The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact

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Boost sensory appeal - make it look and feel different: wear different clothes, have music, present something with white gloves. This is the great trap of life: One day rolls into the next, and a year goes by, and we still haven’t had that conversation we always meant to have. Still haven’t created that peak moment for our students. Still haven’t seen the northern lights. We walk a flatland that could have been a mountain range. It’s not easy to snap out of this tendency. It took a terminal illness for Gene O’Kelly to do it.” Defining moments are social: weddings, graduations, baptisms, vacations, work triumphs, bar and bat mitzvahs, speeches, sporting events. These moments are strengthened because we share them with others. First I should mention that I came into this book with the intention of learning how to make my partner’s upcoming birthday vacation as incredible as possible. We recently watched an episode of “The World According to Jeff Goldblum” where a neurologist explained that life itself feels longer when you have significant moments, so this book felt like a great place to expand on creating those moments. 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.

The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary

Which raises two questions that are foundational to the book: 1. Can you create defining moments? and 2. Do they really matter? The premise of the book is a resounding “yes” to both.

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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. People’s most memorable experiences are clustered in their teens and twenties. Apparently, the reason why time seems to accelerate as we get older is because we are living a life that’s more routine and less novel. When you are doing something surprising, novel, scary, memorable, you find that time slows down. (Probably why vacation time seems slower than work time.) So make sure that you keep adding moments of surprise and doing things differently on a regular (or irregular!) basis to spice up life and slow time down. The most memorable periods of our lives are when we break the script. This book explores ways to make more memorable moments. It suggests that if we pay attention and work creatively, we have the power to turn ordinary occasions into extraordinary ones. It begins by outlining the elements of a “defining moment” with the following characteristics which happen to spell the mnemonic, "EPIC". • Elevate: Create moments that rise above the everyday.

The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary

I also question whether the WOW factor of defining moments is truly transformative. The moment is memorable, but is it the moment or the thing it represents—recognition, connection, trust—that is transformative? And, again, the process the author’s define, which I won’t articulate here here because they deserve the opportunity to lay it out in their own context, is built around some of these fundamentals. My point, again, is one of emphasis and the hierarchy of relative importance. I found quite simple, yet, powerful suggestions on how to add meaning to your life, how to celebrate, and even more importantly, create moments in your life. Chip Heath is the professor of Organizational Behavior in the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University.Knowing what our mind recalls suggests a strategy—we focus on creating a few memorable highlights. Well, just how do we go about making great moments for ourselves? The authors have boiled it down to 4 key things. We can actually synthesize great experiences if we include one or more of these aspects:

The Power of Moments Quotes by Chip Heath - Goodreads The Power of Moments Quotes by Chip Heath - Goodreads

I found THE POWER OF MOMENTS to be a fun read, with lots of practical ideas. I enjoyed the anecdotes that illustrate the principles. Don’t miss the story of how the Ritz Carlton took photos of the forgotten toy “vacationing” around the hotel. Each chapter concludes with a summary called the “Whirlwind review.” I found this summary to be a good recap of the points in each chapter. In THE POWER OF MOMENTS, Chip and Dan Heath suggest an intriguing possibility: We can actually create special moments—we don’t just have to wait for them to happen to us. Instead, “We can be the author of them.” Connection: Forge transformational alliances among people.Through the use of storytelling and science the book then proceeds to illustrate ways of instilling these elements into moments, both at the personal level and within the business environment. Break the script - defying people’s expectations of how an experience will unfold. But if you are doing this with people who experience one of your services/products regularly, need to introduce a bit of randomness. It’s strategic surprise. The four noted elements defined in the book: Moments of Elevation, Moments of Insight, Moments of Pride, Moments of Connection-- were fully explained and how these were applied in this breakthrough ideology. It was interesting to note the ways people remember certain life experiences and forget others. The defining moments of our lives influence us in a multitude of ways and impact our understanding of the people, culture and natural world around us. Every culture has their own special and higher moments: celebrations and parties of all kinds, religious customs/rituals, and political civic events, etc. Research supported that with the combination of negative and positive information “Bad was stronger than Good” People tend to remember and obsess over negative experience/outcomes over more positive and happier times. One example was sport fans remembering losses over wins.As the other Heath books, the structure is straight-forward. It dissects these moments into three broad categories: (1) Elevation of an experience where you build peaks, or break the script, (2) Insight, where you allow people to trip over the truth or help them stretch to gain knowledge, (3) Pride, by recognizing others and setting up work through small milestones that can be celebrated, (4) Connection by deepening ties through experience and developing a shared meaning with a group. Connection. A fascinating study introduced in this chapter looked at what’s more important, passion or purpose. Passion is individual, purpose is shared by a team. People with high passion, high purpose, perform in the 80th percentile. People with high passion, low purpose, perform in the 20th. People with low passion, high purpose perform in the 64th percentile. If you lead a team of people, this should make you stop and think. Are you leverage the massive leverage a clear purpose has? If you ask on your team what the purpose of their work is, do they all know? Have you ever seen people with high purpose, but low passion, have output (I have)? When a story was read for life-guards about the importance of their job, they signed up for 45% more volunteer hours than when told a story about how the skills they were learning would help them in their career.

The Power Of Moments - Heath Brothers Heath Brothers The Power Of Moments - Heath Brothers Heath Brothers

The emphasis is on creating positive experiences, but of course memorable moments can also be "pits" in contrast to the hoped for "peaks." One example described in the book was a program used in some places by John Deere that provides extra attention to making the first day for new employees extra special—letting them know that they are valued and welcomed. That reminded me of an instance in my own employment life when I showed up for work on the first day of employment at a consulting firm. When showed to my new office I found there to be no chair behind the desk. That provided me an excuse to meet other employees while scrounging for a chair, and consequently I remember that first day better than any other of my first days. It was a memorable experience, but still that's probably not the best way to treat a new employee. If you’re struggling to make a transition, create a defining moment that draws a dividing line between Old You and New You.”This book features captivating stories of people who have created standout moments: The owners who transformed an utterly mediocre hotel into one of the best-loved properties in Los Angeles by conjuring moments of magic for guests. Relief workers who beat a deadly health practice in one village by causing the locals to trip over the truth. The scrappy team that turned around one of the worst elementary schools in the country by embracing an intervention that lasts less than an hour." Personally, I do not. At least not the first part. I believe our lives are measured in the quality of our relationships, including the connection we establish to the world around us. (To be fair, connection is part of their formula, but its purpose is to create more defining moments, which is not how I use the term here.) This book made me question choices in my life. Do I take enough risks? What transformation would I need to make for risks to seem less scary? Are big opportunities really just chance?