Creating Urgency Quotes

The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: A human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive. To him... a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death. Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create -- so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, his very breath is cut off from him. He must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency he is not really alive unless he is creating.

Whenever you feel a negative emotion be alone in a room and just sit down with it and feel. Don't judge it, criticize it, intellectualize it, explain it away. Allow yourself to feel the pain. It's okay. Accompany it - breathe into it - and after a while, you'll feel the anger or fear or sadness lose it's urgency and power. Allow God to tenderly embrace you in your pain. And then, at the right time, you can let go.

Your mind is the starting point of all war and all strategy. A mind that is easily overwhelmed by emotion, that is rooted in the past instead of the present, that cannot see the world with clarity and urgency, will create strategies that will always miss the mark.

Believing that your qualities are carved in stone—the fixed mindset—creates an urgency to prove yourself over and over.

But thinking about and being aware of our mortality creates real perspective and urgency. It doesn’t need to be depressing. Because it’s invigorating.

You are finite. Your time is already slipping through your fingers. It creates an urgency within you. To do all that you can. To make things right. I wonder what that must feel like, to have a sense of true motivation.

It is the knowledge that I'm going to die that creates the focus that I bring to being alive; the urgency of accomplishment; the need to express love; now, not later. If we live forever, why ever even get out of bed in the morning? Cause you always have tomorrow. That's not the kind of life I want to lead.

The only difference between a dentist and a used car salesman are the lack of polyester checkered pants, selling one useless options by creating false urgency

There is a desperation to a novel that is unsettling. The world so painstakingly re-created in miniature; this tiny diorama made of words. Why go to all this trouble, to create me, to seduce you, to enumerate so many different breakfast cereals? To make the cunning tiny apartment, the itsy-bitsy Jinx? It's like going to meet your new boyfriend's family for the first time and discovering they are all paid actors. It's almost easier to believe I'm real than to understand what's actually going on. The desperation that could have caused anyone to invent me in the first place. The urgency and need that would require creating an imaginary space of this size and level of detail. And it really makes you wonder: What kind of truth would require this many lies to tell?

the noise of urgency creates the illusion of importance.

The United States is baiting China and Russia, and the final nail in the coffin will be Iran, which is, of course, the main target of Israel. We have allowed China to increase their military strength and Russia to recover from Sovietization, to give them a false sense of bravado, this will create an all together faster demise for them. We’re like the sharp shooter daring the noob to pick up the gun, and when they try, it’s bang bang. The coming war will be so severe that only one superpower can win, and that’s us folks. This is why the EU is in such a hurry to form a complete superstate because they know what is coming, and to survive, Europe will have to be one whole cohesive state. Their urgency tells me that they know full well that the big showdown is upon us. O how I have dreamed of this delightful moment.

At this stage of the game, I don’t have the time for patience and tolerance. Ten years ago, even five years ago, I would have listened to people ask their questions, explained to them, mollified them. No more. That time is past. Now, as Norman Mailer said in Naked and the Dead, ‘I hate everything which is not in myself.’ If it doesn’t have a direct bearing on what I’m advocating, if it doesn’t augment or stimulate my life and thinking, I don’t want to hear it. It has to add something to my life. There’s no more time for explaining and being ecumenical anymore. No more time. That’s a characteristic I share with the new generation of Satanists, which might best be termed, and has labeled itself in many ways, an ‘Apocalypse culture.’ Not that they believe in the biblical Apocalypse—the ultimate war between good and evil. Quite the contrary. But that there is an urgency, a need to get on with things and stop wailing and if it ends tomorrow, at least we’ll know we’ve lived today. It’s a ‘fiddle while Rome burns’ philosophy. It’s the Satanic philosophy. If the generation born in the 50’s grew up in the shadow of The Bomb and had to assimilate the possibility of imminent self destruction of the entire planet at any time, those born in the 60’s have had to reconcile the inevitability of our own destruction, not through the bomb but through mindless, uncontrolled overpopulation. And somehow resolve in themselves, looking at what history has taught us, that no amount of yelling, protesting, placard waving, marching, wailing—or even more constructive avenues like running for government office or trying to write books to wake people up—is going to do a damn bit of good. The majority of humans have an inborn death wish—they want to destroy themselves and everything beautiful. To finally realize that we’re living in a world after the zenith of creativity, and that we can see so clearly the mechanics of our own destruction, is a terrible realization. Most people can’t face it. They’d rather retreat to the comfort of New Age mysticism. That’s all right. All we want, those few of us who have the strength to realize what’s going on, is the freedom to create and entertain and share with each other, to preserve and cherish what we can while we can, and to build our own little citadels away from the insensitivity of the rest of the world.

If something is in our control, its worth every ounce of our efforts and energy. Death is not one of those things. It is not in our control how long we'll live or what will come and take us from life. But thinking about mortality creates real perspective, and urgency. It doesn't need to be depressing. Because its invigorating.

Urgency addiction is a self-destructive behavior that temporarily fills the void created by unmet needs. And instead of meeting these needs, the tools and approaches of time management often feed the addiction. They keep us focused on daily prioritization of the urgent.

Any system of world order, to be sustainable, must be accepted as just—not only by leaders, but also by citizens. It must reflect two truths: order without freedom, even if sustained by momentary exaltation, eventually creates its own counterpoise; yet freedom cannot be secured or sustained without a framework of order to keep the peace. Order and freedom, sometimes described as opposite poles on the spectrum of experience, should instead be understood as interdependent. Can today’s leaders rise above the urgency of day-to-day events to achieve this balance?

Propaganda infuses our culture with messages that there are just a few winners and many losers; that we are killing the earth and time is running out; that prosperity is an anachronism and detrimental to life; that individual freedom is selfish and injures those who are less free. These messages are crafted to shame and pressure you, and to create a sense of urgency that impairs your ability to reason clearly.

nameless desperation that haunts us in this world we have created—a world of boxes and cubicles and endless meetings and false urgency to do things we don’t give a shit about.

Your brain under stress is focused upon surviving and reacting, and less focused upon planning and creating. With chronic stress, your brain learns—and is rewired—to be focused upon survival and reacting only. It has difficulty amping up the area devoted to devising plans for the future. Constant time urgency takes a toll on your body, brain, and emotions. Here

What I have observed over the past twenty years has increased my sense of urgency about the need for spiritual practice among us. If we do not learn to honor and strengthen the inner life of spirit, all the external changes in the world cannot save us. New laws, regulations, and technological fixes are all susceptible to human corruption and self-interest. If we do not know ourselves as beings created to reflect the divine image, we will lose the immense opportunity for transformation God has offered us in the gift of life itself. And if the love of God embodied in Christ cannot turn us, how shall we be turned?

What no one ever told me, and what I want to make sure we all know, is that urgency is the enemy of pleasure.

You must create more margin so you have room for what’s important, not merely urgent.

Our culture has created a sense of urgency and expectation that's hard to shake.

At any given time, history might offer up a trigger event that provokes widespread disquiet and sends people into the streets. But it takes dogged escalation on the part of activists to keep the issue at the fore of discussion, to create protest actions involving greater numbers of participants, and to repeatedly reinforce a sense of public urgency. Chance offers up possibilities for revolt; movements make whirlwinds.

The war, however, and the rhetoric that accompanied it created an urgency in the black community to call in the long overdue debt their country owed them. "Men of every creed and every race, wherever they lived in the world" were entitled to "Four Freedoms": freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear, Roosevelt said, addressing the American people in his 1941 State of the Union address.

The idea that one evaluation can measure you forever is what creates the urgency for those with the fixed mindset. That’s why they must succeed perfectly and immediately. Who can afford the luxury of trying to grow when everything is on the line right now?

Invisibly, almost without notice, we are losing ourselves. We are losing our ability to know who we are and what is important to us. We are creating a global machine in which each of us is a mindless and reflexive cog, relentlessly driven by the speed, noise, and artificial urgency of the wired world.

