Learning through Experience

Ideas inspire me, emotions move me, but it’s experiences that change me.

This weekend, Geneva hosted the largest drone display ever staged in Europe—1350 drones that lit up the sky each night. The artists used their drones to tell stories and illustrate history. By the end, I was in awe of a technology I’d only experienced as intrusive and annoying. The drone show was part of The Feu Ô Lac, a festival somehow related to the Christian feast day of Ascension. It reportedly drew a crowd of 800,000 in a city of only 200,000.

Three days of food trucks, live concerts, and a variety of events included skates available for free to cruise across the bridge at the end of the lake, stand-up paddleboarding in costume, speed traps to measure the power of your tennis serve, and an old-time soap box derby with cars any kid or adult could pilot through the hay bales. Closing the main bridge in town to skate on it and setting up radar guns to measure the speed of your tennis serve left me in wonder at the whimsy, imagination, and competitive spirit of the Genevois. Watching the soap box derby put me back in touch with my own whimsy and innocence of being a kid running out of the house as soon as I came home from school to join the neighborhood kids to make our own fun.

To cap off the weekend, I took my first sort-of-real bike ride through the wheat fields and encountered this Deux Chevaux with an amazing paint job. The restoration and paint job was awesome enough, but I was blown away when I read that 3.8 million were sold from 1948-1990. As its name implies, it was designed to be a work horse. It could cross a freshly plowed field, carry odd and large objects as the entire roof opened up, and sipped gas. It was truly an awesome car, but I'm sure this paint job was not available from the factory.

My weekend experiences expanded my understanding of Geneva and myself and reconnected me with the joy, wonder and awe of being alive exactly as I am and where I'm at. The weekend also helped me realize that although I do a lot of things as a coach and a ski instructor, my expertise is creating experiences to help clients identify and reach their goals. To dip your toes into experiencing how I do that, join me for an in-person or online awe walk in Geneva, Switzerland or Seattle, WA. If you want to jump into the deep end, please schedule time to talk. To Awe and Beyond! Steve Hindmansteve@stevehindmancoach.com +41 (0)79 796 08 97 WhatsApp +1 (360) 303-0473 Expand Your Experience