The Liz Moody Podcast - Top Scientist: Why Some People Are Luckier (& How You Can Become One of Them)

Starting point is 00:00:00 If someone feels like nothing ever goes their way, are they actually unlucky or is it something that they're missing? Bad luck happens to all of us. A lot of times it's about what questions do we ask? Do we engage with people? What do we put out there? How do you define luck? Two different pieces. One is the blind luck that just happens to us. It's the kind of fortune that we didn't work for it and it just presents itself. It's unexpected, it's random. And then serendipity is active luck. It's the interaction between the unexpected and our own agency. Hi, my name is Dr. Christian Bush. I am the author of The Serendipity Mindset, the art and science of creating good luck, and a professor at the University of Southern California. And I am fascinated by connecting dots and seeing how we can cultivate serendipity. If someone feels like nothing ever goes their way, are they actually unlucky or is it something that they're missing?

Starting point is 00:00:46 That's a great question because the way I think about it is in two parts. One is, well, you know, bad luck happens to all of us. And we can't pick it and it happens and it creates a lot of inequality. And then on the other hand, the fact that most of us can be the architects of our own fortune or misfortune. So, you know, take my wife. She, most amazing wife, deeply in love with her. If you would ask her, do you consider yourself to be a lucky person? She would say, yes, but also an unlucky person.

Starting point is 00:01:11 And so I've always been fascinated by this, that when you look at the patterns in her life, she creates a lot of serendivity. And I'm sure we'll talk about that part where she does things that she puts herself into situations where good things happen. But at the same time, she also has some patterns, like for, example, you know, she knows exactly how long it takes to get to the airport, so she will always cut it exactly to that minute. And so now if there's this unexpected traffic jam because there was an unexpected accident, she will miss the flight. And it would seem as if it was the accident that caused the missing the flight, but it was because there was no margin for error. And so it's,

Starting point is 00:01:43 it's that kind of thing where you can, in your own life, then see, oh, wow, there are some patterns that allow me to have good luck and some patterns that allow me to have bad luck. And I think working on that is fascinating. Do you think certain people are more, likely to engage in patterns that allow them to have good luck, though? Like, are certain people born luckier because they are essentially engaging in those patterns? Well, socialization plays a huge role, right? How we grow up, do we feel that our locus of control is with us? Do we feel we can have agency when situations present themselves?

Starting point is 00:02:13 But, you know, there's a favorite experiment I have where they pick people who are very unlucky and people who consider themselves to be very lucky, right? So the unlucky people would say, well, I'm always in accidents and bad things tend to happen to me and so on. And we probably all have people in our lives that are on that continuum between very lucky, very lucky. And so they pick one of each and they say, walk down the street, go into the coffee shop, 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 this super successful business person who can make big dreams happen.

Starting point is 00:02:52 Now, the lucky person walks down the street, sees the five-pound note, picks it up, goes inside the shop, sits next to the business person, they have a conversation, potentially an opportunity comes out of it. The unlucky person walks down the street, steps over the five-pound note, doesn't see it, goes inside the shop, sits next to the business person, ignores the business person, that's it. Now, at the end of the day, they asked both people, how was your day today? Lucky person says, well, it was amazing.

Starting point is 00:03:17 I found money in the street, made a new friend, and potentially, you know, we don't know that, but potential opportunity comes out of it. The unlucky person just says, well, nothing really happen. And so the fascinating thing is when you look at couples, for example, who go to exactly the same event, one comes back and says, oh my God, you know, I just found my new best friend and so on. Other person comes back and says, oh, my God, this was so boring. A lot of times it's about what questions do we ask, do we engage with people? What do we put out there? Those kind of questions. If we all wanted to be luckier based on that story, would we be walking around, like, looking everywhere and talking to everybody that we come across? Well, we all,

Starting point is 00:03:52 have our own filters for how we don't want to be overwhelmed by stimuli. And, you know, especially for I'm that kind of passionate introvert type person who, you know, no problem speaking in front of people, but then I need three hours to recover in the hotel room and get my energy back. And for people like me, a lot of times the serendivity doesn't necessarily come from the conversation with a business person. It does come from that. But it also comes from silent moments, like walking through the street, looking into the bookstore and thinking, oh my God, I could do a podcast around that book. Or, oh my God, you know, in that movie they talked about this, I should write a book about something similar. And so this idea of the unexpected presents itself and I try to connect the dots about

Starting point is 00:04:31 this, I think especially more introverted people also do that a lot. And so the beautiful thing is that, you know, both extrovers and introverts there have a lot of serendipity that can potentially happen depending on how they look at the world, being open to those kind of moments and then trying to figure out what can I do with those moments. I also think about how busy most of us are as we go through our lives. And I feel like you really can't be in a state of overwhelm and be noticing that five pound note on the street. You're like, I'm rushed.

Starting point is 00:04:58 I want to get my coffee. I want to get out of here. Is busyness an impediment to being lucky? It can be when, you know, in a couple of ways. One is being on autopilot, right? When you're in autopilot the whole day because you're so busy that you just kind of like everything is a routine. Everything is something that you want to get done fast.

Starting point is 00:05:14 You don't necessarily sense interesting things, interesting new things and so on. And so you shut down to that. Same with stress, right? when you're in fight or flight, you might kill a lot of the potential serendipity that comes your way. And so I'm a big fan actually of trying to allow for those kind of breathing spaces, you know, being that meditation, being that anything that tries to ground you a little more to then again be able to connect with the environment, with people, with nature, with others. Because a lot of times serendipity is and good luck that kind of presents itself.

Starting point is 00:05:43 It's about seeing it, but also then, you know, being attuned to it and opening yourself up to it. And actioning it. We're going to talk about a lot of different ways to action it. Why do some people seem luckier than other people? Well, you can put it into this, you know, big theme of how do you create an opportunity space in your life? So how do you make it more likely that some sort of dots can connect? And, you know, the dots can be between you and your environment in terms of reading the book. And then, oh, my God, I can do something with this. It can be out of the conversation with someone. So it can be so many different moments.

Starting point is 00:06:16 But it's, A, about how do we put ourselves out there in terms of being curious, being open-minded, being attuned to the environment. but also then into which spaces do we put ourselves and do we open ourselves to other people in that way? I'm always amazed by take the situation, right? You're in a coffee shop or in your case I saw macha, right? So let's say you get a macha and, you know, if you have erratic hand movements like I do, you spill a lot of coffee. So imagine you accidentally spill matcha or coffee

Starting point is 00:06:45 and the person next to you looks at you annoyedly, but you sense there might be something there. You don't know what it is. You just have a sense for it. And now you have a couple of options. One option is you just say, I'm so sorry, you walk outside and you think, ah, what could have happened had I spoken with a person. Option two is you start that conversation and that person becomes the love of your life or your co-founder or you name it. The point is how we react to those unexpected moments, how we play with those moments defines a lot of what comes next.

Starting point is 00:07:12 And that's kind of in a way the big difference between, you know, blind luck is what falls from the sky and just happens to us. But serendably, this active luck is how do I position myself towards the unexpected and do I see something those unexpected? moments. Yeah, it seems like there's two parts. There's the part of putting yourself in situations where luck is more likely to happen and then actioning on those situations in a way that will create more luck from them. Exactly. One is the kind of seeding. You seat something, you put something out there and the other one is the seeing in the sense of like you actually see it when it comes your way. So you can create it, but also you got to open yourself once it comes. To exactly your point, there's these kind of two balancing themes there. What's the biggest myth about luck that's

Starting point is 00:07:51 keeping people stuck? I feel a lot of times it's about that it just happens to you, and that is something that happens to some people, but not to other people. And I think that in a way shifts the locus of control. It says it's not your own agency, it's the agency that's out there. And I think that is partly true because, you know, birth lottery, like those kind of blind luck moments that put people into different positions, and depending on that position, you have broader or less broad opportunity spaces by design. And then within those spaces, that is where your agency comes in. And so a lot of my work, for example, is in extreme poverty contexts. And when you're in extreme poverty, the room of potential serendipity is much smaller because you don't have the access to education

Starting point is 00:08:30 that we have. You don't have the access to network. So you're quite constrained in that. But even within those contexts, you will see that some people create more serendipity than others. And I've learned more in those contexts about serendipity than in other contexts, because people out of necessity a lot of times have to create something out of unexpected moments. What have you learned in those contexts? So for example, one, you know, Amazing organization there, they do low-income education. So they do things like 10 steps to use social media to build your business model. Very simple approach.

Starting point is 00:08:59 They reach hundreds of thousands of people doing that. And the one thing they did differently was to say, instead of going in there and assuming that people have needs and that they are liabilities, we go in there and say there is something here that we can leverage. The former drug dealer is not just the former drug dealer. The former drug dealer is the potential teacher. We don't look at them as this is a person who's a problem for the community.

Starting point is 00:09:21 We look at them as if they can tell their story about how they fell into drug addiction and how they got out of it, that is a powerful story to tell. If they become a teacher that can turn a whole community around. And so what happens here is that people say, instead of creating the luck for them by giving them just resources and money, which keeps them in the same trap, they say, let's help them create their own jobs, create their own smart luck, and so that they actually can then turn the whole community around. And so I've learned a lot about this idea of that real dignity comes from creating your own luck, not having other people creating luck for you. How can we apply that to our own lives? Is it looking around and saying, what can I do with this instead of trying to reverse engineer from this other dream? It's interesting because I think it comes from two places. One is, how can I put myself out there in a way that makes it more likely that other people know how they can help me? So we can talk later probably about how we can cultivate serendivity, but if you think about something like the hook strategy, The hook strategy is about saying, if someone asks me, so what do you do, right?

Starting point is 00:10:20 Being at an event, at a conference, most people will say, I work at this or I do this, right? And so you keep the potential overlap space between the two of you, relatively limited and probably an autopilot of what you usually used to speak. But if you were to answer something like, hey, I'm Sandra, I'm working in talent management, but what I'm really curious about is exploring low-income education and serendivity. Now I have three potential touch points where I could be like, oh my God, such a coincidence. I also work on serendipity, let's connect. Oh my God, such a coincidence. My sister has a school for low-income kids.

Starting point is 00:10:54 I want to put you in touch. And so the point is you can create that opportunity space that makes it more likely that other people can connect with you and by doing that you create that serendipity. That's the kind of how you put it out there. But I think the amazing thing is also that a lot of times people see something in you that you might not see in yourself. And so, you know, Shah Wasman, for example,

Starting point is 00:11:12 She's this wonderful, wonderful entrepreneur in the UK. She, you know, created an amazing PR agency, got an MBA from the Queen, you know, this member of the British Empire. So she really kind of, you know, she made it. And she essentially started. She got her break by. She was in university and she won Cosmopolitan magazine, had this kind of competition, interview, boxing world champion,

Starting point is 00:11:35 Chris Ewing. And so she was like, oh, this sounds fun. Let me kind of just apply and see. And so she wins it and she interviews them. and she interviews him about boxing and stuff. At some point he's like, you know what? I like you. I think you would be great as my PR person.

Starting point is 00:11:48 And she's like, what do I know about boxing PR? And he's like, you know what? The way kind of, you're great at kind of connecting with people. You're great at putting yourself there. Like, I think we should kind of try this out. Fast forward, she sets up her own PR agency and becomes a superstar around this. The point is he saw something in her that she didn't even see in herself. And I think that's kind of then the question about what is our environment

Starting point is 00:12:10 where people see us for who we are or who we could be. And I think that's where it becomes really interesting. That's what I mentioned earlier about this poverty context. I think what they do really well is they allow people to see who they could be. I'm not just the drug dealer. I could be a teacher. I'm not just ex-wasat that I am defined as now. I could be this other person.

Starting point is 00:12:31 I think if we can put ourselves into more of these environments, that's kind of where a lot of the serendivity happens. I feel like a lot of people might be listening in there. like, I wish people saw me as who I could be, not as who I am. Is there any way we can facilitate that in other people? Well, to give you an example, I had a conversation recently with, you know, she's a board member at a large company, and I asked her, so how did you get that job? And she was like, well, I bumped into my CEO in the hallway. And he asked me, so what are you working on? And she said, well, I'm working on this, but I'm also actually, like, I would love to also work more on this and I'm curious about this. Like, just kind of flagging a couple of things you might be

Starting point is 00:13:06 interested in. And he's like, oh my God, I didn't even know you would be interested working on this. Let me try to find you something. That's how she ended up on the board. And so it's really those casual conversations that we might usually see, especially as an introvert, you might see it as, oh my God, now I have to somehow come up with something. But if you think about less so only with new people, let me put a couple of dots out there, but especially also with people we already know, just kind of like, so for example, in my case, right? My nightmare always is like I love my colleagues, I love everyone I bump into, but it's also like these kind of 30 seconds, like a minute that you're in the elevator and where you're thinking about what can you talk about, right?

Starting point is 00:13:43 To me, that's not always that easy. And so what I do sometimes is to in the morning then think about what is one or two things that I would love to throw in that are meaningful at the moment that can lead to a meaningful conversation. So for example, in the last few weeks, it was my four-year-old just learned to negotiate. And so now when someone asks me in the morning, hey, how are you doing? I'm like, well, you know, my daughter just learned to negotiate. It's really not that easy, right?

Starting point is 00:14:05 And then they might say, oh my God, yeah, like I remember when my kids are in that age. And so then we have a meaningful conversation. And so that's kind of what I'm a big fan of to think about. What are some meaningful themes in our lives that we could just put out there no matter what the other person asks? You know, sales pitch is, I'm pitching you one thing and I want you to buy it. And that's kind of boring for most people. But putting some hooks out there is, let me give you a couple of potential interesting things. And you pick the one you're most interested in.