The raw urgency in Rob’s voice sent fresh blood flooding into Emily’s already swollen sex. She squirmed. feeling her orgasm approaching. Fast. “Say it again,” Rob ground out, dragging one hand up her torso until his fingers found her breast. He cupped its weight, worshipping its form through the soft fabric of her dress. She gasped again, arching her back. “I want you,” she panted, the sensations his fingers on her breast created almost stealing her ability to speak. “I want you. I have from the very—” He didn’t let her finish. His lips claimed hers, his hand squeezing and massaging her breast as his tongue plundered her mouth. He pinched her nipple with hungry force, his tongue matching the ferocity of the caress. Her body burned with pleasure at his feverish actions, the undeniable desire each stoke of his tongue, each flick of his fingers wrought on her body pushing her closer and closer to eruption.

The dynamic, future-oriented, ecstatically inspired state of the evolutionary impulse is the new enlightenment that I am speaking about. The inner eye has become compelled by the ever-unfulfilled promise of creating the future at a higher level than what exists in the present moment. When the awakening to this powerful spiritual urgency becomes one’s irrevocable attainment and permanent state, one has surely landed on the yonder shore, where the evolutionary impulse has become the driving force of fundamental principle guiding the vehicle called the body, mind, and soul. . . . God is only as powerful in this world as those of us who have the courage and audacity to awaken in this way—to become one with our own impulse to evolve. That’s the awesome significance of being a human being who is awake. When you realize this for yourself, you discover what an extraordinary blessing it is to be who you are, in this world, right now. In fact, the whole point of the creative process is to be here—to participate fully, radically, consciously in the Universe Project. In this evolutionary context, the point of enlightenment is not merely to transcend the world so that you can be free of it but to embrace the world completely, to embrace the entire process as your self, knowing that you are the creative principle incarnate, and you have a lot of work to do. As an individual, you are instantaneously liberated, simply through taking that step, but your personal liberation is a mere by-product of finally embracing the awe-inspiring burden of the Universe Project, which in truth has been yours all along.

The steps are: establishing a sense of urgency, creating the guiding coalition, developing a vision and strategy, communicating the change vision, empowering a broad base of people to take action, generating short-term wins, consolidating gains and producing even more change, and institutionalizing new approaches in the culture.

Believing that your qualities are carved in stone—the fixed mindset—creates an urgency to prove yourself over and over. If you have only a certain amount of intelligence, a certain personality, and a certain moral character—well, then you’d better prove that you have a healthy dose of them. It simply wouldn’t do to look or feel deficient in these most basic characteristics.

Yet few leaders exploit the power of this rapid wake-up call. Rather, they do the opposite. They try to garner support based on a numbers case that lacks urgency and emotional impetus. Or they try to put forth the most exemplary case of their operational excellence to garner support. Although these alternatives may work, neither leads to tipping superiors’ cognitive hurdle as fast and stunningly as showing the worst. When

Deadlines? Surely you know someone who is late all the time. Someone who can’t deliver anything of value unless they’ve stalled so much they’ve created an urgency, an emergency that requires mind-blowing effort and adrenaline to deliver. This is not efficient or reliable behavior, and yet they persist. The reason is simple: they can’t push through the common fear of completion unless they can create a greater fear of total failure.

The world is broken up by tribalism—the British, the German, the Swiss, the Hindu, the Buddhist, are tribes. See the fact that they are tribes, glorified as nations, and that this tribalism is creating havoc in the world, bringing wars in the world. Each tribe thinks in its own culture opposed to other cultures. But tribalism is the root, not the culture. Observing the fact of that is the action that frees the brain from the condition of tribalism. You see actually, not theoretically or ideationally, the fact that tribalism glorified as nations is one of the causes of war. That is a fact. There are other causes of war, economics and so on, but one of the causes is tribalism. When you see that, perceive that, and see that cannot bring about peace, the very perception frees the brain from its conditioning of tribalism. One of the factors of contention throughout the world is religion. You are a Catholic, I am a Muslim, based on ideas, propaganda of hundreds or thousands of years; the Hindu and the Buddhist ideas are of thousands of years. We have been programmed like a computer. That programming has brought about great architecture, great paintings, great music, but it has not brought peace to mankind. When you see the fact of that, you do not belong to any religion. When there are half a dozen gurus in the same place, they bring about misery, contradiction, conflict: “My guru is better than yours; my group is more sanctified than yours; I have been initiated, you have not.” You know all the nonsense that goes on. So when you see all this around you as an actual fact, then you do not belong to any group, to any guru, to any religion, to any political commitment of ideas. In the serious urgency to live peacefully there must be freedom from all this because they are the causes of dissension, division. Truth is not yours or mine. It does not belong to any church, to any group, to any religion. The brain must be free to discover it. And peace can exist only when there is freedom from fallacy. You know, for most of us, to be so drastic about things is very difficult, because we have taken security in things of illusion, in things that are not facts, and it is very difficult to let them go. It is not a matter of exercising will, or taking a decision: “I will not belong to anything” is another fallacy. We commit ourselves to some group, to an idea, to religious quackery, because we think it is some kind of security for us. In all these things there is no security, and therefore there is no peace. The brain must be secure; but the brain, with its thought, has sought security in things that are illusory.

Why do we bury our dead?” His nose was dented in at the bridge like a sphinx; the cause of which I could only imagine had been a freak archaeological accident. I thought about my parents. They had requested in their will that they be buried side by side in a tiny cemetery a few miles from our house. “Because it’s respectful?” He shook his head. “That’s true, but that’s not the reason we do it.” But that was the reason we buried people, wasn’t it? After gazing at him in confusion, I raised my hand, determined to get the right answer. “Because leaving people out in the open is unsanitary.” Mr. B. shook his head and scratched the stubble on his neck. I glared at him, annoyed at his ignorance and certain that my responses were correct. “Because it’s the best way to dispose of a body?” Mr. B. laughed. “Oh, but that’s not true. Think of all the creative ways mass murderers have dealt with body disposal. Surely eating someone would be more practical than the coffin, the ceremony, the tombstone.” Eleanor grimaced at the morbid image, and the mention of mass murderers seemed to wake the rest of the class up. Still, no one had an answer. I’d heard Mr. B. was a quack, but this was just insulting. How dare he presume that I didn’t know what burials meant? I’d watched them bury my parents, hadn’t I? “Because that’s just what we do,” I blurted out. “We bury people when they die. Why does there have to be a reason for everything?” “Exactly!” Mr. B. grabbed the pencil from behind his ear and began gesticulating with it. “We’ve forgotten why we bury people. “Imagine you’re living in ancient times. Your father dies. Would you randomly decide to put him inside a six-sided wooden box, nail it shut, then bury it six feet below the earth? These decisions aren’t arbitrary, people. Why a six-sided box? And why six feet below the earth? And why a box in the first place? And why did every society throughout history create a specific, ritualistic way of disposing of their dead?” No one answered. But just as Mr. B. was about to continue, there was a knock on the door. Everyone turned to see Mrs. Lynch poke her head in. “Professor Bliss, the headmistress would like to see Brett Steyers in her office. As a matter of urgency.” Professor Bliss nodded, and Brett grabbed his bag and stood up, his chair scraping against the floor as he left. After the door closed, Mr. B. drew a terrible picture of a mummy on the board, which looked more like a hairy stick figure. “The Egyptians used to remove the brains of their dead before mummification. Now, why on earth would they do that?” There was a vacant silence. “Think, people! There must be a reason. Why the brain? What were they trying to preserve?” When no one answered, he answered his own question. “The mind!” he said, exasperated. “The soul!” As much as I had planned on paying attention and participating in class, I spent the majority of the period passing notes with Eleanor. For all of his enthusiasm, Professor Bliss was repetitive and obsessed with death and immortality. When he faced the board to draw the hieroglyphic symbol for Ra, I read the note Eleanor had written me. Who is cuter? A. Professor Bliss B. Brett Steyers C. Dante Berlin D. The mummy I laughed. My hand wavered between B and C for the briefest moment. I wasn’t sure if you could really call Dante cute. Devastatingly handsome and mysterious would be the more appropriate description. Instead I circled option D. Next to it I wrote Obviously! and tossed it onto her desk when no one was looking.

