250 Best The Power of Moments Quotes: Chip and Dan Heath

1. “In the service business, a good surprise is one that delights employees as well as customers.”

2. “the value of asking more questions and listening to the answers.”

3. “Milestones propel us to the finish line because we choose them and they’re achievable.”

4. “CONNECTION: Defining moments are social: weddings, graduations, baptisms, vacations, work triumphs,”

5. “To experience more defining moments, we need to rethink the way we set goals.”

6. “Our lives are measured in moments, and defining moments are the ones that endure in our memories.”

7. “Welcome to the most important work you’ll ever do.”

8. “if appropriate, add an element of surprise.”

9. “Learn to recognize your own scripts. Play with them, poke at them, disrupt them.”

10. “This is what we mean by “thinking in moments”: to recognize where the prose of life needs punctuation.”

11. “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”

12. “Exposure therapy is a way to manage fear by taking many small steps toward your ultimate fear — like getting closer and closer to a spider and eventually holding it in your hand.”

13. “Tell me your hopes and dreams for your child’s future.”

14. “Laughter is more about the relationships than the humor. We laugh to tie the group together. Our laughter says, I’m with you. I’m part of your group.”

15. “Defining moments are social”. They are special because we share them with others.

16. “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”

17. “to defy the forgettable flatness of everyday work and life by creating a few precious moments.”

18. “Her nurses used her drawing as a guidebook for caring for her.”

19. “What if we didn’t just remember the defining moments of our lives but made them?”

20. “Their relationship was utterly transformed because of a simple question: “What matters to you?”

21. “That’s a moment of shared meaning. It instills not the pride of individual accomplishment, but the profound sense of connection that comes from subordinating ourselves to a greater mission. After the All-Staff Assembly”

22. “Transitions should be marked, milestones commemorated, and pits filled. That’s the essence of thinking in moments”

23. “To spark moments of connection for groups, we must create shared meaning. That can be accomplished by three strategies: (1) creating a synchronised moment; (2) inviting shared struggle; and (3) connecting to meaning.

24. “Defining moments rewire our understanding of ourselves or the world,” write the Heaths. “In a few seconds or minutes, we realize something that might influence our lives for decades.”

25. “Bronnie Ware, a palliative care nurse who served patients for the final weeks of their lives, wrote a moving article called “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.”)”

26. “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.”

27. “To meet a goal, create several motivating milestones to hit along the way — like ordering a meal in Spanish, having a Spanish conversation with a taxi driver, and reading a kindergarten-level Spanish book on the way to being fluent.”

28. “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.”

29. “If Palmer wants to persuade the professors, he needs them to trip over the truth. And that starts with a focus on the problem, not the solution.”

30. “I walked away with new ideas for motivating employees, delighting customers, engaging students, and even planning family vacations.

31. “Think of this as the first stage of a successful customer experience. First, you fill the pits [as opposed to peaks of moments]. That, in turn, frees you up to focus on the second stage: creating the moments that will make the experience “occasionally remarkable” Fill pits, then build peaks. What’s striking, through, is that many business leaders never pivot to that second stage. Instead, having filled the pits in their service, they scramble to save potholes – the minor problems and annoyances. It’s as though the leaders aspire to create a complaint-free service rather than an extraordinary one.”

32. “Research has shown, again and again, that we tend to obsess about problems and negative information.”

33. “Moments of insight deliver realizations and transformations.”

34. “Confronting uncomfortable truths requires clear insight, compressed in time, and discovered by the audience itself.”

35. “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.”

36. “The promise of stretching is not success,” write the Heaths, “it’s learning.”

37. “Tailored rewards” make all the difference—as anyone who has ever gotten the birthday gift they wanted knows full well.

38. “Moments matter. And what an opportunity we miss when we leave them to chance!”

