#10 Small Moments, BIG IMPACT
Seemingly forgettable moments can change someone's life
Steve Steele
7/6/20265 min read
Simple Kindness
In 1973, fifteen-year-old Bill Price found himself standing alone at an event, not knowing anyone, with nowhere to go. A woman named Wendy Westman turned around and simply asked, "Would you like to join us?" It was a small, almost throwaway invitation, the kind of thing a person says and forgets within the hour. Bill didn't forget it. He later said that moment changed the entire trajectory of his life. Recounting it on NPR's My Unsung Hero series, decades later, he reflected that noticing someone who looks left out and being kind to them is a gift anyone can give. He credited that single invitation, fifty years earlier, with shaping who he became, eventually becoming a psychiatrist whose work centers on listening closely and attending to people's needs. Westman likely never thought about that moment again. Bill never stopped thinking about it.
How many times do we see this exact situation and act? How many times do we see someone who looks left out or on the outside of a situation, and allow them to stay there? Bill's story is a wonderful example of the potential impact something as small as inviting someone into a group, or including them in something can have. Sometimes, including someone can help them through their day. In other cases, like Bill's, it can entirely alter their future. It could give someone the attention that inspires them to pass it on to others. It can even save someone's life. This story is a wonderful example of why taking a few seconds to include someone or interact with somebody is always worth it. You may not remember doing it, but it could remain with them for the rest of their lives.
Truly Seen
Another story belongs to Dan Roche, who was born with a cataract that left him largely blind in one eye. He spent much of his childhood avoiding eye contact, self-conscious about how he looked. At fifteen, playing first base and outfield on a baseball team, he was solid in the field but couldn't connect at the plate. His coach, a man known as Coach Wells, watched him take fifteen or twenty swings at the ball and noticed something nobody else had: Dan was losing sight of the ball several feet before it reached him. The coach quietly repositioned him, adjusted his stance, and turned him toward the pitcher. By the end of the season Dan could finally track the ball. At the time, it likely felt like a routine coaching correction. Fifty years later, Dan still thinks about the plain, matter-of-fact way his coach noticed the problem and fixed it, calling it one of the few times in those years he felt truly seen, honestly, and without judgment. He didn't recognize the full weight of that moment as a teenager but he's still carrying it half a century later.
This story reflects the potential beauty of youth sports. With the focus on winning at an early age, it's very common for some youth coaches to let kids who are struggling fall by the wayside. Coach Wells didn't do this to Dan. He truly paid attention to him in order to discover what was wrong and then intentionally spent time helping him fix the issue. For kids who may struggle or not take to athletics naturally, this attention can mean the world to them. They aren't used to being praised for athletics all the time. For Dan, it reinforced his love for sports and led him to a successful career in sports' broadcasting. Through all of his successes in that arena, he still remembers the impact of that intentional act of coaching. If you have the wonderful opportunity to be a youth coach, remember this story and realize you have the chance to truly impact the kids you work with in ways you may never know!
The Point
Momentous moments rarely announce themselves. They don't arrive with a drumroll or a label that says "this one matters, pay attention." Most of the time, they look exactly like an ordinary exchange: a hallway comment, a text message, a five-minute conversation that could have been forgotten by lunchtime. We build the case for noticing and creating these moments as we look forward. But there's a second, quieter discipline worth practicing: looking backward.
When you ask yourself, "What's a moment someone created for me that I almost missed?" you're doing more than taking a trip down memory lane. You're recalibrating your sense of scale. You start to notice that the moments that shaped you most were rarely the loudest ones. They were specific. They were brief. They were often delivered by someone who probably doesn't remember saying it at all.
This matters for two reasons. First, it should change how you think about your own impact. The moment you create today might not register with someone until five years from now. That's not a failure of the moment, that's simply how moments work. Second, it should make you more patient and more attentive in the present. If the moments that shaped you were easy to miss, the moments you're creating for others are just as easy to miss, too. Recognition is often retroactive. That doesn't make the moment any less real. It just means the return on it isn't always visible to you.
Finally, I would encourage you, as you reflect on these "Unsung Heroes" in your own life, to reach out to them and thank them for the impact they have had on you. If you have a specific moment, thank them for that (side note, I'd love to hear about them as well if you would like to share, email them to me at steve@themomentousleader.com). If you truly think on this, I'm sure we can all find a few examples of the moments that have led us to who we have become.
Parting Thoughts
Go back before you go forward. Take five minutes this week and ask: what's a moment someone gave me that I didn't recognize as momentous until later, the way it was for Bill Price and Dan Roche? Who was it, and what did they actually say or do?
Name the person, even if only to yourself. Both Price and Roche could name their unsung hero decades on (Wendy Westman, Coach Wells), down to the specific words and the specific gesture. If you can't immediately name who shaped you this way, sit with the question a little longer. The name is usually there, waiting.
Consider whether they ever found out. Roche's coach likely never learned how much that one adjustment meant. Westman may never know the full shape of the life her invitation helped set in motion. If your unsung hero is still reachable, what would it take to close that loop and tell them now what you came to understand later?
Lower your bar for what counts. Neither moment involved a grand gesture. One was a sentence at an event; the other was a few minutes of quiet coaching. If you're waiting to recognize your own impact only in grand, obvious terms, you'll miss most of it. Recognize that the small, ordinary moments you're creating right now may be doing more than you'll ever get to see.
"We do not remember days, we remember moments."
Cesare Pavese