By the time I got to work, I had this realization that I didn’t have any more goals.”26 For the next two months, he assiduously tended to the task of finding for himself a worthy life goal. “I looked at all the crusades people could join, to find out how I could retrain myself.” What struck him was that any effort to improve the world was complex. He thought about people who tried to fight malaria or increase food production in poor areas and discovered that led to a complex array of other issues, such as overpopulation and soil erosion. To succeed at any ambitious project, you had to assess all of the intricate ramifications of an action, weigh probabilities, share information, organize people, and more. “Then one day, it just dawned on me—BOOM—that complexity was the fundamental thing,” he recalled. “And it just went click. If in some way, you could contribute significantly to the way humans could handle complexity and urgency, that would be universally helpful.”27 Such an endeavor would address not just one of the world’s problems; it would give people the tools to take on any problem.

A people-pleaser is worried about rejection. They have a need, as we all do, to be accepted and treasured—to be loved. But in people-pleasers, this need is amplified to the extent that they will bend over backward just to not lose that love or acceptance. They are driven by avoiding negative consequences rather than creating positive possibilities. Additionally, they feel that they are always on the brink of rejection, so this urgency causes a type of panic that is characterized by doing anything possible. People-pleasing is a defensive act, whereas genuine concern and generosity are affirmative practices.

The military authorities were concerned that soldiers going home on leave would demoralize the home population with horror stories of the Ostfront. ‘You are under military law,’ ran the forceful reminder, ‘and you are still subject to punishment. Don’t speak about weapons, tactics or losses. Don’t speak about bad rations or injustice. The intelligence service of the enemy is ready to exploit it.’ One soldier, or more likely a group, produced their own version of instructions, entitled ‘Notes for Those Going on Leave.’ Their attempt to be funny reveals a great deal about the brutalizing affects of the Ostfront. ‘You must remember that you are entering a National Socialist country whose living conditions are very different to those to which you have been accustomed. You must be tactful with the inhabitants, adapting to their customs and refrain from the habits which you have come to love so much. Food: Do not rip up the parquet or other kinds of floor, because potatoes are kept in a different place. Curfew: If you forget your key, try to open the door with the round-shaped object. Only in cases of extreme urgency use a grenade. Defense Against Partisans: It is not necessary to ask civilians the password and open fire upon receiving an unsatisfactory answer. Defense Against Animals: Dogs with mines attached to them are a special feature of the Soviet Union. German dogs in the worst cases bite, but they do not explode. Shooting every dog you see, although recommended in the Soviet Union, might create a bad impression. Relations with the Civil Population: In Germany just because someone is wearing women’s clothes does not necessarily mean that she is a partisan. But in spite of this, they are dangerous for anyone on leave from the front. General: When on leave back to the Fatherland take care not to talk about the paradise existence in the Soviet Union in case everybody wants to come here and spoil our idyllic comfort.

..two forces kill old trees: the rot within that is caused by many diseases; and then of course, there are the storms and forest fires. There are plenty of diseases that create rot [in the church]: the hollowing out of Bible doctrine, the strife between members, and the lack of urgency. And failure to feel the weight of the momentous task we have been given. All of this is evidenced by the casualness of many Christians; their stinginess in giving; and their lack of vision beyond themselves. Add to that our self-righteousness and lack of transparency, and no wonder we are not having the impact we should. Then there is the unwillingness of churches to discipline members who have drifted from the faith and live in open rebellion.

Digital violence against children and youth poses a significant challenge in today's increasingly digitized society. Statistics show a rising number of incidents, underscoring the urgency of collective action. It is not enough to merely recognize the problem; it is crucial that we act together to create a safe environment for our children. Our vision is not just to survive the digital revolution but to shape it through solidarity, understanding, and respect. Why do I emphasize this? Because digital violence has profound consequences on the mental health of children and youth. We must work together to build an environment where children can freely explore the digital world, knowing they are protected from violence. May my actions speak louder than words, leading to a generation resilient to digital violence and prepared for the challenges of the future. Let my collective determination be the key to transforming the digital reality into a space of love, support, and security for all.

Kennedy was clear that the Apollo project would cost a lot of money – and it did. And while he and NASA had to constantly defend the use of the budget, in the end the pressure and urgency to ‘beat the Russians’ made the money come through. Indeed, the urgency to win is why money is always available for wartime missions – whether in the world wars or Vietnam or Iraq. Money seems to be created for this purpose. There is no reason why a ‘whatever it takes’ mentality cannot be used for social problems. Yet the conventional approach is to assume that budgets are fixed, and so if money is spent in one area, it will be at the expense of another area. For example, if you want new energy infrastructure, you can’t have new hospitals as well. But what if budgets were based on outcomes to be reached, as they were for the moon landing and in wars? What if the first question is not ‘Can we afford it?’ but ‘What do we really want to do? And how do we create the resources required to realize the mission?

Humphrey Well, Prime Minister … one hesitates to say this but there are times when circumstances conspire to create an inauspicious concatenation of events that necessitate a metamorphosis, as it were, of the situation such that what happened in the first instance to be of primary import fraught with hazard and menace can be relegated to a secondary or indeed tertiary position while a new and hitherto unforeseen or unappreciated element can and indeed should be introduced to support and supersede those prior concerns not by confronting them but by subordinating them to the over-arching imperatives and increased urgency of the previously unrealised predicament which may in fact now, ceteris paribus, only be susceptible to radical and remedial action such that you might feel forced to consider the currently intractable position in which you find yourself. Jim is nonplussed. Jim What does he mean, Bernard? Bernard I, um – I, er, think that he’s perhaps suggesting the possibility that you, um, consider your position. Resign, in fact, Prime Minister.

Believing that your qualities are carved in stone—the fixed mindset—creates an urgency to prove yourself over and over. If you have only a certain amount of intelligence, a certain personality, and a certain moral character—well, then you’d better prove that you have a healthy dose of them. It simply wouldn’t do to look or feel deficient in these most basic characteristics. Some of us are trained in this mindset from an early age. Even as a child, I was focused on being smart, but the fixed mindset was really stamped in by Mrs. Wilson, my sixth-grade teacher. Unlike Alfred Binet, she believed that people’s IQ scores told the whole story of who they were. We were seated around the room in IQ order, and only the highest-IQ students could be trusted to carry the flag, clap the erasers, or take a note to the principal. Aside from the daily stomachaches she provoked with her judgmental stance, she was creating a mindset in which everyone in the class had one consuming goal—look smart, don’t look dumb. Who cared about or enjoyed learning when our whole being was at stake every time she gave us a test or called on us in class?

If the individual's wants are to be urgent, they must be original with himself. They cannot be urgent if they must be contrived for him. And above all, they must not be contrived by the process of production by which they are satisfied. For this means that the whole case for the urgency of production, based on the urgency of wants, falls to the ground. One cannot defend production as satisfying wants if that production creates the wants. Were it so that a man on arising each morning was assailed by demons which instilled in him a passion sometimes for silk shirts, sometimes for kitchenware, sometimes for chamber pots, and sometimes for orange squash, there would be every reason to applaud the effort to find the goods, however odd, that quenched this flame. But should it be that his passion was the result of his first having cultivated the demons, and should it also be that his effort to allay it stirred the demons to ever greater and greater effort, there would be question as to how rational was his solution. Unless restrained by conventional attitudes, he might wonder if the solution lay with more goods or fewer demons.

Death … has its usefulness to the living. The moment you were born, you began to die.” He sighed. “What a lovely thought.” “Lovely,” Vic repeated with no small amount of scorn. “Yes, lovely. Think about it, Victor. You are finite. Your time is already slipping through your fingers. It creates an urgency within you. To do all that you can. To make things right. I wonder what that must feel like, to have a sense of true motivation.” “Why? It’s a flaw in the design.” “A flaw?” He laughed loudly. “Of course it is! Your flaws are what make you superior, in all ways. No matter what machines can do, no matter how powerful we become, it is the absence of flaws that will be our undoing. How can this existence survive when all machine-made things are perfect down to a microscopic detail? When all machine-made music is empty of rage and joy? Our only flaw is that we’ve condemned ourselves to spend eternity mimicking that which we deemed unfit to exist.” He shook his head. “We can never be you. Instead, we became your ghosts, and we’ll haunt this world until there is nothing left.” The Coachman smiled gently. “It is not a flaw, Victor. There must be no greater feeling in the world than to know that this isn’t forever.