39. “At the café chain Pret A Manger, for example, regular customers noticed that, every now and then, they’d be given something for free with their order. One service expert wrote, of getting free coffee, “It has happened a few times over the last few years, too often for it to be a coincidence, yet so infrequent that it is unexpected. This makes me feel valued as a customer, puts a smile on my face and encourages me to visit again.” These “spontaneous” gifts are only half-spontaneous, as it turns out. Pret A Manger employees are allowed to give away a certain number of hot drinks and food items every week. Pret CEO Clive Schlee said of his staffers, “They will decide ‘I like the person on the bicycle’ or ‘I like the guy in the tie’ or ‘I fancy that girl or that boy.’ It means 28% of people have had something free.” Think on that. Almost a third of customers have gotten something free at least once. (Probably more than once, if they have dimples.) Other retail chains provide discounts or freebies to customers who use loyalty cards, of course, but Schlee told the Standard newspaper he rejected that approach: “We looked at loyalty cards but we didn’t want to spend all that money building up some complicated Clubcard-style analysis.” This is ingenious. Pret A Manger has restored the surprise and humanity to perks that, in a loyalty card scheme, would have been systematized. Note that the giveaways are satisfying for the staff as well as the customers. In an industry where rules tend to govern every employee behavior, it’s a relief for employees to be given some discretion: Hey, every week, give away some stuff to whomever you like. It broke the script for them, too. In the service business, a good surprise is one that delights employees as well as customers.”

40. “Often, what looks like a moment of serendipity is actually a moment of intentionality. What . . . others experienced as the shock of an insight was actually, we came to believe, the whiplash caused by realizing they could ACT and then willfully jolting their lives in a new direction. They were not receiving a moment, they were seizing it.”

41. “Of all the ways we can create moments of pride for others, the simplest is to offer them recognition.”

42. “British Medical Journal asked its readers to vote on the most important medical milestone that had occurred since 1840, when the BMJ was first published. Third place went to anesthesia, second place to antibiotics. The winner was one you might not have expected: the “sanitary revolution,” encompassing sewage disposal and methods for securing clean water. Much of the world, though, is still waiting for that revolution to come.”

43. “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.. Our instinct to capture a moment says: I want to remember this. That’s a moment of elevation.

44. “Our relationships are strong when we perceive that our partners are responsive to us through

45. “What do you want your child to be someday?”

46. “In life, we can work so hard to get the kinks out that we forget to put the peaks in.”

47. “that’s the charge for all of us: to defy the forgettable flatness of everyday work and life by creating a few precious moments.”

48. “Learning who we are, and what we want, and what we are capable of – is a lifelong process.” (Chapter 6)

49. “The lack of attention paid to an employee’s first day is mind-boggling. What a wasted opportunity to make a new team member feel included and appreciated. Imagine if you treated a first date like a new employee: “I’ve got some meetings stacked up right now, so why don’t you get settled in the passenger seat of the car and I’ll swing back in a few hours?”

50. “Implementation instructions are advance mental commitments in support of goals — like planning to order a sparkling water when the waiter asks if you want another drink if you’re trying to drink less.”

51. “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.)”

52. “In life we can work so hard to get the kinks out that we forget to put the peaks in.”

53. “What would you do if you knew you would not live until 40?”

54. “self-insight”—a mature understanding of our capabilities and motivations—and it’s correlated with an array of positive outcomes, ranging from good relationships to a sense of purpose in life. Self-insight and psychological well-being go together.”

55. “It’s going to be way harder than you think to create peaks. But once you’ve done it, you’re going to consider every ounce of effort worth it.”

56. “it was like “peeling an onion” where we were going just slightly deeper on each exchange and when finished, we had moved quite a bit.”

57. “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?”

58. “should not be “losing 10 pounds,” it should be something intrinsically motivating, such as “Fitting into my sexy black pants (without gastrointestinal distress).” Suddenly, your weight-loss mission starts looking more like a playful quest, with frequent victories along the way, and less like a daily weigh-in on the bathroom scale”

59. “A sense of purpose seems to spark “above and beyond” behaviors.”

60. “But let’s not confuse memorability with wisdom.”

61. “The style is not important. What’s important is authenticity: being personal not programmatic. And frequency: closer to weekly than yearly. And of course what’s most important is the message: “I saw what you did and I appreciate it.”

62. “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.”

63. “Trip over the truth. Frey’s activity allowed the vestry to discover insights for themselves”

64. “To produce moments of self-insight, we need to stretch: placing ourselves in new situations that expose us to the risk of failure.”

65. “Beware the soul-sucking force of reasonableness, otherwise you risk deflating your peaks.”

66. “This “moment-spotting” habit can be unnatural. In organizations, for instance, we are consumed with goals. Time is meaningful only insofar as it clarifies or measures our goals. The goal is the thing.”

