One of the most difficult tasks a psychologist takes on is getting a client to slow down. For many of my patients, once they’ve been worked up into a frenzy, the last thing they want to do is take an extra moment to reflect on their situation. Their sense of urgency presses them forward, telling them there’s no time. They have to act now.
Over time, we can start to misconstrue this feeling as necessary to move us to action. But urgency born from the mindset of emergency and true motivation aren’t the same thing.
Vision pulls us forward: The case of Sarah
My client Sarah came to me deeply frustrated. She was facing what she perceived as a crisis of motivation from the team she led. Her company had finally landed fresh funding after a long and arduous fundraising period, and she felt that her colleagues had all lost their sense of urgency.
“We don’t have time to mess around,” Sarah told me, sitting forward in her chair.
I then asked her a question, “Would you rather have a sense of urgency or passionate engagement from your team right now?”
At first, she wasn’t sure what the difference was.
So, I asked Sarah to think about times she had experienced urgency. She described moving quickly, working hard, making difficult trade-offs, and feeling the activation of the fight-or-flight response.
Then I asked Sarah to remember times when she had experienced passionate engagement. This time, she described excitement and enthusiasm. People pulling together, co-creating, enjoying the hard work, and genuinely caring about what they were trying to accomplish.
Suddenly, Sarah looked at me, a new resolve in her eyes. “I guess I really want passionate engagement,” she said, rather than “a bunch of people running around frantically without a shared vision or focus.”
Urgency has its place. But most meaningful goals require us to sustain effort over time. To do that, it helps to have something pulling us forward—a future calling us and asking to be born.
Of course, this principle extends far beyond the workplace. Think about any area of your life where you feel stuck or dissatisfied. If your home has become overwhelmingly cluttered, you could spend a frantic weekend trying to clean every corner, or you could find inspiration by first picturing a calm, organized, and welcoming space.
If you’re looking for a romantic partner, instead of focusing solely on how many dates you can go on, imagine the relationship you hope to create. How do you feel around this person? How do you spend your time together?
Picture this
Our vision of the way the world could be—one year, one month, or even one minute from now—is what underlies every single action we ever take. For many of my clients, developing a strong sense of vision not only offers motivation itself, but also imbues them with stamina, confidence, and meaning.
In our session, I asked Sarah to close her eyes and imagine her company one, three, and five years from now. Then I asked her to picture herself five years in the future, standing in front of her employees and announcing everything they had accomplished. As she did, she reported to me that there was “a lot of energy flowing like electricity through my body.”
Sarah later led her team through a similar exercise. Together, they imagined millions of people being impacted by their work. Afterwards, the team left with an idea not just of what they did, but why.
Research reveals: How visualization works
Research on mental imagery suggests that imagining an experience can activate some of the same neural systems involved in actually perceiving or performing it.[i] That’s one reason visualization has long been incorporated into athletic training. A gymnast might mentally rehearse a routine, or a golfer picture the trajectory of a ball before taking a swing.
A particularly interesting study followed university students and found that vividness of the future self positively predicted subsequent goal achievement.[ii] According to the data, simply feeling positively about one’s future self did not show the same relationship, suggesting that being able to picture the future vividly may matter.
Motivation Essential Reads
In another study, researchers found that envisioning the outcomes of your goals can increase motivation to pursue them, in part because the vision generates positive emotions.[iii] It would seem that imagining a world we genuinely want gives us both a destination and the fuel to reach it.
Your turn: What pulls and what pushes you?
The next time you feel a sense of urgency pushing you forward, ask yourself what’s on the other side of it. What are you actually trying to create? What is it that you would love to see?
Take a moment to picture yourself after the crisis has passed or the goal has been reached. Where are you? What has changed? Who is there with you? What does success look and feel like? Try to make that mental image as vivid and specific as possible.
Remember: our most meaningful goals often take much more than just short bursts of energy. We need to be putting in energy long after adrenaline and anxiety have worn off.
Urgency can spring us into action, but vision sustains us, making the journey forward more meaningful and enjoyable.
