Why Defining Events Don’t Define Your Life

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Most people believe that life’s most meaningful events define who they are and their self-narrative. Events like winning a sports championship, reaching the summit of a climb, a once-in-a-lifetime trip, or the birth of their kids are things they look at and think “they were major turning points in my life.”

But is that true?

I have realized that it is not the mega-events in our life that define us. Instead, I believe it’s the infinite tiny moments, those critical?transition points?that occur every day, that we often overlook that truly define our life.

We let all the distractions around us impact our intentionality because we focus on what is urgent and not what is important. — John R. Miles

When we examine our lives through the lens of critical milestones, we measure them by precise and limited measurements. It causes us to revolve around the essence and magnitude of these moments.

I want you to think about some important events in your own life. It could be your wedding, or maybe a significant career milestone that you were going after, or a significant investment that propelled your startup forward. Perhaps it was something sports-related, like a marathon you completed or a national championship you won.

Was it the event that defined you or the transition points you took leading up to it that genuinely defined the event?

This article was originally published in Change Your Mind Change Your Life and is inspired by a recent episode I did on the?Passion Struck podcast.

What is a transition point?

In writing, which I love to do, the transition is a word or phrase that connects one idea to another. This connection can occur in a paragraph or between paragraphs. These transitions are used to show how different subject matter is linked to other subject matter that you’re relating to the reader and how they relate to the overall theme of the blog post, paper, or book that you’re producing.

Like these transition points in writing, we have transition points in life that connect important events.

Whether it’s evil, good, desire, meaning, worries, doubts, achievement, frustration, or the direction of our lives — all of this is decided in every day, transition points that we pay little, if any, attention to.

A great way to look at this through the lens of the military. Often, you are preparing for a specific mission. Let’s say you need to go into one particular town to look for a high-value target. Your attention is on the moment of the event: apprehending the high-value target and the steps you’re going to need to take during the event.

However, we often fail to focus on those moments leading up to that event and the moments following it. And those are the moments that I define as transition points. These are the periods where we often let our guard down, where we get into the status quo or into the daily motion of whatever it is that we’re doing.

And in a military sense, based on my experience, when I served, these are some of the most critical times that you could possibly have because they are when something comes up unforeseen and bites you when you least expect it. Soldiers get injured or lose their lives, whether from an IED, a surprise, ambush, an unexpected terrain issue, an evacuation route that we weren’t expecting that we had to take and weren’t adequately tuned in for.

These transition points are all around us in our everyday lives. They come in the form of the simple choices that we make, like training for an upcoming race, preparing for a business meeting, giving advice to our kids, but it’s what you do with these transition points that really matter.

Why do transition points define us?

These transition points matter so much because they ultimately make or break your goals and aspirations. Often, we approach these in a lackadaisical way, like we’re going through the motions like we’re just showing up. But we’re not conscious about our actions and the implications that they can have.

And that’s what the importance of transition points is all about: not treating them in that way, not treating them as a trivial event, but treating them along the way, as a vital circumstance to your end goal.

I think sports are an excellent metaphor for these transition points. Earlier in my life, I was a mediocre runner at first when I was in high school. And part of the reason I was a mediocre runner is that I wasn’t taking the transition points seriously enough. I would get to the meets, and I wouldn’t be mentally prepared. My nerves would get the best of me, and I performed sub-optimally.

Then the light bulb went off somewhere around my sophomore year in high school. And I began to treat my practice sessions the same way I was treating the meets I was running in. As I started to focus more on those transition points that occurred during everyday practice and started treating it, as it was actually an event and I was racing my teammates, my performance started skyrocketing.

And then, when I was running in college, I pondered the difference between someone who’s an excellent collegiate athlete and someone who is absolutely the peak performer and an All-American. I think it really comes down to the transition points of everyday preparation that culminate in breakthrough results.

These are the moments when you could be making a decision, such as what am I going to eat? And am I going to be lazy about that meal? Or am I going to be intentional about what I’m eating? It could be your work ethic, and are you giving it your all, or are you just going through the motions? Or it could be mental strength? Are you mentally preparing? Are you getting yourself in the right psyche?

These mundane transition points profoundly impact our achievements and the magnitude of those performances over time.

Exemplars who focused on transition points.

Let’s look at the life of the Hall of Fame basketball player,?Michael Jordan. Jordan was actually cut when he was early in his high school career for those who aren’t familiar with his story. But Michael had a choice at that point. He could either give up on his dream or double down on it. And that’s precisely what Michael did. He joined the?5 am club?and started waking up early every day, going to school and shooting, and practicing from 530 to 730. He was using the transition points in his life to prepare to ensure he would never face that rejection again.

He continued that pattern throughout his entire NBA career. And when other teammates were taking practice like?Allen Iverson, he would show up two hours before practice even started and shoot hundreds, if not 1000s of baskets, preparing and making himself mentally ready to take on that practice.

He did the same thing when it came to games showing up early and doing those daily iterations; during those transition points, that led him to what many consider the best player who ever played the game.

A similar dynamic is still happening with quarterback?Tom Brady?on the football field. Looking back and being a Michigan fan, I would have never predicted in a million years that Tom Brady would still be playing football or win as many Super Bowls as he had and had the career that he’s had.

