The Power of Moments Quotes

“Transitions should be marked, milestones commemorated, and pits filled. That’s the essence of thinking in moments.”
― Chip Heath, The Power of Moments: Why Certain Moments Have Extraordinary Impact

“There’s nine times more to gain by elevating positive customers than by eliminating negative ones.”
― Chip Heath, The Power of Moments: Why Certain Moments Have Extraordinary Impact

“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.”
― Chip Heath, The Power of Moments: Why Certain Moments Have Extraordinary Impact

“Regrets of the Dying.” She shared the five most common regrets of the people she had come to know: 1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me. (“Most people had not honoured even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made.”) 2. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard. 3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings. (“Many people suppressed their feelings in order to keep peace with others.”) 4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends. 5. I wish that I had let myself be happier. (“Many did not realize until the end that happiness is a choice. They had stayed stuck in old patterns and habits.”)”
― Chip Heath, The Power of Moments: Why Certain Moments Have Extraordinary Impact

“But for an individual human being, moments are the thing. Moments are what we remember and what we cherish. Certainly we might celebrate achieving a goal, such as completing a marathon or landing a significant client—but the achievement is embedded in a moment. Every culture has its prescribed set of big moments: birthdays and weddings and graduations, of course, but also holiday celebrations and funeral rites and political traditions. They seem “natural” to us. But notice that every last one of them was invented, dreamed up by anonymous authors who wanted to give shape to time. This is what we mean by “thinking in moments”: to recognize where the prose of life needs punctuation.”
― Chip Heath, The Power of Moments: Why Certain Moments Have Extraordinary Impact

“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear—not absence of fear.”
― Chip Heath, The Power of Moments: Why Certain Moments Have Extraordinary Impact

“What did you guys fail at this week?” “If we had nothing to tell him, he’d be disappointed,” Blakely said.”
― Chip Heath, The Power of Moments: Why Certain Moments Have Extraordinary Impact

“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.”
― Chip Heath, The Power of Moments: Why Certain Moments Have Extraordinary Impact

“The “occasionally remarkable” moments shouldn’t be left to chance! They should be planned for, invested in.”
― Chip Heath, The Power of Moments: Why Certain Moments Have Extraordinary Impact

“If you’re struggling to make a transition, create a defining moment that draws a dividing line between Old You and New You.”
― Chip Heath, The Power of Moments: Why Certain Moments Have Extraordinary Impact

“Our lives are measured in moments, and defining moments are the ones that endure in our memories.”
― Chip Heath, The Power of Moments: Why Certain Moments Have Extraordinary Impact

“In life, we can work so hard to get the kinks out that we forget to put the peaks in.”
― Chip Heath, The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact

“Responsiveness encompasses three things: Understanding: My partner knows how I see myself and what is important to me. Validation: My partner respects who I am and what I want. Caring: My partner takes active and supportive steps in helping me meet”
― Chip Heath, The Power of Moments: Why Certain Moments Have Extraordinary Impact

“Beware the soul-sucking force of reasonableness”
― Chip Heath, The Power of Moments: Why Certain Moments Have Extraordinary Impact

“If you want to be part of a group that bonds like cement, take on a really demanding task that’s deeply meaningful. All of you will remember it for the rest of your lives.”
― Chip Heath, The Power of Moments: Why Certain Moments Have Extraordinary Impact

“Moments of pride commemorate people’s achievements. We feel our chest puff out and our chin lift. 2. There are three practical principles we can use to create more moments of pride: (1) Recognize others; (2) Multiply meaningful milestones; (3) Practice courage. The first principle creates defining moments for others; the latter two allow us to create defining moments for ourselves. 3. We dramatically underinvest in recognition. • Researcher Wiley: 80% of supervisors say they frequently express appreciation, while less than 20% of employees agree. 4. Effective recognition is personal, not programmatic. (“ Employee of the Month” doesn’t cut it.) • Risinger at Eli Lilly used “tailored rewards” (e.g., Bose headphones) to show his team: I saw what you did and I appreciate it. 5. Recognition is characterized by a disjunction: A small investment of effort yields a huge reward for the recipient. • Kira Sloop, the middle school student, had her life changed by a music teacher who told her that her voice was beautiful. 6. To create moments of pride for ourselves, we should multiply meaningful milestones—reframing a long journey so that it features many “finish lines.” • The author Kamb planned ways to “level up”—for instance “Learn how to play ‘Concerning Hobbits’ from The Fellowship of the Ring”—toward his long-term goal of mastering the fiddle.”
― Chip Heath, The Power of Moments: Why Certain Moments Have Extraordinary Impact

“Beware the soul-sucking force of “reasonableness.” Otherwise you risk deflating your peaks. Speed bumps are reasonable. Mount Everest is not reasonable.”
― Chip Heath, The Power of Moments: Why Certain Moments Have Extraordinary Impact