Starting point is 00:14:29 And then let's dive into the meaningfulness of that. Do you have advice for coming up with good hooks? like what you're like my four-year-old is doing this right now. Why is that a good hook? My hooks a lot of times come from. I really care about this topic at the moment. So let me throw something in where I think that might actually be something someone else might also be interested in. But also sometimes I just throw in something that's a very low likelihood, right? I had a, give you an example. I did a session recently with gaming entrepreneurs. And as you can imagine, they were not necessarily the most, you know, extroverted of groups, right? We talked about

Starting point is 00:15:02 hooks and then I got an email a week later where the gentleman was like, hey, I went to this conference and someone asked me, so what do you do? And I just said the things that are truly on my mind. I'm a gaming entrepreneur, but what I'm really curious about is structural holes and the universe or metaverse. And that person says, oh my God, finally someone who's also excited about holes, they talk for half an hour. And then after half an hour, the other person's like, how can I help you? I really like you. And then, you know, turns out that person can really help him and do something. And so I think to me, it's really less about this has to be the perfect thing that sounds great to

Starting point is 00:15:36 everyone. It's more about, hey, if you have 100 people in the room and you will walk through the room and you just told someone about this, they might tell someone else. Even if it wasn't the trigger for them, they might be like, oh, my God, have you talked with this person? Because they seem to be interested in this. And so I think it's just three or four points that seem relevant to us and ideally to the setting.

Starting point is 00:15:55 But it can also be like one or two kind of low probability options that you just throw in because it's just fun. The idea is like they're hooks. There's something for people to grab on to, and you're just increasing the likelihood that somebody will grab onto those things. I also loved you had the tip in the book if you have dinner parties that you could have people go around and say, what was something that makes them come alive and maybe something they're struggling with. I love that. I thought that was such a unique way to start a dinner party. Did I get those two right? Yeah. And I think the core of this is really to say, if you have a dinner party where you ask people introduce yourself in three words or three sentences, people will usually default to whatever

Starting point is 00:16:32 the first person said, right? Because the first person sets the stage. So the first person, if they introduce themselves saying, I'm a banker and I'm so great, everyone else now will just kind of be performing in terms of like, this is how great I am. But if you have the first person talk about, hey, look, like, you know, I'm Christian, I love working on serendivity, but at the moment, you know, I'm going through a real identity transformation because I've had kids. And so I'm trying to identify, you know, what is kind of meaningful to me now and like, who am I now and to the world and to myself. And so if you have someone start with this, what makes you come alive, but maybe also what's really on your mind, then everyone else will

Starting point is 00:17:08 build on that. And then it's fascinating to see that even the most kind of close down people actually now have the license to talk about what makes them come alive. So to your point, I think the interesting thing is, A, questions like what makes you come alive or what's on your mind, I think they open up the sphere of possibility because you can talk about the things you really care about. But also in a way, you give people the license to finally talk about the things they really want to talk about versus just kind of performance-based stuff that everyone's bored by anyway. Can you define luck for us? I feel like I want to get a baseline definition of like some people are like, it's preparation meets opportunity, some people are like, it just happened. How do you define

Starting point is 00:17:47 luck? I look at it as two different pieces. One is the blind luck that just happens to us. It's the kind of fortune that happens and we didn't work for it and it just, you know, presents itself. It's unexpected, it's random and that's what it is. And then Serendipides' active luck. It's the interaction between the unexpected and our own agency. And that's how you will see that Viagra penicillin, a lot of those innovations, up to 50% of scientific innovations. Like, they happen when a researcher sees something unexpected and then says, oh my God, I could do something different with this, right? Penicillin was something like this. But also that's how, you know, people, find love, right? It's not enough to just, in the coffee shop example, where you bump into that

Starting point is 00:18:28 potentially amazing person, but it's not enough to just bump into them. That's kind of random. But then the question is, you know, do you go on dates and actually do something with that moment? And so do you actually materialize it in some way or the other? And so I think at the end of the day, serendipity is about this interaction between randomness and human agency. And why I love it so much is that you then get joy from unexpected moments because you ask yourself all the time, is there some meaning in this. Okay, now, you know, take my mother-in-law. She's a cultivator of serendipity, especially when moments seem to present themselves as a negative event. So, for example, you know, she is in front of the supermarket, has a small car crash. She's the kind of person instead of,

Starting point is 00:19:08 oh my God, now this is so annoying and this other person sucks and all these kind of things. She's the kind of person who's like making friends with that person, turns out one of the biggest podcast people in the country, and her husband gets invited to it. Right. So those kind of things where she creates something out of those moments. And to me, that's very amazing because it's the fundamental thing about serendipity. It's the meaning-making of the unexpected and the agency in that and seeing that you have more agency than you think. It's interesting because you say she is the kind of person who, but you say luck is a skill and it can be trained. So how can we actually train that?

Starting point is 00:19:42 Yeah. Well, the way I think about it is you can build a muscle for the unexpected. And it's really like going to the gym in the sense that it comes in baby steps, right? So it could be hooks, right, that you start with hooks. It could be asking different questions where instead of asking what do you do and it puts people into like this boring back and forth, you can ask, you know, what's on your mind or what brings you here or just something that kind of opens up these spaces for meaningful conversations. And then it's amazing how you reorient yourself. What are other baby steps people could use to become luckier? When you observe people who are really good at cultivating serendivity, they're really good at connecting dots.

Starting point is 00:20:16 To many of us, it might not come naturally. And so one way to program our brain to see those connections is to force ourselves in the next 10 conversations, let me think about one link I can make for the other person. Let me think about when they tell me about that they were depressed for some time, let me think about if I have a friend who might be able to say, yeah, I went through this too and I can help you. Or maybe I know a good resource to read something about that, whatever it is, just one thing that helps the other person. And that's the beautiful thing about neuroplasticity, right? Our brain that then adjusts itself and starts to see connections.

Starting point is 00:20:47 And so I've always been amazed how you can rewire your brain in those small ways where you just force yourself to see some connections. And at some point then it becomes a thing in itself. But I think it's those kind of steps where learning how to identify something in unexpected moments, but also learning how to just see every situation, every conversation as an opportunity space. And then saying, can I learn to see it? And can I force myself to see it at the beginning? And then naturally it happens over time. So we're actually rewiring our brains in a way.

Starting point is 00:21:16 so we're not going to, if we do a little bit of conscious effort, then we won't have to do that conscious effort necessarily all the time in the future. Exactly. And that's, I think, one of the kind of questions sometimes is around, hey, but is it maybe too forced if you try to do that, right? Like, so for example, if you think about hooks or if you think about making those connections, aren't you forcing situations? And the way I'm thinking it is, is more like, well, what you're trying to do is you try to train yourself, like with anything where you put a little bit of work in, and it feels maybe at the beginning you've got to iterate a little, and then it becomes really fun. And I think the main thing is, is it aligned with myself? Is it aligned with what feels genuine?

Starting point is 00:21:50 And that's kind of, you know, with my students, for example, when I get them into trying those hooks, I'm like, you know what? Go to a couple of events and just also feel what feels good when you talk about it. And that will tell you actually what resonates also with yourself and maybe where you don't want to go versus where you want to go. It's occurring to me that a key part of luck is knowing what you want in life so you can put that out there so that people can help bring that to you. would you agree with that? Yes, if you know what you want in life, it's easier for other people to help you, and it's easier to put those hooks and things out there because you're kind of like, okay, I want to have this job.

Starting point is 00:22:24 And so now I will talk to everyone who could somehow get me to that job. So that's amazing. And then on the other hand, one thing I've seen with people is the people who have a lot of serendipity, a lot of times might be the people who are saying, I'm not really sure what I want at the moment, but I know what I'm curious about. Or I just sense that some things are interesting to me at the moment. And so they then in a way have this beautiful intersection between, on the one hand, not being too close-minded because they are kind of like, hey, I want to find something new. And then the curiosity that allows them to somehow inviting that.

Starting point is 00:22:56 And then I'm a big fan of asking people, asking close friends and others, when you look at me, what do you think, what do you see in me? If I were to write a book, what would I write it about? Things like that where then other people also can help us to figure out what is our superpower. What is the kind of thing that could really be meaningful to us in the future? And I think sometimes that can even be more meaningful because the plans and the goals we set for ourselves might be smaller than the things that other people see in us. And I think that's kind of where it becomes really interesting. What habits or mindsets block people from seeing or acting on luck?

Starting point is 00:23:29 One thing that I've seen in my own life is fear of rejection. When you have a fear of rejection, what happens is, you know, if everyone who listens to this, right, if you think about your life and you think back in your life to those situations where serendipity could have happened, but it didn't. Right. So let's say you were in a meeting. You had this amazing, unexpected idea, but you didn't bring it into a meeting because you didn't feel ready worthy, you name it. And then you walked outside and you thought, ah, what could have happened had I brought it up? Or you were flirting with that cute guy in the bus and then you didn't speak with them. And you walked outside and thought, ah, I hope I would have talked with them.

Starting point is 00:24:04 And it's those kind of moments in life where in a way we know that certainty could have happened, but it didn't because we held ourselves back. And in my case, for example, it was based on a clear pattern, which was the fear of rejection that I thought the worst thing that could happen in this moment is that someone rejects me. And so then I'd rather maybe not make that offer or I'd rather not speak to that person or not bring in that idea. And so one of the things that I found fascinating then is to realize, but that's not the worst thing that can happen. The sting of rejection hurts, but the worst thing that can happen

Starting point is 00:24:37 actually is the feeling of regrets of not doing it. And so the thing that I found most helpful for myself is to move away from thinking about what's the worst thing that happens if I do it, the sting of rejection, to what's actually the worst thing if I don't do it, the feeling of regret. And when you have that kind of reframing away from what's the worst thing that I do to if I do it to what's the worst thing if I don't do it, it creates that bias for action because you realize a lot of times the biggest risk is not doing or not acting on it. And that's kind of where then you create that bias for action. I love that so much. I think that there's so many people who are letting their own fear of rejection get in the way of the life of their dreams. And I always tell

Starting point is 00:25:15 people to like think about themselves on their deathbed. And what does that person want you to do? They're going to have so much more regret of you not going after your dream. So I think that's really powerful. You teach that there are three types of serendipity. Can you walk us through the three types? Absolutely. And by the way, just I love the deathbed. regret theme. And I feel like thinking from that perspective of regret minimization, not from a perspective of, oh my God, I regret the things in my life and it holds me back more to, hey, what are the things that I already now know that I will probably regret and can I minimize it looking forward? And so to your point, I think that's such a powerful way to think about it because I think you make

Starting point is 00:25:51 different types of decisions. It's also helpful for realizing that the decisions that you're making in the moment when they're not actually that important, like when you're stressing over an email or you're like, oh, did a friend take this the wrong way? And you're like, Am I going to even remember this in five years? And the answer is probably not. Yeah, 100%. Okay, three types of serendipity. Three types of serendipity.

Starting point is 00:26:09 They are all about essentially saying there's something unexpected happening. But the question is, was I already heading towards something or not? So there's the Akimides Serendipi. Archimedes is essentially, you know, the guy who came up with the Eureka moment. And that serendipity is about, I have a certain idea of where I'm going, right? I want this kind of job. I want this kind of career. And then the unexpected is just about how you get there.

Starting point is 00:26:31 you meet a person randomly in a coffee shop that helps you with that job. So you know where you're going, but there's an unexpected way how you get there. That's kind of those Eureka moments towards something. Second one is posted notes onivity. That's more about you're looking for something, right? You look for, I want to become a consultant. And then as you talk in your interviews with consultants, you're like, oh my God, actually that guy now or that lady wants to set up her own company and I will join them doing that.

Starting point is 00:26:58 So you were looking for one thing, but unexpectedly you find something. different. Which is how Post-it notes were invented. Which is how Post-it notes were invented, because Post-Node notes was all about saying, we're looking for a stronger glue, but actually we found a week ago. There's those kind of moments. And then the third one is really about those kind of more thunderbolt moments. You know, they fall from the sky. They hit you, right? Love, like when you're in that coffee shop situation, you didn't look for anything. Maybe you're in your own flow, and then unexpectedly something enters. And so it's three types. I think that the main reason for types is to say it's just interesting to see that serendivity can manifest itself in different ways. But I think the most

Starting point is 00:27:36 important thing is it's always something unexpected, but it always requires agency. It always requires us to do something about it. So does it matter at all? Should you be like, if I want to fall in love, I should be trying to cultivate thunderbolt serendipity or is it just maybe noticing in each moment? How are we applying this? I think it's mostly about having the realization that no matter if you already have a plan or if you have no plan, serendipity can happen at any point in time and being open to those unexpected moments and not seeing them only as something that potentially might destroy our plans, but it might even open up a new, a better plan.

Starting point is 00:28:10 And I will never forget, I had a mentor once, and he told me, like, when I was in my early 20s, I grew up in Germany and we love plans and we love kind of making those plans and strategies. And he was like, Christian, people like you always think there's one way to roam, the city. And then you realize you don't even want to be in Rome. And so the idea being, yes, there's a lot of different ways to go to Rome that could be unexpected, but also maybe you don't even want to be there. And I think that to me was the biggest conversations I've had back then was around this

Starting point is 00:28:40 idea. I think I want all these things. But what do I know? I'm a 20-year-old kid. What do I know about the world? And there's probably so many more things out there that might be as amazing as Rome. And so it's really that kind of thing of allowing for that potentiality. Does every moment present an opportunity for luck or some moments just like shitty moments and we should just move through them and move on?

