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Wilderness & Wellbeing BLOG

My name is Tom Smallwood and here you will find my posts and those of guests, on the positive effects of time spent outdoors.

Dealing with Fear

How I deal with Fear (not Alex Honnold levels).

March 19, 2018

Reluctant and scared has often been my default position. I am sure I have this in common with most of humanity as I stick to my "comfort zones”. It has prevented me doing things I want to do, developing business ideas and telling people what I really think.

It shaped my educational and early career path (I say “path" but it was more like a circular track caused by an adventurous sheep that has never left a field) and it definitely prevented me from having a much richer and more interesting social life when I was young (yes I also mean with girls). 

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Tags Mental Health, Positivity
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5 Amazing Things That Happened This Week

3 Amazing Things That Happened This Week Courtesy of Radio 4

October 13, 2017

Was this week less great than last week. Nope. Did I have less time than previous weeks for discovering things that amaze me. Yes. So here is a reduced list, all of which I discovered through BBC Radio 4. 

1) Robert Macfarlane on Radio 4

There is never time when I don't want to listen to Robert Macfarlane. This week he shared some of his favourite words with Michael Rosen an dDr Laura Wright, on Radio 4. 

Over the past 10 years, Macfarlane has been gathering a 'word-hoard' of thousands of terms for nature, landscape and weather, in the hope of preserving, enriching and diversifying our language for the living world.

If you don't, you should definitely follow Robert on Twitter where he shares a "word of the day" on.. erm... a daily basis (obvs.). 

2) How Much Water Does it Take to Make a Pair of Jeans?

About 10,000 gallons? After a quick Google, it appears there is nothing new in this staggering data, but it is new to me. My wife mentioned she had heard something on Radio 4 this week in which this subject was discussed. She was amazed. I was amazed. 

Might just have to repair my old jeans. Here is more on the subject and a more recent BBC article on water consumption.

3) Jeremy the 'Lefty' snail has died.

This story comes courtesy of the Today programme. The death of a snail is not amazing. I am pretty sure I kill 50 a year just by walking around in my back yard at night. But Jeremy was no ordinary snail. Jeremy, described as "one in a million", had a left-coiling shell and had been a major news story when he was looking for a mate.

Having finally produced 170 offspring (all with right-coiling shells) Jeremy popped his clogs this week. To be fair, one child is hard enough at times. 

Here is the story from the University of Nottingham.

Tags Positivity
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Amazing things that happened this week

5 Amazing Things That happened This week

October 6, 2017

Routines maketh man. It's Two weeks in a row that I publish this post. does it make it a "thing"? Perhaps. 

I do realise the potential for hyperbole - something which is becoming increasingly irritating to the modern online reader. I would warn people against entitling their articles in this way however I will stick with it because there will be "amazing things" in these posts. Can there be degrees of amazing? I think so. 

1. Natural Health Service!

Fortunately I am well aware of the benefits of fresh air and exercise to help my mental health but it is nice to see it written in mainstream media and with increasing pressure for it be prescribed.

Here are two articles I have read this week extolling the medicinal values of nature and getting outside... and one I published a while ago.

  • Natural health service: wildlife volunteers get mental health boost.
  • What's the ultimate way to defy depression, disease and early death? Exercise
  • Reasons Why the Outdoors is Good for your Health

As a volunteer for The Wildlife Trusts I can heartily recommend it and I sincerely hope others will follow suit.

2. "Maybe it was because I was five feet tall, or I was a little blonde girl..."

“... but I remember that clearly — and it didn’t feel good”. This was the reaction when Caroline Gleich said she wanted to complete the “Chuting Gallery”, 90 extremely difficult and dangerous ski mountaineering lines across Utah’s Wasatch Mountains, from the cult backcountry guidebook; The Chuting Gallery.

"Follow Through" is the story of her amazing achievement, who inspired her, the losses along the way and listening to the right people.

3. Rucksack Magazine

I appreciate that this magazine has been around for a short while but it was this week that I "discovered" it. Here is a high quality "online journal and printed bi-annual magazine" which portrays the wild, and adventures, in a most stylish fashion. There are some amazing photos with a sort of haunting quality, even when looking at small details, that is reminiscent of the paintings of Daniel Crawshaw. I assume this I a policy of theirs... and I love it.

Check out rucksack Magazine here. 

4. Feel Part of a Community with Twitter Chats

Occasionally I take part in a Twitter Chat; a conversation, usually based around a hashtag that takes place on Twitter at an hour appointed by the organiser. Anyone can organise it, anyone can take part. It is quite a nice way to chat with those who share a similar interest, for example I might do one for outdoor or travel bloggers, when I can. It is a nice way to learn a little and often just to talk shop - that favourite of British pastimes. 

Anyway, this week I came across this great little article by @VicAdvisor listing Twitter Chats for travel bloggers and it looks like it could be a very useful resource to enable people to "join the conversation" and feel they are part of a community.

5. Forays in Foraging

Having collected sloes a few days before and then frozen them on Sunday night we started the process of making sloe gin.  

