I ask virtually everyone I work with — executives, entrepreneurs, people between careers, people between marriages, people who are just plain worried they don’t have the right stuff to meet their next challenge — to make a list of the “defining moments” in their lives. A defining moment is an occasion when you found something in yourself you didn’t know you had, or forgot you had, and pulled it out. And as a result, you changed an outcome from negative to positive. A defining moment is when you said, “Yes, I will” or “No, I won’t.” It’s when you drew a line. Or erased one, if that was what needed to be done. It’s a moment after which you never thought of yourself in quite the same way. We all have them. In fact, I bet if you took a good look, you’d come up with a ton of them.

A few years ago, when I asked a client named Ray to go home and make a list of the defining moments in his life, he balked. “I can’t do that,” he said. “I don’t have time, with my work and my family. And, anyway, I don’t have any defining moments.”

“Just do it, Ray,” I said. And he did. He came back two weeks later with five pages of defining moments. Once he had started, he couldn’t stop. “I’m just worried about all the ones I missed!” he said. “Don’t worry,” I said. “There will be a whole lot more.” What kick-started the process for Ray was remembering when he ran for class president in the ninth grade. He ran his heart out — and he lost. But he still had to go to school the next day. He still had to walk down the same halls. He still had to hold his head up. And he did it. What he found in himself was the courage and the will to keep his 13-year-old self going. It really was a good thing that Ray lost that election, because if he had won, he wouldn’t have learned as much about himself. “You know,” he said, “when I think about it, just that one little memory reminds me that I’m strong, that I can handle whatever comes along.”

Ray became a true “collector” of defining moments in his life, as well as in the lives of his wife and children. He sometimes calls or e-mails me with the subject heading “Another Defining Moment.” And he’ll tell me the story of a risk he took or a step forward he made or a step backward that he was able to handle with grace and good humor.