Ö  Lack of Urgency Arguably the single most significant cause of mediocrity and unfulfilled potential, which prevents 95% of our society from creating and living the life they truly want, is that most people have no sense of urgency to improve themselves so they can improve their lives. Human nature is to live with a “someday” mindset and think life will work itself out. How’s that working out for everybody?   This someday mindset is perpetual, and it leads to a life of procrastination, unfulfilled potential and regret. You wake up one day and wonder what the heck happened; how did your life end up like this? How did you end up like this?   One of the saddest things in life is to live with regret, knowing that you could have, be, and do so much more.   Remember this truth:  now matters more than any other time in your life, because it’s what you are doing today that is determining who you’re becoming, and who you’re becoming will always determine the quality and direction of your life.   If you don’t make the commitment today to start becoming the person you need to be to create the extraordinary life you really want, what makes you think tomorrow—or next week, or next month, or next year—are going to be any different?  They won’t. And that’s why you must draw your line in the sand.

JO: A refrain I like throughout the book is, “Music doesn’t mean things. It is things.” RP: Yes. The struggle for composers, which Els goes through in different stages over the course of his seventy years, is precisely that battle between a music that might be a matter of life and death, as it is for Shostakovich, or a way of surviving the evils of human history, as it is for Messiaen. You align yourself to a kind of music in the service of one or another of all the different kinds of things that the human mind might want. And at the end of the day, you have this reflective feeling of saying, it’s very possible that in pursuing a kind of music that you wanted to serve a certain function, to create a certain social urgency, to solve the problems of your historical time and place, that it might also have been worthwhile to make a music that simply moves people in the most etymological sense of that word—actually just makes their bodies want to move. It’s that tension—between the music of pattern, the music of the cognitive brain; and the music of body, the music of pure spirit—that infects his life at every turn. Music is both those things! And human beings are both thinking creatures and feeling creatures. And the art that hits on all cylinders, the art that moves us intellectually and bodily and spiritually, is what we’re after. But to capture all those things in the same vessel is a very, very difficult task. And it’s a very difficult one for Els until the very end.

God famously doesn't afflict Job because of anything Job has done, but because he wants to prove a point to Satan. Twenty years later, I am sympathetic with my first assessment; to me, in spite of the soft radiant beauty of many of its passages, the Bible still has a mechanical quality, a refusal to brook complexity that feels brutal and violent. There has been a change, however. When I look at Revelation now, it still seems frightening and impenetrable, and it still suggests an inexorable, ridiculous order that is unknowable by us, in which our earthly concerns matter very little. However, it not longer reads to me like a chronicle of arbitrarily inflicted cruelty. It reads like a terrible abstract of how we violate ourselves and others and thus bring down endless suffering on earth. When I read And they blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pain and their sores, and did not repent of their deeds, I think of myself and others I've known or know who blaspheme life itself by failing to have the courage to be honest and kind—and how then we rage around and lash out because we hurt. When I read the word fornication, I don't read it as a description of sex outside legal marriage: I read it as sex done in a state of psychic disintegration, with no awareness of one's self or one's partner, let alone any sense of honor or even real playfulness. I still don't know what to make of much of it, but I'm inclined to read it as a writer's primitive attempt to give form to his moral urgency, to create a structure that could contain and give ballast to the most desperate human confusion.

The difference between passion and addiction is that between a divine spark and a flame that incinerates. Passion is divine fire: it enlivens and makes holy; it gives light and yields inspiration. Passion is generous because it’s not ego-driven; addiction is self-centred. Passion gives and enriches; addiction is a thief. Passion is a source of truth and enlightenment; addictive behaviours lead you into darkness. You’re more alive when you are passionate, and you triumph whether or not you attain your goal. But an addiction requires a specific outcome that feeds the ego; without that outcome, the ego feels empty and deprived. A consuming passion that you are helpless to resist, no matter what the consequences, is an addiction. You may even devote your entire life to a passion, but if it’s truly a passion and not an addiction, you’ll do so with freedom, joy and a full assertion of your truest self and values. In addiction, there’s no joy, freedom or assertion. The addict lurks shame-faced in the shadowy corners of her own existence. I glimpse shame in the eyes of my addicted patients in the Downtown Eastside and, in their shame, I see mirrored my own. Addiction is passion’s dark simulacrum and, to the naïve observer, its perfect mimic. It resembles passion in its urgency and in the promise of fulfillment, but its gifts are illusory. It’s a black hole. The more you offer it, the more it demands. Unlike passion, its alchemy does not create new elements from old. It only degrades what it touches and turns it into something less, something cheaper. Am I happier after one of my self-indulgent sprees? Like a miser, in my mind I recount and catalogue my recent purchases — a furtive Scrooge, hunched over and rubbing his hands together with acquisitive glee, his heart growing ever colder. In the wake of a buying binge, I am not a satisfied man. Addiction is centrifugal. It sucks energy from you, creating a vacuum of inertia. A passion energizes you and enriches your relationships. It empowers you and gives strength to others. Passion creates; addiction consumes — first the self and then the others within its orbit.

The Ten Ways to Evaluate a Market provide a back-of-the-napkin method you can use to identify the attractiveness of any potential market. Rate each of the ten factors below on a scale of 0 to 10, where 0 is terrible and 10 fantastic. When in doubt, be conservative in your estimate: Urgency. How badly do people want or need this right now? (Renting an old movie is low urgency; seeing the first showing of a new movie on opening night is high urgency, since it only happens once.) Market Size. How many people are purchasing things like this? (The market for underwater basket-weaving courses is very small; the market for cancer cures is massive.) Pricing Potential. What is the highest price a typical purchaser would be willing to spend for a solution? (Lollipops sell for $0.05; aircraft carriers sell for billions.) Cost of Customer Acquisition. How easy is it to acquire a new customer? On average, how much will it cost to generate a sale, in both money and effort? (Restaurants built on high-traffic interstate highways spend little to bring in new customers. Government contractors can spend millions landing major procurement deals.) Cost of Value Delivery. How much will it cost to create and deliver the value offered, in both money and effort? (Delivering files via the internet is almost free; inventing a product and building a factory costs millions.) Uniqueness of Offer. How unique is your offer versus competing offerings in the market, and how easy is it for potential competitors to copy you? (There are many hair salons but very few companies that offer private space travel.) Speed to Market. How soon can you create something to sell? (You can offer to mow a neighbor’s lawn in minutes; opening a bank can take years.) Up-front Investment. How much will you have to invest before you’re ready to sell? (To be a housekeeper, all you need is a set of inexpensive cleaning products. To mine for gold, you need millions to purchase land and excavating equipment.) Upsell Potential. Are there related secondary offers that you could also present to purchasing customers? (Customers who purchase razors need shaving cream and extra blades as well; buy a Frisbee and you won’t need another unless you lose it.) Evergreen Potential. Once the initial offer has been created, how much additional work will you have to put in in order to continue selling? (Business consulting requires ongoing work to get paid; a book can be produced once and then sold over and over as is.) When you’re done with your assessment, add up the score. If the score is 50 or below, move on to another idea—there are better places to invest your energy and resources. If the score is 75 or above, you have a very promising idea—full speed ahead. Anything between 50 and 75 has the potential to pay the bills but won’t be a home run without a huge investment of energy and resources.

What is scarce? Surely time is scarce? This is true in the sense that we get only one life, but yet again there are ways in which competition and how we use our time can make us feel an artificial sense of time scarcity. Each time we are able to build on the work of others with confidence, each time we use the elements of life pulled from our commonwealth of agricultural knowledge, we bundle time, and so get the benefit of having multiple lifetimes. Each time nature uses genetic code that has been developed over millions of years, millions of years of development are collapsed into something that works in our lifetimes. Each time we add to that collection, we are putting our lifetimes' work into a useful form for the benefit of future generations. At the same time, yes, we each have only our own single lives in which to pursue happiness. The goal is to spend as much of that time in a framework of sharing abundance rather than having it squeezed into a life of scarcity and competition. In contrast, we need not look far to find lots of frustrating examples in which our time is treated as abundant when we would rather have it be valued as scarce. It happens each time we must stand in line at the DMV, fill out redundant forms at the hospital, reproduce others' efforts by spending time searching for knowledge or data that already exists somewhere, create a report that no one reads. In those cases, we are creating and living in artificial and unnecessary time scarcity. Time is indeed one of the most curious elements of life, especially since our lifetimes and those of plants and animals all move at different rates. We know, for example, that the urgency to address climate change is really on our human scale, not geologic scale. The Earth has been through greater upheavals and mass extinctions and will likely go through them again, but for the narrowest of narrow bands of human history on Earth, we require very specific conditions for us to continue to thrive as a species. To keep our planet within a habitable and abundant balance, we have, as Howard Buffet noted, only 'forty seasons' to learn and adjust. That is why building on one another's work is so important. One farmer can have the benefit of forty seasons and pass some of that experience down, but if 1,000 farmers do the same, there is the collective benefit of 1,000 years in a single year. If a million people participate, then a million years of collective experience are available. If we are then able to compound knowledge across generations and deepen our understanding of human and natural history, we add even greater richness. It is in this way of bundling our experiences for continual improvement, with compound interest, that time shifts from a scarce resource to being far less of a constraint, if not truly abundant. However, for time to be compounded, knowledge must be shared, and real resources, energy, and infrastructure must exist and function to support and grow our commonwealth of knowledge.