67. “Defining moments rewire our understanding of ourselves or the world.”

68. “And those bonds can continue to strengthen with astonishing speed. A defining moment of connection can be both brief and extraordinary.”

69. “That visit was a game changer,”

70. “To think in moments is to be attuned to transitions and milestones”

71. “In a study, fewer than 20% of comments that sparked laughter were even remotely funny. Laughing actually functions to tie groups together and send positive signals back and forth.”

72. “Joshie,” a child’s pet giraffe left behind at the Ritz-Carlton, is the central figure in one of Chip and Dan Heath’s great examples of how relationships aren’t built over time, they’re built on moments. Check out the whole story here.

73. “Self-understanding comes slowly. One of the few ways to accelerate it—to experience more crystallizing moments—is to stretch for insight.”

74. “Target a specific moment and then challenge yourself: How can I elevate it? Spark insight? Boost the sense of connection? Life is full of “form letter in an envelope” moments, waiting to be transformed into something special.”

75. “The presence of others turns abstract ideas into social reality.”

76. “There’s nine times more to gain by elevating positive customers than by eliminating negative ones.”

77. “You should normalize failure and see it as something you want to do instead of as not achieving the right outcome.”

78. “Let’s face it: Most PowerPoints aren’t creating a lot of emotion.”

79. “when you seek out situations where you might fail, failure loses some of its menace. You’ve been inoculated against it.”

80. “Here’s our three-part recipe to create more moments of elevation: (1) Boost the sensory appeal; (2) Raise the stakes; (3) Break the script. Usually elevated moments have 2 or 3 of those traits.”

81. “Spot the occasions that are worthy of investment”, more than the standard birthday or graduation celebration. “Recognise where the prose of life needs punctuation.”

82. “surprise can warp our perceptions of time, and why most people’s most memorable experiences are clustered in their teens and twenties.”

83. “What’s indisputable is that when we assess our experiences, we don’t average our minute-by-minute sensations. Rather, we tend to remember flagship moments: the peaks, the pits, and the transitions.”

84. “Familiarity and memorability are often at odds.”

85. “The first time you hit me, I must have been four. A hand, a flash, a reckoning. My mouth a blaze of touch. The time I tried to teach you to read the way Mrs. Callahan taught me, my lips to your ear, my hand on yours, the words moving…

86. “Fill pits, then build peaks.”

87. “The ‘occasionally remarkable’ moments shouldn’t be left to chance! They should be planned for, invested in. They are peaks that should be built. And if we fail to do that, look at what we’re left with: mostly forgettable.”

88. “Beware the soul-sucking force of reasonableness”

89. “The point here is simple: Some moments are vastly more meaningful than others. For tourists, the Popsicle Hotline is a 15-minute experience that pops out of the surrounding 2-week vacation. For students at YES Prep, Senior Signing Day is a single morning that rises above a 7-year journey.”

90. “You endure a grueling experience with others and emerge with bonds that will never break.”

91. “As Mark Twain said, “Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear—not absence of fear.”

92. “The good news is that if even one person is brave enough to defy the majority, we are emboldened. We’re not alone anymore. We’re not crazy.”

93. “Self-insight, a mature understanding of our capabilities and motivations, leads to better relationships and a stronger sense of purpose in life.”

94. “Our relationships are stronger when we perceive that our partners are responsive to us. (The term used frequently is “perceived partner responsiveness.”) 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 my needs.”

95. “Companies in this era of apps and personal tracking devices have grown much smarter about surfacing milestones that were previously invisible… to think in moments is to be attuned to transitions and milestones. ”

96. “My father wanted us to try everything and feel free to push the envelope. His attitude taught me to define failure as not trying something I want to do instead of not achieving the right outcome.”

97. “Success comes from pushing to the finish line. 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.”

98. “We can shape traditions like birthdays or marriages to make them more memorable and meaningful to us. When a life transition lacks a ‘moment,’ we often feel anxious because we don’t know how to act or what rules apply.”

99. “In addition, a good mentor offers direction (a suggestion of how to grow) and support (something that will make the suggestion more comfortable for them.”

100. “Nonresponsiveness is corrosive.”

101. “For formal recognition programs, they recommend using objective measurements, such as sales volume,”

102. “Intimacy escalates with turn-taking”

103. “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.”