Starting point is 00:29:01 Well, it's interesting because we talked about earlier, right? We just had a really tough year, right, both of us. And in our case, right, our house burned down in the wildfires and the palisades and, you know, our house burned down, house of my parents-in-law burned down. Our whole neighborhood was just gone from one day to the other. And it's those kind of moments where you're just like, wow, that's just really bad. That's just really painful. Like, it just feels like, okay, this just feels very heavy. And you wake up in the morning and you think, wow, can that be real?

Starting point is 00:29:31 And then the way I've, throughout my life, I've had by now three kind of near-death experiences. And what has helped me a lot in those experiences was rereading Victor Frankel. Like, he has this amazing book, Man Search for Meaning. And it's all about how do you find meaning and tough moments? And, you know, in his case, it was about he survived the toughest moments you can imagine, right? concentration camps, which is completely meaning less. And he said, you know what, if there is no meaning, can I still try to create some meaning? So I'm stuck in this camp now. Can I create meaning by I still want to write a book when I get out of here? So I still have something out there that is

Starting point is 00:30:07 waiting for me. So now I can keep the hope. And then also maybe I can speak with other prisoners, make them feel better about themselves. That's also a micromeaning. And so he created those kind of different types of meanings for himself. And that's something that I've tried in those kind of tough moments and that has worked with me and others around me was to say, okay, this is a, objectively speaking, really bad situation. And now that is about acceptance. That is about saying, I can't change the situation like anymore. Like it happened. The house is gone. So that's, you know, where psychologists come in. That's where meditation comes in. That's where grief and acceptance come in and not running away from it, but saying, you know what? That is just what is. And that is painful.

Starting point is 00:30:45 and we talk about it because we don't want to pretend it's not there. And then at the same time, what can I still now influence? What is the hope I can create? And so in our case, for example, it was about, okay, my best psychologist is trying to write about what happens. So maybe it's a book about it. Maybe it's research papers about it. Maybe it's something around it where I do feel that some serenity will come of it. I don't know exactly what it will be, but I know it will be.

Starting point is 00:31:10 And so that kind of to me then, in a way, even in those tough moments, I've learned in life, that they can become inflection points for beautiful things. Right? So maybe to bring it closer to home, imagine you have this unexpected breakup, right? The person breaks up with you and you're like, oh my God, this is the end of my life. And then six months later, you meet that person who you feel is the real love of your life. You will say, thank you person six months ago that you broke up with me. Otherwise, I wouldn't have met that person. Right.

Starting point is 00:31:35 And so these moments then that presented themselves as really bad and that push us into really bad situations and emotionally are really tough might still become the inflection point for growth, for new things. And so that's kind of in a way we talked about this, right? The difference, I think, to toxic positivity and things where you're saying, this is not about saying that this situation is good. This situation is really bad, but also I'm keeping the hope that there might actually be something that might grow from it, even if I don't know exactly what that will be. And that is the meaning-making that serendipity is about to say, yes, the car crash might be a car crash here,

Starting point is 00:32:08 but maybe then that podcast producer, right, in the case of my mother-in-law, then actually creates a beautiful situation out of it. And so it's kind of that hope in a way that I feel carries a lot of times people through those kind of situations. When you think about strength and resilience, like your ability to feel energized, to recover well, to stay strong as you get older, what do you think that actually comes from? Most people say working out or good nutrition, and yes, of course that matters. But there is a biological foundation underneath all of that that most people are completely overlooking. I have been diving deep into this lately with the team at timeline. and what I've learned has genuinely shifted how I think about my own health.

Starting point is 00:32:48 Every single movement that your body makes, every step, every workout, every muscle contraction depends on energy produced at the cellular level. And at the center of that is your mitochondria. Here is the thing that nobody tells you, certainly nobody told me, starting around age 30, our mitochondria naturally become less efficient. More get damaged, more become sluggish, and over time that impacts your energy, your strength, your recovery, and your resilience. Most of us respond by pushing more.

Starting point is 00:33:16 We're like noticing these things and we're adding in more protein. We're trying to fix it with more supplements. We're trying to do harder workouts. And those things do help. But timelines research suggests that we also need to be supporting the cellular machinery underneath. And that is exactly what their supplement mitopure does. It contains urolithin A, which helps your body clear out damage mitochondria and support

Starting point is 00:33:39 healthier ones so that your cells can produce energy more efficiently. Because this is happening to your cells, it's going to impact your entire body, your immune system, your muscles. One study found that taking mitochondria increased muscle strength by 12% in four months with no change in exercise routine, it's going to impact your energy, your sleep, your skin, your cell health impacts all of this, and urolithin A keeps your cells healthy. Timeline has done over 15 years of research and testing on this one product, urolithin A, which, by the way, most of us lack the gut bacteria to synthesize nymphs. naturally, that's why many of us need to supplement it to get the benefits.

Starting point is 00:34:16 This has become a staple supplement for me. It is my top way to support how I want to look and feel as I age. Support yourselves and how you age with mitopure gummies from Timeline. Visit Timeline.com slash Liz and save up to 39% on your mitopear gummies. That is timeline.com slash Liz. I very rarely get genuinely excited about skincare, but this is one of the most innovative products that I have come across in years. and I'm so obsessed with it. I've been telling all of my friends to get it, so now I need to tell you guys.

Starting point is 00:34:50 Here's some science first. Your skin isn't just getting older. It's being actively broken down by something called senescent cells. These are cells that have stopped functioning but refused to die. They sit there releasing inflammatory signals, breaking down your collagen, degrading your skin barrier, and accelerating every visible sign of aging. Scientists call them zombie cells, and as they accumulate, they are one of the primary drivers of how old your skin looks and feels. The team at one skin, a group of female longevity researchers and PhDs, spent five years testing over 900 peptides to figure out how to help reduce the accumulation of senescent cells. And they finally landed on it. OSO1, the first peptide scientifically studied to reduce

Starting point is 00:35:34 skin's biological age at the molecular level. OSO1 goes in and it clears out the senescent. cells so it helps skin function like healthier, younger looking skin. It is not masking the signs of aging. It's not targeting one thing. It is actually rolling the clock back at a cellular level. I've been using the face moisturizer for almost six months now and I love it so much. It feels amazing. It goes on really smoothly. It's not tacky at all. And I actually see a difference, which I just feel like is never the case with skincare. You want to always like see a real difference and you're kind of like, do I? Do I? And this, I genuinely do. Because it's clearing the senescent cells, it doesn't just target one thing. So my skin looks firmer. It looks glowier. The texture feels dramatically

Starting point is 00:36:20 smoother. And I feel like you can see that too. I also love the body moisturizer. It dries down really quickly, which is always a pet peeve of mine with moisturizers. I hate that like sticky feeling when you go to put your clothes on. This does not do that. But it does moisturize really, really well. and then again, I'm reducing my skin's biological age. I am not making it just look younger. I am making it actually younger. One Skin has four peer-reviewed clinical studies in over 10,000 five-star reviews.

Starting point is 00:36:49 The data backs everything up. For a limited time, get 15% off with code Liz at oneskin.c.c.o slash Liz. Again, that's 15% off at oneskin.co with code Liz. If you have headaches, allergies, brain fog, skin irritation, or you've been dealing with hormone issues, you are especially going to want to listen to this ad. Every single thing that I just listed has been linked to chemicals and household cleaners. One study found that regular use of cleaning sprays was associated with a lung function decline comparable to smoking 10 to 20 cigarettes per day.

Starting point is 00:37:27 Synthetic fragrances are a well-documented migraine trigger and a number of studies have linked ingredients in common household cleaners to fertility issues, thyroid dysfunction, mood changes, and more because of their impact on our endocrine systems. Luckily, you can just make one simple swap and you can eliminate all of those risk factors that you get from common household cleaners. Branch basics makes cleaning products that are plant and mineral based, completely fragrance-free, and made safe certified, meaning they are screened against thousands of known and suspected harmful chemicals. And best of all, you literally use one product, but you mix it with different amounts of water to make your kitchen spray,

Starting point is 00:38:05 your bathroom cleaner, your laundry detergent, your produce wash, your glass cleaner, literally everything. It does not smell. It does not give me headaches. It does not give me rashes or itchiness from clothes because you are. Remember, we're using this for laundry. We're using this for literally everything. And it works so well. Everything gets so clean. And I know that I'm protecting myself from all of those long-term issues too. And I'm protecting my kittens who much tinier than me, so anything they're exposed to has a much greater impact on their little tiny systems. And they're running around on their little paws and then they're licking them. So I'm protecting them too. Brand basics is now available at Target, target, target.com, Amazon and branchbasics.com.

Starting point is 00:38:47 So it's easier than ever to make the switch. And if you want to grab their premium starter kit, you can use code Liz Moody for 15% off at branchbasics.com. That's code Liz Moody for 15% off the premium starter kit at branchbasics.com. And when they ask you where you heard about us, please make sure to mention the show. That is branch basics.com and use code Liz Moody. Do you think optimists are luckier then because they're more readily able to access that hope? It's interesting because to me it comes a lot back to Victor Frankel. Victor Frankl talks a lot about this idea of rational optimism or like in his own words, it's more about, you know, he has the story of the flight instructor.

Starting point is 00:39:25 Where the flight instructor told him, hey, Victor, if you want to fly like this, you have to start like this because the wind will pull you down. So if you start as a realist, you end up as a depressionist, but if you start as an optimist, you end up as the real realist. And that's what I deeply believe in what I've seen a lot, that, yes, if you have the predisposition to see things as there could still be something here, then it is more likely that you might see the potentiality in it. But if there's too much of it, right, it might go into the more idealistic, hey, this is just too much and you might take too much risk or you might do too many things. And so the way I look at optimists is like, is that a rational optimist who in a way was tested by life? And it's actually based on like a true understanding of life and that life is tough and rough and painful. And then they're still optimistic. That's the person I would put my money on.

Starting point is 00:40:12 If it's someone who's like, oh my God, life is so great, everything is great, that person I wouldn't put my money on. Right. So it's kind of the type of optimism in a way that matters. How do we go from life is tough? Life is hard. It's awful to it's all of those things. and I still have hope. Two things I found very helpful there.

Starting point is 00:40:30 One is to surround oneself with people who live it, because it's almost like apprenticeship, right? Like where if you have one or two people around you who naturally are good at maybe seeing the meaning in situations, you start to then get more and more into that because you see that, oh, it's actually small things they do differently. It's actually not that many things they do differently. It's just a couple of things that they do differently.

Starting point is 00:40:53 So A, I think it's thinking about who are the people in mind, life who naturally do that? And can I spend more time with them? Can I can I just kind of be in that kind of surrounding? And then two, I think it's the baby steps we talked about earlier. Is there small things I can do? So for example, if I think about my life, is there something in my life where I feel, okay, this is the tough things in my life that keep me down at the moment? And then thinking about when I think about other people in the world who have had similar situations, but somehow they became infection points for something, is there something I can learn from this in terms of how they maybe lifted themselves out of this? Is there a pattern that I can see here? And to me, that's the

Starting point is 00:41:31 big difference between just looking at one person, because you know, there's all these hero stories of like, oh my God, this person did this great thing. And I wouldn't put too much trust in this because there's so many different conditions that we're not aware of. But if you see that there's 10 people who also had a tough breakup, who also went through a tough time, and they all did this one thing that worked really well. Now we have a pattern, right? And then it becomes more scientific in the sense of, here's a pattern and I can learn from that.

Starting point is 00:41:56 And that's where actually I learned a lot, Adam Grant and Charles Sandberg, they wrote this amazing book about resilience. And that was a lot about this idea of perspective taking. So essentially, how can I take myself out of the, oh my God, everything is emotional, everything is tough situation, that we're all right, when we're in a tough situation. That's where we're in.

Starting point is 00:42:16 It will always be like this. It will always be tough. I will never get out of this, right? And then the question is, how can you take yourself out of this and look at it as kind of an observer? And so I found that very useful for myself in those situations to then think about, what would I tell a friend? Right? Because I sometimes overthing situations. I go out of the visa office and I think, oh my God, hopefully they didn't interpret this and this as like that I wanted to do X, Y, Z, right? Like, I overthrink those situations. But then when I'm like, okay, what would I tell a friend now? I'd be like, no. Like, you just gave a human answer to a human question, and it's fine. And so I think that perspective taking.

Starting point is 00:42:50 I found extremely useful. Was that option B, the book? Yeah. Yeah. I read that when my cat died and it was really, really, really helpful for me. Does believing that you're lucky make you luckier or is that just toxic positivity in disguise? I think it depends on what you do with it. So there is research, right, that shows, and we talked about some of this, that people who believe

Starting point is 00:43:11 they are lucky tend to be luckier because they tend to have a certain locus of control. They tend to believe that they can have agency in situations. so they might actually act on it. But I think it becomes difficult when you see that as something that will naturally happen without you doing something about it. And that's kind of like, you know, when you think about something like manifestation, right? Something like manifestation can be interesting when you use it as something, hey, this is my North Star where I want to be and then act on it. Because now it comes to what you said, right? Like I think you said it as like a flexible vision, right, or something that kind of like is adaptable because you're saying, I want to get here.