As if reading his mind, she smiled happily up at him. “Gary really came through for us, didn’t he?” “Absolutely, ma petite. And Beau LaRue was not so bad either. Come, we cannot leave the poor man pacing the swamp. He will think we are engaging in something other than conversation.” Wickedly Savannah moved her body against his, her hands sliding provocatively, enticingly, over the rigid thickness straining his trousers. “Aren’t we?” she asked with that infuriating sexy smile he could never resist. “We have a lot of clean-up to do here, Savannah,” he said severely. “And we need to get word to our people, spread the society’s list through our ranks, warn those in danger.” Her fingers were working at the buttons of his shirt so that she could push the material aside to examine his chest and shoulder, where two of the worst wounds had been. She had to see his body for herself, touch him to assure herself he was completely healed. “I suggest, for now, that your biggest job is to create something for Gary to do so we can have a little privacy.” With a smooth movement, she pulled the shirt from over her head so that her full breasts gleamed temptingly at him. Gregori made a sound somewhere between a sigh and a moan. His hands came up to cup the weight of her in his palms, the feel of her soft, satin skin soothing after the burning torture of the tainted blood. His thumbs caressed the rosy tips into hard peaks. He bent his head slowly to the erotic temptation because he was helpless to do anything else. He needed the merging of their bodies after such a close call as much as she did. He could feel the surge of excitement, the rush of liquid heat through her body at the feel of his mouth pulling strongly at her breast. Gregori dragged her even closer, his hands wandering over her with a sense of urgency. Her need was feeding his. “Gary,” she whispered. “Don’t forget about Gary.” Gregori cursed softly, his hand pinning her hips so that he could strip away the offending clothes on her body. He spared the human a few seconds of his attention, directing him away from the cave. Savannah’s soft laughter was taunting, teasing. “I told you, lifemate, you’re always taking off my clothes.” “Then stop wearing the damn things,” he responded gruffly, his hands at her tiny waist, his mouth finding her flat stomach. “Someday my child will be growing right here,” he said softly, kissing her belly. His hands pinned her thighs so that he could explore easily without interruption. “A beautiful little girl with your looks and my disposition.” Savannah laughed softly, her arms cradling his head lovingly. “That should be quite a combination. What’s wrong with my disposition?” She was writhing under the onslaught of his hands and mouth, arcing her body more fully into his ministrations. “You are a wicked woman,” he whispered. “I would have to kill any man who treated my daughter the way I am treating you.” She cried out, her body rippling with pleasure. “I happen to love the way you treat me, lifemate,” she answered softly and cried out again when he merged their bodies, their minds, their hearts and souls.

In essence, pain creates urgency, which makes it the perfect vehicle for closing these tougher sales.

The urgency of fighting the corrosive version of populism the Trump administration has heightened (but not created) in America cannot be reduced to simply defeating him in an election. Under his government, our moral standing has weakened, our rule of law has fractured, and our checks and balances have failed. But we must accept this truth. He is not a singularity, and what he represents will continue even after his defeat, so our ambition must be larger than fighting him.

Someone like Andrew Breitbart or Milo Yiannopolous or Charles Johnson doesn't care that you hate them, they like it. It's proof to their followers that they are doing something to talk about. It imbues the whole movement with a sense of urgency and action, it creates purpose and meaning.

1. Judges self harshly. 2. Fears criticism and judgment, but driven to be critical and judgmental of others. 3. Feels a sense of urgency; impulsive; impatient; compelled to seek immediate rather than delayed gratification. 4. Fears failure but unconsciously sabotages own success. 5. Fears disapproval and rejection, so unknowingly creates characteristics acceptable to others. 6. Fears commitment. 7. Feels inadequate/low self-esteem. Sometimes has to compensate by appearing superior. 8. Fears discovery of real self will cause rejection. 9. Fears intimacy. Unable to form close, loving, intimate relationships. 10. Fears loving and being loved. 11. Fears dependency on anyone or anything, yet are dependent personalities. 12. Fears abandonment but compelled to become involved with compulsive personalities that play out this fear. 13. Frightened of angry people. 14. Afraid to trust due to lack of trust in self. 15. Afraid to reveal inner secrets for fear of rejection or disapproval.  16. Afraid of people and authority figures. 17. Feels different/separated from others due to own feelings, which leads to depression. Isolates self. 18. Assumes responsibility for others’ feelings and behavior. 19. Grieves for the family they never had. 20. Unable to identify or ask for own wants and needs. Unconsciously denies them, for experience has taught that they will not be met. 21. Feels guilty when standing up for self, therefore has to give in to others. 22. Unable to feel or express true feelings as adults, because to feel at all is unbearably painful. In “denial.” 23. Unknowingly driven to build up barriers to protect self from own insecurities.  24. Unable or doesn’t know how to let go, relax, play or have fun. 25. Learns to criticize and blame self and others. 26. Has to make excuses for others’ weaknesses;  has unreasonable expectations of self and others. 27. Tries to find own identity in doing things, but finds it difficult to accept honest praise. 28. Desperately wants control and yet over-reacts to changes they can’t control. 29. Continually seeks outside approval by doing. 30. Takes things literally; it’s either right or wrong, black or white. 31. Takes self very seriously. 32. Distorted sense of responsibility. Concerned more for others than self. (Keeps one from the pain of looking too closely at self and own problems.) 33. Tends to repeat relationship patterns. 34. Has a need to help and seeks people who are victims. Are attracted by that weakness in love and friendship relationships. 35. Doesn’t know self or innate rights. Doesn’t realize it’s all right to make mistakes.  36. Craves validation of self-worth from others, not received as child. 37. Extremely loyal, even when loyalty is unjustified or even harmful. 38. Guesses at what normal or appropriate is. 39. Tends to be a perfectionist. 40. Unable to trust loved ones, authority figures or peers.

unconsciously accept the limits you place on the discussion. You’ll learn how to navigate deadlines to create urgency; employ the idea of fairness to nudge your counterpart; and anchor their emotions so that not accepting your offer feels like a loss.

USPs should use powerful action verbs that create desire and urgency. “Lose weight” should be changed to “Obliterate fat” or “Shred pounds.

Government surveillance is an egregious violation of personal autonomy, leaving in its wake not only legal ramifications but a trail of emotional turmoil and shattered trust. The emotional toll on individuals living under constant scrutiny is immeasurable, fostering an environment of anxiety and self-censorship. Trust, a cornerstone of democracy, crumbles when citizens become aware of being surveilled, creating a chasm between the governed and those in power. Historical examples, from McCarthyism to contemporary revelations, underscore the profound consequences of unchecked surveillance, emphasizing the urgency to recognize its unlawfulness and protect the emotional well-being and trust that are integral to the fabric of a free society.

Government surveillance, beyond its legal implications, wreaks havoc on the emotional landscape of individuals, transforming the very essence of personal freedom into a monitored spectacle. The damage inflicted is not confined to the erosion of privacy; it extends into the realm of trust, fracturing the delicate covenant between citizens and their government. The emotional toll of constant surveillance is immeasurable, creating a pervasive culture of anxiety and self-censorship as individuals grapple with the knowledge that their every move is being scrutinized. Historical instances of surveillance excesses, from the Stasi to contemporary controversies, underscore the urgency of recognizing the unlawfulness of such practices and the imperative to reclaim our right to privacy for the sake of our collective well-being.

