The Power of Moments: Why Certain Moments Have Extraordinary Impact

by Chip Heath

we tend to remember flagship moments: the peaks, the pits, and the transitions.

What the Magic Castle has figured out is that, to please customers, you need not obsess over every detail. Customers will forgive small swimming pools and underwhelming room décor, as long as some moments are magical.

ELEVATION: Defining moments rise above the everyday. They provoke not just transient happiness, like laughing at a friend’s joke, but memorable delight. (You pick up the red phone and someone says, “Popsicle Hotline, we’ll be right out.”) To construct elevated moments, we must boost sensory pleasures—the Popsicles must be delivered poolside on a silver tray, of course—and, if appropriate, add an element of surprise.

INSIGHT: Defining moments rewire our understanding of ourselves or the world.

PRIDE: Defining moments capture us at our best—moments of achievement, moments of courage.

CONNECTION:

These moments are strengthened because we share them with others.

Defining moments often spark positive emotion—we’ll

If you Elevate the Positives (Plan B), you’ll earn about 9 times more revenue than if you Eliminate the Negatives (Plan A).

To elevate a moment, do three things: First, boost sensory appeal. Second, raise the stakes. Third, break the script.

Beware the soul-sucking force of “reasonableness.”

The heart of change, after all, is the need to break the script.

“Variety is the spice of life.” But notice that it does not say, “Variety is the entrée of life.” Nobody dines on pepper and oregano. A little novelty can go a long way. Learn to recognize your own scripts. Play with them, poke at them, disrupt them. Not all the time—just enough to keep those brown shoes looking fresh.

This three-part recipe—a (1) clear insight (2) compressed in time and (3) discovered by the audience itself—provides a blueprint for us when we want people to confront uncomfortable truths.

You can’t appreciate the solution until you appreciate the problem.

So when we talk about “tripping over the truth,” we mean the truth about a problem or harm. That’s what sparks sudden insight.

High standards + assurance is a powerful formula, but ultimately it’s just a statement of expectations. What great mentors do is add two more elements: direction and support. I have high expectations for you and I know you can meet them. So try this new challenge and if you fail, I’ll help you recover. That’s mentorship in two sentences.

His question, “What did you guys fail at this week?”

The promise of stretching is not success, it’s learning. It’s self-insight.

It’s the promise of gleaning the answers to some of the most important and vexing questions of our lives: What do we want? What can we do? Who can we be? What can we endure?

MOMENTS OF INSIGHT THE WHIRLWIND REVIEW 1. Moments of insight deliver realizations and transformations. 2. They need not be serendipitous. To deliver moments of insight for others, we can lead them to “trip over the truth,” which means sparking a realization that packs an emotional wallop. • Kamal Kar’s CLTS causes communities to trip over the truth of open defecation’s harms. 3. Tripping over the truth involves (1) a clear insight (2) compressed in time and (3) discovered by the audience itself. • In the “Dream Exercise,” professors discover they’re spending no time in class on their most important goals. 4. To produce moments of self-insight, we need to stretch: placing ourselves in new situations that expose us to the risk of failure. • Lea Chadwell took a risk by opening a bakery. Overwhelmed, she closed it, and in the process learned more about her capabilities and her values. 5. Mentors can help us stretch further than we thought we could, and in the process they can spark defining moments. • The psychiatry resident Michael Dinneen had a mentor who pushed him to continue working through the night: “He knew I had it in me to make it through that night when I didn’t know that myself.” 6. The formula for mentorship that leads to self-insight: High standards + assurance + direction + support. • Six Sigma expert Ranjani Sreenivasan was pushed by her mentor to develop skills in company operations. “I learned that I’m capable of more than I thought,” she said. 7. Expecting ...

Moments of elevation lift us above the everyday. Moments of insight spark discoveries about our world and ourselves. And moments of pride capture us at our best—showing courage, earning recognition, conquering challenges.

What’s inherently motivating?

What would be worth celebrating that might only take a few weeks or months of work?

What’s a hidden accomplishment that is worth surfacin...

Remote contact is perfectly suitable for day-to-day communication and collaboration. But a big moment needs to be shared in person. (No one dials in to a wedding or graduation, after all.) The presence of others turns abstract ideas into social reality.

Purpose trumps passion. Graduation speakers take note: The best advice is not “Pursue your passion!” It’s “Pursue your purpose!” (Even better, try to combine both.)

Passion is individualistic. It can energize us but also isolate us, because my passion isn’t yours. By contrast, purpose is something people can share. It can knit groups together.

She believes purpose isn’t discovered, it’s cultivated.

Connecting to meaning matters.

Sometimes it’s useful to keep asking, “Why?” Why do you do what you do? It might take several “Whys” to reach the meaning.