Axe it 5 times a day, the tree will fall.

One of the speakers in Hillsong Conference is John Maxwell. He is a world known speaker, coach and writer on leadership. He mentors some of the world's largest companies like Google and Microsoft. If you have never heard of him, I suggest you check his stuffs out. They're really good.

 

In the conference, Maxwell gave us a few leadership principals, and one of them is that leaders should invest in themselves, and invest in what their good at. If you don't invest in yourself and in your key strenghts, what do you have to offer to others? How are you going to lead and help others develop their strenghts?

At the end of the day God will not hold you accountable for the gifts you didnt get, but He will hold you accountable for the gifts He did give you.

 

The other principle is... that if you hit a tree with an axe, just 5 times a day every single day, after a period of time, the tree will eventually fall down. There's no question about it. Bigger tree will take longer, smaller tree will go down faster, but eventually each will fall. Just 5 times a day, daily. It's all about building good habits.

 

In his example, Maxwell is a great writer... and he's a successful writer because everyday he reads, think about what he reads, he files his findings, and he writes. Every single day: he reads, thinks, files and writes. Read, think, file and write. Read, think, file and write.

 

It makes me think about developing my God given strengths and think about some of the things I will commit to do daily to develop my strengths. At the moment I think I'm gifted in in writing. I've loved writing since a very young age, but it's only since I've published article type blog entries that people tell me that I'm quite good at writing. I thought everybody can write. I thought it's easy for everybody to simply express their thoughts and feelings on a piece of paper, or well... type it up, but apparently it's not. For some people, they can't even articulate their thoughts and feelings in a way that others can understand, let alone write them down. So then I realise that writing is one of my gifts, and I need to keep using it to build up others.

 

I know it will take sometime, but I'm committed to read more, to listen more to audio preaching, to read the bible one passage a day, think and reflect about it, and just use my spare time to write and write and write. Sometimes I might write about nothing, other days I might write something really encouraging. I dont know, but I just want to start somewhere, and continue to use my gifts to encourage others.

 

How about you? 

What comes naturally to you?

What can you do daily to sharpen your strenghts? 

 

It might take you some time to figure this out... but I just wanna encourage you to think and reflect about this, and build a good habit that will strenghten your God given skills and talents to build and encourage others.