Modern Wisdom - #464 - Dr Christian Busch - The Science Of Creating Good Luck

Episode Date: April 23, 2022

Dr. Christian Busch is the Director of the Global Economy program at New York University's Center for Global Affairs and an author. The science of creating luck seems like an oxymoron. How is it possible to create more of something which is totally random? Dr Busch's lab has spend years looking at the habits and behaviours of people who have lots of luck to distill down how everyone can replicate this in their own lives. Expect to learn why viagra wouldn't have happened without a good luck mentality, the best way to consciously cultivate more serendipity in your life, how to never feel anxious about approaching someone again, my Tim Ferriss-based regret, why our mindset around luck is more malleable than you might think and much more... Sponsors: Join the Modern Wisdom Community to connect with me & other listeners - https://modernwisdom.locals.com/ Get 15% discount on Craftd London’s jewellery at https://bit.ly/cdwisdom (use code MW15) Get 15% discount on the amazing 6 Minute Diary at https://bit.ly/diarywisdom (use code MW15) (USA - search Amazon and use 15MINUTES) Extra Stuff: Buy Connecting The Dots - https://amzn.to/38PdRGB  Follow Christian on Twitter - https://twitter.com/chrisserendip  Get my free Reading List of 100 books to read before you die → https://chriswillx.com/books/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello friends, welcome back to the show. My guest today is Dr. Christian Bush, is the director of the Global Economy Program at New York University's Center for Global Affairs and an author. The science of creating look seems like an oxymoron. How is it possible to create more of something which is totally random? Dr. Bush's lab has spent years looking at the habits and behaviours of people who have lots of luck to distill down exactly how everyone else can replicate this in their own lives. I expect to learn why Viagra wouldn't have happened without a good luck mentality.

The best way to consciously cultivate more serendipity in your life, how to never feel anxious about approaching someone again, my Tim Ferriss-based regret, why our mindset around look is more malleable than you might think, and much more. Just like the David Robson episode from a couple of weeks ago, this is another great science writer talking about something that we all have a sense of in our own lives. We all know what it feels like when things are going our way, and it's nice to know that there is a reliable way to replicate this, even if we don't feel particularly lucky every day. I really hope that you enjoyed this one.

But now, please welcome Dr. Christian Bush. How would you get started on thinking about the science of luck? As far as I was aware, luck was some random chance, blessed to some and not to others, and the end of a rainbow and a pot of gold and stuff like that. Where does the signs of luck come into it? Yeah, that's a great question, because we always assume that luck is something that just happens to us, right? So, you know, being born into a nice family stuff like that, that we can't really influence.

What I found fascinating, both in my work as entrepreneur, social entrepreneur, but also in my research is that somehow, the most successful, inspiring people, they seem to have in common, that they somehow intuitively cultivate a little bit more luck than others. And so I got fascinated by that question,

is there some kind of smart luck here? Is there some kind of process we can influence? And so take the example, right? Imagine you have irredicant movements like I do and you spill a lot of coffee. And so imagine you spill coffee in a coffee shop over someone, and they look at you slightly annoyedly, but you sense there might be something there. You don't know what it is, you just sense there might be something there. And now you have two options, right? Option number one is you just say,

I'm so sorry, here's an Epkin, you walk outside, and you think, ah, what could have happened, had I spoken with a person? Option number two, you speak with a person, that person turns out to become the love of your life or your co-founder or your name it. The point is our reaction to the unexpected, us making the accident meaningful in a way creates that kind of smart luck, that kind of serendipity. And so in a way, a lot of our research focuses on the question, is there a pattern behind all these different stories of serendipity? Is that always the same process of some kind of unexpected trigger happening, but then ask connecting the dots and doing something with it?

And so that's the past thing. We can create more of those triggers, but also we can learn how to connect those dots better. So is the difference between look and serendipity, whether it's random or whether it's purposeful or intentional? Well, it's interesting, because in a way, both kind of the blind luck and the smart luck, which sort of it is, somehow have some kind of randomness in it,

right, bumping into that person at a conference, or, you know, I'll tell you the example of the potato washing machine to give you that point. But the idea is that there's always some kind of element of randomness, but then we have some kind of agency in it. We have some kind of control over not the situation itself, but our response to it. And so take the potato washing machine, right? Essentially, a couple of years ago, a company in China,

they produce refrigerators, washing machines, and so on. And they receive calls from farmers. And the farmers told them, you're crappy washing machines always breaking down. Well, why is the washing machine breaking down? Well, we're trying to wash our potatoes and it doesn't seem to work. So what we usually do, we'll probably tell them, well,

don't wash your potatoes in the washing machine. Like it's made for clothes, you know, well, why would you do that? They did the opposite. They said, you know what, that's unexpected, that's random. But there's probably a lot of farmers in China who have a similar problem.

So why don't we build in a dirt filter and make it a potato washing machine? That's how serendipity so though, the potato washing machine emerged, that's how up to 50% of innovations and inventions emerge, that's how a lot of times we fall in love. It's not only bumping into that person, we have to go on a date,

we have to do something with it to actually turn it into that kind of positive outcome that doesn't just happen to us. It seems to me that there's two things that we're playing with here. One of them being how frequently we can put ourselves into situations where the randomness can come to us. And then also our response to the situations, which is kind of how we profit or benefit or make good of whatever happens. Is that right? Absolutely. It's exactly it's kind of exactly in a way making the accident meaningful. And that's the exciting thing. Having more accidents.

Having more accidents. We can literally create more positive accidents. Yeah, that's interesting. Is Serendipity still Serendipity, if you take an active role in it? Well, that's the fascinating thing. When people connect the dots at hindsight, when they look at their severe cell, they would say, oh, this was just lucky there

and this lucky here. But then they think about it and they're like, oh, but actually, you know what? I worked really hard to have that luck. I worked really hard to then follow up with that conference guy. I bumped into and then do this and do this. And so the point here is that actually, when you look at certain entity

and the role of people in it, it's more than we think, but we average it out of our stories, right? I work a lot with executives and when you're the CEO of a company, you come into the ballroom and you want to be able to say, I planned this, I did this, and then this happened, right? Yeah, everyone knows that you know what, it's probably more like a squiggle, like our CV, right? It's not just, I planned this, I did this, I did this. No, like you bumped into someone and you did this, this, this, but and that's what I'm so fast

and about this topic. It's instead of thinking, oh, this is weak. Oh my God, like I wasn't in control. This is actually the ultimate form of trying to figure out how to gain some kind of control over your environment and let go of an illusion of control to say, hey, I created a mindset and a culture that allows actually for those unexpected things to happen instead of actually overlooking

them, right? You would never see the potato washing machine if you would say, no, this doesn't fit my marketing plan, it shouldn't be here. Yeah, it doesn't happen. And you will be in control of your old plan. But maybe you'll be out of business in a few years when there's so many farmers who actually wanted that machine and you compare it, right? And so it's really these kind of things where it's out control over those kind of things. Well, you can't stop the randomness. That's going to continue to happen. So I think you're right.