104. “If you elevate neutral/slightly positive customers to be delighted customers, this earns you 9x as much revenue as moving negative customers to neutral because you generate more incremental spending and reach more people.”

105. “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.”

106. “Responsiveness is correlated with attachment security, self-esteem, emotional well-being, and a laundry list of other positive attributes (even healthier levels of diurnal cortisol, which sounds like a Harry Potter spell but is actually a stress hormone). So when we ask what made the home visits at Stanton”

107. “Most PowerPoints aren’t creating a lot of emotion. We decided to flip this on its head. Let’s have people do something active and immersive. That’s going to generate more of an emotional response so they will feel something. And then they can think about what they’ve learned.”

108. “Recognition is characterized by a disjunction,” say the Heaths.

109. “Richard G. Tedeschi and Lawrence G. Calhoun (2004). “Posttraumatic Growth: Conceptual Foundations and Empirical Evidence,” Psychological Inquiry 15: 1–18. The researchers have a test of post-traumatic growth, called the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory (PTGI), that you can find online. We also recommend the excellent Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy by Adam Grant and Sheryl Sandberg. Also see:”

110. “Purpose trumps passion.” Purpose unites us with others around a shared goal, creating something greater than the individual parts involved – there’s a sense of mission. Passion is more individualistic – “it can energize us but also isolate us, because my passion isn’t yours”.

111. “To increase positive variance is to welcome humanity and spontaneity into the system.”

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

113. “What she gained was the insight that comes from experience.”

114. “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.”

115. “What’s least commonsensical is that pits can sometimes be flipped into peaks.”

116. “By the spring, we were ready to do anything,” said Fisherow. “We were desperate to do something different. When you’re down and out, you’re open to all sorts of ideas.”

117. “First, you 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.” Fill pits, then build peaks.”

118. “But here’s the best part: We’re not stuck with just one finish line. By multiplying milestones, we transform a long, amorphous race into one with many intermediate “finish lines.” As we push through each one, we experience a burst of pride as well as a jolt of energy to charge toward the next one.”

119. “three situations that deserve punctuation: transitions, milestones, and pits.”

120. “Moments matter, and what an opportunity we miss when we leave them to chance. Teachers can inspire. Caregivers can comfort. Service workers can delight. Politicians can unite, and managers can motivate. All it takes is a bit of insight and forethought. This is a book about the power of moments and the wisdom of shaping them.”

121. “The larger point is that most recognition should be personal, not programmatic.”

122. “A relationship in which one party is oblivious to the most profound moments in the life of the other is no relationship at all.”

123. “Defining moments rise above the everyday,” write the Heaths. “They provoke not just transient happiness, like laughing at a friend’s joke, but memorable delight.”

124. “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. It sounds simple, yet it’s powerful enough to transform careers.”

125. “Transitions should be marked, milestones commemorated, and pits filled.”

126. “To elevate a moment, 1) boost sensory appeal by making things look, feel, taste, or sound much better than normal 2) raise the stakes by adding a competition, a game, a performance, a deadline, or a public commitment 3) break the script by violating expectations about the experience and doing something very different and surprising from what is expected.”

127. “This terrific book is bursting with practical insights and memorable stories on every page,” writes Eric Ries, bestselling author of The Lean Startup. “

128. “In a study, teachers who wrote feedback with the copy, “I’m giving you these comments because I have very high expectations and I know you can reach them” (vs. a generic note), twice as many students chose to revise their papers. High standards plus assurance is a powerful formula.”

129. “these were not stories about sudden realizations. These were stories about action.”

130. “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…

131. “Stay alert to the promise that moments hold.”

132. “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 flat land that could have been a mountain range.”

133. “If you want to lead people differently, you have to be cognizant of your ability to change the ordinary.” (Chapter 2)

134. “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. It sounds simple, yet it’s powerful enough to transform careers.”

135. “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.”

136. “Frey’s challenge to walk the grounds already added a sense of play to the moment. What if he had also given them a “character” to role-play during their observations?”

137. “Stretching — placing ourselves in situations that expose us to the risk of failure — can spark self-insight.”

138. “crystallization of discontent”

139. “If you’re struggling to make a transition, create a defining moment that draws a dividing line between Old You and New You.”

140. “The surprise about great service experiences is that they are mostly forgettable and occasionally remarkable (p.11).”

