Camp is more than just a place to play: Camp Builds Skills for Life!
Skills For Life is Leadership Academy’s new blog series highlighting why Camp is the perfect place to build character and inner strength that will last a lifetime. Whether you’re sending your child to Camp, are part of a Camp Staff, or are taking some time for yourself at Grown Ups Camp, outdoor play is good for everyone, no matter what age.
This week, we’ll look at grit and persistence: what they are, why they’re important, and how Camp develops these skills.
What are Grit & Persistence?
Someone with grit has a firmness of mind or spirit; an unyielding courage in the face of hardship or danger. People with grit have the mental toughness to face down challenges. Persistent people keep doing or trying something even when it’s difficult or opposed by others.
Whether it’s a community leader that never gave up the fight for justice, a soldier defending her country, or a musician who played 1000 shows before landing a recording deal, the people we most admire have are gritty and persistent.
Why Are These Skills For Life?
Young people need grit and persistence now more than ever. Most children and teens face tremendous academic and social pressure at school, and there are often more challenges awaiting them at home or work.
Learning to anticipate challenges, and understanding that we can face and surmount them, builds our grit and persistence. The earlier these skills can be learned and nurtured, the stronger they will become over time.
A child who develops emotional toughness and refuses to give up is well-equipped for what the future brings. The payoff of grit and persistence is strengthening, growth, and preparedness for future challenges. The college application process, athletic competition, or searching for a job in a difficult market is less daunting in adulthood if we were trained from a young age to keep going when the going gets tough.
How Does Camp Teach Grit & Persistence?
Camp is where adults model grit and determination by leading outdoor activities. It’s spending a whole day in the outdoors, taking on its obstacles, and realizing its beauty. Whether it’s finishing a 4-mile hike, digging holes to plant a garden, or hitting the trail on a mountain bike, Camp is where you come face-to-face with new challenges, and where you realize you can surmount them. It’s taking on new social situations: meeting new people, working as a team, finding strength in yourself and others. Supporting one another through challenges helps everyone at camp to cultivate grit and persistence.
Camp is a safe, beautiful, fun environment to learn the emotional toughness it takes not to give up. Grit and persistence transform us: our dreams become more possible, our goals more reachable, our character more steady. Camp is proof that once those skills are with us, they never leave us, they only grow.
At Leadership Academy, our immersive nature day camps are designed to cultivate grit and persistence as campers come face to face with the invigorating challenges of the outdoors. To learn more, visit us online, email us at [email protected], or call us at 615-856-4772.
© Laura Johnson and LeadershipAcademyLLC.com, 2016. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Laura Johnson and LeadershipAcademyLLC.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
