4 Leadership Lessons From A Mistake I Made In The Colombian Jungle

I just got back from 8 days in the Colombian rainforest.

I was filming there as a National Geographic Explorer.

Part of that trip included a two day expedition down the Samaná River with class IV and class V rapids.

It. was. wild.

The first night, we slept in hammocks in the jungle next to the river.

Before going to bed, one of the guys I was with suggested setting up a time lapse to capture the stars.

I asked him how likely it was that it would rain during the night… he said not very likely.

I still wasn’t that comfortable, but went along with it and set up my camera near the river to do a time lapse until the following morning.

I walked back and slid into my hammock around 10:30pm… it didn’t take long for me to doze off.

All of a sudden, I was woken up by the sound of rain at 12:50am.

You’ve got to be kidding me!

I jumped out of my hammock and ran down to the river.

As I did, I noticed how slippery the large boulders had become that I had to climb across.

I finally got to my camera, grabbed it along with the tripod in one hand and holding my phone in the other, went to jump to the next rock, slipped and fell.

My camera hit the boulder in front of me, my phone fell in the water and without my hands to brace myself, my body was extremely sore from the fall.

As I got up, I could still see my phone down below in the water. I reached down, grabbed it and turned it off immediately in the off chance it would still work later on.?

I was seething.

I didn’t want to do the stupid time lapse!

I got back up to camp and the guy who suggested doing it in the first place was there packing up my other camera from the time lapse he had also set up.

I wanted to say something but knew if I did, nothing good would come of it.

I managed to keep my thoughts to myself, packed away the rest of the gear and went back to bed.

As I was there laying in my hammock gently rocking back and forth, still extremely frustrated, I asked myself, what can you learn from this? There’s got to be a lesson here.

There was. 4 in fact.

1. Perspective:?

It could have been much worse. With the way I fell, my head could have easily smashed against one of the rocks, I could have broken my arm or my camera could have been completely destroyed. I still copped some nasty bruises and a bill to fix my now damaged camera lens, but it could have been much much worse.

2. Ownership:?

Where can I take responsibility for this? How did I contribute to this happening? Sure, someone else suggested doing the time lapse, but I was responsible for actually following through with it. I set the camera up. I took the risk. My responsibility, no one else's.

3. Gratitude:?

How can I be thankful for what happened? You know what, while this time lapse didn’t turn out, I was grateful for the opportunity to learn some important steps in making it successful next time. I was also grateful this didn’t turn into a medical emergency and that I was still able to film the rest of the trip with another camera lens.

4. Opportunity:?

How can I grow through this? What lessons have I learned? How will this help me in future situations? What I’ve come to understand is that challenging situations allow us to grow (and usually much faster than when things are comfortable all the time) and that absolutely happened here too…

I also now have a structured 4 step process to deal with my next challenge and I’ve been able to take this experience, bruises and all, and share it with you here in a way that can help you overcome yours too.

Use this acronym POGO… and just like a pogo stick, you’ll be amazed at how quickly you bounce back from your next challenge.

Trust this helps,

Cameron.

PS. Amazingly my phone still works :)

PPS. If you want help working through your next challenge, I’ve been privately coaching c-level executives & founders for 13 years now and would love to see how I can help. Simply reply to this email and share a little about your situation.