Starting point is 00:43:48 And now I can put that here and then I will have people working with me getting there. If you then, though, are the person who says, okay, I'll just put it out there in the universe and now I'm sitting on the sofa and waiting for it, then it backfires, right? And I think that's, I saw that when there was this whole lucky girl thing, right? I was going to ask if you had heard of that. It's like a TikTok trend, if anybody's not familiar, there's a TikTok trend called Lucky Girl Syndrome. And people were like, you basically just say to yourself, right?

Starting point is 00:44:14 Like I'm lucky. I'm the luckiest girl in the world. and then people were reporting all these crazy effects that they had. Is it legitimate Lucky Girl Syndrome? That's where I think it becomes really interesting, that if you do that where you say, oh, I can be luckier, and now you're looking out more for it,

Starting point is 00:44:30 you're more attentive to things, you're more open to it. It can actually help you, right? Because it can now actually shift your appreciation of your locus of control and it can shift your understanding of what could happen. But again, if it's the kind of thing where you just put it out there, but then it doesn't happen, it actually has the opposite effect because you might be like, well, but I did that and it didn't happen.

Starting point is 00:44:51 So what now? And I think that's where it gets dangerous. And so I think I'm a big fan of the more kind of science-based themes around how do you essentially think about what is under my control and then what can I do within that space of control. And one thing I can do is to develop the belief that I can be lucky, right? That is a strong thing that you actually start to believe in yourself. You start to believe in you can make something happen. That can be super effective. But then again, I think without actually acting on it, it can backfire if you don't try to make it happen. And I actually think the former is harder than the latter. Like I feel like acting is easier than changing your belief system and then letting the results of those actions change your belief system. At least for me, it'd be very hard for me to sit here and be like, well, I thought I was unlucky. And then I listened to this podcast and now I believe that I'm lucky. But if I went out there and I tried some hooks and I started to see some results, I would begin to change that mindset.

Starting point is 00:45:42 Do you have any advice on like, do you recommend people start with actions versus shit? their beliefs? I love that because that is exactly what I've experienced when talking with people versus having people just directly implement some things, right? Because there's only so much you can tell someone to say like, yay, do these five things. And then maybe it's overwhelming or is the kind of thing that, you know, it's just too abstract. But so I had this wonderful colleague in London when I taught there. And he was this kind of eminent professor person. And he was like, Christian, I love you. I love your research, but why do I need that? I have an okay life. I have an okay family. I don't think I need it. And so we made a deal. And we said, you know what? In the next

Starting point is 00:46:22 couple of weeks, just put a couple of hooks out there what you really care about, what you're really passionate about, what you really enjoy doing, ask a couple of more open-ended questions, right? So just do a couple of small things differently and then we'll talk again. He comes back after a couple of weeks and he's like, Christian, I didn't know life can be so joyful. And so to me, that was exactly the thing. I could have told him so many things about your life will be joyful and he would have been like, ah, you have no idea about my life. You have no idea about like, this is not my world and we're here in the UK. People are not really joyful, right? That kind of thing. I mean, I'm not saying that, but that's what he would have said. He had to try it himself. And so I absolutely agree with you that

Starting point is 00:46:57 it's so much about just doing this kind of baby steps first. And then as you do these baby steps, you realize that your mental scheme, what you think is possible shifts, because you're like, wow, actually I can be more joyful than I thought. And actually, I have more control than I thought. And so that's kind of in a way, I think what that is, like just kind of forcing oneself to do a couple of those things. And then as it happens, like your mindset starts shifting. Along the lines of like Lucky Girl Syndrome and talking about that, do you think it's helpful to ask yourself, like what would a lucky person do right now or how would a lucky person engage with the situation? This is a really interesting question because it reminds me of, so Adam Grant, he had some of that

Starting point is 00:47:36 work around essentially when you have a kid. And I think a lot about kids at the moment for, you know, the reasons we discussed. And when you have a kid and let's say in the playground, they took something away from them and they're like, oh my God, like this is so unfair and everything else. And then you ask them, well, what would X, Y, Z person do who maybe is their superhero, right? So like, what would Wonder Woman do? Right. And then maybe she would say, oh, Wonder Woman might be really happy for this person or like gets another toy and then shares it with someone or whatever it might be, right? And so in a way, what you're doing is you're trying to put that person into the idea of, yeah, what would that person do? And I think especially with kids, it can be helpful because then it puts them away from, this is me, me, and everything is so important here to, well, actually, it's me, but also I'm in relation to other people. And so maybe there's something I can do about this. But also it makes you then more resilient in this. So yeah, I'm a huge fan of this. It comes back what we talked about, that it's both, hey, is that something that what would X was a person maybe do in that situation? or X was at people, because again, I think the pattern is the most interesting thing.

Starting point is 00:48:39 Like, I feel like in my life I'm thinking more about, okay, what is the pattern I've seen in the past with other people that worked for them? And what would that pattern teach me versus what would the person teach me? This is maybe like a little in the weeds, but I feel like how do we find those people? Because we live in a society that puts on pedestals some pretty shitty people. And also some pretty shitty people seem like they get pretty lucky. So how do we find the good people to begin? to connect those patterns with. And also separately, why does so much good luck seem to happen to really shitty people? Well, that's a really good question. I think I would put myself into that

Starting point is 00:49:15 bracket when I was a 16, 17, 17 year old, kicked out of school, had to repeat a year. I certainly broke a lot of rules, right? And a lot of people would have said, oh, my God, he's not the nicest of people here at the moment. And I think when you break rules, it can go both ways, right? I think we have a lot of examples at the moment, right, where you will see that it can either work really well for someone or really not well for someone. And so I think a lot of times people who might not be the people we might align most in terms of values, for example, they might be highly risk-taking, right? And so it might really pay off because they place bets and then if it works like they're

Starting point is 00:49:50 really lucky or really unlucky, right? And so I think those people is really hard to take as role models because, and there's amazing work if anyone's interested, Cheng Walu is doing some work about this idea that you should never trust the highest performer too much, because the highest performer probably had a lot of blind luck, right? So, for example, if you had that one analyst who predicted the stock market crash, right, it's very likely that it was just blind luck that they predicted that one time, right? Versus the people who consistently predict a little bit of the things who may become third or second,

Starting point is 00:50:21 they consistently have figured out something that gives them a pattern. And so I'm a big fan of this to think about not necessarily who's the best person at the moment, but who are the solid people who have similar values like I have, who have done interesting things in the world that I can feel I can relate to because I can learn from their patterns. I found it most interesting to think about, yeah, who have five inspiring people in my industry or more broadly, who truly inspire me in what they're doing?

Starting point is 00:50:48 And then what is the pattern that they have in how they approach life and what can I learn from this? And so I would maybe start with, yeah, in your world, in your network, in your world, in your world. and then kind of take it from there, who might be those interesting people. And like my husband and I do that all the time, even in our personal lives, will be like, what couples inspire us, what we're thinking about having kids? We're like, what parents inspire us?

Starting point is 00:51:10 And I do think you can do it not only in this career avenue, but for everything. Do you think there's an element, though, of selfishness that creates opportunities for luck? When I think about a lot of the people who seem like they have luck because they've been able to take these risks, it feels sometimes like it's just because they don't care about other people. And so they're able to... climb higher by trampling on other people along the way. You know, coming back to Adam Grant, like he did some amazing work around this kind of,

Starting point is 00:51:35 that givers and takers, right? The takers a lot of times, yes, they might win in some areas, but actually the givers are the winners in life. And I always like that idea that if you're a giver, you're the winner in life. And so I think to me that comes a lot back to what is our success metrics. If the success metrics is you make a great career

Starting point is 00:51:52 because you mess with people. And I'm not sure you're on your deathbed, the most proud person of yourself. Because if you're the person who gave a lot, who helped a lot of people make a career, I'm sure that person on the deathbed will be happier. And so I think it's the kind of thing where at the end of the day, when I look at people who are very self-interested and I try to understand what is the pattern behind it, I feel there's so much about overcompensating.

Starting point is 00:52:15 There's so much about that there's a void in some way. It's something where I immediately feel how can we work with that person to maybe see how we can get rid of that void because then they might realize that there's a much better life out there for them because maybe they're just doing it because they never got the love that they wanted. And so they just have to prove everyone all the time that they're the best. But actually, they don't get really fulfilled by it. It's just kind of their only means of like getting attention. Right.

Starting point is 00:52:42 And so I think it's, I found it fascinating to think about what is the underlying psyche of people. And when I think about some of the people that I immediately would first think about are the biggest Aholds, a lot of times actually then I realized, oh my God, they had like something in their life. that was actually really tough. And at that point, they didn't have anyone to talk with or they didn't have anyone who understood. And so since then, they've just been overcompensating or they've been doing something like

Starting point is 00:53:07 this. And so long story short, I think it's about success metrics. And if we think about success being living a life that's truthful to ourselves, I feel that giving people, A, a lot of times have serendipity because people want to help them out, but also, again, on the deathbed, I'm sure they will be happier than others. How much does timing matter for luck? A lot. I was thinking about this with my wife, actually, we met during COVID.

Starting point is 00:53:31 We remet. So we had known each other for a long time. We were friends for very long time. But then during COVID, we remet. And we remet where she just had gone through a divorce. And I just had kind of like been through this, being alone in COVID and thinking, oh my God, I should repart this relationships. And so we met at a time where we both were open to thinking about what is the new kind

Starting point is 00:53:51 of relationship. And she was really good at saying, hey, this is what I'm looking for in relationships. and she was telling me as a friend, but then the first time I was like, wow, actually I've never seen a potential relationship in the person, but the way she talks about relationships is exactly what I'm looking for. And so the timing was just perfect for both of us. And so I think timing is so important.

Starting point is 00:54:12 But then again, at the same time, you know, someone like Lexi would always in a way have good timing, right? So if in this particular case, I hope it would still have been with me, even if it wouldn't have been in this moment, but by putting some of these like information points out, there that helped me then to sense make what she was looking for, it made it more likely that the timing would be the right timing. And so it's kind of those things where, yes, timing matters,

Starting point is 00:54:34 but we can also make it more likely that we have more timings that matter. Can you give us some pragmatic advice for increasing our chances of luck via timing? Like I, for instance, feel like I miss the timing in terms of housing. I mess it up every single time. Like I miss the good time to buy a house. And then my husband and I just got rid of our rental. and then two months later, we were like, we checked online, we did our due diligence, made sure we could afford a similar priced home, whatever. Two months later, this huge AI boom happens in the Bay Area. Prices go up by like 2,000%.

Starting point is 00:55:06 So it just feels like our timing is awful when it comes to housing. What could we be doing differently? So I'm certainly not an expert in housing. But like, yeah, how do we? What I find interesting is exactly what we talked about earlier, that in a way, I bet like if we would talk in five years, so hopefully we will talk in five years, again, you know, you might say, oh my God, actually, yes, we didn't get a house for a year, but then we found this gem of a house somewhere where we wouldn't have expected it and we wouldn't

Starting point is 00:55:34 even looking. So yes, it took us longer, but then it was actually even more beautiful. And so I guess my point is that even if the timing might not feel right at some point, it might be right at another point. Give an example. I have, you know, MBA students who applied to the same company 20 times, right? And then it worked the 20th time. And then at that point, the timing was right. The 19 times before it was by frequency, by doing more of it and by, you know, playing the long game, you make it more likely that at some point timing will be right. And it's something you mentioned earlier, right, which was about that when you, you said it beautifully, I think, along the lines of, hey, you know, if you ask yourself, is this

Starting point is 00:56:16 decision, will it still matter in 30 years from now? And that most decisions, you know, most decisions actually won't matter in 30 years, the housing decision will matter, right? But because it matters, it probably also is more about the long game than the short game. And so it's less about can we find it within five months, but can we find something that then ultimately we can raise our kids in, right, and be really happy and things like that. And so one thing I've seen in our research is that, yes, timing always plays a huge role, but some people seem to be really good to, in a way, create situations where it just becomes more. And then, you know, when you find your gem in five months, unexpectedly somewhere, you would be like, thank you very much that we didn't find it immediately because now we found that gem.

Starting point is 00:56:55 So I understand the post facto gratitude and being like, oh, it all worked out. Everything is great. But is there anything I could be doing right now so that in five years I am in my beautiful house having that gratitude versus being like, well, that was the beginning of a downward spiral? Absolutely. Is there somewhere where real estate people hang out and like you hang out with them and like talk with them and they flag things to you, right? or is it you have those two friends who are in real estate who can connect you with 10 other people where now you can be part of their conversations and whenever something comes up, they will forward it to you. So in a way, you try to create situations where it becomes more likely that there's an opportunity space for it to happen. And so I think that in a way, to me, is the most pragmatic thing to think about who are the five people in my life who might know people in real estate, who might know in those areas where I'm looking, I'll send them an email right now saying, this is what I'm looking for. and they should get back to me.

Starting point is 00:57:46 In every conversation that I have now, I mentioned to people in the sideline, by the way, I'm also looking for a house, right? And so those kind of things where then one of your friends who has nothing to do with real estate might say, oh my God,

Starting point is 00:57:56 my mother-in-law actually is this amazing agent who just, you know, found a house there, I'll put you in touch. And so I'm a big fan of, again, like trying to create that opportunity space,

Starting point is 00:58:05 making more likely that at some point Serendip will happen around it. Is opportunity space always via other people or are there other ways to create opportunity space? Well, it can be with other people,

Starting point is 00:58:14 which is the easiest in that sense, it can be with ourselves in terms of attention. Where do we put our attention? If you're the person who always takes the same way to work, it's very unlikely that serendipity will happen. But if you take that one other street and you keep your eyes open and you see that bookstore and see that book in the bookstore that tells you, oh, my God, this could be a new podcast episode, right? Then serendipity can happen.