Getting ready to control that. It feels like the sort of old school business world where everybody would have to wear a suit in a tie and everybody would have to work from the office and everyone would have to be very prim and proper. I think that that illusion of control is kind of masking over the fact that it's idiots all the way up. I've got a bunch of friends that I've met and I spent a bit of time with people that are around literally the highest echelons of tech and of business and of finance. And they've said to me, dude, no one has an

idea what they're doing. Everyone is clueless, the entire way up, all the way up, and everyone's winging it. So, getting ourselves to this stage now, where you go, okay, look, the veil has been lifted. There is no magic that's sort of going on here. What we're trying to do is create a culture and environment in which this randomness can be profited on. Didn't you have a story about, with Viagra as well?

Absolutely, and you know, to exactly your point, right? That's the fast-saying thing that once you let go of this idea that you can control everything, then actually you start building that muscle for the unexpected and that decreases anxiety. You know, I come from Germany, we love to control things, to plan things, to have a plan, right? And then real life happens, you're like, oh my god, like now I'm overwhelmed. But as if you're saying, you know what, you know, I'll have a plan now, but I'm already building in the expectation that there will be something unexpected

and that's not the threat that could actually be something even more beautiful, right? And we can talk about other examples there. For example, Vagra, right? Vagra is exactly this, where researchers were giving people medication against a giant pectorus, Viagra is exactly this, where researchers were giving people medication against and giant-attack tourists, the illness, and they realized unexpected

that there was some kind of movement in male participants' trousers. And you know what we usually do? We're probably either try to ignore it or kind of find a better way to kind of, you know, get rid of that side effect of having that kind of movement. They did the opposite. They said, you know what, that's unexpected, but there's probably a lot of men in the world who might have a problem with that department,

so why don't we develop a medication around this? And that's really the thing here, right? To exact the point that if we're trying to stick with our original plan, just focus on this, we don't see all these beautiful other things that might come of it. And that's the same, you know, in any part in life, and that's what the excitement is, I think,

that there's so many meaningful potentialities out there, but we have to open our eyes to it. How malleable or ingrained do you think are people's mindsets around look? You know, it's interesting, because I always thought, you know, people like what I presume you from what I've seen, myself and others who intuitively cultivate a lot of serendipity, they're, I first thought, hey, this content is for those people who then have vocabulary, a language for what they intuitively do,

it legitimizes what they do and then they can go to their boss and say, no, I wasn't out of control here. I actually created something that allowed me to get here. And that works. But then what's actually much more fascinating to me is the second group of people, like a colleague of mine in London, you know, this kind of eminent professor, type person, wonderful person, but he came to me at the beginning when I started this work. And he said, Christian, I love you. I love your work. But I don't need serendipity. Like I have a nice family. I have a nice job, I have everything I need, like, why would I need this?

So we made a deal. We said, you know what? Why do you not use a couple of strategies? And we can talk about, for example, the hook strategy, which I asked him to use. And then, you know, ask a couple of different questions, a couple of those things, and then we'll reconvene in a couple of weeks. He comes back a couple of weeks after, and he's like, Christian, I didn't know life can be so joyful.

And to me, that's really the kind of thing that those people who believe that there's this difference between luck and kind of hard work. Those are the ones who once they realize, oh my God, I can create my own luck, who get the most excited because for them is the biggest shift. There's this for others, it's like, yeah, great, I have another exercise here,

but it's kind of a more incremental shift. And to give an example, one of my favorites to get people into that is the hook strategy. And the hook strategy is all about saying, how can I use every conversation, every interaction, to cast a couple of hooks, to put a couple of interesting themes into the conversation where the other person

can connect the dots for us. So there's this amazing entrepreneur in London, Oli Barrett. And if you would ask Oli's this amazing entrepreneur in London, Ollie Barrett. And if you would ask Ollie this kind of dreaded, what do you do question? He wouldn't just say, I'm a technology entrepreneur. He would say, I'm a technology entrepreneur, recently started reading into the philosophy of science,

but what I'm really excited about is playing the piano. And so what he's doing here is he's giving you three hooks where you could be like, oh my God, such a coincidence. My sister is teaching on the philosophy of science, you should give a guest like, oh my god, such a coincidence, my sister is teaching on the philosophy of science, you should give a guest lecture. Oh my god, such a coincidence, we're hosting piano sessions, you should stop by. The point is, I'm a big fan of doing a certain limited journal where you write down two or three key themes of, you know, that's what I'm curious about at the moment. How to take this idea into curricula or organizations, yet, I add a,

and then kind of, you know, plug that into conversations. And it's beautiful how often people would be like, oh my god, such a coincidence, my brother of the sister of the father is exquisite, right? And so, but we can't know this potentiality if we don't put it out there for people to find it themselves. It is interesting to think about how people respond to different situations. How would you characterize the difference between a person who has a life which is more lucky and the way that someone who is less lucky behaves? Yeah, it's interesting. And if I may else, I'll start that answer

with one of my favorite experiments, which is a bit of a fun experiment, but I think it brings home that point that a lot of it is how we frame the world and how we look at the world and how alert you are to what's out there. And so in this experiment, they took people who self-identifies very lucky

and everyone who's listening to this, like I'd love you to think about, do you consider yourself to be lucky or an unlucky person? And just kind of like then stick with that while we talk through that experiment. And so they pick people who consider themselves to be very lucky. So people who say, good things tend to happen to me