141. “We need to break the script in our own lives – we “feel older” not because we age but because our lives become more routine – we start to reminisce about the past instead of looking forward to the future because we stop creating and experiencing enough peak and meaningful moments.

142. “When responsiveness is coupled with openness, though, intimacy can develop quickly.”

143. “The outcome is clear. Purpose trumps passion. Graduation speakers take note: The best advice is not ‘Pursue your passion!’ It’s ‘Pursue your purpose.’”

144. “Before using Customer Thermometer, if we ever

145. “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.”)”

146. “These moments are strengthened because we share them with others.”

147. “It’s as though the leaders aspire to create a complaint-free service rather than an extraordinary one.”

148. “acting with responsiveness to others can create tighter bonds:”

149. “Our good intentions to create these moments are often frustrated by urgent-seeming problems and pressures.”

150. “The “occasionally remarkable” moments shouldn’t be left to chance! They should be planned for, invested in.”

151. “We felt like we were in the Twilight Zone,” said Bryant.

152. “About 40% of the students who got the generic note chose”

153. “What’s indisputable is that when we assess our experiences, we don’t average our minute-by-minute sensations. Rather, we tend to remember flagship moments: the peaks, the pits, and the transitions (p.9).”

154. “Groups bond when they struggle together,” write the Heaths.

155. “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.”

156. “But they were devout Catholics, and they had tremendous faith in their marriage. She said that every night, after a tough day, they’d put their hands together in bed so that their rings touched, and they’d repeat their wedding vows to each other.”

157. “in recalling an experience, we ignore most of what happened and focus instead on a few particular moments.”

158. “Mostly forgettable” is actually a desirable state in many businesses. It means nothing went wrong. You got what you expected.

159. “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”

160. “he invented five milestones en route to the destination, each worthy of celebration.”

161. “VELCRO QUOTES” (IDEAS THAT ARE GOING TO STICK WITH ME MOVING FORWARD):

162. “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.”

163. “Pits need to be filled.”

164. “The most talented practitioners seek out certification as a Six Sigma Black Belt,9 an honorific that has nothing to do with karate but rather reflects a noble and ultimately hopeless attempt to give the work some sex appeal.”

165. “Flat out amazing” (according to Jake Knapp), The Power of Moments “offers something for everyone—medical practitioners rethinking the patient experience, corporate leaders re-imagining staff engagement, small businesses looking to differentiate themselves, teachers crafting more memorable lessons…

166. “You can be the architect of moments that matter.”

167. “we’ve seen how massive changes often hinge on single moments”

168. “Not every meeting needs to be a “defining moment.” But once every 5 to 10 meetings, find a way to break the script.”

169. “Our school felt like a school instantaneously,” Fisherow said. “I could not believe that it had worked so fast.”

170. “The point we’re emphasizing here is that certain circumstances demand attention”

171. “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.”

172. “To spark moments of connection for groups, we must create shared meaning. That can be accomplished by three strategies: (1) creating a synchronized moment; (2) inviting shared struggle; and (3) connecting to meaning.”

173. “When it comes to performance, strong purpose trumps strong passion.”

174. “The promise of stretching is not success, it’s learning.”

175. “Defining moments capture us at our best – moments of achievement, moments of courage”.

176. “The instinct to notice and commemorate achievements is oddly lacking in many areas of life.”

177. “Defining moments shape our lives, but we don’t have to wait for them to happen. We can be authors of them.” How empowering! With all the educational challenges encountered this year, I believe I have authored many of my positive memorable moments this past year.

178. “Defining moments shape our lives, but we don’t have to wait for them to happen. We can be the authors of them (p.5).”

179. “If we can create the right kind of moment, we can change relationships in an instant.” (Chapter 11)

180. “Defining moments rise above the everyday. They provoke not just transient happiness, like laughing at a friend’s joke, but memorable delight.”

181. “About two weeks later, on September 10, 2005, O’Kelly died of a pulmonary embolism. What O’Kelly realized, in the shadow of his final days, was the extraordinary power of a moment. He wrote: I experienced more Perfect Moments and Perfect Days in two weeks than I had in the last five years, or than I probably would have in the next five years, had my life continued the way it was going before my diagnosis. Look at your own calendar. Do you see Perfect Days ahead? Or could they be hidden and you have to find a way to unlock them? If I told you to aim to create 30 Perfect Days, could you? How long would it take? Thirty days? Six months? Ten years? Never? I felt like I was living a week in a day, a month in a week, a year in a month. Now, take a second look at the beginning of O’Kelly’s memoir, especially those final two words: “I was blessed. I was told I had three months to live.” That opportunity to live was why he felt blessed. Shouldn’t we share his zeal for moments that matter? We may have more time to live than he did, but should that be a reason to put them off? 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. What would it take to motivate you to create a Perfect Moment?”

