Emotions Are Important
September 30, 2022
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My Leadership Journey in Yellowstone
I believe the best leaders are life-long learners who continuously seek to be more expansive by further understanding themselves and the world around them. As a leadership coach, trainer, and organizational change consultant, I must practice what I encourage my clients to do. One way I accomplish this is by indulging in my curiosity about the world and its beauty and diversity. While I’ve lived in cultures very different than my own and journeyed to less-traveled places, there are many places in my home country that I have not explored. So, after several dormant years due to COVID, I decided that my next travel adventure would be in the United States.
As a graduate student many years ago, I was inspired by a group of European tourists during a camping trip. They traveled throughout the United States in a rented recreational vehicle (RV) to visit several of the magnificent national parks in the United States. This summer, I followed their footsteps and realized my 30-year aspiration to navigate through the wide-open roads of my home country in an RV and visit one of our most spectacular spots, Yellowstone National Park. This was my travel partner’s first trip west of the Mississippi, and therefore we devoted our trip to exploration, a deep love for nature, and challenging our limits.
During the days leading up to the trip, we didn’t know whether we would be able to make our journey even though we had prepaid for our RV and flights. Unexpectedly, Yellowstone was closed due to severe conditions and did not reopen until a few days before our flight. The northern parts of the park remained closed throughout our stay, and our final camping site did not reopen until a day before our arrival. We decided to surrender to the circumstances. We had an RV and gas money and were determined to make the most of our week.
My trip included a drive from Washington, DC, to New York City to meet my travel partner, a flight to Salt Lake City, a run in a rental car up to Idaho Falls to pick up our rented RV, and a 4-hour drive through the Rocky Mountains to arrive at our first campsite. Our week included travel in 4 western states and visits to Grand Teton National Park, Old Faithful, Grand Prismatic Springs, Yellowstone Lake, Hayden Valley, Grand Canyon of Yellowstone, Norris Geyser Basin, and many stops in between. We stayed at four campsites during our trip, took a breathtaking hike each day, and immersed ourselves in the presence of nature and the extraordinary features that make Yellowstone one of the most unique places in the world.
Encouraged by my travel partner, I made an impromptu video while hiking on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone during the final day of our stay. This supporting article delves deeper into my four leadership learnings from the trip.
Practice Facing Fear Through Adventure
I’ve always battled the dissonance between my curiosity for the world and the safety of my contained small town roots. My inquisitiveness began to prevail during my 30s as I commenced my pursuit of an international career. Although I was eager to travel and live in places very different from home, my anxieties always followed me wherever I went. I would worry about everything …. safety, health, food, logistics, crime, and disagreeable clients. Over time, I learned to accept my travel fears as part of my identity. Fortunately, I never let my travel distress control me. I’m grateful for all my overseas experiences.
As I planned for Yellowstone, I became apprehensive about the trip. It was a domestic trip with all the certainties we would expect from a national park. It was supposed to be fun, but I was fraught with concerns. First, I had never rented an RV vehicle before. I needed to figure out how to reliably meet my travel partner and get to Idaho Falls during a chaotic travel season. I needed to drive up and down the Rocky Mountains in an RV; I had never operated one before. Second, I needed to find places to park the RV each night during a booked-up travel season. Third, I worried about mechanical failure and how to hook up the RV to electricity, water, and sewage. Finally, I was concerned about my relationship with the RV owner and whether anyone would help me if I had problems.
By understanding the falsehoods my brain was using to keep me home, my worries began to dissipate. First, I received excellent coaching from my travel partner as we committed to a mindset of wonder, excitement, and exploration, which overpowered my doubts and insecurities. Second, I have a strong foundation of coexisting with my travel fears and knew that I would work through them because I have done this many times before. Third, I surrendered myself to the adventure and relinquished control — I handed off my concerns to greater powers and resisted my instincts to focus on details. Putting these principles into practice, I was carefree and enjoyed each moment of the trip.
I want to be a bolder, more creative, and more expansive leader. I understand this requires me to stretch myself and go into areas that are uncomfortable for me. However, as I practice discomfort, I create stronger neurological connections that allow me to seek adventures more easily in the future. Although difficult, I want to continue extending and challenging myself with adventurous experiences to keep growing as a person and leader.
Experience Wholeness Through Nature
One of my greatest aspirations at this stage of my life is to be whole. I want more energetic integrity and to live a more authentic and harmonious life. As a life-long grinder who relied on grit to accomplish most things in life, this is not an easy task. But, while nature teaches us much about wholeness, Yellowstone is our guru master.
The Norris Geyser Basin is the hottest thermal area in Yellowstone. Yellowstone’s destroyed timberlands, deep canyon valleys, and 1,850 archaeological sites remind us of its dynamic past. Its spectacular vistas and pristine surroundings bring us to the present. The park’s 500 erupting geysers emphasize the park’s unpredictable future. Its millions of soaring trees connect the sun to the park’s abundant life. The Continental Divide cuts through the park linking its snow-capped mountains to the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Yellowstone is one of the world’s largest active volcanos and is deeply adjoined to the earth’s inner core. The area is home to 67 species of animals and 1,300 plants. Because of its geothermal activity, it has microorganisms, fungi, and insects rarely found in other parts of the world. Click on this link, https://www.yellowstone.org/10-yellowstone-facts/, to learn more about Yellowstone’s unique features.
