We’re delighted that our Director of Education, Julian Turner, took on the Renewd Alpine Challenge for BrainWaves. Alongside fellow Renewd members, Julian spent two days hiking in Chamonix, tackling routes reaching over 2,000m. In this blog, Julian reflects on the challenge and what it taught him.
Don’t get me wrong, I was pretty grateful for the ladders. Solidly attached to the rockface, they enabled us to gain altitude more quickly in our goal of hiking up two mountains to raise much-needed funds for the BrainWaves research and education project.
But the truth is I’m not that good with heights. By the time I got half-way up the last of a series of vertical ladders, I realised just how far there was to fall when I glanced down to make sure my boot was securely on a rung. I could feel my heart-rate rising and a cloud of irrational fears interfering with my concentration. It was very appropriate therefore that I needed to call on the BrainWaves anxiety strategy of breathing more deeply and just focusing on the next step.
We did of course make it to our goal, expertly led and encouraged by our wonderful Alpine guides. For me it felt about as big a physical challenge as I could manage, but there is great reward in that. The inspirational psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi described how the highest level of satisfaction, and even personal growth, occurs when the difficulty level of an activity is just about within your capability to perform it. If that is the case, I think the aches currently popping up in unexpected places might just be my own personal growth pains!
So far, we are nearly half way to our target of raising £20,000 – enough to complete and test three new lessons to add to our BrainWaves curriculum; or to support around 16 of our fantastic BrainWaves Research partner schools whose young people’s complex lives we capture in our data; or to make our data available to researchers all over the world for another six months. We are incredibly grateful to those who have supported us so far. Please help us to get to our goal by adding your donation below.