But Tom embraces football the same way that Michael Jordan embraces basketball. He concentrates on the transition points of his daily life and treats them all around with intentionality. And to be the best player that he can be. You see how Brady mindfully approaches the transition points throughout his career: his strict diet, work ethic, the way he shows up and encourages his teammates.

It’s his observance of the transition points and making the most of them that have led to the fantastic career that he has had, just like Michael Jordan.

How do you approach the transition points in your life?

A few months ago, I had on one of my favorite guests on the Passion Struck podcast. He’s a Naval Academy classmate, retired astronaut, and Navy SEAL, Captain?Chris Cassidy. And during our conversation, I asked him what the most important thing that he would teach midshipmen if he came back and gave a talk was. His answer:?the power of being present in the moment.

Be present in life's moments.

And that’s what transition points are all about. It’s being present in your daily interaction with family, friends, peers at work, or when you’re in a meeting. And treating each and every interaction as the most essential thing that is going on in the moment. And just like I’m writing this article right now, you, the audience, are the most crucial thing in my life at this moment. However, if the house around me suddenly caught on fire and I had to do something differently, of course, that would take priority, and I would have to deal with that emergency.

But if you think about the long-term goals you’re after and the steps leading up to making them happen, it’s being present at the moment, along that continuum, that matters most. It’s putting in the daily repetitions to improve.

If you’re an athlete, it’s practicing your craft and striving to achieve better performance every single day. If your aspiration is to be a great parent, it’s being present at the moment with your family so that you can be the best version of yourself for them.

Create a system of prioritization.

The second step to approaching transition points is to develop a system of prioritization for your actions. In a previous episode of the Passion Struck podcast, I talked about the?Ivy League method, which I like to use to help prioritize my daily goals. The Ivy Lee method is a simple way to approach the five most critical things you have to get done the next day. You jot those down before you go to sleep. And then the next day, you go in rank order of the prioritization you laid the night before. Ultimately they are the daily activities that are leading you closer to your goals.

Without prioritization, it is so easy to fall into the trap of just doing the status quo and going throughout your day on auto-pilot.

Build positive habits. Remove negative ones.

The third step to approaching transition points is to focus on building habits that lead to taking better initiative. A simple way you can think about this is that we have both good habits and bad habits. Take out a piece of paper, think about your days, and write down all your good habits. Then write down all your bad habits. From there, focus on one good behavior and double down on it to maximize that habit even more. Or take a harmful practice and take steps to try to eradicate it from your daily activity.

Either way, whether you’re taking something away or building something up, you’re using your transition points in the form of habits to your advantage. And you’re making progress on your goal.

A great book to learn more on this subject is?Atomic Habits?by James Clear.

Stop focusing on past success.

The fourth step you can take on this road to creating better transition points is not looking too far in the rearview mirror. It is so easy to look at past success and think that it will determine our future. How many times have you seen a standout athlete with tons of promise have success early in their career, and then they seem to disappear?

Think about Serena Williams playing tennis, and she just won the French Open. And she knows she’s got Wimbledon and the US Open, coming up just after around the corner. It would be so easy for her to just take that moment of winning the French Open and running with it for the rest of the year. It is a fantastic accomplishment.

But what really takes work is Serena putting herself in that mental place where she’s not focusing on the fact that she just won that event. Instead, she shifts focus to the next opportunity coming up, which could be the next Grand Slam for her. And then making sure that she’s focusing on the transition points between those two events and ensuring that she’s getting mentally ready, physically ready, and doing everything she can spiritually to prepare to win a Grand Slam.

The same thing happens in the business world as we transition from one critical event or project to another. Or, as an entrepreneur, during the transition from a crucial investor meeting to another. It’s all about not letting yourself get caught in the day-to-day noise. Make sure that you are focused on the transition points and taking steps to get better every day.

That’s what the transition point is all about.

Be intentional.

And the last and final step on how you approach transition points is to be intentional about them. According to?The Dennettian Model,?“the heart of folk psychology is the taking of an intentional stance as the primary way to predict human behavior, as well as the behavior of various other complex systems. This stance treats people as rational agents who choose in conformance to their beliefs and desires.”

Intentionality is something that I think so many people are missing today. And all you have to do is go into a restaurant and just observe people’s behavior. Are they on their phone? Or are they really, really paying attention to each other with intentionality.

I think we go through so much of the pattern of daily interactions with good intentions. But we let all the distractions around us impact our intentionality because we focus on what is urgent versus what is important. And that’s what being intentional is all about. It is putting your focus on those inputs that are taking you to where you want to go.

Take Away

Transition points are all around us: in our relationship goals, our career aspirations, the path to physical achievement, and the approaches we take for our spiritual, emotional, and mental health.

It is essential to be present in the moment, prioritize your actions, build positive habits, get rid of harmful ones, stop focusing on past successes, and live each day intentionally.

Ultimately, realize it is the transition points to and from life’s defining events that truly define us.

If you liked this article, check out another on the importance in life of being resilient.

For more inspiring podcast content like this, visit the?Passion Struck?podcast.