Yellowstone is a vast 22-million-acre self-sustaining ecosystem. It contains an abundant assortment of diverse parts and energetic forces. Each element of the park is interdependent, as each influence and is impacted by the other. It does not think, analyze, or control, nor is it confined by time, borders, or laid-out rules. Instead, it has a flow, rhythm, and natural order far greater than our collective minds can conceive. Yellowstone’s ability to adapt, regenerate, and evolve is the superpower behind its 2-million-year existence and the spectacular beauty we enjoy today.
I aspire to be like Yellowstone because I want to be more whole. I want to be more connected and eliminate the things that detach me. I wish to be more balanced and follow the positive energy cultivated within me. I no longer want to be a victim of my circumstances, nor feel the need to control my outcomes. Like Yellowstone, I choose to be in unity with my diverse and complex environment and gracefully change, evolve, and grow.
Create Beauty From Change and Trauma
I want to gracefully adapt to change with an open and unattached mindset. I wish to turn my trauma into beauty. Yellowstone teaches us both.
The one constant of Yellowstone is change. Every mile that I hiked led me to a different type of terrain. Each tree that I studied was either growing or atrophying. The many streams that I crossed were a never-ending movement of energy. The many geysers I enjoyed were an evolving spew of the earth’s inner resources.
The greatness of Yellowstone comes from its trauma. Can you imagine the trauma it experienced when its three super volcanic eruptions first struck 2.1 million years ago? Or, when glaciers invaded the park bringing its frozen arctic temperatures and moving massive amounts of its land? Interestingly, trauma continues to be a common occurrence in the park, with up to 3,000 earthquakes and 78 forest fires each year.
As I took scenic rest stops throughout the trip, I often felt the ever-present power of Yellowstone. Yet, as I processed these experiences, I understood that its magnificence is not a product of what it does. In fact, it doesn’t do anything …. nor does it attempt to overpower or control. Instead, I learned that its distinctiveness is not only its enormous capacity to endure …. but its harmonious unity with change and trauma …. whether in the past, present, or future.
My drive through Hayden Valley to the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone was my most profound experience during the trip. Only a few miles apart, the first was crafted by glaciers and the latter by volcanic eruptions. While very different, both were two of the most spectacular and meaningful places I visited in my lifetime. They taught me that divine beauty can be created from our most chaotic moments and traumatic circumstances. As we experience and learn about Yellowstone’s virtues, we are better equipped to create, not just survive, from the challenges of today’s increasingly complex and rapidly changing world.
Wash Away Clutter by Immersing in Nature
As managers, we are inundated by things that fill us up …… problems, worries, planning, and unresolved emotions. Yet, as leaders, we often neglect the space that we need within us to feel our feelings, rest our minds, and nurture our energetic forces.
Do you know that over 99% of our bodies is empty space? Therefore, we are mostly comprised of energy that turns our physical particles into living, breathing, and regenerative people. While we give most of our attention to the 1%, we inadequately tend to the 99%, which truly makes us unique and powerful human beings.
While nothing feels better than a hot shower after a hard day of work, there is nothing healthier for our leadership than bathing in the wide-open spaces of forests. The Japanese have a word for this, shinrin-yoku, which literally means forest bathing. In nature, we can disperse out our thoughts, worries, and fears that clutter our bodies and diffuse into our bodies the fresh, pure, and positive energies that bountiful spaces in the forest provide. Arduous exercise is not necessary to shinrin-yoku, all we need to do is be present and exist in the moment while immersing our senses in the sights, smells, sounds, and feels of the forest. To learn more about shinrin-yoku, watch this video created by the World Economic Forum: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stuZaKB9j7I .
As someone easily distracted by worry and thought, I frequently need to unjumble myself to create the space and healthy energy to bring out my most authentic, most connected, and optimally creative self. A week solely devoted to observing a bison grazing in a distant field, listening to the sounds of a boiling spring, breathing in the freshness of early-morning mountain air, or feeling the presence of a nearby bear offers a plethora of opportunities to clean out, restore, and re-energize. For me, this is more than self-care. It’s training camp to be the best leader that I can be.
Final Reflections
Originating from nature, we humans have a visceral connection with the natural world. While so many modern things pull us away from it, I believe we need nature to be fully whole. It offers us far more than the leisure and recreational benefits we typically use it for in contemporary life. It’s our greatest source for learning, connecting, and restoring, providing us with solutions to many of our most significant challenges. I am grateful for the wisdom, beauty, and sense of belonging that Yellowstone shared with me. I am forever changed by the experience.
I encourage leaders and those who aspire to be leaders to be in touch with nature as often as possible. It is a place for freedom, wonder, imagination, and an antidote to our fragmented lives. Nature can be your sacred place to drop your armor and expose your vulnerability and child-like essence. It can bring out the most powerful and creative you and be the ideal place to learn, grow, change, and lead. So, bon voyage to your next travel adventure in nature.
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