"That isn't amazing", I hear you say. Bah... you're probably right, but this is pretty good: Some more boozy foraging ideas from Ordnance Survey, courtesy of @CraftInvaders. 

Tags Positivity, Mental Health
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5 Amazing Things That Happened This Week

September 29, 2017

I HAD AN IDEA TO WRITE THIS KIND OF POST ON A WEEKLY BASIS, NOT AS SOME SORT OF HAPPY ECHO-CHAMBER - THERE SHOULD BE NO HIDING FROM THE PROBLEMS OF THE WORLD. I WAS THINKING MORE AS A FORCE FOR POSITIVITY; A WAY OF HIGHLIGHTING SOME INSPIRING OR INTERESTING THINGS I HAVE NOTICED IN THE LAST 7 DAYS. 

So here goes. From reducing single use plastic to the beauty of bird beaks, here are 5 amazing things that happened this week.  

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Tags Positivity, Plastic
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Positivity is a Currency.

December 20, 2016

A few days ago I had a dark day. Dark like those I had before I quit the rat race to try to live a different lifestyle. 

I felt anxious and distinctly under the weather. One interesting project I am involved in suddenly looked a lot more daunting. It appeared as if it would not get off the ground for a lot longer than I thought. I was frustrated with a couple of other non-work related matters. Perhaps the sky was grey… 

Then it struck me that these were largely incidental. What had really happened is that I had a conversation with Cathy O'Dowd (first woman to summit Everest from both sides and exceptional motivational speaker)...

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Tags Running, Living Better, Positivity, Cathy O'Dowd
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The Wisdom of Pod.

January 5, 2016

Interview Podcasts. You have to choose.

There just isn’t enough time in the day to listen to all of them and of course you will find celebrities with something to promote, even if only in a subtle way, will do the rounds of a umber of podcasts. 

So you find one and you stick with it. You like the format, you like the presenters, it feels fresh and they seem to get the best out of a guest in a relaxed atmosphere. It is so much better than a few minutes on a chat show, shoe-horning references to whatever it is they are trying to sell, whilst finding a tortuous way of retelling that story. Podcasts are one of the great innovations that the internet has brought us.

We get to hear genuine, often amusing and touching chats with the people we normally only read about in the media and almost exclusively in the context of their work. Celebrities often become human in podcast format.

Absolute bliss. 

But then… the host of the podcast becomes restless, begins to muscle in on celeb time, famous even… and ultimately irritating.

For a long time I enjoyed WTF but eventually I went off it because of the self-indulgent monologues with which Marc Maron began every show. He is good at what he does but I don’t want him to be the star of the show. I do not want to listen to his neuroses every single week.

I switched my focus to The Nerdist. Now, I remember an early episode with Jon Hamm, that opened up a new world to me. Hamm was not what I imagined. It turns out he is not Don Draper - he was gentle and amusing and sounded like a a great bloke - it all sounded like the kind of honesty that comes from the foolishness of relaxed company was a revelation.

I think that was Nerdist #5. Around Nerdist #150 I lost it. Every episode had become saturated with self-indulgent references from Chris Hardwick about how life is difficult for sensitive artistic types like himself… and his interviewees. Once or twice maybe, but to my ears it seemed every single episode (with the exception of Jeff Bridges who somehow brings out the best in Hardwick) was brought down by sycophantic pandering and nauseous references to the difficulty of coping with being creative. Vomit.

You see we, the humble audience, get to listen to the host every week. When we download a new episode of a podcast we are waiting to hear the guest, not the necessarily the presenter. Surely it was always thus, on radio, TV and now online; the interviewer should be the facilitator.

The Adam and Tim Shows

So, where does that leave me now? Well, Adam Buxton (he of Adam & Joe ‘fame’) has his own version of the interview show format. Perhaps lacking in professional confidence, perhaps content with ploughing his own unique furrow, I suspect Adam will never succumb to stardom in a way that will take over his show. I will follow this with interest as he is also, I believe, capable of getting people to relax through his own brand of quirkiness. Whether he will ever get the A list guests remains to be seen… indeed maybe its best if he doesn’t.

But the current star for me is the Tim Ferriss Show - thanks to my wife for hooking me up with this one. In common with millions of others, I know Tim Ferriss from his amazing book; The 4-Hour Work Week. I did not know he had a podcast. So in the last few days I have listened to the Alain de Botton, Rainn Wilson and Jamie Foxx episodes. The first was fantastic, the last was nothing short of sensational. When did you imagine you would listen to two and a half hours of interesting, amusing, poignant and altogether rounded and balanced discussion with one of Hollywood and Music’s biggest stars? 

Undoubtedly Tim is a super smart guy (his book made a difference to my life and many others before and since) but the biggest thing I notice is that his contribution to the interview is minimal… which of course means it is not. He listens and guides, uses a few intelligent stock questions to discover more and then lets the guest do the talking. Maybe it helps that I had never heard Jamie Foxx talk about his life, but I sincerely hope that Tim Ferriss does not go the way of other pod hosts and retains the kind equilibrium that his writings have given to millions.

Tags Positivity
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