We have in our backyard three thundering plum trees, and for one week each year, they are magnificent!  You see, the rest of the year, they look good with their plum colored leaves.  But once a year, they bloom with the most gorgeous pink and white hue flowers which ultimately give way to a plum colored leaf.

During that one week they bloom, it is a beautiful sight to see. They literally light up the yard.  They take what was once these dry and barren branches and sprinkle them with their pink and white well-worked beauty.

I love that week.  Even though most of the other flowering trees and plants are still waking up from winter (and this one was a wild one), these three little bright spots, move up and out.  They announce spring is coming with a roar.  They tell the world that they’ve been soaking up all the rain, snow and sun all winter and blasts it back to us in technicolor.

The difficult part is that their brilliance only lasts about a week. After that, the delicate flowers fall and the plum leaves arrive and stay until fall.  But for that one week, they are the star! They are the difference maker, they are tops, they are the ones everyone looks to, they have their 15 minutes of fame and then they go back to the normalcy of the other 51 weeks a year.

It takes a lot of effort to be brilliant, I wonder if it may take all 51 years worth of effort to make that one week remarkable.

Does the fact they bloom for a short amount of time, make them “less” valuable?

No, just the opposite.

It’s the fact that they are exquisite for a mere week each year that has me peeking out the window in our great room to catch their annual brilliance.  And so I was rewarded by being able to snap this picture.

I wonder if the same is true with us?

As leaders, do we expect that we will be brilliant, truly exquisite, 51 weeks each year with only one week of effort going into it?  If we do, we’re probably off the mark.

It takes consistent effort, building momentum, risking and experiencing failure and re-calibrating to give the world a short view of our brilliance.  The type of brilliance where your efforts are extraordinary. The type where you can seemingly do no wrong.

And then your week, month, or year is over.

But not forever!

Soak in all you can learn, hone your skills in a new area, keep moving forward for the season of brilliance is brief but, oh, so sweet!

Hope this is that week for you!