When you're 2 days walk from civilisation, it's pissing down with rain, and you're cold, wet, hungry, and tired, you get a different perspective on life and the "soft" challenges that you face in life back home.
By "soft" challenges I mean things that aren't really life threatening, if you fail to pay the bills, you aren't going to die. If you get soaking wet and get hypothermia in the bush, you could very well die (although it's very unlikely in a structured environment like scouts).
I used to ignore problems that I didn't like, and more or less wait for them to go away, this approach obviously didn't work too well. One thing that spending a lot of time in the outdoors did was teach me that when you're in the shit, the only thing that you can do is keep on going forward. When it's dark and cold, and you're tired and your feet hurt, sitting down and resting and waiting isn't going to help you, you need to keep on walking to the hut. And there's nobody else who's going to help you; you can't phone a friend and get them to do the walking for you.
The teamwork skills you learn are different to the ones you learn in a soft environment too. Everyone works together for a group benefit, because you're all stuck there together.
I've never served in the military, but from the people I know that have, they pretty much learn to take the same attitude. I think that these experiences are something that everyone should have exposure to earlier in life. I've had some experiences where I was absolutely miserable at the time, but in retrospect have been very powerful character building and learning experiences. I spent a week cold and wet in the rain, with a wet tent and a wet sleeping bag on Outward Bound and for 2 nights I was sleeping on an open sailboat and managed about 3 hours of sleep total, I hated it at the time, but it was one of the most character building experiences of my life in retrospect.