and yeah, they add it. And then people who consider themselves to be very unlucky. So people who say bad things tend to happen to me, I'm always in accidents and so on. And we probably all know people on this kind of continuum who are on that. Now they pick one of each and they say walk down the street, go into a coffee shop, grab a coffee, sit down, and then we'll have our conversation. What they don't tell them is that there's hidden

cameras alongside the street and inside the coffee shop. There's a five pound note, so money in front of the coffee shop door, and inside the coffee shop there's one empty chair next to this extremely successful businessman who can make big dreams happen. Now the lucky person walks down the street, sees the five pound note, picks it up, goes inside the shop or just the coffee, sets next to the business man, they have a conversation, exchange business cards, potentially an opportunity coming out of it, we don't know that part. The unlucky person walks down the street, steps over the five pound north, so it doesn't see it, goes inside the shop, orders the coffee, sits next to the businessman, ignores the businessman, that's it. Now at the end of the day, they asked both people, how was your day today? And so the lucky person says, well, it was amazing. I found money in the street, made a new friend, and you know, potentially an opportunity

coming out of it. The unlucky person just says, well, nothing really happened. And there's a lot of these kind of experiments where you can put people into exactly the same situation. And by the way, they look at situations. By the way, they ask questions. By the way, they alert to opportunity. They will completely differently experience that and come out lucky or unlucky.

I find a lot of money in the street, unfortunately, mostly pennies. So it doesn't really help my lifestyle that much. But like everyone, I would really highly recommend start looking for the pennies in the street and you will continuously find them. People job a lot of money. I was surprised about that, by the way. So is the big difference there? One person's more vigilant, more observant, more open to new interactions. The other person is more focused, less open, less keen about trying to start new connections. Exactly, so that's definitely one of the factors. I mean, if you look at it as kind of like a couple of bend diagrams that come together through them kind of shape that that's our duty mindset, one piece of this is really this alertness and this kind of

also often curiosity, right, to learn about the world, learn about the environment, is the kind of thing when, you know, let's say you take another way to work in the morning and really open your eyes to the street and see, oh, there's a bookstore, all that book in the store. People haven't talked about this for a while. That should be a podcast. Those kind of things where serendipity then comes from the most unexpected of sources, books, movies, everywhere,

right, everywhere, there's potential dots that we could connect. So that's definitely a big piece. I think another piece in that experiment was also around this idea of, you know, it can help to actually, you know, engage people, like obviously networks, social capital is a huge kind of factor for having that potentiality,

but you know, for closet introverts like myself, there's a lot of hope that a lot of times serendipity comes from quiet sources like reading a book or that we can actually work with extroverts that they kind of do a lot of this for us. So for example, going to an event and speaking about an idea with a host for us so that the host then talks about the idea. Things like this where we can leverage extroverts

if we feel more introverted. What would you say is the opposite of a serendipity mindset? I think it's really someone who believes that life is given. Serendipity mindset is about the idea that life is extremely socially constructive. I mean, you know, there's there's there's there's fixed constraints and a lot of my work is in very kind of extreme poverty regions and those are kind of very fixed constraints and a lot of my work is in very extreme poverty regions. And those are very fixed constraints. And I think we have to, while we work on mindset, also work on this societal constraints,

societal inequalities. I think that's a big piece that goes hand in hand with the mindset work. But then on the mindset side, I think it's someone who doesn't question assumptions, who in a way is in this fixed mindset of, of, hey, look, the world is just the way it is. And, and you hear that very quickly in the language people use, right? When people use language along the lines of, hey,

this is how it's supposed to be. And, you know, when I look in the stars, like there's this thing that, that is being told to me, whatever it is, like, that's kind of like more, okay, I can't really influence it, versus certainly, what you mindset is about,

I can influence it, I can do something about it. I hesitate to say that I think British people might be some of the worst at creating their own luck. The word that kept on coming up was cynicism. Someone who's a cynic, who would always presume that this is the way that things have been, this is the way that things are always going to be, that isn't open to new ideas, that isn't questioning assumptions. And I don't know whether that's just the sort of working class towns, perhaps that I've spent most of my time in, but I kind of get the impression that it's not, and I'm out

here in Austin, Texas at the moment, very much. You know, I was walking out of the sauna a couple of days ago, and one dude went, hey, man, I think I know you from your podcast. What are you doing tomorrow night? I was like, I don't know, that was last night. And he's like, I've just moved into a new ranch. I'll give you a message on Instagram if you want to come up and we'll put a fire on and you can meet some new friends.

And last night I made five new friends because this guy decided that that's not that that's never once happened to me in the UK that sort of openness will be significantly more cynical. Rolling it back to what you said before, Charlie Hooper guy that does charisma on command which is this huge five and a half million subscriber YouTube channel. One of the questions that he gets asked when he's coaching people on charisma is how to have a better open and how to make yourself feel feel more interesting and see more interesting to people. And one of his best things is to do exactly what you said with the hook strategy. So he is trying to put out a number of different points of contact that people could get themselves on. So I

live in LA at the moment. I run my own business, but I've traveled the world for a very long time. I actually coach people on charisma. I once met Russell Brand and I can play the piano, or some shit like that, right? And that, all of those different opportunities there, again, it's the opposite of a cynic mindset of just saying, oh, my name's Charlie, and I do stuff on the internet.

Like, who's excited or interested by that person? And I think you kind of suggested that, especially with introverts, there's like a first mover problem here, right? Who is it that's going to actually begin the momentum within this interaction? And if someone enters the frame and makes it kind of fun and exciting and bantiful and you're able to go back and forth, it's easier for you

because you bounce off their energy, but it is really just a tiny little flick of an avalanche at the top and then it just cascades from there. So I do think even though I would also agree relatively introverted myself, I do think that it doesn't take much to just programming to you a little script that you can run that kind of sets the tone and then that person's energy increases and you bounce off that and their energy increases and you bounce off that. And yeah, you know the people that are like that,

you know, the people that when you sit down in the sauna or at a coffee shop or at a party or something that you go, yeah, I want to talk to that person more because they made me feel energized. They weren't cynical. So yeah, I think the opposite of a serendipity mindset is cynicism as far as I can see. Well, that's really interesting, right? To exactly your point. I mean, one thing that I found extremely helpful as someone who, you know, we live in a world designed for kind of more

extrovert people and then kind of like we try to make the best of it, right? And have spikes of extroversion, everyone thinks you're an extrovert, but actually then you're hiding the toilet after the speech. And so it's kind of those things where those kind of things happen. And so, what I, like, there's two things I found extremely helpful in that regard. One is to think about questions beforehand. So, you know, if you would ever run into that conference speaker or that potential lovely life or something else, you have one or two questions that feel authentic to yourself and that feel, oh, this, I could literally ask everyone. I could literally ask everyone, what do you enjoy doing, right?

