The False Sense of Urgency and How to #WINtheNOW

Preface

On March 17, 2020, I furloughed my dental team. I sent them home with no clue when I could welcome them back. We closed up shop to everything except emergencies. It was surreal. It was agonizing. It was stressful. It created tremendous fear and uncertainty. I hated it. I cried. I felt sorry for myself. I lamented the loss of life as we had known it.

But did I really? A breakneck pace of life for the last eighteen years of dental practice, overloaded and compounded by running the business, keeping track of eighteen employees, and being involved in several extracurricular activities. And by extracurricular activities, I mean triathlon to Ironman, climbing Kilimanjaro, dental missions to Haiti and Guatemala, riding my bike across Iowa in a day three times as a fundraiser (because two times isn’t enough), the Leadville 100 MTB race. And, oh, by the way, trying to be a father, husband, friend, and my own best version.

In the midst of the pause I was faced with, this break from business as usual, a spark was lit that there might be something more to this life than going from stress to stress. And the idea to write was born. Little did I know what I was in for in the way of self-awareness and self-discovery. And in a key conversation, the idea for The False Sense of Urgency was born.

I think the false sense of urgency is a very real thing, and it is wreaking havoc on our hearts and our minds and in many cases crushing our very souls. It is that constant nagging of “what’s next,” of “nothing is good enough.” Of “I should be doing more.” And it is exaggerated and exacerbated by our phones and constant need to be plugged in and in the know. It is made worse by comparison culture and feelings and rumblings that the grass may be greener elsewhere.

The false sense takes and takes. It stokes our worry, fear, stress, and anxiety, leaving us a shell of our best selves, with a constant feeling of needing to do something and at the same time paralyzed by inactivity and analysis paralysis. It is relentless and it is real, but it does not have to be our only reality.

We can take back some ground in this fight! Join me as we learn about the false sense of urgency, share a few stories here and there, and learn in the end how to #WINtheNOW and take back that lost ground and take back our lives. We get one shot at this life, so let’s live it to the fullest!