Another musing takeaway from this podcast with Brené Brown, Dax Shepard and Tim Ferriss that has been ruminating today: Sliding door moments (perhaps you’re sensing a theme after yesterday’s post).

They described sliding door moments as turning points or game-shifting occurrences in our lives that create a change in direction, ability, perspective, or opportunity and ultimately alter the course of our trajectory. Interesting stuff to think about. Oftentimes for me, identifying sliding door moments when I look back at my past includes an amount of surprise. They are usually conversations that didn’t feel revelatory at the time; relationships that cropped up out of nowhere; or decisions that felt cloudy or insignificant; or choices that seemed obvious or arbitrary in the moment that have, retrospectively, created my life’s most pivotal plotpoints.

Should we try and get better at recognizing sliding door moments when we’re experiencing them? I’m not convinced. I think that might cause us to approach them with more gravity. I think we owe it to ourselves to live a life that results from our authentic actions; not getting a head’s up when something might matter more than another decision that looked equally ambient by its cover. Otherwise, how will we learn what we need to learn?

-LS