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TwitThisWhy "Now" Really Matters
So just how long is a "moment" once we get there? Does it happen with the speed of lightning, the blink of an eye? In his book The Present Moment in Psychotherapy and Everyday Life, psychiatrist Daniel Stern, professor of psychology at the University of Geneva in Switzerland, says that any given "moment" lasts three to four seconds, and no more than ten.For all their brevity, "present moments are unbelievably rich," he points out. In that tiny parcel of time, a lot can happen. Stern tells of a therapist friend who shook the hand of each patient at the beginning and end of every session. After an emotional talk, one of his patients was feeling particularly sad. When the therapist gave him the usual goodbye handshake, he also laid his other hand on top of the man's in a consoling two-handed shake.
Though neither person said anything, that simple act transformed their relationship, says Stern. "That handshake may stand out as one of the most memorable moments in the entire therapy," he suggests.
Life is made up of such mini-turning points, agrees Gail Blanke, who runs Lifedesigns, an executive coaching firm in Manhattan. "Sometimes it takes a crisis to find out who you are, what you stand for and what you stand against," she told one group of executives. "And those times of crisis are our defining moments."
One of her most wrenching ones, which she recounts in her book Between Trapezes, happened in college. Her mother had called the dorm to share the tragic news that Blanke's older brother, Jay, a Navy pilot, had perished in an accident. She remembers what else her mother told her that day: "Gail, we will never lose him." When Blanke recently recalled the incident, her animated face tightened into tough resolve.
"That comment gave me courage," she says. It was the courage to live on, yet not lose the memory of her brother.
Today, she uses defining moments in her work. To offer clients insight into themselves, she asks each of them to write down the times when life tested them, when they stood at some crossroad. This exercise sometimes brings unexpected benefits. One hard-charging executive, Blanke recalls, gruffly insisted, "I have no defining moments."
"So," she says, "I sent him home with an order to make a list. He came back with pages."
It opened his eyes to what was going on around him. He told Blanke about going to his son's second-grade art show and, rather than racing through it, actually taking his time. He sat down on the floor in front of his son's artwork and asked the boy why he drew what he drew.
"I might have missed a special connection with my son if I hadn't done that," he told Blanke.
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