Starting point is 00:58:38 And so I think it's where do we put our attention? Where do we put our energy towards? How does technology impact serendipity, either for positive ways or for negative ways? I feel social media is both the worst thing and the best thing that has happened. So the worst thing in terms of doom scrolling and now seeing everything everywhere and just thinking the world is just going down and everything is going crazy. But then also social media is so wonderful for hooks, right? When you think about, let's say you have a LinkedIn account with a thousand connections. Now, if you write a story that's, you know, not about self-promotion, but more about just creating

Starting point is 00:59:16 some sort of value, putting something out there, right? So, hey, you know, we've been working on a new project and, you know, in this project, we've learned this, and, like, next we'll work on this and this and this project. And then you invite a thousand people to, you know, potentially say, oh, my God, like, I didn't even know you worked on this. And so the scale is just completely different in terms of how you can put those hooks out there. And so I think in terms of the exponentiality of potential serendipity. I think social media is huge. I think at the same time then,

Starting point is 00:59:45 the filter aspect and the aspect of making sure there's meaningful conversations over volume and stuff like that, that's with my kids what I'm most concerned about in terms of saying, hey, look, let's make sure you stay enough in real life that you have really meaningful relationships that are in depth versus just the scale and quantity of people or relationships.

Starting point is 01:00:04 So would the best use of social media be to insert hooks in any opportunity possible and then not scroll that much? Or what would you recommend? So I think it's about, yeah, what is meaningful to us at that particular point in time? And then can we bring that into conversations without forcing it in there?

Starting point is 01:00:19 I think there's also an over-in engineering of Serendibb that can happen if you force things too much. What about AI? I found it fascinating in the sense that, I mean, I'm both really scared by it because I think it's the kind of thing where we have a lot of people working on it who in terms of they're really good at technology,

Starting point is 01:00:39 but not necessarily really good at realizing the unintended consequences of things. And, you know, as someone who studies unintended consequences, it's just something that scares me that I don't think people are really aware how big the unintended consequences could be, both good and bad. And then at the same time, I found, especially, you know, for me as Chachypete, I found it fascinating as a kind of idea-sparing partner as someone who helps me think through things. I, you know, my wife recently told me she feels this is the third person in the relationship now because it's kind of, you know, usually when I would write an email,

Starting point is 01:01:08 because I'm a non-native speaker, I would always go to my wife and say, oh, is this okay? And now I'm kind of like, okay, chatypte tell me, does that make sense? And so I feel my life has become much easier because of it, especially as a non-native speaker. And I've seen that especially with people who are non-native speakers in English, particularly here in the US, that it in a way equalizes a bit more when you write emails, when you interact with people online. But then at the same time, it's the same issues we talked about, right? That if you over-reliolide, when it's hallucinates, the amount of stuff it makes up, when I ask it, and I literally put it in the prompt, I'm saying, tell me about this,

Starting point is 01:01:43 don't make things up. And still, it would make things up sometimes. So it's the kind of thing where I feel if it would keep at that point where it's now, that would be great because I feel now it's really helpful. I'm just scared where it could go because I think, yeah, at some point it's just going to be so good that I wonder about the meaning. Right. So I guess for you as well, right, you mentioned like writing novels and in my case is writing books. And if at some point AI is so good that it can write those things itself, then maybe there's less meaning in writing those things because if you know that a machine could just do it like this within a minute, why would you put two years into that? And so it's those kind of things where I'm a bit scared of. Will there still

Starting point is 01:02:19 be enough meaning for all of us when a machine can do these things easier and better? We live in a time that feels really scary to a lot of people. You say that cultivating this skill of serendipity can help us deal with uncertainty. So can you tell me how that works? Well, when you think about, you know, crazy times we live in every day, there seems to be something unexpected and something that kind of completely shifts again, how the world works. And what I found interesting about when you use a serendibity mindset, what it helps you do is to say, okay, is there still something here? Is there something I can meaning make around this? And so it's not only something that destroys your plans, but it's something where you say,

Starting point is 01:02:54 okay, maybe there's still something that I can meaning make. So, for example, one of the companies that have been part of almost went bankrupt at some point. And in that moment, it felt like, oh my God, this is destroying everything we want to do and everything else. But then it really forced us to rethink how the organization works, and then it became kind of like a way for us to build a different type of business model for that organization. And so is those kind of things where something that presents itself as something that can bring anxiety and that can bring you, oh my God, can also then become an inflection point for something good. And I think that's where Victor Frankel has helped me a lot to really kind of consistently try the meaning-making piece of,

Starting point is 01:03:30 is there something here that we can still somehow meaning-make around it? Can you do that for things that are outside of your control, though, like, I'm scared that climate change is going to destroy the world. I'm scared about the state of the government. How do we meaning make for those types of things? And that's, I think, coming back to what we talked about earlier, that those things, you know, climate change, partly in our control in terms of, you know, with great platforms, we can build the collective consciousness of it and help talk about it. And that I feel like over the last 20 years, for myself, I've been working a lot on to get away from this is something that I can't control and I get really worried and anxious about it

Starting point is 01:04:07 versus this is something I can control. I can get into action and when I'm in action, then I'm less anxious about things because I feel okay, there are something moving. And so the thing that I've seen about things like climate change or others is like, okay, can I work on something that's concrete here that actually, even if it just moves the middle a little bit, that actually has something impactful. And so I think that kind of bias for action in a way then gets us from the head into kind of action. If you are to believe the psychology research about how anxiety mostly comes from when we think a lot about it and overthink it, to actually getting away from that and saying, okay, let me focus on what I can control. Yeah, I say action is the antidote to anxiety a lot.

Starting point is 01:04:48 And I do think that that's been really helpful for me. Would you say that part of cultivating the skill of luck is being able to identify where we have agency and where we don't have agency? Absolutely. And, you know, I think that's where that's where. idea of, you know, if you can't control the situation, trying to figure out a way how you can then accept it and then really focusing on what I can control, I think that is the most empowering thing one can do. And also where then again, I think you can, you know, let's say you have a huge project and you feel very anxious about it because like, oh my God, this is such a big project. Okay, can you break it down into micro projects now or micro steps so that you can actually

Starting point is 01:05:27 focus on something, get into action? And then even if it doesn't necessarily become that big project anymore because it changes route, at least you see that something is happening. And so I'm a big fan of, yeah, identifying that locus of control. Are there certain types of people who are naturally luckier? Like, are women luckier than men? Are certain cultures or countries more practiced at the skill of luck? Well, I'm very hesitant to put people into boxes and themes. I feel like most people are so multidimensional that one thing I can say is, especially when you look at culture, you know, I grew up in a culture where it's very plan focused, very strategy focused. And so you're not inviting necessarily the unexpected into your life so much because you perceive it as a threat usually. Versus if you

Starting point is 01:06:09 are in the Middle East, for example, it's part of life that there's so much flow, right? And in a way, you're constantly serendipitizing because you're constantly in that flow. And so I think you will see those differences culturally in different parts of the world. And then I think it's about saying, okay, what are the patterns I can take from both that I can learn from? So, you know, from the German approach you can take, yes, planning is great. But you know what? You also got to plan for the unexpected, which means you've got to plan for something, but keep the openness to that the unexpected can help you. And so I'm a big fan, for example, of asking in weekly meetings, in team meetings, what surprised you last week, right? So even if you're in an organization that's very planning

Starting point is 01:06:45 focused, or if you're very planning focused, what you're doing is you're saying, if there is unexpected situations, they are not necessarily a threat to what we're trying to do, but they can be new information points. So, for example, one of my absolute favorites is the potato washing machine. Potato washing machine is a couple of years ago, there's a company in China called Hire, they produce washing machines. And they receive calls from farmers. And the farmers told them, your crappy washing machine is always breaking down. Why is it breaking down? Well, we're trying to wash our potatoes in it, and it doesn't seem to work. Now, what we usually do would say, our plan is that you wash your clothes in there. So don't wash your potatoes in there. No more

Starting point is 01:07:21 warranty for you. What did they do? Exactly the opposite. They said, you know what? That's unexpected, but there's probably a lot of farmers in the world who have a similar problem. So why don't we build in a better dirt filter and make it a potato washing machine? And so that's kind of like, I think where it gets interesting that if you then ask people what surprised you, they might tell you, well, it surprised me that customers use our product differently than we thought. And instead of thinking, oh, my God, like they don't understand our product, you're saying, oh, maybe there's an even better use for our product. And so then kind of like, that's where you invite serendipity thinking into your life. What about women versus men? Because I feel like you've mentioned your wife naturally is really

Starting point is 01:07:55 adept at these things. And then also you mentioned your mother-in-law, correct? Yes. So are women luckier? I think, again, I'm very cautious of putting people into different boxes. I think I'm very lucky that I'm surrounded by amazingly strong women who have so much serendity in their lives that I'm constantly in awe and I'm learning a lot from it. So for example, people who are good at conversation, people who are good at empathy, people who are good at connecting with people. Yes, Serendipity is more likely, right, because you're able to resonate with the other person's needs and then figure that out, right? And so what you might see as natural traits, and again, I'm not putting people into boxes. So I'm just saying people have a tendency towards my empathy, for example, those might also be the people who become better at connecting dots, right, and those kind of things. So yes, I do think there might be tendencies that people have, but again, I wouldn't want to put people into too many boxes there. Are there other tendencies, though, that you feel like lend themselves to being more serendipitous or having more serendipity? Yeah, I mean, curiosity, a big one.

Starting point is 01:08:53 I'm a big fan of this little prince. Like, I have that little prince book in my, well, I had it. Now I don't have it anymore, but I used to have it. It was that guy who walks around and it's just curious and asks why all the time. And I've seen that with people who ask why a lot of times, that they tend to have more serendipity because they don't assume that they know exactly what happening, but they try to understand what is behind something. An example from certainly my life, which is the toothpaste in the bathroom. And so imagine, right, your partner comes into the bathroom and says, oh, my God, you again put the toothpaste like in the middle of the bathroom. And then you have a fight about it.

Starting point is 01:09:30 And then it's not about the fight itself. It's not about the toothpaste, right? If you ask yourself, then, why do we have a fight? You realize, oh, the fight is because she doesn't feel appreciated that she told me that and I did it again. And so asking why essentially helps you to understand the real root cause. And that a lot of times helps with, you know, conflict resolution, but it also helps with more serendivity because you understand what people really, what the real need is, what the real motivation is. And that makes it more likely you can connect the dots. Where are you putting the toothpaste?

Starting point is 01:09:58 I always put it in the wrong spaces. I was like, I picture a tuber toothpaste like in the middle of the bathroom floor. And I'm like, what do we do here? Okay. With parent brain, I feel like I forget it everywhere. Well, I like the Y thing too because I, there's a cleaning tip that stuck with me, which is notice the patterns that you're already engaging in. and then create solutions around those patterns. So, like, if you're always dumping your dirty clothes in one place,

Starting point is 01:10:20 instead of trying to switch where you dump your dirty clothes, put a laundry hamper in the place you're naturally dumping them. And I think that the Y, why, why can help you figure out, like, well, because that's the place that it naturally makes sense for me to dump my dirty clothes. 100%. And that's exactly where it becomes interesting to understand, A, what is the pattern? What is the real thing here? And then, B, if that is the pattern and if it's hard to change,

Starting point is 01:10:42 can I then at least kind of do something that makes it easier for us, right? So in your case, like the laundry, putting it somewhere in our case, it was about talking about that the toothpaste doesn't represent, disrespect, it represents parent brain, those kind of things. I'm genuinely confused how master class gets literally the absolute top people in every single field to teach every single one of their classes. I use it when I want to learn things directly, like the cooking class from Thomas Keller, has all of the wisdom that you would normally have to go to culinary school for. But also, I'm being honest, this is like a use case I don't hear a lot of people talking about.

Starting point is 01:11:16 I'll just watch it for entertainment when I want to do something that's far more interesting than scrolling. Christina Aguilera taught me to sing. Shan Boudrum's Art of Mastering Confidence and Sex Appeal class is 10 out of 10. There's menopause classes with leading doctors. There's script writing with Mindy Kaling. Literally, you name it. They're on masterclass and it is such a good way to get off your phone but have something that's like, not quite as long or hard to get into as a TV show or a movie and that it just keeps you

Starting point is 01:11:43 entertained and interested. And you are learning. There are over 200 classes from the world's best, all for just $10 a month when billed annually. And you get unlimited access to every class on the platform so you can learn at your own pace whenever you want on your phone, your computer, or even in audio mode like a podcast. If you're looking to stop scrolling and start consuming entertaining content that makes you feel excited and helps you learn. Masterclass is it. And the best part, every membership comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee so you can start learning risk-free. Right now, our listeners get an additional 15% off any annual membership at Masterclass.com slash Liz Moody. That's 15% off at Masterclass.com slash Liz Moody,

Starting point is 01:12:28 masterclass.com slash Liz Moody. Look, I'm never going to make everything that I wear organic, But your sheets, your pillows, your comforter are literally touching your skin for eight hours every single night. That is a third of your life right there with one simple swap. And if your bedding is worn out, it's trapping heat or it's made with questionable materials, your sleep is going to suffer. And so will everything that depends on it. You want a bed, you deserve a bed that you are excited to get into every single night so that you can get the sleep that you need to feel your best. That's why I love Bowling Branch so much. their signature organic cotton sheets are incredibly soft. You notice that the first night,

Starting point is 01:13:09 and they are so breathable, which is a godsend if you sleep hot like I do. But what massively impresses me is that in an era where everyone is greenwashing everything, Bowlin Branch takes the safety and the quality of their products so seriously. They're got certified, meaning the organic integrity is verified at every single step of production, not just the raw material. They're Okotech certified, which I always look for. It means that everything has been tested and cleared for harmful substances from the yarn all the way to the finished product. And they are fair trade certified.

