The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact

What made the training so effective? “One element of such training, the gradual and graduated practice of the dangerous tasks likely to be encountered, seems to be especially valuable,” Rachman said.

“Just as an athlete practices his or her moves to commit them to muscle memory, the point here is to make voicing our values the default position,”

many people believe they need to find their calling, as though it were a “magical entity that exists in the world waiting to be discovered.”6 She believes purpose isn’t discovered, it’s cultivated.

accomplished together? One couple we know kept an anniversary journal for the first decade of their marriage. Every year they would record the things they accomplished: Redecorating the back bedroom, hosting extended family for Thanksgiving dinner, and so on. They’d also record the trips they took, and the friends they saw most frequently, and, ama

These are important questions but impossible to answer in one’s head. Better to take a risk, try something, and distill the answer from experience rather than from navel-gazing. Action leads to insight more often than insight leads to action.5

Mentors push, mentees stretch. If you mentor someone—a student, an employee, a relative—you might wonder about the best way to give them a productive push. A good starting place is a two-part formula cited in a paper by the psychologist David Scott Yeager and eight colleagues: high standards + assurance.8

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.

“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?”

What would it take to motivate you to create a Perfect Moment?