As I listened to my Aunt speak Sunday night, reminiscing about her NYC Marathon run years ago, I was struck by a parallel I perceived about the LTW Conference I experienced this past weekend.  She spoke about the line up and her feeling of anticipation, surrounded by thousands of other runners, upon the races beginning.

“There we were, all together, united by this common goal,” she said with an excited tone of voice.

Immediately my mind went to the Leadership That Works Conference and the final workshop I had taken earlier that afternoon with Earnest.  We stood attentively, watching Earnest prepare for the final exercise of the day.  We breathed in unison and our bodies moved in a smooth sweeping gesture of Thai Chi as a loud sound erupted from the depths of our bellies and beings.   On the 7^th time around during this exercise something magical happened: our voices seemed to flow out, like warm honey, effortlessly together, no trying, no thinking, just being, and the feeling was like pure, warm liquid moving through the room.

As thousands of people ran through the five burrows of NYC that day surpassing their own personal limits and moving through the impulses of the mind deeper into their bodies, we too moved, together, through the energies that surfaced for us in small conference rooms just blocks away from the finish line of this infamous race.

Much like the marathon runners that day, who no doubt had prepared for countless hours to be ready for such a feat, so too have we prepared and worked for countless hours of our lives.  We’ve imagined and intentioned to be in this place together forging a new way for coaches and leaders through out the world.

Unlike a race, though, with a definitive finish line, I see us on a journey together with lots of different “finish lines”.  And unlike a race where only one person wins, I see us crossing the finish line together, holding hands, cheering madly and dancing with our arms waving above our heads as we all cross these milestones together.