompensate with chocolate and pub meals!
​
I took a couple of opportunities in the last couple of weeks. One was to undertake a module of Master Practitioner for NLP – I am now a qualified Master Practitioner in Memory Re-solution. It was a really interesting 2-day topic, quite intense. Through doing that, I also met one of my ‘interesting people’ – Shirley Sharp, who has sped through her NLP Practitioner journey and onto doing Master Practitioner, and was a lovely supportive energy to learn with. She worked for Standard Life and was keen to introduce me to some of her colleagues who may also be interested in retreats and outdoors personal development.
 
Saw a new film during the week – The Big Short – all about the housing market crash in 2008 and the few lucky people who predicted it and profited a huge amount from it. It was a pretty interesting film, with an all-star cast. 

This latest weekend saw me head up to Fort William – taking up an opportunity presented to me. My friend Lucy Wallace, a qualified Winter Mountain Leader, who normally lives on Arran had hired a cottage near Fort William and invited me up to stay for a weekend to practice some winter skills. I met her husband, Wally, who counts as another one of my ‘interesting people.’ While Lucy was working on the Saturday, myself and Wally went out into the valley beneath the cliffs of Ben Nevis to practice winter skills, such as building buried axe belays, cutting steps, etc. Wally also told me of how he had been in an avalanche the day before, on a route known to be a ‘safe route’ in avalanche conditions. That, coupled with meeting the mountain rescue team still searching for a young couple who have now been missing on Ben Nevis for over a week, really sunk home how important some winter knowledge is to enable you to make safe decisions in the mountains, and how sometimes, even with this knowledge, nature will overpower you. We even saw an avalanche happen down one of the gullies in Ben Nevis, naturally triggered just by the weight of fresh snow.
​
Saturday night saw a trip to the Fort William Film Festival, for a fantastic night watching presentations of awards for Mountain Culture, and then a brilliant slideshow and film by the Wild Bunch, called the Adventures of Dodo. Basically, a 79-year Reverend and yacht captain, Bob Shepton, invited 4 young and slightly crazy Belgian climbers on a yachting/climbing trip to Greenland and Baffin Island. The 4 climbers are also musicians, and the resulting film is funny, beautiful, a bit crazy and thoroughly enjoyable. If you like comedy, folk music, sailing and climbing, or any combination of the above – I really recommend this film. It got several minutes of standing ovation. 

Finally, on Sunday, I undertook a new type of exercise – building a Shovel Up. This is an emergency shelter in winter, which essentially involving shovelling snow on top of your rucksacks until you have a massive pile, then pulling your rucksacks out of the middle and hollowing it out until you have a hole big enough to crawl into. It was physical demanding and tiring work, but the results were pretty cool!
​
Some learnings from the last 2 weeks are:

1. Ask for help, and talk about what you want and need, and opportunities start to come your way. This follows the NLP principle of ‘where the attention goes, the energy flows’ – in that you start to attract and/or notice opportunities related to what you are thinking about, talking about and focusing on. Simple, but true.
2. In the event of getting stuck out in winter in an emergency, walking out/down is almost certainly going to be quicker and less tiring that building an emergency shelter (particularly if you don’t have a shovel, which I normally don’t) – still a good skill to know, even if its just for fun on a shit weather day.
3. Sunshine really makes a difference to my mood. Its like the sky is smiling at me, and it makes me smile back. Perhaps I need a winter sun holiday each year?

A busy week of mountains this week, starting with a weekend away on my mountaineering club’s annual club party meet at Roybridge. It also saw me accidentally complete Dry January (after 2 months of speedy progress through my ‘drink 30 different alcoholic drinks’ challenge item in November and December) – I got back to my more normal self of not really drinking much. After friends posted ‘Dry January Champion’ on their facebook walls on the 1st Feb, I reflected that I hadn’t had any alcohol since the 2nd January on the last night of my scouts mountaineering course. So, if I made it to the 3rd February, I’d technically have made it too, albeit without trying.

Friday night was a lovely opportunity to meet some new club members in the local pub, with Saturday was a bit of wash-out weather wise – we had a short wander up towards ‘the Window’ on Creag Meagaidh where we met the avalanche assessment guy on his way out, whose advice was basically ‘Don’t Bother.’ Sunday was a much better day, where I climbed my second new munro of the challenge, Sgurr Eilde Mor, near Kinlochleven. The weekend ended as all good mountaineering weekends should, with a burger in the Clachaig Inn in Glencoe, a new restaurant for my challenge.

The weekend provided the opportunity to meet lots of new ‘interesting people’ for my challenge. We travelled up with Rob, an experienced mountaineer who has a 2-year old, recently moved back to the UK from Canada. He came along to join the club on Thursday, and less than 24-hours later, was on his way to the mountains. We shared a chalet with a new couple to the club – Ben and May (which I’m counting as one new person….) – they knew my name from my Reading Uni days, where I briefly dated the president of the caving club they were members of. They were new to winter mountaineering, so it was great to get outside with them and teach them some skills (albeit somewhat hampered by the weather.) On the same day, I also met Jonathan, who is planning a travelling trip to the America, so we spent a good hour or so talking about travelling.
​
Wednesday saw a cheeky mid-week mountaineering trip with a fellow Jacobites member working towards his winter Mountain Leader Award. We climbed Carn Mairg and Meall nan Aighean near Aberfeldy, in sunshine and snow, and found time to practice some snow belays. I’m now at 4 new munros for the challenge. 

I tried one new recipe this week – Salmon and Broccoli Gratin. It was pretty tasty and only 400kcal, another recipe from my Cambridge Weight Plan recipe books.
​
Also this week, I took a new opportunity – the lady that did my NLP Training offered me the opportunity for a ‘breakthrough’ coaching session with one of her Master Practitioners-in-Training. With a lot going on for me personally, I had some trepidation at coaching – although I know it definitely works, I was unsure whether I was ready to deal with anything that came up. However, I enjoyed a lovely day with Gina Brown, who coached me through a reassessment of my values around my business and some memory resolutions. I now have lots to think about and act upon.
My learnings this week:

1. I need to practice my snow belays if I’m to do my Winter ML qualification this year. I just can’t dig very well with an ice-axe. I get there in the end, but not quickly enough.
2. Mid-week mountain trips are awesome! Not only do you get to spend a day in the mountains, but it feels like a weekend. Then you get back, spend 2 days at work, and it’s the weekend again!
3. I’ve been putting a lot of pressure on myself to succeed at my business. If I instead focus on what I want my business to be about, helping people, getting outdoors, finding my own (and providing others with) a sense of calm and peace, then success will follow on.