Instead of what do you do, which puts someone into your box, if I slightly change it into what do you enjoy doing, the other person can can can veer into whatever area they want. And I think you had a great point there on energy, right? Then then they get into out of their autopilot in terms of, I'm this, I'm this, I'm this, to I actually enjoy this and this and this where then you can pick up on whatever is most, most interesting. I think the second point, you know, is really when you think about what holds us back a lot of times, what are the kind of fears that are there? Is it imposter syndrome? There's always this kind of small little imposter in there or fear of rejection, things like this. Something that I found extremely helpful is to think about what's the worst thing

that can happen. I always thought the worst thing that can happen is rejection, right? Conference Speaker saying, I don't have time for you. Love and just saying, I don't find you interesting, whatever it is. But then I realized that's thing of rejection is nothing. In comparison to this feeling of, ah, what could have happened? Had I spoken with a person, that feeling of regret, that feeling of like thinking the whole day,

oh, if I had done this, could this and this happen? It's very much twain thing in terms of that you will regret the things you haven't done all the things you have. And so I think it's very much this kind of thing of really reframing it away from, hey, rejection is really the thing that's the worst here too. Hey, the worst thing that can happen is to not act on it and then feel really bad about

it. That is the best takeaway that I had from your work, the fact that the pain of not closing a loop and the pain of a what if is way, way, way worse than the pain of rejection, especially if you can add a tiny bit of humor into it. Because if someone does like reject you in a rude way, it's funnier than it is rude. The worst sort of rejection isn't the one that's really rude, yet it's the one that you've got in your mind. And yeah, perfect example, the first weekend that I landed here in Austin in November last year,

Tim Ferris, right, God of the podcasting world, one of the OGs, was in the sauna cold plunge place that I go to. And he went in with somebody that I know, right? So a past podcast, I guess, Dr. Dan Engel owns that place. Dan knows me. Tim Ferris walks in. I'm like, right, okay, I know Dan, I don't know Tim. I'd love to know Tim. Tim's right there. We went in, came back out, and then Tim was sat down reading a book.

And I just thought, I won't interrupt him. He's reading his book and he's doing whatever. And now, even now, three and a half months on, I could have just gone up and said, hey man, I just wanted to let you know you did a how to start a podcast podcast four years ago that I listened to, were now 50 million plays deep. I just wanted to say thank you for the stuff that you've done. What's that? 10 seconds? 10 seconds. And Tim Ferriss is no way that big of a dick that he wouldn't have at least been accepting of it, if not genuinely happy to feel like, because I'd like to feel that right,

or hear that from someone, but I didn't do it. And it still plagues me to this day. That still hangs over me, versus how they've just gone up and tapped him on the arm and said, hey man, thank you for everything that you do and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And who knows what would have come out of that? So I don't have many regrets,

but that from the last couple of months is one that sticks with me. Yeah, no, I feel you. And I think that's exactly, you know, when you think about it in terms of, now it's at least also a good story, right? Either way, like everything that, even if it would have been rejection, right,

it would have been a good story. And so the point is like, to, like, I've actually become a big fan of rejection in the sense of it feels really bad in the moment, but it literally closes other doors, right? So the rejection of, you know, that love interest where you thought, oh my god, this is the love of my life. And then you realize, and actually she's like a bit of a, you know, that might be great. If you would have figured that out in five years, once you're married and have two kids, it's a bit too light. And you know, that's what I found really fascinating in terms of when does something become the inflection point

for something and that actually a lot of times serendipity comes out of crisis, it comes out of something not working out, some kind of rejection for a job, and then you're like, oh my God, I could actually open up my own business and or my own cool podcast or whatever it is, right? There's a, so maybe Tim Ferriss would have said,

hey, do this for me. And then it would have ended up as like a medium type or everything versus now you have your own big thing. You know what I mean? So it's kind of, I feel almost, hey, great. Maybe that was also the best. It's almost like, you know, it could become infection points either way,

but I think that a lot of times their individual actually comes out of crises or it comes out of things that didn't work and rejection is a big one there, I guess. There's a concept that I've bro-signed stint to existence called anxiety cost. So you understand opportunity cost, right? That by doing one thing you can't do another, anxiety cost to me is the amount of time that you spend thinking about an unclosed loop. So that is a cost that you could have fixed.

Had you have just done thing? Had I have gone up and spoken to Tim Ferriss, it would have taken me 20 seconds to walk across the room, 10 seconds to speak to him, 30 seconds total time investment, as opposed to probably hours that I've reflected on that situation, or the same thing that I need to go to the gym today. If you go to the gym in the morning,

that means that for the rest of the day, you can bathe in your self-congratulatory adulation and fill all prestigious because you went to the gym earlier, as opposed to leaving it until 8pm and you spend all of the day thinking to yourself, I gotta go to the gym, I gotta go to the gym, I gotta go to the gym. And yeah, I think that trying to limit that by just putting yourself into situations is such an easier way to do that and remembering the pain of unfulfilled what ifs is way worse than the pain of rejection. For no matter how introverted you are, that's a pretty big

motivator. Absolutely. And I love the way you frame that. I think that's a very affordable sentence right there. What about different types of serendipity? There must be different categories of some kind. Yeah, what is interesting, because in a way, when you think about what is serendipity all about, it's a lot of times there's three different types that we found work. One is that you're saying you're already looking for something, that say you're looking for a job at X-Wazat consultancy,

and then you coincidentally run into someone that you didn't expect could even help you with this and they get you that job So in a way you already knew what you wanted, but you find a very kind of unexpected way to get there I mean, you know the quintessential Example there's Archimedes who you know he for his For his king he tried to figure out like is that crown real gold or did someone kind of you know Mess with a king and so he didn't find a solution to this. And so he went, you know, chilled out in the baths, right?

