Chapter 6 - The Power of Micro-Moments: How Tiny Experiences Saved Me — and Can Save the World
From the book, Living as a Cathedral of Awe
Living as a Cathedral of Awe Book
For most of my early life, fear lived in me like second nature.
Not because I chose it, but because it was planted in me —
seeded by unstable expectations, cultivated by systems that confused control with love.
Fear was the emotion my body memorized.
Fear was the lens through which I first saw the world.
Fear was the rhythm my heart learned to beat to.
It would have been easy to believe that was all there was.
That fear, vigilance, anxiety were the natural atmosphere of existence.
But something — something deep inside me — refused to accept that.
Something believed there had to be another way to live.
Even if I couldn’t name it yet.
Even if I had only glimpsed it in fleeting moments.
That’s when I began to recognize the power of micro-moments.
It started with my daughters.
In the ordinary, everyday messiness of life —
between school drop-offs, doctor appointments, late-night homework —
there were these flashes:
moments where everything unnecessary dropped away,
and I was simply there with them.
Fully present.
Fully alive.
Fully connected.
At first, those moments were rare and brief.
A shared laugh.
A held gaze.
A few seconds where love wasn’t an effort, but a state of being.
But then I realized:
I could choose to notice them.
I could choose to expand them.
I could choose to memorize them —
the way I had once, unconsciously, memorized fear.
I began to practice.
Capture the micro-moment. Feel it fully. Name it. Let it flood me.
Expand it. Stay in it longer. Breathe it deeper. Stretch it wider.
Anchor it. Let it carve a new path in my memory, my body, my mind.
Return to it. Revisit it when fear tried to reclaim the ground.
Little by little, I taught myself that
positive emotions were not just accidents.
They were skills.
They could be cultivated.
They could be expanded.
They could be lived.
Later, I saw how this insight extended into my work.
I taught sales teams to recognize the micro-moment that happened just before the customer said "yes" —
that flash of trust, alignment, emotional safety.
I taught them to memorize the feeling they had on their best sales day ever —
not the script they spoke, not the tactics they used,
but the emotional state they were in.
Because it was never just about the words.
It was about the energy they carried.
The emotional presence they offered.
The micro-moment of safety and possibility they created.
I taught them to trust that if they could hold that emotional state —
The right words would come.
The right actions would flow.
The right connection would build itself.
Just as I had learned to trust myself
to recreate the states of presence and love with my daughters,
even when life was hard, even when fear tried to creep back in.
Micro-moments saved me.
They taught me that I didn’t have to wait for life to get easier.
I didn’t have to wait for the world to change.
I didn’t have to wait for perfect healing or complete safety.
I could live in wholeness, awe, gratitude —
one moment at a time.
And every time I chose to expand a micro-moment of flourishing,
I carved a deeper path out of fear and into life.
This, too, became part of THX.
Unspoken but living inside it:
Every Utility.
Every element of PERMAH.
Every spark of Admiration.
All of them built, sustained, and made real
through the mastery of micro-moments.
Today, I still live this practice.
I don’t chase perfection.
I don’t wait for safety to be guaranteed.
I don’t demand that the world fix itself first.
I look for the next micro-moment.
I expand it.
I honor it.
I let it heal me a little more.
Because the truth is:
Healing doesn’t happen all at once.
It happens one breath, one connection, one act of presence at a time.
And if enough of those moments are strung together —
they don’t just change a day.
They change a life.
They change the world.
Next: Chapter 7 - The Art of Immersion: How Micro-Moments Awaken Awe and Admiration
How immersion opens the heart, dismantles fear, and births true transformation.