Starting point is 01:13:44 So the people actually making your sheets are being paid and treated fairly. Most people start with the signature sheet set. And honestly, once you feel them, you're going to want to do the entire bed. They feel like a fancy hotel, but maybe even better. It's made travel actually worse for me, fair warning, because my own bed at home is like nicer than the nicest hotels. It just feels so good. I get so excited to get into it every single night. It's time to upgrade your sleep with Bowlen Branch. Get 15% off your first order plus free shipping at Bolandbranch.com slash Liz Moody with code Liz Moody. That's Bullen Branch, B-O-L-L-L-and-Branch.com

Starting point is 01:14:20 slash Liz Moody. Use code Liz Moody to unlock 15% off. Exclusions apply. The number one rule of habits is to make the things that you want easier and the things that you don't want harder. Yet so many of us want to eat healthier, but so few of us actually take the steps to make eating healthier easier. That's where Marley Spoon comes in. What I love about this company and what's different than all of the other companies out there that are doing stuff in the same arena is that you can customize your choices based on the effort that you want to put in. So if you want them to send you ingredients, so you can make your own 20-minute meal and get into your chef energy, they'll send it to you to all be in perfect portions so you'll eliminate waste. Great, that's sorted. But they also have

Starting point is 01:15:05 meals that you can just heat up. They have ready-made breakfast, which is always such a tough time of day to get a healthy meal in. They have grab and go snacks. Everything is made from farm fresh produce with high-quality proteins and you can select by dietary preferences, including Mediterranean diet, which is the top diet that doctors on this podcast recommend. Also things like gluten-free, dairy-free, low sodium, anything that you need. The food is so good and it's so gourmet feeling like you feel like you're at a nice restaurant. We're talking like chicken Milanese with a crunch cucumber arugula salad or everything bagel salmon with truffle chive potatoes. My favorite recent meal was the creamy lemon chicken tray bake. I had one of those moments where I looked at my plate and I was like,

Starting point is 01:15:47 wait, I made this and so quickly, like so easily. It's just so little effort for so much reward. Marley Spoon just makes eating well feel easy instead of stressful. And honestly, that is everything. This new year, fast track your way to eating well with Marley Spoon. Head to marlyspoon.com slash offer slash Liz Moody for up to 25 free meals. That is right, up to 25 free meals with Marley Spoon. That is Marley Spoon.com slash offer slash Liz Moody. So remember to get the offer slash Liz Moody for up to 25 free meals. What role do gratitude enjoy play in cultivating luck?

Starting point is 01:16:28 I think gratitude is one of those things. And I remember you talked about this once, I think, around this idea of gratitude to others versus to yourself. When you think about how certainity happens, a lot of times it happens because people want to help you. It's a lot of times something where they connect the dots for you. And so I think when you say thank you to people, they are much more inclined in the future also to actually want to be good to you

Starting point is 01:16:52 because they know that you're grateful when you do something. And so I felt gratitude A is something that makes me much happier because it's just a really good thing and nice thing to do. And it helps me to appreciate things and things like that. But also then other people, when you are grateful, they also, again, want to interact more about whatever things you were grateful about. And so I think it's kind of that two-way street where gratitude can be really interesting.

Starting point is 01:17:18 Oh, joy is wonderful in the sense of that if you look at joyful people and also the joy that certainly can create. It's like the example we talked about earlier of my colleague in London, who, again, if you see the unexpected not only as something that's, oh, my God, now I'm talking about a new topic, and I don't know if that topic kind of then brings me into a bad situation to, oh, I'm talking about this new topic, but there's actually a world out there. I wasn't even aware that exists. Then actually potentiality starts to happen. And so I think serendivity and joy are very closely related.

Starting point is 01:17:49 And one of the things actually that gets me most joyful about serendipity and that content is that I see people get less anxious. Like I see, you know, psychologists sending an email and saying, hey, I can use this for my patients because it, it re-anchors their locus of control. It says the unexpected is not just something that comes from outside and you have to accept it only, but there's there's the meaning making that you can do with it. And that then, again, makes it more joyful also to be in situations where something could happen, but it kind of like you still can shape it. You can be part of it. And I think that agency that gives you more control of your life. Oh, that's so interesting. As an anxious person, again, like what we were talking about earlier, it's so hard to come at your anxiety directly

Starting point is 01:18:31 sometimes. So I love the idea of this workaround path to your anxiety. I feel like that can be much more effective. So the idea would be like, let's say I'm scared of flying and like barring a crash. I'm scared of like, is the turbulence really bad? I'm scared of every single possible thing to happen flying. Would the idea be that I know even if it's bad, I can find some sort of meaning in it? And then thus that would decrease my anxiety. Is that correct? Yeah. So for example, right, assume you are in that plane and you get really anxious. And then you start that conversation with a person next to you who's also really anxious about it. And you become best friends for life because you're connected over vulnerability.

Starting point is 01:19:09 Right. So it's those kind of moments that, and I'm a big fan of that because I have a lot of those kind of quasi-vulnerable moments where I spill a lot of things. I, you know, I dump a lot of things. And so I'm in those moments that are, you know, theoretically embarrassing, especially when you're with people who, you know, you meet the first time. But I've learned that actually those moments are the most amazing moments. of connection because there might be another person who spills a lot and we might be like, oh my God, like, finally someone who, like, you know, has that thing too. And so, and then we connect. And it's a much more genuine connection than the kind of professional, let me meet you here.

Starting point is 01:19:42 And so I think in your example, yeah, if you meet that new best friend in the plane because you have a similar fear, when thinking about anxiety and fears, I found that to be a beautiful way to connect with people. It's very Breeney Brown in terms of it's not about oversharing. It's not about saying, let me tell you my life story. It's more about saying, what is it that is something that is maybe relatable in my fear and that maybe the other person has too and maybe we can talk about it and that maybe helps us build a friendship. If parents wanted to raise lucky kids, what advice would you give them? It's very top of mind for me at the moment because I'm thinking a lot about my parents and what

Starting point is 01:20:15 they've done because I felt very lucky throughout my life. And I think the one thing they did was they instilled this amazing feeling of self-worth. like the idea that Christian situations will go wrong, but you're okay. Like you're a great person. You're not a failure because the situation fails. You're a person who in that situation tried something, it didn't work, and then you moved to the next situation. And I love that because we talked about earlier, right?

Starting point is 01:20:44 With my daughter now, I've tried to instill that a lot. And, you know, when she kind of like has something that she messes up, right, so she spills water or something. And then she's like, oh my God, this was an accident. Now my brain is growing, right? So something like that, right? Where that's kind of like what I want to instill because it's the kind of thing where then you see accidents,

Starting point is 01:21:05 you see unexpected things, you see things you mess up, not as, oh my God, I'm a bad person. And more as, okay, that was a situation that went bad, but let's make it funny or let's make it like, and then actually that's where serendivity happens, right? And the organization I mentioned earlier in this kind of poverty context, they are really good at this, where they essentially say, let's bring as much humor as possible into it,

Starting point is 01:21:26 especially with younger people, because that's the best way to relate to someone, right? When you spill something and you make it humorful as like, oh my God, gravity is not on my side or something like that, right? Like, people can relate to that. And then kind of like it makes it easier to connect. And so I think with kids, A, the idea of self-worth, be the idea of like rewarding not outcomes, but rewarding curiosity, rewarding like the things that they do that are about like inquisitiveness and trying to figure things out. So the same traits we talked about earlier that can help serendipity incentivizing them with kids, I think there's a lot there. I also love the idea of just doing that as an adult. Like, oh, I said something in a way I didn't mean to in that meeting.

Starting point is 01:22:04 My brain is growing. Like, I just think that's like I love that. I feel like I'm going to take that on as a mantra. Like, oh, I wish I'd said that differently in a podcast. My brain is growing. This is great. Your daughter's an icon. We talked about conversational hooks.

Starting point is 01:22:16 Tell me about serendipity bombs. Well, the idea is that you put a couple of things out there that could go off. you don't know if they will, but it could. So let's say you write a new book and you identify 20 people that are extremely inspiring that you would like an endorsement from. And now what you're doing is you try to figure out, okay, can I send them an email or an inmail on LinkedIn or something where you're like, hey, look, your work has really been inspiring to me.

Starting point is 01:22:39 So like very kind of genuine, personalized, like deep, kind of truthful things. And then you say, okay, I'm sending that to 20 people. And again, not in a kind of mass type, like just sending out, but like in a, you in a personalized, like, deep way. And then you do that 20 times. And one of them might be like, oh, my God, you know, when I was your age, this and this was in my life, too, like, let me connect with you. So the idea is, like, you build a couple of hooks in the email or a couple of hooks

Starting point is 01:23:06 in the message. And as you do that, again, some will go off, some won't. But it's the kind of thing where you're just saying you're just trying to figure out, like with my students, for example, when they apply to jobs, the idea is, yes, like, you've got to cast your net wide to kind of put a lot of. things out there where you apply, but also then do the kind of things where you just connect with an alumni and you just mention three things and you see what they react to and what they come up with. And so it's kind of you enable some potential serendipity where you don't even know what

Starting point is 01:23:34 could come from it. It feels like so much of this serendipity is about tenacity and just ability to keep going. If somebody's listening, they're like, I'm already tired. This is going to make me more tired. Like what advice would you give them to have that tenacity to be able to keep going. Well, I can certainly relate to tiredness and exhaustion. I think as young parents, that's definitely something. The reason tenacity, I think, is such an important theme that we talk about is that at the end of the day, there's so much potentiality out there, right? There's so many potential things that could happen, right? You bump into the person in the supermarket who could be the love of your life, but you've got to go on dates. If you don't go on dates, that person will

Starting point is 01:24:12 not become the love your life. Or, you know, the potential idea, it's not enough. You've got to put it into a potato washing machine, right? And I think that's kind of in a way where building that muscle also and forcing oneself to do that, I do think it gets easier. I do think it's the kind of thing, again, right, going on dates, right? If you go on more dates, it becomes easier to go on dates. And so I think it's, it's again the muscle where we can similarly to like a general muscle for the unexpected, also build a muscle for that tenacity.

Starting point is 01:24:39 And so, but I think filters are really interesting there to say, let's not only maximize everything because again, that's kind of like so exhausting. I'm actually a big fan, by the way, of Jomo, the joy of missing out. So really kind of like missing out on a lot of things and feeling good about it because you're like, okay, I don't need to have all of this. And so filters could be values, right? So I don't know. If you're a trader and you get this unexpected tip for like a new share, but your value

Starting point is 01:25:05 system says, I will not do illegal stuff, then you will shut that potential serendipity out, right? And so it will make your life much easier if you have non-negotiable values. And so I'm a big fan of just setting those non-negotiables out because then in a way it makes life easier to also know what should I be tenacious about versus where is it just not worth it? Because it's not the kind of person I want to work with. It's not the kind of thing I want to work on. And so really kind of having some filters. I think that also then focuses our energy on the things that are really worth pursuing and worth the tenacity versus getting rid of the things that are not worth it. What would you say to somebody who's like, I've been putting myself out there and I haven't been getting results and I'm, I feel beat down. I feel like I'm just an unlucky person. a lot of us have been there, right? Like, I mean, I always love those tales from the trenches from people. And again, I think there's a bit of a survivorship bias sometimes, right?

Starting point is 01:25:53 Where, like, successful people talk about, yes, and like, I was rejected so many times. And then I was successful. It's easier to tell that story once you're successful, right? Then once you're in the trenches, not being successful. I do think, though, there's a lot of value in seeing that most people, and I love this idea, one of my colleagues, she did a failure CV. So really, like a CV where she would list all the things that didn't go. right, right? Instead of listing all the grants she got and all the publications, she was listing,

Starting point is 01:26:20 this paper was rejected, this grant was rejected, and then you read that the failure CV is much longer than the actual CV, right? And so those kind of things. And I think so the first thing is about this kind of appreciation that most people, like a lot of times, have more of those rejection type things than we might be aware of. I mean, I've certainly seen it in my own life. I was rejected from 38 universities or like, I think 30, something around 40. And it was still the time where you had to send like paper applications. And so most of them said, no, like your high school certificate is really bad. Like, sorry.

Starting point is 01:26:50 And then, you know, one or two would say, oh, my God, yeah, you could still, we'll give you a chance. But the point is, at every stage of life that was something where there was always a lot of rejection and you talk more than about the things that worked versus the things that didn't. But I think everyone has that. But I think the first thing around how do we realize that most people have a lot of rejection in their life. And then the second piece about what is it about that keeps me. going because I think the again I can only speak from my experience when it comes to this where

Starting point is 01:27:19 those moments where it has felt oh my god maybe I want to give up it was also sometimes related to maybe that doesn't feel that meaningful or maybe it's not worth it right so if I if I'm in a relationship where I'm like oh my God is this worth it and then I'm just tired of it you don't want to fight for it right because maybe you feel it's not the right thing and so I feel like like taking that step back and thinking about is this actually worth fighting for and if not like what what else could be with fighting for it. I see that with students who like apply to consultancies and then get all these rejections

Starting point is 01:27:49 and then actually when they take the step back there like, oh, I actually only wanted to do consulting because my family wanted me to do it, but actually I don't really want it and that just comes out in the interviews, right? People feel that when you're not really in it. And so it's kind of, I think it's also like then that kind of stepping back and saying

Starting point is 01:28:05 why am actually doing this in the first place and what is my motivation and maybe can I channel my energy differently? So it's the meaning making again. Yeah, that's interesting. Are there other obstacles to cultivating our luckiest lives that we haven't talked about? Perfection. Perfectionism, I think I've always found that fascinating, the difference between perfection and excellence. Like in a way, if you look at the company like Pixar, right, like they do all these finding Nemo, like beautiful, super creative things.

