You’re back from the conference, full of new ideas and fresh perspectives, but how can you keep this energy going? It’s easy to fall into old routines or be swamped by all the daily things in life. Here are three ideas (+ a bonus one) that will get you on the way!
One sentence summary of your personal takeaways
Summarize your personal takeaways from the conference. Go through the notes, stencils, and the material you got at the conference. See if there were something particular that spoke to you, or if you see that there is an underlying theme that stands out to you. Try to summarize it into one sentence. Make it fun, challenging, and motivating, so you will remember it. Then keep this little reminder in your faith planner or planner as a reminder to keep the energy going.
Write down 3 actionable to-dos
It was a great conference, right? Your mind is buzzing with new ideas and inspiration that you just have to write down, maybe a blog post or an article, to get in touch with a friend, or start that Bible study group up again. All these intentions are good, but often after a week of normal life are they forgotten or postponed. A good way to make sure that you take action is to set deadlines and make the ideas actionable. Here are three examples to get you going:
- Call Sarah the leader of the prayer team in church and discuss how to move forward with the new women’s prayer group
- During the next 30 days, read a special Bible text/chapter/section every morning that was highlighted at the conference
- Research the speaker(-s) at the conference to find what books he/she has written to dive deeper into the subject
Organize all the new contacts
Meeting new people is awesome, especially if you find out that you find out you have things in common. Perhaps there was someone you connected with that could help you move forward in your ministry goals, giving you a recommendation, or a person you promised to get back to. To remember all the new people, a great idea is to organize them into a system.
- If you have received business cards, write a quick sentence about the person on the back of the card.
- If you’ve exchanged numbers, write a note in the digital contact card about what the person does.
- An extra tip is to ask the question: “ how can I be of service to this person” and take note of that.
All this is so that you in 3 months will remember the person and why you have their card/contact information.
Bonus: Listen to the conference music
A great way to be reminded of how awesome the conference was is to listen to the conference music again. Perhaps there was a special band that played, an artist that sang or, a special song was performed. Get back into that energetic feeling by finding that music and listening to it during the day.
Conclusion
If there is one thing to be said about conferences, they have a lot of input. You immerse yourself in the speaker’s ideas and inspiration comes with no extra effort. That is amazing, and we could of course wish it was so easy day-to-day to keep the momentum up. However, after the conference ends you will need to make a bit more effort. Using the ideas above can be a great start to prolong the energy boost you got.
Let us know in the comments below what your best tip for keeping the “conference high” going is!