“How do you build peaks? You create a positive moment with elements of elevation, insight, pride, and/or connection.”
― Chip Heath, The Power of Moments: Why Certain Moments Have Extraordinary Impact

“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”
― Chip Heath, The Power of Moments: Why Certain Moments Have Extraordinary Impact

“And that’s the charge for all of us: to defy the forgettable flatness of everyday work and life by creating a few precious moments.”
― Chip Heath, The Power of Moments: Why Certain Moments Have Extraordinary Impact

“Here’s how it happens: One person reveals something and waits to see if the other person will share something back. The reciprocity, if it comes, is a sign of understanding, validation, and caring. I’ve heard you, I understand and accept what you’re saying, and I care for you enough to disclose something about myself. An unresponsive partner—like a seatmate on a flight who puts on his headphones shortly after you make a comment—terminates the reciprocity, freezing the relationship.”
― Chip Heath, The Power of Moments: Why Certain Moments Have Extraordinary Impact

“What have you failed at this week?”
― Chip Heath, The Power of Moments: Why Certain Moments Have Extraordinary Impact

“What would you do if you knew you would not live until 40?”
― Chip Heath, The Power of Moments: Why Certain Moments Have Extraordinary Impact

“As Mark Twain said, “Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear—not absence of fear.”
― Chip Heath, The Power of Moments: Why Certain Moments Have Extraordinary Impact

“Close your eyes. Call up the face of someone still alive who years ago did something or said something that changed your life for the better. Someone who you never properly thanked; someone you could meet face-to-face next week. Got a face? Your task is to write a letter of gratitude to this individual and deliver it in person. The letter should be concrete and about three hundred words: be specific about what she did for you and how it affected your life. Let her know what you are doing now, and mention how you often remember what she did.”
― Chip Heath, The Power of Moments: Why Certain Moments Have Extraordinary Impact

“defining moments can be consciously created. You can be the architect of moments that matter.”
― Chip Heath, The Power of Moments: Why Certain Moments Have Extraordinary Impact

“INSIGHT: Defining moments rewire our understanding of ourselves or the world. In a few seconds or minutes, we realize something that might influence our lives for decades: Now is the time for me to start this business.”
― Chip Heath, The Power of Moments: Why Certain Moments Have Extraordinary Impact

“How do you build peaks? You create a positive moment with elements of elevation, insight, pride, and/ or connection. We’ll explore those final three elements later, but for now, let’s focus on elevation. To elevate a moment, do three things: First, boost sensory appeal. Second, raise the stakes. Third, break the script. (Breaking the script means to violate expectations about an experience—the next chapter is devoted to the concept.) Moments of elevation need not have all three elements but most have at least two. Boosting sensory appeal is about “turning up the volume” on reality. Things look better or taste better or sound better or feel better than they usually do. Weddings have flowers and food and music and dancing. (And they need not be superexpensive—see the footnote for more.IV) The Popsicle Hotline offers sweet treats delivered on silver trays by white-gloved waiters. The Trial of Human Nature is conducted in a real courtroom. It’s amazing how many times people actually wear different clothes to peak events: graduation robes and wedding dresses and home-team colors. At Hillsdale High, the lawyers wore suits and the witnesses came in costume. A peak means something special is happening; it should look different. To raise the stakes is to add an element of productive pressure: a competition, a game, a performance, a deadline, a public commitment. Consider the pregame jitters at a basketball game, or the sweaty-hands thrill of taking the stage at Signing Day, or the pressure of the oral defense at Hillsdale High’s Senior Exhibition. Remember how the teacher Susan Bedford said that, in designing the Trial, she and Greg Jouriles were deliberately trying to “up the ante” for their students. They made their students conduct the Trial in front of a jury that included the principal and varsity quarterback. That’s pressure. One simple diagnostic to gauge whether you’ve transcended the ordinary is if people feel the need to pull out their cameras. If they take pictures, it must be a special occasion. (Not counting the selfie addict, who thinks his face is a special occasion.) Our instinct to capture a moment says: I want to remember this. That’s a moment of elevation.”
― Chip Heath, The Power of Moments: Why Certain Moments Have Extraordinary Impact

“Some powerful defining moments contain all four elements. Think of YES Prep’s Senior Signing Day: the ELEVATION of students having their moment onstage, the INSIGHT of a sixth grader thinking That could be me, the PRIDE of being accepted to college, and the CONNECTION of sharing the day with an arena full of thousands of supportive people. (See the footnote for a mnemonic to remember this framework for defining moments.)”
― Chip Heath, The Power of Moments: Why Certain Moments Have Extraordinary Impact

“Creating more memorable and meaningful experiences is a worthy goal—”
― Chip Heath, The Power of Moments: Why Certain Moments Have Extraordinary Impact