rocky mountain leadership conference

This week I have been up in Estes Park staying at the Stanley Hotel (featured in both dumb and dumber AND the shining). Its the Rocky Mountain Leadership Conference which Ive helped out with registration and various other things for.

Today we had Reggie McNeil speak. The guy was hilarious! i do believe he has a gift for using sarcasm to make his points hit home. He talked about Greatness in Leadership and the disciplines which lead to it.

'if you have to choose between being a good leader and a bad leader choose to be a good one cuz then you'll make a positive difference. but there is always a third option - to be a great leader. great leaders change the world.'

one of the points that hit home for me was 'grow in your strengths'. ive heard it a lot before that even though common sense says to work on your weaknesses you'll be able to make the biggest difference if you work on your strengths. well Reggie used an illistration that just seemed to make that idea totally fresh again. heres his illistration in my own paraphrase:

there was a baseball great in the 1940's Ted someone. he had a 400 batting average which as i understand it is a feat that is still unprecedented. one day his coach tells him to give some hitting pointers to a new rookie. so ted walks over and stands there watching as the rookie swings at 95mph fastballs.

finally ted offers this advice "watch the stiches". the rookie looks confused and asks him what stiches. ted replies 'on the baseball. if you watch how they spin you'll be able to tell where the ball is going to go after you hit it.'

the rookie was dumbfounded because as the baseball adage goes 'in the first 10 feet from the pitching mount the ball looks like a blur and for the other 50 feet its invisible'.

Ted had 20/10 vision and was able to watch the stitches spinning on a ball going 95 miles per hour. (he also once said that on a good day he could see the commisioner meaning the baseball commissioners signature on the ball.)

after telling us this story Reggie asked "Where can you see the stitches?" thats such a profound question. where in your life are you gifted with a talent that no one else has as easily or naturally as you do? if you know what that talent is (most people dont know theirs) then you need to go out and spend your time using and developing that gift. why spend all your time struggling to develop a skill that your not gifted in when God has given you ones that you ARE gifted in?

its like from chariots of fire where the guy says "when i run i feel Gods pleasure". what gift do you have that when you use it you feel God smile?

im not 100% sure where my giftings and talents lie. but after today i eagerly want to discover them. i used to think i knew what they were but then i never did anything to develop them so now i have to go an rediscover them.

if any of you have any insite into my life and where my talents might be let me know. :)

ps theres supposedly a blizzard on the way and im up in the mountains. i am sooooooooooooooooooooooo incredibly hopeful that we'll get to have a blizzard here. its also supposed to clear out tomorrow night so by friday the roads should be clear down the mountain. perfect! a blizzard in the mountains but we can still leave when the conference is done. (blizzards are on my list of natural disasters to check off having lived through). :)