The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact

Product Information

I found the chapter on creating elevating moments especially interesting. The authors provide a recipe on creating such a moment: 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.” When Blakely and her brother were growing up, her father would ask them a question every week at the dinner table: “What did you guys fail at this week?” “If we had nothing to tell him, he’d be disappointed,” Blakely said. “The logic seems counterintuitive, but it worked beautifully. He knew that many people become paralyzed by the fear of failure.”

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

While I believe, after reading the book, that you can create an enhanced opportunity for defining moments, I’m not convinced it’s the best or safest investment of time and resources. After all, both time and resources are limited in every organization (and in every life). If you spend the same amount of time and effort building trust in your organization, would the ROI be better? I think so, and that is not to say that you can’t build trust through defining moments. It’s a matter of emphasis and line of approach.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." 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. In the book, we have two goals: First, we want to examine defining moments and identify the traits they have in common. What, specifically, makes a particular experience memorable and meaningful? Our research shows that defining moments share a set of common elements. Second, we want to show you how you can create defining moments by making use of those elements. Why would you want to create them? To enrich your experiences. To connect with others. To make memories. To launch your life or your career or your team in a new direction." The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have An Extraordinary Impact written by acclaimed NYT bestselling author’s Chip Heath and his brother Dan Heath, is an engaging and exceptional book that combines the latest research from education, teaching, business, to technology with four basic principal concepts. These concepts shape and define our world, and can be applied to every aspect of our personal and professional lives.

The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extr… The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extr…

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.” While human lives are endlessly variable, our most memorable positive moments are dominated by four elements: elevation, insight, pride, and connection. If we embrace these elements, we can conjure more moments that matter. What if a teacher could design a lesson that he knew his students would remember twenty years later? What if a manager knew how to create an experience that would delight customers? What if you had a better sense of how to create memories that matter for your children? There were many interesting stories. The first was about improvement that led to insight and better education, relief workers that helped primitive isolated villagers with sanitation measures, a leadership conference that stressed that innovation started outside the office, workers were treated respectfully and encouraged to participate in a retreat. A new marketing strategy encouraged the vital importance of going beyond understanding and actually “feel” the customer’s needs. This is a brief review, there was much more to this remarkable book that truly has the power to change and influence a person’s life and work. 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.”

Boost sensory appeal - make it look and feel different: wear different clothes, have music, present something with white gloves. 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” 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.” The book applies a formula that has become universal in the world of modern business management and the consulting that drives it: Every problem/opportunity can be solved/leveraged by analyzing the data, discerning the patterns, and applying them to future or potential data sets. It’s not a bad framework, per se, but I don’t personally feel it applies equally in all situations. Some problems/opportunities just don’t lend themselves to such a conscious and rational process. Defining moments, I believe, are one of them. 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.

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

If you’re struggling to make a transition, create a defining moment that draws a dividing line between Old You and New You.” He received his B.S. degree in Industrial Engineering from Texas A&M University and his Ph.D. in Psychology from Stanford. The Power of Moments is a guide to having more stand-out moments in your life and how those can change you. We all experience moments that catapult us in a direction, but do they have as much of an effect if we aren't paying attention to them? In this book, we explore why certain brief experiences can jolt us and elevate us and change us—and how we can learn to create such extraordinary moments in our life and work. 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.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.” 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: 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. 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.”

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

Chip and Dan spend a lot of time explaining each of the 4 keys, and tell lots of funny stories about how companies did something to create a special moment. In the end, therefore, I’m glad I read the book. I personally found the value (the ROI of time and money spent) of the book to be so-so. (Admittedly, prices are set by the publisher, not the authors.) It doesn’t, in my mind, hit the mark of transformative. 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. I also agree that, “Purpose trumps passion,” and that, “…purpose isn’t discovered, it’s cultivated.” And, “You can’t deliver a great patient experiences without first delivering a great employee experience.” All sound advice. 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.

Defining moments capture us at our best—moments of achievement, moments of courage. Need to plan for a series of milestone moments that build on each other en route to a larger goal. The part that had the strongest impact was when the authors said we must “raise the stakes”, “break the script”, and build determination to see Defining Moments through – the exact example they used was of people saying they should go see the Northern Lights, then never following through! I said just a few months ago that I want to go see the Northern Lights for my birthday in September! This motivated me to begin the itinerary for the trip, which I’ll be sharing with my travel friends for discussion later in the week 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. Do you have one of those moments in your life that had a disproportionate impact on your life? This book about how to create those moments for yourself and others. The Heath brothers, authors of Decisive, have done it again—what an absolute pleasure. Especially the first two chapters on elevating experiences and creating moments of insight were absolutely excellent.