The kind of, in a way, the old version of the sauna. It seems like good things happen there, right? That's fantastic. And so he went to the bath and he lowered himself into the water. And he realized, oh, wow, like the water will be pushed differently depending on the weight of something. And so essentially, if I do that with a crown, I can figure out if that is real gold. And so he already knew what he wanted to do, but he found an unexpected way to solve that. Now, that's the first piece. The second piece is really when you kind of like you're not looking for anything, right?

And then boom, thunderbolts happens and you know, you sit in that coffee shop, you weren't looking for love, but you instantly know that is the person, and then it happens in that moment and develops from there. So it's kind of, you're not looking for anything, but it happens. And then the third piece is really more the kind of posted notes type serendipity where you're looking for something,

maybe you're looking for a job in consulting, and then you get that job, and you realize, oh, I actually don't really want it, but on the way you realize, one of the people who interviewed you could be an amazing co-founder for your business, and so you start something completely different. So, you look for something, but then you find something completely different in the process, like post-it notes, right? They look for a stronger glue, but then realized, oh, wow, a weaker glue might be, might be much cooler than that. And so,

the point is what they all have in common is, there's always some kind of unexpected moment, right? Something that happens. But then again, we have to do something and connect the dots and and and act on it. One of the problems that I had was with people who say things happen for a reason. So they look back after some catastrophe that they've gone through and they say, well, yeah, but this this happened for a reason. I broke my legs for a reason, I crushed my car for a reason. I broke my legs for a reason. I crashed my car for a reason.

I lost my job for a reason. The reason that I don't like that wording is that it seems to me to take the agency out of that person's actions, right? That, okay, let's say that in one version of this universe, this did happen for a reason. And you were meant to get into a car crash and you were meant to break your legs and you were meant to lose your job. And then out of the back of that,

you've now got a better life. The other version of the story, which I believe, is that something shitty happened to you three times, like car crash broken legs lost your job and you overcame that. You went through all of these different situations and you made something good come out of something bad. Or you made something great come out of something good, you know I had this great opportunity and then I became whatever it is that I wanted or I found my wife or I did whatever right that to me is a much more Empowering inspiring energizing story to tell yourself then like what what's the answer? What what does it what do people mean when they say This happened for a reason?

You're like post-hoc rationalizing all of the good stuff you did, and outsourcing it to what? Like some higher power? Fuck that, like it's your, you were the person that made this go well. So I don't, it feels very disempowering to me when people say that.

And it feels like it's kind of like the serendipity mindset or connect the dots as well that you're kind of reverse engineering your own input into this situation out of it and leaving it completely up to chance. Well, that's the interesting thing, right, that if you think about it, and you know, it reminds me of this beautiful idea that does the situation define you or do you define the situation, right? So in a way, you know, most inspiring people that I know had some kind of inflection points in their

life where the question was, will that situation define them? Will they be the one who was broken up with for the rest of their life? Will they be the one who was bankrupt for the rest of their life? So do they settle with that idea that something went wrong? Or do they say, no, this becomes the inflection point for something, and now I find something better or something that fits better. And so I think that's the fascinating thing, right? And it always reminds me that kind of agency.

And that comes really back to the social constructiveness of things. It reminds me of Victor Franco. And you know, he wrote this amazing book, Man's Search for Meaning. I read it when I had actually two newadeath experiences, I reread it recently, but so I've been reading it and what I've always found inspiring when he kind of, you know, he was in a concentration camp, which as you can imagine, or in several, but like as you can imagine, that's the toughest situation you can be in, objectively there's no hope, no meaning, nothing. It's objectively meaning less from the perspective of the person who's in there and in general

from a societal perspective. And so it's kind of the toughest situation you can be in. And he said, you know what? I still have agency in this situation. Even in this most of meaningless situations, I will create meaning. And so what he did was he was saying, look, every day, I will still speak with another prisoner in this camp

to make them feel better. And by doing this, now I have a meaning to wake up tomorrow morning. Now I have a reason to wake up tomorrow morning because I still have to talk with so many people to make them feel better. And then I also still want to write that book once I get out of here. And so what he did was he created this duality of meaning of a day-to-day meaning where every day there was a bit of a small meaning.

And then also this big meaning, hey, this is still something I want to do when I'm out of here. And I've always found that inspiring as this idea that, look, a Victor Frankel can do this in a concentration camp. If social entrepreneurs can do that in sub-Saharan Africa, where a lot of our work is, I think we can do that in a lot of other contexts as well. And so I think there's always this huge element, I think, of, hey, what is our agency here and what can we do with it and can we define that situation a little bit? What are you doing in Africa?

Well, so I started working there around 10 years ago. But first for my PhD, which was all around the question of how do entrepreneurs in that context develop their networks to somehow have an impact and to scale and to grow. And it's become, you know, for me, the context where I've learned the most from in the sense of especially Kenya and South Africa,

I will never forget, for example, the first time I went there, and now very good friend of mine, I asked him, so me as someone coming to your context, what should I never ask you? Was the one thing that, you know, these white kids coming into your context always ask you, but like, you should never, never do that.

And he said, don't ask me what I need as a first question. If you would, if you ask me what I need as a first question, you put me into the role of the victim of the beneficiary of someone who kind of needs your benevolence. Because if you come in and say, what's here, what can we do together? And then you can still like resource and whatever, but we then kind of meet on the same level. And I think that to me was extremely inspiring, because I think, you know, when I think about all these development efforts

over the last decades, a lot of them have failed, because there's always this idea of, oh, people just need better nutrition and better education. No, people also need dignity and hope on the feeling that they can create their own luck and that you create, like that you don't give them handouts. And I think that's kind of,

for me, there was a big shift in thinking to say, no, it's not just about lower needs and fulfilling them first, it's starting with meaning, it's starting with dignity and then kind of getting from there. And I think that for me has informed everything else I've been doing. What, Ro, what's the framework that you've got in that case for reframing things? We've spoken about Victor Frank, we've spoken about people in Sub-Saharan Africa, but being in a really shitty situation and just manifesting meaning seems like a pretty big task. Have you got some steps that people can go through? That's a great question.

