Top Quotes on Having a Sense of Urgency

In Quotes 3 Mins Read

Dream as if you‘ll live forever. Live as if you‘ll die today. – James Dean

What are you going to do with your ONE precious life? This life is not a drill; it could end any time without warning. We hear it all the time, “Life is Short,” but we don’t live our lives like it could end anytime sooner or later we are all going to DIE. Most of us think we have time, and we live in “Someday Isles.” We say ‘Someday I’ll start my blog, ‘Someday I’ll start the business, Someday I’ll do this and do that but the only time we have is NOW.

We all realize the brevity of life differently; it may be through the death of a parent or a sibling, the diagnosis of a terminal illness or a life-shattering event. In Life, You are either heading to a storm, going through a storm, or heading to a storm. Tupac died as 25, John Lenon at 40, Kobe Bryant at 41 and Micheal Jackson at 50, you and I do not know how long or short our life is going to be hence the need for a sense of urgency.

Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, and today is a gift––that is why it is called the present.

Do your best, add value to people while you are here, and have a sense of urgency as your life could end anytime. Follow your Bliss, dare to live your highest life possible, Dream, Live, and Love. As clergyman, Newman, John Henry once quipped, “Fear not that thy life shall come to an end, but rather fear that it shall never have a beginning.”

Here are some great quotes on having a sense of urgency:

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The Sunk Cost Fallacy

In Management 5 Mins Read

Recently I enrolled in a Bootcamp, which I had thought would help me achieve one of my career goals. Few weeks into the program and after I had paid a large sum of money, which was non-refundable, I realized It was not going to help achieve the career goal that I had intended and coupled with my hectic work schedule. It was not easy pulling the plug on the program, even though I had invested a large chunk of money, but I had to for the sake of my sanity & save money, time, and energy.

In retrospect, it was not a wrong move to leave the program as I was able to use that time for some other activities such as writing some IT certifications. I had to think of the trade-off I would be making vis a vis my career goals.

The Sunk Cost Fallacy is the tendency to continue to sink money, time, or effort into an activity/project we know is not going to give us our expected result. We continue these resources imply because we have already incurred a cost (sunk), which cannot be recouped. We place more value on the project based on how much we have already invested rather than the real present value.

The sunk cost is very pervasive in every area of our lives as we continue to spend money, time and effort in abusive relationships, loss generating business, viewing boring movies or sports games, nonproductive dating/marriage, or even schooling and career choice. There are lots of examples of the sunk cost in the business world such as Concorde, Google Glass, Microsoft Zune among others.

Here are some examples of the sunk cost fallacy:

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Book Summary: The Courage to Be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi & Fumitake Koga

In Book Summaries 9 Mins Read

All you can do with regard to your own life is choose the best path that you believe in. On the other hand, what kind of judgment do other people pass on that choice? That is the task of other people, and is not a matter you can do anything about

Print | eBook (kindle) | Audiobook

The Courage to Be Disliked follows a conversation between a young man and a philosopher as they discuss the tenets of Alfred Adler’s theories. Alder, a lesser-known twentieth-century psychologist whose work stands up to Freud and Jung, believes in a liberating approach to happiness in which each human being has the power and potential to live a happy and fulfilled life without worry about the past or future.

Their dialogue spans five nights, and the reader is invited to journey alongside the youth as he grapples with, fights against, and is ultimately moved by the profundity of Alder’s wisdom.

The Courage to be Disliked is inspired by Socratic dialogue, a literary genre derived from Plato’s dialogues in which Socrates is a main character who, through conversation, seeks to answer questions on the meaning of life.

When you’re 18, you worry about what everybody is thinking about you.
When you’re 40, you don’t give a darn what anybody thinks of you.
When you’re 60, you realize that nobody has been thinking about you at all!

Here are my favourite takeaways from reading “The Courage to Be Disliked: The Japanese Phenomenon That Shows You How to Change Your Life and Achieve Real Happiness“. Some great insights such as your past does not determine your future, Happiness is a choice, how we fabricate anger, a competitive mindset can affect your mental health and the courage to be disliked leads to long-lasting happiness.

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The Pygmalion Effect: The Power of Positive Expectation

In Personal Development 6 Mins Read

Treat a man as he is and he will remain as he is. Treat a man as he can and should be and he will become as he can and should be. – Goethe

The Pygmalion Effect or The Expectancy Theory is a phenomenon whereby others’ expectations of a target person affect the target person’s performance.

The effect is named after the Greek myth of Pygmalion, a sculptor who fell in love with a statue of a woman he had carved & fell in love with it. Unable to love a human, Pygmalion appealed to Aphrodite (the goddess of love), to bring it to life. Aphrodite granted his prayers.

Alternatively called the Rosenthal effect, named after psychologist Robert Rosenthal. And Lenore Jacobson, their research concluded that high expectations lead to better performance and low expectations lead to worse, both effects resulting to a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The Pygmalion Effect is a phenomenon whereby higher expectations lead to higher performance. For example, a manager’s higher expectation on work performance affects the employee’s input, which in turn leads to better job satisfaction and fulfillment while a manager’s low expectations on work performance jeopardize the employee’s output, which in turn leads to low morale & dissatisfaction.

When we expect certain behaviors of others, we are likely to act in ways that make the expected behavior more likely to occur. (Rosenthal and Babad, 1985)

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Book Summary: Rising Strong by Brené Brown.

In Book Summaries 7 Mins Read

We can not rise strong when we are on the run.

In Rising Strong, Brené Brown, shares great insights on how acceptance of our struggles make us more whole in the long run than hiding them. The “Rising Strong” process requires courage, reckoning with our emotions, rumbling with our stories, and living the process, which is revolution and leads to wholeheartedness in our lives.

Walking into our stories of hurt can feel dangerous. But the process of regaining our footing in the midst of struggle is where our courage is tested and our values are forged. Our stories of struggle can be big ones, like the loss of a job or the end of a relationship, or smaller ones, like a conflict with a friend or colleague. Regardless of magnitude or circumstance, the rising strong process is the same: We reckon with our emotions and get curious about what we’re feeling; we rumble with our stories until we get to a place of truth; and we live this process, every day, until it becomes a practice and creates nothing short of a revolution in our lives. Rising strong after a fall is how we cultivate wholeheartedness.

Here are my favourite take aways from reading Rising Strong by Brené Brown:

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Top 30 Quotes on Patience

In Quotes 4 Mins Read

Two things define you: your patience when you have nothing and your attitude when you have everything. When executing a project or living through the gig called life,…