The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact

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Readers discover how brief experiences can change lives, such as the experiment in which two strangers meet in a room, and forty-five minutes later, they leave as best friends. (What happens in that time?) Or the tale of the world’s youngest female billionaire, who credits her resilience to something her father asked the family at the dinner table. (What was that simple question?)

Number-heavy organizational goals are fine as tools of accountability, but smart leaders surface more motivational milestones en route to the target.To produce moments of self-insight, we need to stretch: placing ourselves in new situations that expose us to the risk of failure. According to the psychologist Harry Reis, what deepens individual relationships is “responsiveness”: mutual understanding, validation, and caring. Across the studies, which spanned 46 years, only one factor was cited every time as among the top two motivators: “full appreciation of work done.” Moments of elevation are experiences that rise above the routine. They make us feel engaged, joyful, amazed, motivated. Chapter 5: Trip Over the Truth You can’t appreciate the solution until you appreciate the problem. So when Chip and Dan write about “tripping over the truth,” they mean the truth about a problem or harm. That’s what sparks sudden insight. Chapter 6: Stretch for Insight

In their research, Chip & Dan Heath have found that defining moments are created from one or more of the following four elements: When creating a memorable customer experience, you first need to fill the pits. That, in turn, frees you up to focus on the second stage: creating the moments that will make the experience “occasionally remarkable.” What milestones do is compel us to make that push, because (a) they’re within our grasp, and (b) we’ve chosen them precisely because they’re worth reaching for. In studies, star employees tended to have a strong sense of meaning attached to their work. It’s the difference between Purpose and Passion. If people have high passion but low purpose, they will often be poor performers. But if they have high purpose and low passion, they can still be strong performers. Of course, high purpose and high passion = best results.The other difference between “breaking the script” and generic surprise is that the former forces us to think about the script. What makes a relationship strong? When you perceive that your partners are responsive to you. In three ways: (1) Understanding: My partner knows how I see myself and what is important to me. (2) Validation: My partner respects who I am and what I want. (3) Caring: My partner takes active and supportive steps in helping me meet my needs. Secondly, the authors note early on, “Our lives are measured in moments, and defining moments are the ones that endure in our memories.” If you accept that premise then this is the book for you. I found the chapter on creating elevating moments especially interesting. The authors provide a recipe on creating such a moment: I will say that it felt very business-oriented; there were examples and sections dedicated to explaining how managers and corporations can/have used defining moments to increase employee and customer satisfaction, which resulted in increased profit. However the structure of a defining moment is the same in your personal life, and there are many resources referenced in the text that I’m planning to follow up on with not just my spouse, but people I’m interested in getting closer to as well.