182. “Transitions should be marked, milestones commemorated, and pits filled,” write the Heaths. “That’s the essence of thinking in moments.”

183. “Defining moments shape our lives,” the Heath brothers write, “but we don’t have to wait for them to happen. We can be the authors of them.

184. “To exceed customer expectations and create a memorable experience, you need the behavioral and interpersonal parts of the service. You need the element of pleasant surprise.”

185. “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.”

186. “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.”

187. “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.”

188. “Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear—not absence of fear.”

189. “Moments that break the script are critical for organizational change. They provide a demarcation point between the “old way” and the “new way.”

190. “defining moments can be consciously created. You can be the architect of moments that matter.”

191. “Some moments are vastly more meaningful than others. For tourists, the Popsicle Hotline is a 15-minute experience that pops out of the surrounding 2-week vacation. For students at YES Prep, Senior Signing Day is a single morning that rises above a 7-year journey.”

192. “Notice the similarities here: The recognition is spontaneous—not part of a scheduled feedback session—and it is targeted at particular behaviors.”

193. “To increase positive variance is to welcome humanity and spontaneity into the system. And that means giving employees license to break the script.”

194. “I’m recommending it to everyone I know!” wrote Angela Duckworth, the author of Grit after describing The Power of Moments as both “beautifully written” and “brilliantly researched.”

195. “By breaking the script, we can lay down a richer set of memories.”

196. “A few minutes can change a life. These moments didn’t just happen; thoughtful teachers made them happen.”

197. “This is important. This is real. We’re in this together. And what we’re doing matters.”

198. “defining moment is a short experience that is both memorable and meaningful.”

199. “We must understand when special moments are needed. We must learn to think in moments, to stop the occasions that are worthy of investment.”

200. “Culture change is difficult and slow. To have any chance to succeed, the meeting needed to deliver a jolt.”

201. “By using Kamb’s level-up strategy, we multiply the number of motivating milestones we encounter en route to a goal. That’s a forward-looking strategy: We’re anticipating moments of pride ahead.”

202. “Responsiveness is correlated with attachment security, self-esteem, emotional well-being, and a laundry list of other positive attributes (even healthier levels of diurnal cortisol, which sounds like a Harry Potter spell but is actually a stress hormone).”

203. “What was your first day like at your current (or most recent) job?

204. “We can also surface milestones that would have gone unnoticed. • What if every member of a youth sports team got a “before-and-after” video of their progress? • Number-heavy organizational goals are fine as tools of accountability, but smart leaders surface more motivational milestones en route to the target. 8. Moments when we display courage make us proud. We never know when courage will be demanded, but we can practice to ensure we’re ready. • The protesters involved in the Nashville lunch counter sit-ins didn’t just show courage, they rehearsed it. 9. Practicing courage lets us “preload” our responses. • Gentile’s approach to ethics says we usually know WHAT is right but don’t know HOW to act. 10. Courage is contagious; our moments of action can be a defining moment for others.”

205. “The proper pace of recognition is weekly or even daily, not monthly or yearly.”

206. “In the first 3 months of using Customer Thermometer, we had x6 the number of responses we hoped for”

207. “One simple diagnostic to gauge whether you’ve transcended the ordinary is if people feel the need to pull out their cameras.”

208. “Shouldn’t couples acknowledge and celebrate what they’ve accomplished together?”

209. “In the short term we prioritize fixing problems over making moments and that choice usually feels like a smart trade-off, but over time it backfires.”

210. “ELEVATION: A love letter. A ticket stub. A well-worn T-shirt. Haphazardly colored cards from your kids that make you smile with delight. INSIGHT: Quotes or articles that moved you. Books that changed your view of the world. Diaries that captured your thoughts. PRIDE: Ribbons, report cards, notes of recognition, certificates, thank-yous, awards. (It just hurts, irrationally, to throw away a trophy.) CONNECTION: Wedding photos. Vacation photos. Family photos. Christmas photos of hideous sweaters. Lots of photos. Probably the first thing you’d grab if your house caught on fire.”

