The Story Behind What Matters: We Are the Sum of Small Moments

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What Matters: We Are the Sum of Small Moments represents a natural pause in my writing life—a moment to step back after fifteen books and ask a deeper question:

What have I really been trying to say all along?

Over the years, my books have explored identity, self-awareness, communication, reinvention, and purpose. Some focused on work and personal growth. Others reflected on relationships, storytelling, change, and the quiet ways people shape one another.

But beneath all of those themes was the same underlying question:

What actually matters in the end?

This book grew from that reflection.

In many ways, my writing has been a long-form attempt to understand how people become who they are. The answers have changed over time, just as I’ve changed. But through it all, the work has remained rooted in a deep curiosity about identity, growth, meaning, and the people who shape our stories.

Most of my earlier books focused heavily on the self—self-reflection, self-awareness, communication, and personal responsibility. Over time, however, I came to realize that relationships are inseparable from this work. They are not simply something we experience; they become part of who we are.

Relationships open the door to reinvention. They teach us about boundaries, resilience, purpose, love, disappointment, and hope. They challenge our assumptions and offer us mirrors—sometimes flattering, sometimes uncomfortable—of how we move through the world.

Two of my earlier works, Embrace Life’s Randomness and Why Life Stories Change, explored the tension between what happens to us and how we interpret it. I found myself increasingly interested in how belief, attention, memory, and interpretation shape not only our decisions, but our experience of life itself.

Those books raised questions I still think about today:

Can we live by a steady personal code in a chaotic world?

Are we defined more by what we choose—or by what we endure?

At the heart of these reflections is one truth:

We grow by engaging, not retreating.

By staying present in uncertainty.

By reflecting on pain without letting it define us.

By making meaning from both the beautiful and the difficult parts of life.

Because all of it matters.

Over time, I noticed that one short reflection quietly posted on my website began reaching more people than almost anything else I had written. Readers returned to it again and again because it captured something deeply human: the idea that people enter our lives for reasons we may not fully understand at the time.

Some stay briefly.

Some remain for years.

Some change us permanently.

That reflection stayed with me because it points toward something central to this book: our lives are shaped not only by dramatic turning points, but by accumulated moments of connection, loss, understanding, timing, and perspective.

“It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.” — Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

That line captures something essential about reflection and memory. We often think our life story is fixed—written permanently in ink. But every time we look back, we revise the story slightly. We notice different details. We interpret events differently. We understand ourselves through a new lens.

We are never quite the same person telling the story twice.

Our experiences change us. So do the people who enter our lives, the books we read, the losses we carry, and the questions we begin asking ourselves over time. In that sense, identity is not static. It is a living narrative shaped by memory, perspective, interpretation, and growth.

Over the years, I have told my own story many times—sometimes in front of audiences, sometimes across a table in quiet conversation. Each time, different details rise to the surface. Certain moments feel more important. Others soften with distance. And again and again, I am reminded that growth is not about erasing who we once were, but understanding ourselves with greater honesty and compassion.

When I look back now, I realize that nearly everything I’ve written has been leading here.

To the understanding that meaning is rarely found only in dramatic turning points.

It is found in conversations.

In relationships.

In small acts of kindness.

In moments of clarity.

In the stories we tell ourselves about who we are becoming.

What Matters was written as a reflection on those moments—and on the quiet ways they shape us over time.

Because in the end, the people and moments that matter most are not measured by duration, but by the meaning they leave behind.

My Other Books that Influenced What Matters