Starting point is 01:28:33 And, you know, I always loved that notion that they would say, well, at the beginning, all of our movies start as bad ideas. So they don't have to be perfect. So when you're in the meeting, you don't have to bring in the perfect ideas. because by definition the idea will iterate and it will become better. And if we want a truly excellent idea, we can't start with perfect ideas because nobody would bring anything in because it's just not perfect. And so I'm a big fan of that idea of allow yourself to be fallible, to be vulnerable. I had someone recently come in for a conversation who talked about that they don't talk about

Starting point is 01:29:05 lessons learned, but they just talk about essentially the continuous learning of there is no failure. It's just like an experiment that didn't work, right? And so I think if you reframe something when you bring in an idea and that idea wasn't the perfect idea, it's not that you failed in terms of the idea. It's just that you put something out there and now it's observing and it was just an experiment. And now you're moving on. And that's what you learn from. And so I'm a big fan of getting away from it has to be perfect to, yes, we want to be excellent in the end.

Starting point is 01:29:32 But the only way to excellent is to allow yourself to be fallible. I love that. And then I think we touched on this with the potato washing machine, but rigidity or like thinking that we have to follow a plan is also a really big impediment to luck, correct? Absolutely. And I think that kind of rigidity of this is exactly how it's supposed to work in a way then, especially when it comes to the kind of Archimedes type serendivity, right, where if you think the only way I can get to this consultancy is to apply through these three channels. And then you don't even realize that your peer in class, actually, their mother is like the head of consulting and they might actually be the one bringing you in, right? But if you're too rigid of like, no, this is the only path here, you might completely miss this. And that's kind of like one of the the biggest things that I felt in life, you know, when you go into a room and I see green energy and red energy. So green energy is people who are open-hearted, who are kind of good energy, and then red energy is kind of like the person who always looks like for the next interesting person and like who are hungry for like working their way up, right? And that person is the kind of person

Starting point is 01:30:32 you don't want to hire it because they're just eager for like this kind of self-interest type thing we talked about. And so I think when you're the person who just goes to an event and says, you know what? I just want to generally connect with people and I want to connect with a waiter as much as I want to connect with the CEO. The CEO actually is much more likely to react to you because they will be like, oh, that's the one person that talked actually with a waiter. And again, not every CEO will, but my point is that it's more about this idea of the kind of people that you want to have in your life are probably more the people who also talk to the waiter than the people who are constantly trying to go from one to the other. And so I think the rigidity of, I go to this event, I need to

Starting point is 01:31:07 talk to these three people and I will hunt them down completely makes you miss all the wonderful people that would have been there who could have become your best friends, who could have been the boss of the person you want to talk with, like those kind of things, or the waiter who actually is just a really cool person, like those kind of things where I think letting go of the rigidity of I have to do exactly those three things. Having it as I love how you said it earlier, kind of like this is kind of the broader vision of what I want to do here. Like I want to meet those three people, but I'm also open to all the other beautiful things that could happen here. I think about that in life in general, like letting go of the idea that life looks like, but up,

Starting point is 01:31:42 but up, but up, like hitting these stages, like I get a job and then I get married and then I buy a house and then I have kids. Maybe that's a future you want. Maybe that's not a future you want. But if you're holding it so tightly, you might be missing out on all of these other potential futures that you might find would make you even happier. 100%. What are a few daily practices that we could do that would increase how lucky we are? I'm a huge fan of two things. One is writing down in your life. And that's more kind of like a meta practice for the beginning to think about when in my life could serendipity have happened, but it didn't, and then identifying those moments and seeing the pattern and saying, okay,

Starting point is 01:32:15 if the pattern is fear of rejection or imposter syndrome or whatever it is, and then saying, okay, now I can work on this. Now I can do something about it. So that's kind of like more of a meta thing. The same for serendipity. When in my life has serendivity happened? What is the pattern and how can I do more of it? And so then kind of like from that, you know, I'm a big fan of just from time to time highlighting, you know, it doesn't have to be a serendivity journal. It could be from time to thinking about what was it about today where it happens and, you know, can I do more of that? And some want to write it down. Some just want to think about it. But I'm a big fan of just making ourselves presence of those kind of moments. The second one, I'm a huge fan of really

Starting point is 01:32:52 in conversations and situations, forcing ourselves to find some meaning, especially in a bad situation. So let's say you are on your way to the holidays and the car breaks down, right? It's a very kind of annoying situation. But you know what? Maybe it's the one situation where nobody has reception and you finally as a family can talk out the conflict that you always were running away from, right? And so now you have it. And then afterwards as a family, you feel finally we have the catharsis of talking about it, whatever it is. So this idea of, again, not toxicly positively thinking this will be great, but thinking about can I find something meaningful, can I force myself to see something in this situation, even if it presents itself as really negative.

Starting point is 01:33:33 And that's in real time, like not post facto, but like when you're sitting in the broken down car, you're like, how can I make meaning of this moment? And that's really important, I think, not only the post-rationalization and the kind of like trying to see the meaning behind or afterwards, but to actually try to sense make in real time. And I think that simple heuristic, that simple way of saying, okay, this presents itself as bad. But if I were to force myself to think about, is there something meaningful in here, So yes, I'm sitting in this plane now. I'm really fearful of the plane, but I see the person next to me is scared too.

Starting point is 01:34:04 Okay. So that's bad. But you know what? Maybe we can talk about it. And maybe I can tell that person something nice. And then that person tells me something nice. And again, we become best friends. Right?

Starting point is 01:34:13 It's those kind of things. Or even, like, as an introvert, I feel the need to point out a non-other human-based option, which is the meaning I get from flying is this reminder that I'm devoted to living a big, beautiful life and that I'm brave and that I can do hard things. that I can do things that scare me. And I can be sitting there reminding myself of that, even if I don't talk to whoever is sitting next to me. 100%. And you know, I relate to that. So again, I wouldn't also necessarily be the person. I'm just like, am I going to have to talk to them for the next five hours?

Starting point is 01:34:40 No, no, no, no. Headphones in. The practice that I really like that you shared in your book was the writing thank you notes to people three times a week. I thought that felt very doable. I also like the idea of did you picture it handwritten or did you picture emails? Because there's something about like a handwritten note I find really lovely that people don't do anymore. Yeah, handwritten notes, I'm a huge fan of it. I think it has a completely different way of how you receive it. Like it's much more, if I receive a handwritten note, I'm like, wow, that's a person who really put thought into that. So, yeah, I'm a big fan of handwritten notes, especially to people

Starting point is 01:35:12 who had a meaningful impact in our lives and just kind of saying, hey, thank you for that. And it's amazing because I think especially those people, right, it might be the high school teacher. It might be whoever had a real impact, that small thank you note. it might make their day. It might make much more of their day. Like, that's the kind of interesting thing about life, right? The butterfly effect of you might send them a thank you note when they're in a really depressive phase and they're like, oh my God, what am I doing with my life? And you're sending them a thank you note and say, hey, back in the days when you were my teacher, you really were the one person who made me, you know, possible to move on. That kind of really

Starting point is 01:35:47 helps them, right? So I had a person, for example, one of my high school teachers, he was one of the very few people who despite me being that kind of crazy. rebel type who was really not good in school. He still believed in me and he still kind of like did that and I did it with him like at some point I went back to him at a like when we had a reunion and I went to him and I kind of did a verbal thank you note for for some time and it was both for me important because it had such a big impact on my life but also I could see that for him it really made a difference to have someone who wouldn't gain anything from saying that now and I think that's the kind of thing like not doing it instrumentally as like, oh, this is the person whom I need for a favor in 20 days,

Starting point is 01:36:27 but the person where you're like, I don't want anything from that person. I just want to say thank you. And it's amazing how for both of them it makes such a big difference. And again, in the long run, it's also amazing how much serendivity comes from it because reconnecting with that person then leads to exquisite other beautiful things. And so I'm a huge fan of those thank you notes. But also by email, perfectly fine too. I think it's more about thinking of the other person and making them feel thought of

Starting point is 01:36:52 because I think we live in a world where a lot of us feel very disconnected. It's such a paradox, right? We're the most connected, but also the most disconnected, right? In terms of, like, so connected with everything, but also just like the genuine thank you, like, I think that carries a lot of weight. I think you can also do it with people that you don't know. I have a girlfriend who has mentors that are people everybody has heard of. And I've slowly found out over the years that what happens is she reads their books.

Starting point is 01:37:19 She sends them this note about how much the book has meant to her. And it's always really, really genuine. She's like, it's just the books that really change her life. She sends them a note. And then they start this conversation back and forth, not all the time, but sometimes. And she's cultivated these incredible relationships. And I knew about it for one person. And then like recently I found it was another person, another person. I'm like, oh my gosh, you've built this incredible network just by sending thank you notes to people about what their work meant to you. Yeah. I think that's a beautiful example because that's what it is, right? Also, people think that successful people like hear it too much or something. But every really successful person I know, if somebody says, this is what your work genuinely meant to me and this is how it changed my life. I know for me, when people say that about my book or my podcast, it moves me so deeply. And it just, I think all of us can feel like we're shouting in to avoid a certain point, even if you see the numbers and all of that. So yeah, I think, I think there's nobody that that wouldn't mean something to. Okay. I'm going to give you a few real life situations and I want you to tell me one action to increase our luck in each of these situations.

Starting point is 01:38:19 We're all about pragmatic action steps here. So achieving a big goal. I think breaking it into micro goals and then committing to it and having an accountability partner, having a person where you say within the next five days I will do this and this and you hold me account. How can we increase our luck job hunting? Putting some hooks out there, what you're looking for, like, you know, kind of in a way creating that potentiality space by talking with people, especially also with people where we might think that they might not have an idea. I think I found it useful

Starting point is 01:38:50 to really, with everyone, one talks through that period, just bringing in, by the way, I'm also X, Y, Z. And the amount of times people would say, oh, yeah, my uncle used to work there and there. They might be able to help with this and this. So I would just say that's where hooks play a huge role, just like, kind of like

Starting point is 01:39:06 with people putting that side sentence in. And by the way, I'm currently looking for new adventures, just wanted to let you know. I also think that's one where trying to do the meaning making or reminding yourself that there's going to be meaning making from this sometime in the future can be helpful because it can beat you down, getting rejection after rejection after rejection. But you also like rejection, which we talked about earlier. That can be a helpful thing too. I mean, I don't necessarily like it, but I feel it can be really useful. Rejection is a really interesting one because I do feel putting oneself into low-risk rejection situations and building a muscle for it, right?

Starting point is 01:39:39 So, I don't know, going into a supermarket and buying something and saying, can I get a 20% discount today because, you know, my daughter just had her teeth or whatever, like just something like this, right? I say it's my birthday. Or it's a birthday. Whatever it is, right? As long as it's true. I feel that it is. Like, it feels deeply true on some level. That's nice.

Starting point is 01:39:57 That it's always my birthday. I'm a leo. Yeah. But you think that's good for us? I think it's great because, look, what's the worst thing that can happen? The worst thing that can happen is someone saying no, and then you build your muscle. but actually surprisingly, like often people say, you know what? That's such a dumb question that I actually give you 20%. Or, you know what I mean? So my point is like it's fascinating. Sometimes it leads to new conversations, whatever it is. So I guess that the point just being that if you put yourself into situations that feel a little bit uncomfortable and you do that more often, it prepares you for those situations that are truly uncomfortable a little bit better. Yeah. And I just like, I come back to over and over. It is better to be rejected after having tried than to have never tried at all. How can we be luckier if we have a company, but we want to make that company really successful. Maybe we're like a solo

Starting point is 01:40:40 entrepreneur, but we want to find career success. I mean, there I think social media plays a neutral, right, in terms of really putting a couple of hooks out there. I think being very active, especially LinkedIn is super useful. I feel in terms of, hey, like this week I learned this. And, you know, my company is exploring more in this now. Just kind of putting a couple of hooks and then maybe someone saying, oh my God, like I've been thinking about something similar. Why don't we join forces, right? those kind of things. Serendibli bombs, I think, are a big one there in terms of just thinking about who are 10 inspiring people who are working on similar things, who might be interesting there, just kind of like reaching out a little bit there. I saw you had Gary,

Starting point is 01:41:16 a bunch of furniture here, right? A lot about this kind of, if you want to set up a restaurant, like reach out to 20 different restaurants and connect with them and see. So really that idea of like it is the uncomfortability, I guess, of reaching out. But there is a lot in there in terms of allowing for that potentiality. When you're sending out these bombs, is there like a structure to it that you find is more successful or less successful? I feel it's leading with a gratefulness piece for the other person or like what inspires you about the other person, right?