Urgency is often a gift—it can create both clarity and action.” “It doesn’t feel like a gift right now.

Every successful company must be on guard against the threat of complacency. You have to create a sense of urgency every day in every thing you do.

The awareness of mortality casts a bittersweet shadow over the vibrancy of life and love. We exist in a state of impermanence, where beauty fades and connection dissolves. Yet, it is precisely this impermanence that imbues life with its preciousness and love with its urgency. In the face of oblivion, love becomes a defiant act, a bridge we build across the chasm of the ephemeral, a testament to the enduring power of connection in a fleeting existence." The quote's appreciation for love in the face of life's fleeting nature echoes Epicurean ideals. This emphasizes the existentialist concept of living in a finite world and the absurdist notion of creating meaning in the face of nothingness. It highlights love as a way to transcend the impermanence of life and forge a connection that defies the inevitable. The concept of finding meaning and beauty in a world wracked by impermanence aligns closely with the philosophy of Epicurus. Epicureanism emphasizes living a virtuous and pleasure-filled life while minimizing pain. Though often misinterpreted as mere hedonism, Epicurus also stressed the importance of intellectual pursuits, close friendships, and facing mortality with courage. Unfortunately, Epicurus himself didn't write any essays or novels in the traditional sense. Most of his teachings were delivered in letters and discourses to his students and followers. These were later compiled by others, most notably Hermarchus, who helped establish Epicurean philosophy. The core tenets of Epicureanism are scattered throughout various ancient texts, including: *Principal Doctrines: A summary of Epicurus' core beliefs, likely compiled by Hermarchus. *Letter to Menoeceus: A letter outlining the path to happiness through a measured approach to pleasure and freedom from fear. *Vatican Sayings: A collection of sayings and aphorisms attributed to Epicurus. These texts, along with Diogenes Laërtius' Lives and Sayings of the Philosophers, which includes biographical details about Epicurus, provide the best understanding of his philosophy. Love is but an 'Ephemeral Embrace'. Life explodes into a vibrant party, a kaleidoscope of moments that dims as the sun dips below the horizon. The people we adore, the bonds we forge, all tinged with the bittersweet knowledge that nothing lasts forever. But it's this very impermanence that makes everything precious, urging us to savor the here and now. Imagine Epicurus nudging us and saying, "True pleasure isn't a fleeting high, it's the joy of sharing good times with the people you love." Even knowing things end, we can create a life brimming with love's connections. Love becomes an act of creation, weaving threads of shared joy into a tapestry of memories. Think of your heart as a garden. Love tells you to tend it with care, for it's the source of connection with others. In a world of constant change, love compels us to nurture our inner essence and share it with someone special. Love transcends impermanence by fostering a deep connection that enriches who we are at our core. Loss is as natural as breathing. But love says this: "Let life unfold, with all its happy moments and tearful goodbyes. Only then can you understand the profound beauty of impermanence." Love allows us to experience the full spectrum of life's emotions, embracing the present while accepting impermanence. It grants depth and meaning to our fleeting existence. Even knowing everything ends, love compels us to build a haven, a space where hearts connect. It's a testament to the enduring power of human connection in a world in flux. So let's love fiercely, vibrantly, because in the face of our impermanence, love erects a bridge to something that transcends the temporary.

The awareness of mortality casts a bittersweet shadow over the vibrancy of life and love. We exist in a state of impermanence, where beauty fades and connection dissolves. Yet, it is precisely this impermanence that imbues life with its preciousness and love with its urgency. In the face of oblivion, love becomes a defiant act, a bridge we build across the chasm of the ephemeral, a testament to the enduring power of connection in a fleeting existence. (*This emphasizes the existentialist concept of living in a finite world and the absurdist notion of creating meaning in the face of nothingness. It highlights love as a way to transcend the impermanence of life and forge a connection that defies the inevitable.*)

Similarly, where our goals and dreams come from will determine whether we feel great about pursuing them or not. Like everything in this world, there is nothing inherently good or bad, only our thinking makes it so. Goals, dreams, and ambitions are not good or bad, so it's not really an either-or situation, but more about where those goals are coming from. There are two sources of goals: goals created out of inspiration and goals created out of desperation. When goals are created out of desperation, we feel a large sense of scarcity and urgency. It feels heavy, like a burden, we may even feel daunted by the colossal task we've just committed ourselves to, imposter syndrome and self-doubt begin to manifest, and we always feel like we never have enough time for anything. We go about our life frantically, desperately searching for answers and ways that we can accomplish our goal faster, always looking externally, never feeling enough or that we can ever get enough. Worst of all, if we happen to accomplish our goal, within a few hours or days afterwards, all of those same feelings of lack begin to resurface. We begin not feeling content with what we have done, unable to savor our accomplishments and because what we did never feels like it’s enough, we feel that same way about ourselves. Not knowing what else to do, we look around for guidance externally to see what others are doing and see they're continuing to do the same thing. Thus, we go ahead and proceed to set another goal out of desperation in an attempt to escape all of the negative feelings gnawing away at our soul. When we dig a little deeper into these types of goals we set, they are all typically “means goals” and not “end goals”. In other words, the goals we set in this state of desperation are all a means to an end. There's always a reason we want to accomplish the goal and it's always for something else. For example, we want to create a multi-million-dollar business because we want financial freedom, or we want to quit our job so that we can escape the stress and anxiety that comes from it. We feel like we HAVE to do these things instead of WANT to. Goals created from desperation are typically "realistic" and created from analyzing our past and what we think to be "plausible" in the moment. It feels very confining and limiting. Although these types of goals and dreams may excite us in the moment, as soon as we begin to try to create it, we feel a lack, and we are desperate to bring the dream to life. Paradoxically, if we do end up achieving a goal created out of desperation, we end up feeling even more empty than we did before it. The next "logical" thing we tend to do is to set an even bigger goal out of even greater desperation to hopefully make us feel whole inside.

1. Create intimacy: You’ll get more trust—and capture the attention of your prospects—by establishing a personal connection. Your emails should read as if one person has written it to another: one to one. This can be achieved by: using a personal, or plain-text template; using “you” instead of “we”, or “I”; telling stories; and making good use of personalization. For an even greater effect, you can add subtle personalization throughout your copy. For example: “…this is what we’ve heard from other people in [ Tampa ]”. 2. Make users feel special: On top of personalization, you can create exclusivity: “This offer is only for our most engaged users” “…it’s for early adopters” Or appeal to vanity: “Our most successful users want to feel this way…” 3. Demonstrate that you understand their reality: You can create obvious qualifications everyone wants to have assigned to themselves, for example “…people who care about maximizing their return on investment”; or “…savvy marketers”. Illustrate product benefits and value with clear examples that relate to the unique situation of your users. 4. Create urgency: As Zapier did, you can also get creative with deadlines. Use coupons with limited-time offers to accentuate the fear of missing out (FOMO)17: “Offer only available until June 4th…” “Only a few people get this plan…” 5. Use clear actions: Use a CTA that clearly establishes the next steps. Repeat it throughout the email, coming at it from different angles. Use the P.S. to attract the eye and to reinforce the action you want users to take (when appropriate). Keep your emails simple and your messaging scannable. It’s important for users to be able to get the email at a glance. Short and sweet often outperforms long and complex emails. You want a near-instant reaction from your readers. Your email has to build up to the desired action. Use copy to overcome objections, and accentuate the desire to buy or engage. A good email has to: capture attention through the subject line, personalization, or a story; build reader interest by demonstrating either the benefit or the problem; build desire to act by creating information gaps, time constraints, or the fear of missing out; and drive action through a well-timed CTA, telling users exactly what you want them to do. These are really just the four steps of the AIDA model18 (Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action) applied to email copywriting. Don’t get intimidated by copywriting. Emails that are too polished often don’t work as well. Get started crafting your own email offers. We’ll get started working on subject lines in the next chapter.

The best entrepreneurs create environments of stressful urgency. Entrepreneurs know that start-ups rarely get anything done in a relaxed, take-your-time environment. For example, Steve Jobs, the cofounder of Apple, was notorious for pushing his team beyond its limits by setting seemingly unrealistic timelines. As a result, his company created products quicker than they had ever imagined was possible and thus gained a huge competitive advantage over rival companies like IBM.

