A number of years ago my wife and I took the kids on a vacation in Colorado and went through the Rocky Mountains. This one day, we were driving up the mountain and the weather outside was dreary, cold, and damp. We had to have the windshield wipers on because there was a continual mist. After a while we pulled over to a rest area. It was then that Kevin, the oldest child, and I decided to walk up a trail. We climbed up that trail panting, at least I was, for about 50 yards or so. Then, all of a sudden, we were in bright sunlight looking down on a bank of clouds. We could also see other mountains with sun-drenched snow caps rising above the clouds. It was truly beautiful. Then we went back down to the car, still stuck in the clouds.
(OK, so this is Brendan, not Kevin, and it’s an old picture. But don’t ya love it?)
The Old Testament of the Bible tells how Moses was up on the mountain of God and received the Ten Commandments. What a mountaintop experience that must have been! Then he came down the mountain to find the people he had led out of Egypt dancing around and worshipping a golden calf. In the New Testament we are told that Jesus took Peter, James and John up a high mountain where he became radiantly transfigured and was joined by Moses and Elijah. That is what you call a real mountain top experience. But then, they get down the mountain and a man brings his son to Jesus to cast out a demon because his disciples couldn’t do it.
Many of us have had other kinds of mountain top type experiences. We have experienced the motivational speakers at national sales events or conferences. But then what?
For some of us, it is simply back to the grind. Yes, we got pumped up a bit. We got hyped! But did we take that sense of elation into the workplace? Did it change anything about the way we did our job? The mountaintop experience isn’t any good if it doesn’t have an effect on how we do things back down in the valley, and we all have a lot of demons we have to deal with.
While your webpages and webinars may not be in the class of mountaintop experiences, they still need to motivate and have a positive effect on the people who see or attend them. They need to have an affect on how they act in their daily work life. They need to prepare them to overcome their everyday demons.
What are the demons your mountain top experiences need to address?