211. “Stay alert to the promise that moments hold. These moments do not need to be “produced.”

212. “I think it’s very rare for parents to see their students’ work…they see swim meets, they see dance performances, they see plays, but it’s very rare for parents to see the academic work their kids do. School needs to be so much more like sports…in sports there’s a game and it’s in front of an autidence. We run school like it’s a non-stop practice—you never get a game. Nobody would go out for the basketball team if you never had a game. What is ‘the game’ for the students?”

213. “Being innovative starts with getting outside the office and it doesn’t ‘hurt’, it feels good! It stimulates you and stretches you and reinvigorates you.”

214. “Couch to 5K había cambiado su vida. Él pretendía”

215. “Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear- not absence of fear.” - Mark Twain

216. “Connecting to meaning” reconnects people with the purpose of their efforts. That’s motivating and encourages “above and beyond” work.

217. “People will welcome a struggle when it’s their choice to participate, when they’re given autonomy to work, and when the mission is meaningful.”

218. “Laughter is more about relationships than humor. We laugh to tie the group together. Our laughter says, I’m with you. I'm part of your group.” - Robert Provine

219. “CONNECTION: Defining moments are social:”

220. “What did you guys fail at this week?” “If we had nothing to tell him, he’d be disappointed,” Blakely said.”

221. “Creating more memorable and meaningful experiences is a worthy goal—”

222. “Beware of the soul-sucking force of ‘reasonableness’ otherwise you risk deflating your peaks. Speed bumps are reasonable. Mount Everest is not reasonable.”

223. “The reason people hate meetings is that emotion is deliberately squeezed out. Participants sit and listen to programmed presentations. But this is a choice, not an inevitability. You can just as easily conduct a meeting that has drama, meaning, and connection. You cannot bring two teams together by simply talking about unity. They must experience unity. That’s what makes it a defining moment.”

224. “by disrupting routines, we can create more peaks.”

225. “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.”

226. “When people assess an experience, they tend to forget or ignore its length. Instead, they seem to rate the experience based on 1) the best or worst moment and 2) the ending. Beginnings and transitions tend to matter a lot too!”

227. “Transitions should be marked, milestones commemorated, and pits filled. That’s the essence of thinking in moments.”

228. “A really demanding task that’s really meaningful will make a group bond like cement.”

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

230. “What they realized was that they didn’t need their colleagues to understand something, they needed them to feel something.”

231. “Recognition should be personal, not programmatic, and closer to weekly than monthly.”

232. “A small investment of effort yields a huge reward for the recipient.”

233. “What have you failed at this week?”

234. “Studying our own behavior leads to more self-insight than focusing on thoughts or problems.”

235. “To exceed customer expectations and create a memorable experience, you need the behavioral and interpersonal parts of the service. You need the element of pleasant surprise. And that comes when human beings interact.” - Leonard Berry

236. “Tell me about your child’s experiences in school. Tell me about yours.”

237. “peaks can also be used to mark transitions. (Think weddings and graduations.)”

238. “In the short term, we prioritize fixing problems over making moments, and that choice usually feels like a smart trade-off. But over time, it backfires.”

239. “Sometimes, in life, we can’t get our bearings until we trip over the truth.”

240. “Having our skill noticed by others is what sparks pride.”

241. “The year was crazy. It was like being in the trenches. We felt like we were in battle,” said Fisherow. None of their plans were working. As one observer said of Stanton, during the 2010-11 school year, “the school went from ‘really bad’ to ‘worse.'” Then, midway through the year, Fisherow fell down the stairs at school and broke her leg.

242. “themselves. In turn, that discovery makes the need for action obvious. Guthrie doesn’t share his findings from his customer meetings; he creates a situation where they can replicate his discovery. It becomes their own insight, and as a result, they’re motivated to act. Similarly, CLTS facilitators see the problem vividly, but they don’t share their concerns directly. They let the villagers see for themselves. The”

243. “What do I need to do to help your child learn more effectively?”

244. “5. In individual relationships, we believe that relationships grow closer with time. But that’s not the whole story. Sometimes long relationships reach plateaus. And with the right moment, relationships can deepen quickly.”