Again, I lived in these contexts for a little bit as a kind of guess, but I think both from the inside and from the outside, you know, there's objectively resource constraints and we have to work on them and I think that's a given. So that's not a one talking about what I'm talking about though is that in every context you find people who have a different mindset than other people in the same context. And so in this context, for example, there's this amazing organization that used an approach that I find extremely useful in those kind of contexts, which is scaling Bricolache,

so scaling the best out of what is at hand. So what they do is it's an organization that has a low cost education methodology. So, you know, it's things like 10 steps to use social media to build a business and stuff like that. And what they do is they go into other low-income communities and instead of asking what do you need because they don't have resources that they could give

and that's obviously not the approach they want to use. They say, what's already here and how can we make the best out of this? There's an old garage, fantastic, that could be a training center. There's a former Dr. dealer, fantastic. That person has amazing resourcefulness probably, they probably have a large social capital and if you turn them into a teacher, they can probably turn the whole community around.

And so the point here is that you're looking at the world from the perspective of what can we make with what's here versus what we think we need. And that kind of like you can transfer, right? They've used that model in banks, for example, where the old school approach during the pandemic would be we have to fire people because we don't have the resources now to have them sit in the office or have them sit at home or stuff like that. That's always the easy way out, right? To fire people to, quote unquote, decrease costs.

With this kind of scaling brick or lash model, the ideas that you go in and you say, okay, what's already here? We have this cashier and we don't need them because we have a machine for that now. Well, but maybe that could be a financial trainer and maybe the office could be the broadcast center for the online financial education course.

And so the point here is that once you reframe it away from what do we need? We need more budget, more resources. Yeah, that's too, what's already here? How do we make the best of it? You can create budgets around this, right? Where you ask people, hey, have you already considered how you could use the chairs of your neighboring restaurant for your event rather than needing 10 chairs

to buy and stuff like that. And then once you do that, you get so used to this idea, oh, actually, there's always resources around us if we see it or not. And that comes back to the CERN Divinity mindset that there's an abundance of potentiality, but we tend to not see it because we're so focused on particular resources and particular things. What do you think it is about the, when you're not looking for it, that's when it arrives mentality to do with look, you know, that buses, you're waiting and waiting and then when you finally turn away, that's when the bus arrives type thing.

I think, you know, it's commonly held wisdom. Have you ever seen this arise inside of your own work at all when people start focusing on things less, some of how opportunities arise to? Because that seems to run quite counter to what we're talking about. One of these is, deliberateness, intentionality, whereas that is almost, I don't know, like, turn your back and forget about it and then it's going to happen. Yeah. Well, look, and I think, you know, those thunderbolt kind of serendipity has happened a lot

of times, that when you're not looking for anything, and then that beautiful thing happens where you fall in love and X Y Z things like this And I think you know to me that comes a lot back to the point of Am I trying too hard for something if I if I want this one job and this one consultancy and I'm trying really hard That can be really great, but I might also close my eyes now to all these other potential consultancies or to all these Conversations randomly next to me where someone was talking about that they're looking for exactly the person that I am to close my eyes now, to all these other potential consultancies or to all these conversations randomly next to me where someone was talking about that they're looking for exactly the person that I am, but I didn't even listen to it. Is that what you think the problem with wanting stuff too hard or trying too hard is then

that you become overly narrow focused? Exactly. And I think what it creates is anxiety, right? A lot of anxiety. I mean, I remember I used to be very much like this, like, hey, I need a plan. I want to know exactly what I'll map out and explore that. And then I had this amazing mentor and he always used to tell me, Christian, people like you always think there's one way to roam. And then you realize you don't even want to be in Rome. And to me, that kind of like really drove at home

where you're like, geez, like you think you know what you want, you think you know what it is, you know nothing to your point earlier. We're all just ringing it. Like, how can I know now what I want in 10 years? Like, how is that even possible? I don't know, you know, I know, you know, I have a beautiful family and things like this,

but you know, we might kind of like, whatever kind of like life kind of happens in terms of, you know, we'll find another city to live in whatever, whatever you never know what happens. The point is that I think, you know, from our work and I, the inner research in me comes out when you ask that question, the nerdy one, who says, we just did a study actually with, with CEOs, where we try to figure out what is it that makes the most successful CEOs really successful? And the one key theme that they all have in common is that they extremely good at saying, here's a sense of direction.

If I'm running MasterCard, here is my sense of direction. We want to get 500 million people into the financial system who were previously unbanked. This is our north star. This is our sense of direction. Here's an approximate strategy, but I'm already telling you now that we will adjust that strategy based on your information coming in. So what they do is they give people a sense of clarity of where we're going, but at the same time also build the unexpected as part of the plan. And I think that to me in my own life and in the lives of others, I've seen that that decreases anxiety so much because you're saying yes, I have a key sense of direction, but I'm also open to the unexpected. And even if I don't, I work a lot with young people and young people, there's so much pressure

on them in terms of find your purpose, find your meaning, find this in this. I mean, come on, when you're 18 years old, like how are you supposed to do all that? So I'm a big fan, actually, of asking them, what's your curiosity? What is something that really you're curious about? And then that becomes your sense of direction for the time and then something else becomes. And then you more and more go towards a sense that Who you are and who you want to be in this world, but I think as long as we don't know that I think a key curiosity It gives us a sense of direction without overpressuring that plan

I think that's to your point if we get to rigid with a plan. That's when things go wrong What as soon as you have that plan especially one that's, you then begin to measure the difference between where you are and where the plan said that you were. And inherent in that is that there's going to be some anxiety around however far away from it you are and then over time, this is going to diverge. Yeah, I am, I don't know, I think that that sort of flexible approach would implicit in that the subtext of having that flexible approach is that you can be more confident that future you will deal with whatever problems arise. Like the reason that you have an unbelievably strictly laid out plan is basically because of a lack of faith that you could come up with a solution impromptu now and now and now

and now and now and now and now. So by having a more flexible plan that empowers the people who are following the direction to say, well, look, like, you know, we knew that this was going to be a thing that constantly being more vigilant because they know that they're actually on the lookout for new opportunities. And generally, I think I have this friend who spends way too much money on supercars. And he always says that when he buys another one, I have faith that future Andrew will pay for it. And the point is that he believes in himself so much

that it doesn't matter. He's like, I'll spend the money now and the guy tomorrow will end up paying for it. Now I am aware that some people have probably got themselves into some pretty severe credit card debt by also taking that point of view. But he has evidence as well over time that he's accumulated that shows him that he's probably going to be quite okay.

