Chronos is chronological time.
Chronos appears more than 50 times in the original New Testament.
Kairos is a pregnant moment in time, an inflection-point of consequence.
Does it surprise you that Kairos appears more than 85 times?
Each of us vividly remembers those Kairos moments when we decided to turn the steering wheel of Life and begin traveling in a whole new direction.
Jim Burns is a counselor. His voice is heard on more than 800 radio stations each day and he has 3 million books in print. But I didn’t know any of that prior to him appearing as a guest speaker at our church last week.
I tell you this only because Jim Burns said something that I really needed to hear.
“I had to learn to say ’no’ to good things, to say ‘yes’ to the most important things.”
That was a Kairos moment for me because it instantly crystallized something in my mind that had previously been only the foggy awareness that I was speaking with so many people each day that I no longer had time to take a deep breath and calm my thoughts.
Then Jim said it again, but differently.
“But see what I’m saying is sometimes we just have to say ‘no’ to good things even, to say yes to the most important things. That’s how we declutter. That’s how we run light.”
Two days later, I was surprised by a video on Youtube in which my friend Ryan Deiss mentions me by name. He had posted that video a couple of weeks before Jim Burns spoke at our church.
Speaking of himself, Ryan says,
“I literally had zero recollection whatsoever of what I did, or what any of my companies did those weeks, either. It’s just like they were a complete blur. More than likely, I spent all my time responding to whatever emergency someone else decided was important for me on that particular day.”
Wow. Ryan Deiss was speaking exactly what I had been feeling for more than a year.
There are now 87 Wizard of Ads partners and many hundreds of clients, so I go to bed most nights exhausted by the long days, the countless conversations, and the constant feeling that I am somehow letting everyone down.
But Ryan wasn’t finished.
“Scale creates chaos. So if you want to get bigger, you have to insist on focus and simplicity. It is a bit of a paradox, but the key to scale is actually to do less, not more. Because when you force yourself to do less, you shift the emphasis from quantity to impact. And at scale, output matters a lot more than activity.”
We – not just me, but all of us – need to be on guard that we don’t allow the “merely urgent” to displace the truly important.
Have you ever noticed that the things that are truly important are rarely urgent, and things that are “exclamation-point URGENT” are rarely of lasting importance?
Urgent things are momentary, but constant.
Important things are forever, but they can always wait.
And then one day, they can’t wait any longer.
And by then, it’s often too late.
For those of you who are curious, Indy Beagle has posted in the rabbit hole the Ryan Deiss Youtube video that I mentioned, as well as the Youtube video of Jim Burns speaking at our church.
Those two messages, just 48 hours apart, created a Kairos moment for me.
If you have been feeling what I was feeling and what Ryan was describing, maybe those videos will do the same for you.
You can watch the videos or click past them if you don’t have time.
Believe me, I completely understand.
Roy H. Williams
America’s top CEOs pay Doug C. Brown to teach them how to rethink their approach to sales. Doug has consulted Procter & Gamble, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, and Embassy Suites. Doug C. Brown is not a lightweight. Doug tells roving reporter Rotbart, “most companies can quickly realize a 20-30% improvement in operating profits” when they follow his straightforward recommendations.
Doug says that it is more important “to know the right prospects to approach” than to know how to close the sale. If you think you’ve heard it all, listen to Doug C. Brown. There is a chance that maybe you haven’t heard it all. Doug C. Brown will light you up. The right time to listen is up to you. But the place will always be MondayMorningRadio.com