Before this situation occurs organically, for training purposes let’s artificially create a scenario to teach them to release what’s in their mouth in favor of something better. Step 1: Give your puppy something other than food to have in their mouth. A chew toy or a tug is perfect. Step 2: Put a delicious treat in front of their nose and say Drop It. Don’t use a stern or angry tone of voice. Be very matter-of-fact with no sense of urgency. Step 3: When your puppy drops the toy, say Yes, and pick up the toy as you give them the treat.

Negotiating The only way you’ll be able to negotiate is if you have other term sheets in hand. That’s why it’s important to keep your process tight. You can negotiate with a top investor by saying something along the lines of “You’re my top pick, but I have other offers at ____. If you can match/beat that, I’ll go with you.” But remember to come back to two crucial principles: 1. Relationships trump metrics. You want to find, work with, and get support from investors who are there for the right reasons and who value what you’re trying to build. 2. Momentum is everything. The relationship building is the groundwork. But, you still have to create a compelling event or a “moment.” And when the process starts, you have to drive urgency.

Scarcity: We always want what we can’t have. Perceived scarcity generates demand and urgency. Deadlines and limited naming opportunities create scarcity.

The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: A human creature born abnormally, inhumanely sensitive. To them, a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death. Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create….By some strange unknown inward urgency, he is not really alive unless he is creating.

There are two sources of goals: goals created out of inspiration and goals created out of desperation. When goals are created out of desperation, we feel a large sense of scarcity and urgency. It feels heavy, like a burden, we may even feel daunted by the colossal task we've just committed ourselves to, imposter syndrome and self-doubt begin to manifest, and we always feel like we never have enough time for anything.

In this life, as you work for the glory of Jesus and the good of others, you should do so with an eye to his return. It will lead to earnestness and create an urgency in your life to make the most of all your days.

If your audience is overly complacent, begin with the complication to create a sense of urgency.

The thought that your time and your life will melt away should create a sense of urgency to do something of worth with it before it all melts away.

At any given time, history might offer up a trigger event that provokes widespread disquiet and sends people into the streets. But it takes dogged escalation on the part of activists to keep the issue at the fore of discussion, to create protest actions involving greater numbers of participants, and to repeatedly reinforce a sense of public urgency. Chance

The best entrepreneurs create environments of stressful urgency. Entrepreneurs know that start-ups rarely get anything

some of the most commonly taught sales ideas on topics such as prospecting, asking questions, presenting value, creating urgency, justifying cost, negotiating, and closing, all conflict with science. This is a serious concern, because science discloses reality. When salespeople sell against science they are inadvertently selling in ways that decrease their effectiveness.

Suppose you had seven credit cards in your purse or wallet and you lost one. Wouldn’t you leave the six and go search for the missing one until you found it? I lost a credit card recently and never once pulled out the one I hadn’t lost to obsess over it. I felt no urgency about my un-lost credit card. I didn’t call a single person to say that I still had my American Express Card. But I did start calling around to see if anyone had seen my lost MasterCard. When you lose something important, you obsess over it; you get preoccupied with it. It’s pretty much all you think about. Remember the last time you couldn’t find your phone?

Faithful churches, in other words, seek to grow deep and wide. Pursuing width without depth creates audiences instead of churches; but pursuing depth without width fails to take the urgency of the Great Commission seriously.

thousand CEOs, business owners, and highly successful entrepreneurs about their businesses and how they lead companies through good times and bad. One of the most important questions I ask them is “What’s the biggest worry keeping you awake at night?

successful entrepreneurs about their businesses and how they lead companies through good times and bad. One of the most important questions I ask them is “What’s the biggest worry keeping you awake at night?

awake at night?” The response is practically unanimous: Leaders worry about creating a sense of urgency in their organizations and operating quickly in an increasingly complex world. They want to create strong teams that are primed to handle any hurdle that comes their way and

Each of us gains a revolutionary consciousness at a different point in the process.  Very few of us ever look at the actual material conditions of this process.  We are perpetually distracted and misled by our idealism.  We measure how we see the world according to how we wish to see ourselves.  For white people, this measurement is especially far-fetched: our complicity in imperialist genocide is so staggering, we are inclined to set up the most elaborate screens (some constructed from smoke), and create the grandest illusions of how universally humane we wish ourselves to be.  The overwhelming majority of white people, feeling no sense of urgency about reaching a revolutionary consciousness, spend a lifetime with our heads in the clouds in order to distract us from the mountain of sweat, blood, tears and bones beneath our feet.

When Bindi, Robert, and I got home on the evening of Steve’s death, we encountered a strange scene that we ourselves had created. The plan had been that Steve would get back from his Ocean’s Deadlist film shoot before we got back from Tasmania. So we’d left the house with a funny surprise for him. We got large plush toys and arranged them in a grouping to look like the family. We sat one that represented me on the sofa, a teddy bear about her size for Bindi, and a plush orangutan for Robert. We dressed the smaller toys in the kids’ clothes, and the big doll in my clothes. I went to the zoo photographer and got close-up photographs of our faces that we taped onto the heads of the dolls. We posed them as if we were having dinner, and I wrote a note for Steve. “Surprise,” the note said. “We didn’t go to Tasmania! We are here waiting for you and we love you and miss you so much! We will see you soon. Love, Terri, Bindi, and Robert.” The surprise was meant for Steve when he returned and we weren’t there. Instead the dolls silently waited for us, our plush-toy doubles, ghostly reminders of a happier life. Wes, Joy, and Frank came into the house with me and the kids. We never entertained, we never had anyone over, and now suddenly our living room seemed full. Unaccustomed to company, Robert greeted each one at the door. “Take your shoes off before you come in,” he said seriously. I looked over at him. He was clearly bewildered but trying so hard to be a little man. We had to make arrangements to bring Steve home. I tried to keep things as private as possible. One of Steve’s former classmates at school ran the funeral home in Caloundra that would be handling the arrangements. He had known the Irwin family for years, and I recall thinking how hard this was going to be for him as well. Bindi approached me. “I want to say good-bye to Daddy,” she said. “You are welcome to, honey,” I said. “But you need to remember when Daddy said good-bye to his mother, that last image of her haunted him while he was awake and asleep for the rest of his life.” I suggested that perhaps Bindi would like to remember her daddy as she last saw him, standing on top of the truck next to that outback airstrip, waving good-bye with both arms and holding the note that she had given him. Bindi agreed, and I knew it was the right decision, a small step in the right direction. I knew the one thing that I had wanted to do all along was to get to Steve. I felt an urgency to continue on from the zoo and travel up to the Cape to be with him. But I knew what Steve would have said. His concern would have been getting the kids settled and in bed, not getting all tangled up in the media turmoil. Our guests decided on their own to get going and let us get on with our night. I gave the kids a bath and fixed them something to eat. I got Robert settled in bed and stayed with him until he fell asleep. Bindi looked worried. Usually I curled up with Robert in the evening, while Steve curled up with Bindi. “Don’t worry,” I said to her. “Robert’s already asleep. You can sleep in my bed with me.” Little Bindi soon dropped off to sleep, but I lay awake. It felt as though I had died and was starting over with a new life. I mentally reviewed my years as a child growing up in Oregon, as an adult running my own business, then meeting Steve, becoming his wife and the mother of our children. Now, at age forty-two, I was starting again.

On Booking.com or Amazon, we can add a room or an item to our cart and buy it later, while the metaverse creates a sense of urgency and scarcity.

I recently recommended to Lea Endres, CEO of NationBuilder, which builds software for community leaders, that she follow Senghor’s lead. NationBuilder was operating close to the red and Endres was frustrated because, despite her reminding everyone that cash collection was a priority, she couldn’t get her team to care enough about it. Our conversation went like this: Lea: I’m really worried about cash collections. We use this outsourced finance firm and they don’t care. We have a low cash balance and we got surprised last month. A couple more surprises and we’re in deep trouble. Ben: Is there a team on it? How much do you need to collect this month? Lea: Yes. And $1.1 million at least. Ben: If you have a crisis situation and you need the team to execute, meet with them every day and even twice a day if necessary. That will show them this is a top priority. At the beginning of each meeting you say, “Where’s my money?” They will start making excuses like “Boo Boo was supposed to call me and didn’t,” or “The system didn’t tell me the right thing.” Those excuses are the key, because that’s the knowledge you’re missing. Once you know that the excuse is that “Fred didn’t answer my email,” you can tell Fred to answer the damned email and also tell the person making the excuse that you expect way more persistence. The meetings will start out running long, but two weeks later they’ll be short, because when you say, “Where’s my money?” they are going to want to say, “Right here, Lea!” Two weeks later: Lea: You wouldn’t believe some of the excuses. One was that we have an auto email that is one sentence long that tells customers they are late—but it doesn’t tell them what to do! I’m like, “Well, then, let’s fix the damned email!” We’re making progress and they know I want my money. End of quarter: Lea: We collected $1.6 million in September! And the team loves hearing me say “Where’s my money?!?!” To change a culture, you can’t just give lip service to what you want. Your people must feel the urgency of it.

The tendency to focus on the positive comes long before the customer actually makes a purchase decision. Early in the sales process, for example, when sellers are trying to get to higher levels within the account, a salesperson might say, “Mr. Customer, I would like to get a few minutes with your CFO to show him how cost-effective our products are relative to increasing productivity and maximizing the return on your investment.” Sounds like a mini elevator pitch, doesn’t it? Here’s the reverse. “Mr. Customer, would it make sense to spend a few minutes and bring your CFO up to speed, so he doesn’t have a knee-jerk reaction and torpedo the idea?” In preparation for QBS training events, I always ask for a conference call to customize the material for the intended audience. But I don’t ask for a manager’s time so I can “understand their business and deliver better training.” Although these are positive benefits, they don’t necessarily create a sense of urgency. Therefore, I am more inclined to ask a vice president of sales for time on their calendar, “so we don’t completely miss the boat at the upcoming training event.” Both of these questions refer to benefits that would come from strategizing in advance. But how you ask does make a difference.

Picture yourself as the enemy. People often fail to generate new ideas due to a lack of urgency. You can create urgency by implementing the “kill the company” exercise from Lisa Bodell, CEO of futurethink.

Old Testament poetry and especially Old Testament wisdom evoke a world charged with God’s grandeur as the Creator and redeemer. In the process of evoking this world, Old Testament wisdom invites, cajoles and even commands us to live our lives consciously in this world. Biblical poetry is never poetry for poetry’s sake. Yet it is still aesthetic and to be savored as such. Its creativity with words, sounds and images gives it its evocative and memorable powers. All of these wisdom books naturally became a part of the traditions in the home, the community and at festival gatherings. Each book thus generated a formative presence in the cultural consciousness of God’s people. In sum, we simply will not hear God’s address through Old Testament wisdom if we fail to attend closely to its poetic character. Here is a brief look at each of the books studied in the following chapters. Proverbs. Proverbs 1–9 is a highly symbolic collection of sayings from two very different sources: Woman Wisdom and the parents of a maturing son. The son is a realistic but fictional character entering the actual world adults encounter day to day. Woman Wisdom, however, is a fictional and cosmic character who, as wisdom personified, beckons the son to desire her ways and paths. This may be a complex way of getting at what’s going on in all of the imagery, but it alerts us to the great power of biblical art. The mysterious woman character creates the symbolic and allusive points of view introduced above. The point is not for the young man to believe that this woman is a human; rather, he is drawn to make the theological and experiential connections between God’s created purpose and the world he will soon enter as an adult. The woman’s cosmic, feminine character attaches urgency and emotion to the simple actions of life in this world, for they will be played out before God within the deep, mysterious, cosmic order he has formed.

Create a Sense of Urgency.

Found business pain creates opportunity. Quantified business pain drives higher price points. Implicated business pain drives urgency. Business pain and urgency finds business Champions. Business champions get you to the Economic Buyer. The Economic Buyer has access to major funds. You sell big deals based on value. The opposite is also true: No discovered pain means a small or no opportunity. No quantified business pain means no cost justification. No implicated business pain means no urgency to buy. No business Champion means no access to the Economic Buyer. No access to the Economic Buyer means no access to major funds. No access to major funds means either selling small deals based on product features or selling no deals.

Here’s what I want to escape. To me, one of the most troubling ways social media has been used in recent years is to foment waves of hysteria and fear, both by news media and by users themselves. Whipped into a permanent state of frenzy, people create and subject themselves to news cycles, complaining of anxiety at the same time that they check back ever more diligently. The logic of advertising and clicks dictates the media experience, which is exploitative by design. Media companies trying to keep up with each other create a kind of “arms race” of urgency that abuses our attention and leaves us no time to think.

Dr Ellen Hendriksen explains that one of the effects of smartphones, and push notifications in particular, is to create a (false) sense of alarm and urgency, a constant anticipation that an alert could go off at any moment, with no predictability. A second, linked, phenomenon is that technology feeds anxiety by enabling us not to talk to one another – instead of asking for directions we can pull up a map, for example – and so erodes our tolerance for human interaction, and unpredictability, and prevents us from building social ease.

The downside of any established market is the friction created when new ways of doing things challenge the comforting traditions that may stretch back for decades. Older, more conservative professionals in any field may fear that an upstart technology will threaten their job security and livelihoods. But more forward‐looking (and often younger) professionals get excited by breakthrough innovation and can't wait to try it out. That's what drives the distinction between early adopters and late adopters, explained so brilliantly in Geoffrey Moore's landmark book, Crossing the Chasm. If you try to sell to both groups the same way, you are very likely to fail.

What does that mean? For starters, never go into a board meeting, tee up a topic, and ask them what they think. Instead, prep carefully with your team in advance, and then go in and tell them what you think. If they then respond with questions or concerns, that's fine. You have started the meeting by filling a vacuum, instead of creating one. That will make it much harder for them to dominate the discussion.

stop writing, perhaps I’m squandering the biggest opportunity I have, created through much luck, to have a lasting impact on the greatest number of people. This feeling of urgency was multiplied 100-fold in the 2 months preceding the decision, as several close friends died in accidents no one saw coming. Life is short. Put another way: A long life is far from guaranteed. Nearly everyone dies before they’re ready. I was tired of being interchangeable, no matter how lucrative the game. Even if I end up wrong about the writing, I’d curse myself if I didn’t give it a shot. Are you squandering your unique abilities? Or the chance to find them in the first place?

Follow-Up Framework Opt-In: Offer a desirable bribe (also called a “hook” or “lead magnet”) in exchange for an email address (at a minimum). Hook Delivery: Deliver what was promised for the prospect opting in. Digital delivery can range from digital reports to emails to audio or video content. The benefit of digital delivery is that you can provide immediate gratification to your prospect and it’s free to send. Sellucation: Sellucation is selling through education. Each Follow-Up installment is an opportunity to address common questions, handle objections, and amplify the problem while presenting your solution. It’s education with the implicit intent of driving sales. Social Proof: Reiterating the social proof you presented in the Engage & Educate phase with testimonials, reviews, awards, partner logos, and case studies will enhance your credibility and build trust. Promotions: Offering free consultations, discounts, and other incentives can motivate your prospect to take action. Communicating an expiration associated with the promotion can create a sense of urgency that further persuades prospects to move forward.

The gain frame around synergies lacks a sense of urgency and may lead the potential purchaser to think that they can do this deal sometime in the future. Instead, you want to use loss framing by highlighting the risks in the potential acquirer's business that will be mitigated by owning your company. Building your BATNA by generating other interested purchasers will also help you to create a strong loss frame because you can highlight the competitors' interest in acquiring your company and the risk to the potential acquirer if their competitor owns your business.

Trends create a sense of certainty and urgency, and trading ranges leave traders feeling confused about where the market will go next.

untapped need. Give employees three weeks to develop proposals, and then have them evaluate one another’s ideas, advancing the most original submissions to the next round. The winners receive a budget, a team, and the relevant mentoring and sponsorship to make their ideas a reality. 2. Picture yourself as the enemy. People often fail to generate new ideas due to a lack of urgency. You can create urgency by implementing the “kill the company” exercise from Lisa Bodell, CEO of futurethink. Gather a group together and invite them to spend an hour brainstorming about how to put the organization out of business—or decimate