But yeah, I think I think taking a looser approach heading towards some sort of a North Star rough-hune on the way up there, I think that that's a pretty good way to go about it. Well, and the interesting thing is to your point, if that's kind of being hand in hand with a kind of measured risk taking approach, to your point versus like overconfidence, maybe that some people kind of in some ways might do, that's kind of like, I think what's fascinating about

when you look at successful people and you study them, what always kind of is with them is that they, to give an example, I was fascinated when COVID happened. And when COVID happened, you know, you had all these old school leaders. And the old school leadership mantra is always portray strength, always portray that you know everything that you have everything

under control. So it's a complete illusion control. And some people buy it, some people don't, but in a way it's completely lying to everyone. And so when COVID happened, you had these kind of in the US here, you had some governors or some kind of people who are running the state essentially saying, here's an exact timeline.

And when we open up, here's exactly what we'll do. Here's exactly one like X-Wazette will happen. Now, when you information comes in, of course, now they have to either revise the timeline and look weak, or they have to hide the data, which you love them to do. The other, the new school leadership approach that's based on the kind of more the mindset we've been talking about is to say, hey, here's our kind of North Star, here's our sense of direction, which is public health and economic health. Here's an approximate timeline based on these kind of things.

The timeline is usually then the same as with the other. That's the funny thing, right? It's the same timeline they will, they will both give, but they will say, we already tell you now, as soon as new information comes in, we will revise the timeline and that will be part of our plan. And by doing this now, when new information comes in and they revise the timeline, they look strong versus the other ones looking weak.

And to me, that's the big difference. This is really not about at all saying, let's let go of everything and like, let's kind of just be out there and float. No, this is actually being realistic about what you can control. And then controlling everything you can control, but then also letting go of this illusion of control.

And I think that's where it gets exciting because then to your point, you don't get anxious about new data because that wasn't part of your plan because you said when new information comes in, we'll adjust. Are you familiar with the control problem in artificial general intelligence? Have you heard about this? I did, but please, I mean, yeah.

Okay, so there's an issue that a misaligned super intelligent AGI that is given some optimization function could end up turning the entire world into paperclips because it didn't realize that we didn't quite mean don't turn everybody into paper clips. And one of the solutions that's proposed is kind of similar to what you're saying. It's called machine extrapolated volition, right? MEV. And what it proposes is that instead of trying to create in advance a bunch of rules which cover every single potential

misinterpretation of every rule, and it's somehow managed to quantify, encode what we mean by good and happy and human and life and everything else, right, which we already can't define even just using words. Instead what it says is that you ask the machine to come up with its own solution for what we would have wanted, had we have known as much as it knows. Right? So it's this ever mutating, ever progressing, ever updating solution. It's constantly checking against what we would have asked for, had we known what it knows,

which is way, way more than we know. And it kind of feels a little bit like the malleable, easy to move plan that you're saying, the sort of new wave of politicians and business leaders are following, is kind of similar to that. We're not trying to say in advance exactly what we're gonna do. We're going to have a plan, which is going to be updated on route.

And we know that it's going to be more optimal because it's going to be able to adjust to things that we couldn't see like maybe a global pandemic. And it's going to make us look stronger because in advance we said that this was what we were going to do. Well, this is, I mean, that's a fascinating theme, right? Because, and by the way, those of you interested in this, there's the world-ticking reform, they have these knowledge maps, which is essentially AI kind of building interest graphs and knowledge graphs and kind of like trying to,

like AI trying to figure out, how do we organize your knowledge differently than kind of traditional things did? And I've always found that super interesting in terms of what can AI do and how is that being organized but to your point, something that it's beautifully serendipitous that you brought that up. We actually just finished a very nerdy paper, those of you just delighted to share about exactly what is the role of AI in serendipity? Like how do we, you know, when you think about the relationship between AI and serendipity, how does that interplay? And one of the key kind of like conclusions we came to was that

like AI is extremely good at to your point. Once you have a certain idea of criteria of judgment, like something that you're saying, okay, this is what we think we might want or something like this. Here's a couple of criteria of judgment and then let them run with it extremely good, right? At getting all the information and all this stuff. But then serendipity a lot of times depends on meaning good, right? At getting all the information in all this stuff,

but then serendipity a lot of times depends on meaning making, right? It depends on sense making. It depends on this kind of social context. It depends on, you know, AI can try to find me, my love, my life, but then I have to still have that gap feel of yes, this could be it versus not, right? And so that's the fascinating thing where this augmentation between AI and the human actually can then scale certain

bit of innovation by saying AI can scale the information, it can scale the potential data point and recommend some stuff. And then human meaning-making can kind of like connect a couple of those dots. And then if you take that together, you can actually scale that up. And I think that's where these knowledge graphs become extremely interesting where you can then potentially get more information quicker, but also connect the dots much quicker as well. But I think that's at the very beginning of, and I'm certainly, I'm a student of this. I'm still kind of trying to learn how this is playing out

a sophisticated theme. Dude, read super intelligence by Nick Bosterim or probably audible it because the book is a little bit of a heavy meal. But that came out in 2014 or 2016, I think, maybe 2014. And it was a New York Times bestseller, hardcore AI existential risk, understanding the different types of takeoffs. So the way that I have no idea how it became a New York Times bestseller, but obviously it's very well written and really engaging, right? But it shouldn't

do given the topic that it's about. But that was that really informed a lot of my understanding about AI systems, but also the principles that underpin them, and machine extrapolated volition is such a useful tool just to have, even if you're not thinking about designing an AI, which obviously I'm not, but it's just a really useful way to think about having an adaptive plan that moves forward and allowing cumulative wisdom to feed back into whatever it is that you want. Wasn't there a thing, or didn't you do something to do with rabbit z-ers? Wasn't that in the book? The floppiness of rabbit z-ers? Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

What was that? Yeah, well, that's actually, you know, that's a beautiful example, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, what was that? Yeah, yeah, well that's actually you know That's a beautiful example actually of of counterfactuals, right? Which I think is always the fascinating thing what could have happened? Had you acted on something right the beautiful conversation we had earlier about that kind of thing of like Ah had I gone through with this next was that and so the floppy rabbits is really about this idea that two researchers at the same time gave kind of rabbits some kind of injection, testing something, and then the rebits years flopped, and both of them were surprised. So both of them

had the same random surprising observation, but only one of them acted on it. And you know, realized, oh my god, that's about blood flow, that's about kind of like, you know, accelerating a blood flow and so on. So he kind of helped turn that into a thridus kind of tackling medication and became like got a lot of prices, versus the other one didn't do anything with it. And so it's the fascinating thing, right? Well, we talked about in the coffee shop that our reaction to that unexpected moment, then that's what makes it.

