Or, really, any other one thing.

You may have read a quote at one time or another that profoundly impacted you.

It may even have changed everything. A true epiphany. My first experience of this was something Carl Sagan said:

"If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe."

Here's the thing though.

It's not true.

That one quote did not change my life.

It was merely the tipping point of a Damn Big Idea.

Imagine a bucket of water placed under a leaky roof, slowly filling up, one drop at a time.

As long as the drops keep coming, the bucket will keep filling. Sooner or later, the water level will reach its brim. And then...

One drop that causes the bucket to flow over.

But it wasn't really that drop, was it?

It was ALL the drops that made that happen.

And so it is with quotes or "life changing events" in general.

Here's why this is a practical idea that's actually useful to your day to day life:

Understand that you probably attribute far more importance than merited to singular events...

... And probably not nearly enough importance to the process leading up to that tipping point event.

Things that happened to you that you thought were life-changing, were in all likelihood just tipping point events, where in reality ALL the drops were equally important.

And to crystallize all of this in a single, coherent thought:

When the student is ready, the teacher appears (and vice versa).