Starting point is 01:41:45 So I want to give you also an example of where I found it to be extremely useful as a exponential thing, which is public events. So imagine you're at a public event at Berkeley here, right? So you're at the University of Berkeley and there's this amazing speaker. And so let's say there are 500 people in the room. That's an audience you would never get yourself if you're kind of like the student at Berkeley, right? But if you're not sitting there as a student and that speaker just talked about something and now you're the first person like you raise your arm so that they can't ignore you. And you're saying, well, thank you so much, Mr. Speaker or Mr. Speaker.

Starting point is 01:42:17 As someone who's currently X, Y, Z and that's where you put your hook, I was wondering, you know, being inspired by what you just said, what would you advise me? And so what happens is two things. A, the speaker might remember you, might or might not, but that doesn't matter. What matters is that 500 people in this room just heard that you're interested in this. And what usually happens is when you try that is there's two, three people out of the audience saying, oh my God, like you also exos that, you also exos it. And so I'm a big fan of make it about the other person, but put a couple of hooks in there and then let people kind of like pick up on this.

Starting point is 01:42:48 And I think, again, social media is great, but also public events, like not overdoing it. Like there's nothing worse, right, than someone at a public event who pitches their own company. but if you put it in a side sentence, as someone who's currently building a company that does this and this, I'm super interested in this and this. Like now people might be, oh my God, like, I'm looking for this. Or somebody who's like, I'm currently struggling with this at the company I'm building versus like the ones that annoy me are like, I'm behind WWW. And I'm just like, we know it's very clear what you're doing here. Exactly. Exactly.

Starting point is 01:43:18 Okay. If we wanted to increase our luck in terms of just getting rich, we just want more money. How can we do that? you know it's interesting. So A, I would wonder why do I want to get rich, right? In terms of, I think there are these wonderful studies that show that at a certain point, richness actually, you know, there's a plateau of what makes you happy. But if you really want to be rich, I'm a big fan of placing bets, right? So I think that portfolio mindset comes with a lot of people who really have made resources possible. It's kind of like you try to figure out, okay, where can I place a couple of bets? So can I work for five hours in a startup, get a bit of equity from there? Can I do this and this? just kind of putting a little bit of a couple of different eggs into different baskets and then maybe if one basket goes up versus thinking this is the one, I'm a big fan of focus, I'm a big fan of building something. But the likelihood of you building the next huge thing that makes you extremely rich is less

Starting point is 01:44:07 so than building something amazing, but also being part of a couple of projects as an advisory board member or as a volunteer or as whatever it is to just be part of a couple of things where then people pull you in. I think there's a lot in that kind of placing bets. And I think you see that a lot with entrepreneurs that they, when they build their next things, they're really good at kind of like being part of those like networks that in a way help each other out. And so five ventures will not work, but the six one will work. And so that kind of placing bets.

Starting point is 01:44:35 If we wanted to be luckier in terms of meeting the love of our life, what should we do? I had a period in my life where I was on the dating scene where it was all about, let me meet as many people as possible so that I can filter out and then find it. And what I've realized is that kind of like gets you into this kind of weird autopilot, like, you know, you just versus actually thinking about what is it at this point that I'm truly looking for and then really just communicating this. And that filters out so much already. And then once you filter that out, then actually I'm going in. So I feel the best thing is, again, those kind of coffee shop moments and then kind of like trying to figure out is this values aligned. And what are my non-negotiables?

Starting point is 01:45:10 I think the non-negotiables in terms of, you know, I know so many people who go on dates and they have this gut feeling of all, but they have this one thing that doesn't resonate with me. and kind of really learning, okay, if this is non-negotiable, then maybe this is not the date for me. And so I'm a big fan of A, allowing for the potentiality of the coffee shop, but also B, then, defining a couple of non-negotiables and being just really harsh on, okay, this is just not what aligns with my values. So it's rigidity in terms of values, but not rigidity in terms of where things could happen. I love that. I have a thing called Match Theory, which is basically like we are looking for authentic connections in life.

Starting point is 01:45:46 So the sooner that you are fully yourself, the sooner you'll match with the person. and that's at work, that's in friendships, that's in romantic life. And I feel like also figuring out what you want another person, but also unabashedly being yourself to get rid of the people who don't want you, it can accelerate things in a really nice way. It can feel scary, but I think it can accelerate things. If we want to be luckier in terms of being healthy and not getting sick, what can we do? I mean, I can speak mostly for mental health, I think, in terms of that when you think about that certainty mindset we just talked about.

Starting point is 01:46:20 terms of that you perceive the unexpected not only as a threat, but actually something that's the source of something new that could create potentiality. I think that does a huge shift for mental health. So I think it's really kind of forcing yourself in unexpected situations to think about, okay, is there some sort of meaning here, right? You're in the plane and like, you know, we were on a plane. No, I can't hear a bad plane story. Are you going to tell them about that story? Okay, forget about that. And everything was fine and everybody was great. Everyone was great. And it's still one of the most, one of the safest things, right, to fly.

Starting point is 01:46:56 But let's say in general, right, when unexpected things happen in that moment thinking, okay, is there something here, A, that is under my control? So if I'm in a car, car, is that bad? You weren't a serious car accident. So you can use that. Use that as an example. That's safer for me. But in general also, yeah.

Starting point is 01:47:13 The car accident was interesting because there was more about like a need-death experience that then created that search for meaning. and it actually, once you face death, you're like, okay, what truly feels meaningful? And so that's kind of in itself, like a whole meta experience, I guess that was interesting. But I think the general, like let's say, you are in a small car crash, like my mother-in-law, right? And then if you shift to, okay, is there still some meaning here? Oh, maybe that other person could be a nice person to talk with or whatever it is. Doesn't matter.

Starting point is 01:47:41 I think then kind of like it shifts your idea of this is only bad to, okay, can I still see some meaning in it? And so I'm a big fan of, yes, like constantly. in terms of mental health, like shifting away from only focusing on what we can't control, okay, this thing happened now. And yes, I have to accept it, but in this moment,

Starting point is 01:47:59 can I still do one thing? And I think that kind of bias for action, I think has helped me a lot, certainly, to get away from worries and anxiety to, here's an action point. Yes, we crashed now. And again, car crashes, like maybe not the most harmonious of examples,

Starting point is 01:48:14 but it's still, the other person also now is in a really bad place. And so, hey, can we at least kind of like, you know, treat each other nicely and then maybe that person becomes the podcast host who you will have a show with. But maybe not, right? It doesn't matter because you still had a better relationship with that person than if you just go in as kind of like a confrontation or, hey, this was a problem type situation. What about the really bad, like really just unlucky, unfortunate things that happen in life? Like dealing with infertility, dealing with cancer,

Starting point is 01:48:42 dealing with loss of loved ones. How does this approach change the way you would interact with those types of situations. So one person in my life, well, I never met him, but he was the father of a very close friend of mine who had cancer and, you know, he went through that tough period. And I was very inspired because he used the themes that we just talked about where he said, okay, so he was in politics and he essentially said, I will see cancer like I would see the opposition party and I will make a campaign. So the way he did it was to then see cancer as I will now essentially run.

Starting point is 01:49:17 about how I cope with cancer and by doing that help other people to cope with it. And so he found a tangible way for himself to somehow still meaning make it. And so I think I'm coming back to, you know, what we talked about earlier, the Pellisades Fire, right? It feels like very meaningless to all of us. And it feels like how can you just get rid of a whole neighborhood and it's just gone, completely meaningless? And then finding those micro moments of meaning, right? Connecting with that neighbor who we never really connected with and who now becomes a good friend.

Starting point is 01:49:45 or writing some content about it that maybe can help other people to meaning make those kind of situations, right? So in a way, still meaning making in some ways, both the macro and the micro. And I think that's kind of very much the Victor Frankel thing that, you know, you can't always pick the situation, but your response to it. And apparently he never said it that way, but like his thinking was that way. That yes, the situation presented itself and was really bad, but can you meaning make it? Can you make it a campaign? And can you make it something that still then when you look back, you feel I still had some agency in doing something about it? Even if that agency is smaller than what you would want it to be.

Starting point is 01:50:24 How can we get luckier if we want to meet a best friend? I'm a huge fan of putting yourself into context, communities that have a certain value alignment, but that you might usually not have put yourself in, right? Because I think we all have certain kind of routines and certain communities we are part of. but maybe actually the new best friend is someone who's similar in some respects but different in other respects. And so, yeah, I'm a big fan, you know, thinking about what are some community happenings around me where maybe there are people who are really aligned being there. But I think the most interesting thing about, again, how I think you meet best friends is through shared vulnerability. And so I think it's really when something goes wrong, right, when you have a small kind of car hit another car or when you spill that coffee, can it be the kind of situation?

Starting point is 01:51:10 where then that person who's next to you becomes your friend because they also tend to spill coffee, right? Those kind of moments. I think quite a few of my friends and love interest came a lot. Like I feel like this is the like theme of my life. And you're like, great things have happened through all of my spilling. Well, I mean, again, now I'm extremely happily married. But when I, before I was married, the amount of, you know, people I would connect with in coffee shops who became people I dated or who, I mean, it's so I'm not recommending for people. to spill more coffee, don't get me wrong, but I'm saying it is a trigger to potentially have a conversation. Well, and it's a metaphor. Like, what is the spilled coffee in your life

Starting point is 01:51:48 if you're listening to this? Yeah. How quickly can we expect to notice results if we start doing all the stuff that we've talked about today? It's an interesting question because I think it's like with happiness, right? If you focus too much on the outcome, you make it less likely that it happens. So I think it's less about when exactly is the outcome and more about how can I create the flow for myself that it starts to happen at any given point. So you will see that people like Lexi, my wife, she will have serendiply wherever she goes because it's just her motor as a brandi that she constantly connects and things like that. And so I think it's about doing a couple of those baby steps we talked about.

Starting point is 01:52:23 And then as it happens, it just happens all the time. And you're kind of like, again, at some point, the challenge then will be the filter to say, let me not do that. So when, for example, when writing a book, at some point I was like, no, I just need to sit now in a coffee shop with headphones on because I don't need more ideas now. I just need to write it and just need to execute. So I also think there's a timing to everything in terms of the openness to new serenity versus now it's execution time and you actually just want to get things done and maybe have

Starting point is 01:52:52 stronger filters for having more serendipity or not. We like to end with one homework assignment, something that people can do immediately when they turn off this podcast. So if someone wants to get lucky or starting today, what is one simple thing they could do that actually works? thinking about three information points that you want to, whoever you meet next, whatever they're asking,

Starting point is 01:53:12 you just put it in there, right? They ask you, how are you doing today? Well, you know, at the moment, my four-year-old really keeps me up in night, because just throwing something and can be one hook,

Starting point is 01:53:22 two hook, three hooks, but really kind of getting yourself into, just throwing that into conversations, whatever the other person asks, right? How are you doing? What do you do? Oh, you know, I'm working on serendivity,

Starting point is 01:53:32 but actually what really keeps me up at night is my four-year-old. learning how to negotiate. And so as you do that, like you will see, like you will iterate a little bit of, oh, like, this feels more authentic. This works more in this context. And so really kind of then it gets away from the more forced to the, oh, this is just me now and I'm just kind of creating that potentiality. And so I think those hooks to me are the favorite because they're easily implementable. You directly do it. I also think the questions like just getting away from what do you do to what do you enjoy doing, what brings you here, simple shifts, but they open that

Starting point is 01:54:04 opportunity space. remind us in like one or two sentences why those hooks work so well to cultivate that luck? Well, hooks work really well to cultivate luck because you, A, find unexpected overlaps with people, right? So you say, I'm Christian, I study serenity, but my four-year-old is really keeps me up at night. Oh my God, such a coincidence. I also have a young kid that keeps me up at night. Let's talk. And then we nerd out about parenting, right? Those kind of things. So it makes it more likely to find unexpected overlaps. But also then that person, as they talk with other people, they might be like, oh, Christian, oh, he's the guy who works on serendipity. Oh, he's the guy who has the four-year-old.

Starting point is 01:54:37 So they also then have something meaningful they can connect you with when they talk with other people because you actually gave them some information to work with. Amazing. Can you tell us a little bit in your own words about your wonderful book, the serendipity mindset, and anything else that you'd like to spotlight? Yeah. Well, the serendipity mindset is all about saying, how do we get away from the idea that luck is just something that happens to us? And rather luck is the interaction of something random and then our own agency, what we do with it. It's about the science of this.

Starting point is 01:55:04 What can we learn about how all these different examples of serendivity from Viagra to penicillin to how people find love? Different stories, but always the same patterns. And then what are the actionable practices that help us to create more of that serendipity? Amazing. Thank you so much. This was absolutely wonderful. I'm also going to be thinking like my brain is growing all the time.

Starting point is 01:55:23 I'm going to be practicing my hooks. I've got so many action steps ago. So I really appreciate it. And likewise, thank you so much for the amazing questions. Thank you. Thank you so much for tuning into this episode of the Lizzie. Moody Podcast. If you enjoyed the episode, go ahead and follow on Apple or Spotify or subscribe on YouTube and hit that notification bell so you never miss a new episode. And if there's

Starting point is 01:55:42 somebody in your life you think would benefit from this episode, send them a quick link. It is the best way to support the podcast and it is so, so appreciated. And if you're watching this, drop me a comment. I would love to hear your thoughts and what resonated most with you. Thanks again for being here. I feel so lucky that I get to grow and learn and share with you. and I will see you on the next episode of the Liz Moody podcast. Oh, just one more thing. It's the legal language. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. It is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, a psychotherapist, or any other qualified professional.

The Liz Moody Podcast - Top Scientist: Why Some People Are Luckier (& How You Can Become One of Them)

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.