It's yes, it's random, but then hey, what do we do with it? So we've got the serendipity journal. We've got the hook strategy. What else, what are some other ways that people can apply what we've gone through today to try and get a bit more look in their lives? Well, I had two new-death experiences in life. So I'm a huge fan of actually trying to not have new-death experiences in your life, but to actually have the same logic that a lot of people like me have when you face death, which is you just don't care about a lot of things

anymore because you're like, you know what, when you're on your deathbed, you won't care about if you have four or five cars in your garage and you won't care about so many things you think you care about now. And I'm a big fan of, you know, I would literally Google deathbed regrets where there's a nurse that wrote down the kind of top deathbed regrets of people who I would literally Google deathbed regrets where there's a nurse that wrote down the kind of top deathbed regrets of people who she had on her deathbeds and it's always the same things, right?

As always, I wish that I had lived a life true or to myself, I wish that I had spent more time with the people I love and more meaningful connections with them and stuff like that. And so I think to me, this is really at the absolute core of everything we just talked about. Serendipity is about potentialities, about who we could be, who others could be. And one thing that can really help us figure this out is to become clear about who do I want

to be. What are the kind of being at values, being it kind of non-negotiable values that I feel I want to stand for. So when I'm on my deathbed, that's what I will be happy about while I be proud of. So I'm a big fan of this kind of pre-mortem, where you're essentially saying, okay, how do I think about now what I would regret on my deathbed if I would run in front of a car tomorrow?

And I think to me, this comes to a big upon Chris, which is, I think we always assume, there's a lot of times to still do the things that feel really meaningful. So for example, a lot of my students, they first go into a job that they don't enjoy that much, because it gives them a lot of money and networks. And then later on, they do the things they really care about.

And one conversation we have a lot is that yes, by any means, if you have a student that and everything else, you've got to do something to pay that back. And at the same time, don't assume that you have a lot of time. Don't assume that life might not be over very quickly. So try to do as much as you can now that actually gives you something meaningful. So if you join x-was at bank by any means, find out on day one if there's a board member who's excited

about similar issues as you are and can you then get that bank to tackle those issues. Or something like this where you leverage them as a platform then towards what you're really excited about and build that meaning into it. And I think that comes back to our earlier point that even in those situations where some people might say, oh, I have to work in this bank now for five years before I can do X was that, no, try to figure out within this bank if you can somehow develop leverage. A lot of times it's interns who build the most meaningful stuff by finding a couple of people, a couple of champions and then within the organization then do something really meaningful. So I think it's really about going on our deathbed and saying what would I regret and then

thinking from there what's meaningful to us and trying to find the people who feel meaningful to us. I think to your point, what are the kind of communities that feel meaningful to us, the kind of themes and so on? There's a guy Alex Hormosi who's coming on the show next month and he recently sold his business for some insane amount of money and he put a tweet out the other day that said, stop saying that 50 years old is middle aged. The average life expectancy of a man in the United States

is 75.5 years old. He said 37 years old is middle aged. You have way less time than you think. And that's back to your point, right? You do need to remember that the clock ticks down to death. It doesn't take up from birth. That's the way that your life is going. There is a limited number of books that you get to read for the rest of your life. There are a limited number of Netflix shows and meals out with friends and time that you get to spend with your parents and time that you get to spend with your kid and so on and so forth. You need to make sure that you use them right. And a lot of the time, if you, if you haven't done that pre-mortem, if you haven't looked at what is the direction

that I want to go in perfect to what you said earlier on. You think that you want to go to Rome and halfway along the journey you realize that that wasn't even the place that you were supposed to end up at. And yeah, going through life to find out not only that you didn't mean to get there, but that you wanted to be somewhere else as well. That's a pretty dangerous situation to be in. So I hope that that has scared some people into realizing they should probably do a little bit of reassessment. Well, and to your point,

I feel it's fascinating once you then face death, I think Steve Jobs says it beautifully, that of course, emotionally, in those kind of situations, when he got cancer, right? He had this beautiful sentence that the death can be life's greatest motivator, right? Imagine a situation where if you would live forever, right? I mean, what kind of sense of urgency would you feel?

What kind of sense of meaning would you feel when you know, yeah, whatever I do, I'll still be here in 50,000 years, so whatever, right? But it's just like now that, you know, actually, whatever I do, like I'll still be here in like 50,000 years, so whatever, right? But it's just like now that, you know, actually I only have a limited amount of time. Maybe that also can be meaningful in that sense. And so I actually, you know, I spend a lot of times after my first and second

near experience with people who have cancer, for example, and other terminal diseases. And what I found fascinating is how many of them have then found a deep purpose. So for example, taken the cancer and say, this will be a campaign now, and I'll run this like I'll run a campaign in politics or xyzx was that, and I will inform others about how we can go about this and you know set up a foundation on it, you name it. And so the point is that I think it's kind of hopefully it never comes to kind of those

things, right, terminal disease, and so which obviously is the worst thing that can happen. And at the same time, I think this question of how do we think about that, yes, life can be short, but also maybe that's not a bad thing in the sense that it can give us meaning to actually focus now on the things that are truly meaningful. And then, I don't know if you're watching, I just started watching this show now, I'm forgetting the name, but it's all about this kind of upload Where essentially people can get digitally uploaded and then they download again and it's just a fascinating kind of whole whole thing I forgot the name of it, but my point is who knows what happens afterwards, right? Who knows what comes next So let's make the best of what we can do here

Dr. Christian Bush ladies and gentlemen if people want to keep up to date with what you do, where should they go? So the homepage is the serendipity mindset.com Ladies and gentlemen, if people want to keep up to date with what you do, where should they go? So the homepage is the serendipitymindset.com. I'm at Chris Serendip on Twitter, and the book is in bookstores around the world. Thanks mate. I appreciate you. Thanks so much. Yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah