Own Your One Thing

“Holiday Time” is over, the family has scattered, and the decorations are slowly disappearing, boxed away til next year. Meanwhile, “Ordinary Time” is rushing in like a subway train rumbling out of the tunnel. We wait on the platform, checking eMail that has already piled up out of nowhere.

But in between Holiday Time and Ordinary Time, a fleeting window of time opens up that might best be called “Resolution Time” - but that doesn’t quite do it justice. “Get Real Time” might be more accurate. “Get Real Time” is that catalytic holiday mix of sober assessment looking backwards and cautious plans for the future, mixed in with a dash of unreasonable expectations.

It’s important to hold onto this fleeting Get Real Time as long as possible until Ordinary Time washes everything away in a time churning burn of business as usual. Get Real Time has some special characteristics that can lead to extraordinary outcomes.

1). Get Real Time shines a light on situations and personal decisions that can get hidden during Ordinary Time. Instead of looking away, or rushing to your first meeting, take a moment to look at things with fresh eyes. What you see might excite you, anger you, scare you - or all three at once! Exciting-angry-scary is an impossible emotion to fit into an Outlook Calendar meeting box, which is why it’s so important to use Get Real Time and finally go down that rabbit hole to see where it goes.

2). Get Real Time is information rich with actionable data because it is - by its nature - closer to the truth. You may finally see with crystal clarity that it’s time to have that difficult conversation, send that resume, take that course, or show up completely different. Get Real Time can give you the clarity and courage to take action. As you head into Ordinary Time, be sure you don’t squander these powerful insights.

3). Last but not least, Get Real Time separates the bullshit from the realshit. Under the transformative light of Get Real Time, your all consuming To Do Lists start to waver and dissolve. What emerges are the handful of essential items that belong on a new and entirely different list - your Success List. This list of Should Dos starts glowing when the light of Get Real Time shines on it, and you already intuitively know what the Should Dos are, and why they matter.

Once Ordinary Time hits it’s easy to become consumed with countless “Could Dos” and “To Dos”, and miss the all important “Should Dos”. The really amazing thing about creating your Success List is not only how it prolongs Get Real Time, but how it even can start transforming Ordinary Time into Extra Ordinary Time!

The holidays are over, and ordinary time is just around the corner. For a fleeting moment though, be sure to grab hold of Get Real Time and use it to radically transform the coming year - a year in which Ordinary Time will be anything but ordinary.