The Walking Mentorship, Day 0 What#8217;s In Your Backpack

The Walking Mentorship, Day 0 What8217s In Your Backpack Joo Perre Viana is the mastermind behind the Walking Mentorship program, an innovative one-week experience that helps people face their personal and professional challenges while taking a120-kilometer (74.5-mile) hike alongthe Camino de Santiago.The purpose of this methodology is to help gain perspective on what is important (both personally and professionally), update our reality maps, and create an action plan for the future, Viana says.Vianas next program starts this Sunday, and over the course of the next week, hell be updating us daily about the journey he and his participants are about to embark on.This postwas written as Viana prepares for the upcoming hike.- Ed. Note.Ive lost count of how many times in the last 30 years I have prepared my backpack and hiking gear, a repetitive action at first sight that often leads tounpredictable outcomes. This week was no different.A couple of days awa y from the beginning of another Walking Mentorship program, it is inevitable I have to find a way to fit all my needs and belongings into a 45-liter rucksack. Its a simple exercise, butdepending on how you go about it, you can learn some valuable lessons from it.There is a rule probably the only rule that you should never forget when youre preparing for a hike Whatever you put in your backpack, you will have tocarry it for the whole walk.This is one of my favorite analogies between walking and life or maybe between life and walking, if I ever find a difference.Experienced hikers and travelers know that youshould not take mora than 1/10 of your body weight, but truly speaking, youonly understand what youcan really take when youstart walking. Some days you will notice you can take more, and some days you have to take less.Just like in life.The most important skill youneed to master is the art of creating a perfectly unperfected balance which can only be achieved by learning how to select the most important things while getting rid of those superfluous items.If you take only water in your backpack, you sure wontbe thirsty, but you might get cold at night. If you take only clothes, you will never show up in the pictures with the same shirt, but you might become very hungry as the journey progresses.Looking at my backpack, I understand the size and the weight of my universe a needle and thread, a couple of t-shirts, one shirt, two pairs of shorts, a polar fleece, three pairs of socks, a sleeping bag, three pairs of underwear, a poncho, sandals, hat, sunscreen, a towel, earplugs, and a pen.I get a funny feeling when I look around the hundreds of (more or less important) things in my office and I compare them with my list of essentials for hiking. Experience tells me that for the next 120 km of happiness, I will barely need much more.I stop for a moment and think about where the unperfected balance in my life is, that thin red line that reassures me that Im not c arrying more than I can take.Both life and the route are magnanimous. If your load becomes too heavy, you probably need to drop something. But dont worry just a few kilometers up the road, you will probably understand the reason why.Joo Perre Viana foundedtheWalking Mentorshipprogram.