245. “Programs that reduce drug use employ interactive methods, while ineffective programs don’t.”

246. “How do you build peaks? You create a positive moment with elements of elevation, insight, pride, and/or connection.”

247. “If we want more moments of connection, we need to be more responsive to others.”

248. “Our lives are measured in moments, and defining moments are the ones that endure in our memories”. It’s the significant moments that stand out in our lives, rather than the tasks achieved or ticks on an action list.

249. “The surprise about great service experiences is that they are mostly forgettable and occasionally remarkable”

250. “Relationships don’t deepen naturally. In the absence of action, they will stall.”

251. “Those are the conditions that Sharp honored in calling for volunteers to join “action teams” to improve the patient experience. The work was meaningful: serving patients better. The teams were given autonomy, often entrusted to formulate the health system’s policies in a certain domain. Participation was voluntary. And volunteer they did: 1,600 people came forward. A mass movement of people willing to struggle together. 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.”

252. “Moments of elevation transcend the normal course of events; they are literally extraordinary,” conclude the Heaths.

253. “A defining moment is a burst of magic — thoughtful, playful, emotional.”

254. “5. In individual relationships, we believe that relationships grow closer with time. But that’s not the whole story. Sometimes long relationships reach plateaus. And with the right moment, relationships can deepen quickly. • Fisherow and her team turned around the troubled Stanton Elementary School by relying, in part, on short parent-teacher home visits before the start of school. 6. According”

255. “What separated Blakely from other women with the same idea was her persistence.”

256. “The Power of Moments Quotes”

257. “For a fee, Vocation Vacations could arrange for you to spend a few days shadowing people who were living your dream. The jobs available for visit included cattle ranching, managing a bed-and-breakfast, owning a winery, and—there it was!—starting a bakery.I”

258. “the common perception that time seems to accelerate as we get older. Our lives become more routine and less novel. We’re seeing more and more brown shoes and fewer alarm clocks. Now,”

259. “• Art Aron’s 36 Questions experiment leads total strangers to become intimate—in 45 minutes! Clinic 5 How Can You Combat the “Silo” Mentality?”

260. “Life is full of “form letter in an envelope” moments, waiting to be transformed into something special.”

261. “Novelty even changes our perception of time.”

262. “Guthrie doesn’t share his findings from his customer meetings; he creates a situation where they can replicate his discovery. It becomes their own insight, and as a result, they’re motivated to act.”

263. “A quote from Rabbi Harold Kushner—who lost a child—captures what it means to welcome growth while wishing it had never happened: ’I am a more sensitive person, a more effective pastor, a more sympathetic counselor because of Aaron’s life and death than I would ever have been without it. And I would give up all of those gains in a second if I could have my son back. If I could choose, I would forgo all of the spiritual growth and depth which has come by way because of our experiences. But I cannot choose.’”

264. “Defining moments are created from one or more of the following four elements:

265. “The most interesting, immediately actionable book I’ve read in quite a while,” wrote Adam Grant in a review of The Power of Moments.

266. “Kamb’s insight was that, in our lives, we tend to declare goals without intervening levels.”

267. “Beware the soul-sucking force of “reasonableness.” Otherwise you risk deflating your peaks. Speed bumps are reasonable. Mount Everest is not reasonable.”

268. “Dramatizing problems leads people to think of solutions.”

269. “ELEVATION: Defining moments rise above the everyday. They provoke not just transient happiness, like laughing at a friend’s joke, but memorable delight.”

270. “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.”

271. “How do you make moments of pride? The recipe seems clear: You work hard, you put in the time, and as a result, you get more talented and accomplish more, and those achievements spark pride. Simple as that.”

272. “We all have defining moments in our lives—meaningful experiences that stand out in our memory. Many of them owe a great deal to chance: A lucky encounter with someone who becomes the love of your life. A new teacher who spots a talent you didn’t know you had. A sudden loss that upends the certainties of your life.”

273. “‘School needs to be so much more like sports,’ he added ‘In sports, there’s a game, and it’s in front of an audience. We run school like it is nonstop practice. You never get a game. Nobody would go out for the basketball team if you never had a game. What is the game for the students?’” - Jeff Gilbert

274. “Both women experienced moments of self-insight sparked by “stretching.” To stretch is to place ourselves in situations that expose us to the risk of failure.”