TRIGGERnometry - The Science of Making Your Own Luck

Episode Date: July 21, 2022

SPONSORED BY: *Ridge Wallet* Use Code “TRIGGER” for 10% off your order at https://www.ridge.com/TRIGGER Dr Christian Busch is the bestselling author of 'Connect the Dots: The Art and Science of Creating Good Luck' and an internationally renowned voice in the areas of innovation, purpose-driven leadership and serendipity. He is the director of the CGA Global Economy Program at New York University (NYU), and also teaches at the London School of Economics (LSE). Join our exclusive TRIGGERnometry community on Locals! https://triggernometry.locals.com/ OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: https://www.subscribestar.com/triggernometry https://www.patreon.com/triggerpod Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Buy Merch Here: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/​​​ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/sign-up/​​​ Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod​​​ https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod​​​ https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod​​​ About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The most purpose-driven, successful, inspirational people around me, they seem to have something in common, which is that they intuitively cultivate serendipity. They see a little bit more in unexpected moments, and then they connect the dots and turn that into positive outcomes. And so the fascination was, is there a science-based framework for this? Is there a science-based framework for cultivating this kind of smart luck? And so that's kind of in a way what I'm most excited about now. Welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kissen. And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people. Our brilliant guest today is the author of Connect the Dots, the Art and Science of Creating Good Luck.

Dr. Christian Bush, welcome to Trigonometry. Thanks so much for having me. It's really great to have you on. Can't wait to talk to you. Before we do, though, you've had an interesting life traveling around the world, researching things. Tell everybody who are you, how are you where you are, what has been the journey through life that brings you to be sitting here and talking to us about your book. And good luck. Yeah.

Well, I used to be that kid in high school. I was thrown off high school, had to repeat a year, probably helped the unofficial world records of how many dustbins and trash cans you can knock over on your way to school when you're driving. And then one day wasn't so lucky anymore and crashed into four-part cars, you know, all cars completely destroyed, including my own. And I won't forget the policeman who came to the scene and he was like, oh my God, he's still alive.

And so that idea that I was supposed to be dead that stuck with me. And I asked myself all these weird questions, you know, if I would have died, who would have come to my funeral, who would have actually cared, was it all worth it? And, you know, at that point, I had mostly depressing answers. And so it took me on this intense search for meaning, trying to figure out what is life all about. And I read this amazing book, Victor Frankel's Man Search for Meaning, which is all about how do you find meaning in tough circumstances. And, you know, when reading this, what I realized is that what I enjoy doing is connecting ideas, connecting people and seeing how that spark that comes from doing those, making those connections. And so I started out as a community builder, bringing together young innovators, and then went to entrepreneurship and later into academia. And what I found fascinating on this journey, you know, is that the most purpose-driven, successful, inspirational people around me, they seem to have something in common, which is that they intuitively cultivate serendipity.

They see a little bit more in unexpected moments, and then they connect the dots and turn that into positive outcomes. And so the fascination was, is there a science-based framework for this? is there a science-based framework for cultivating this kind of smart luck? And so that's kind of in a way what I'm most excited about now. Well, that sounds absolutely fascinating. It's something we think about here because trigonometry, our YouTube channel, has kind of gone from being a podcast by two comedians to what is now a bigger YouTube channel and we employ people.

And so we're trying to build something. And we're always thinking about what is the next step and how do we improve things and how do we, you know, recognize opportunities and capitalize them and all of that. That's absolutely fascinating. So when you said that the most kind of creative and innovative people that you met, had something in common in terms of cultivating serendipity, how does one cultivate serendipity? Yeah. Well, it's fascinating.

I mean, think about the quintessential coffee shop example where, you know, imagine you're in a coffee shop and if you have your etiquette movements like I, you spill a lot of coffee. And so imagine you spill coffee over someone and that person looks at you slightly annoyedly, but you sense there might be something there. You don't know what it is. You just sense there might be something there. Now you have a couple of options, right?

One option is you just say, I'm sorry, you walk outside and you think, ah, what could have happened had I spoken with a person? Another option is, you know, you start that conversation and that person turns out to become the love of your life, your co-founder, your next hiking buddy, you name it. The point is that our reaction to the unexpected moment, making the accident meaningful is what a lot of times create serendipity. And so a lot of this kind of is then around saying, what are the barriers that

usually hold us back from this, right? We probably all have this unexpected idea in a meeting that we didn't bring up because we didn't feel ready. We had a fear of rejection or whatever it is. Or we all kind of probably were at a conference where we had this idea that, you know, when the speaker talked about something, we were like, oh my God, this could relate to my business, but we didn't then go to the speaker because we didn't feel ready and so on. And so what I've been fascinated about is, A, how do we in a way decrease those self-limiting constraints? that we have and work on those kind of deeper psychological things, but also then what are some of the strategies we can all use that are easy to do? So, for example, one of my favorites is the hook

strategy. And the hook strategy is all about saying, how do you build in memorable talking points into every conversation? So if someone asks you this dreaded, what do you do question, you wouldn't just say, I'm a podcast host or I'm an entrepreneur. You would do it perhaps like Ollie Barry does, who's a wonderful entrepreneur in London. If you would ask him the dreaded, what do you do question? He would say something like, well, I'm a technology entrepreneur, recently started reading into the philosophy of science, but what I'm really excited about is playing the piano. And so what he's doing here is he's giving you three hooks where you could be like, oh my God, such a coincidence. We're hosting piano sessions. You should stop by.

Oh, my God, such a coincidence, my sister is teaching on the philosophy of science, you should give a guest lecture. The point is we can all reflect on what are some interests we have at the moment in our life and then seat them into conversation so to have other people connect the dots for us. So the long story short is there's a lot of these kind of things we can. do to build a muscle for the unexpected, but also to create it and create more meaningful accidents. And you know, Christian, that particular example you gave has got very real resonance for me because one of my favorite bands is the Rolling Stones. And Mick Jagger met Keith Richards at a train station.

And I think it was Keith Richards who had a blues album under his arm. And Mick Jagger went, I didn't know anybody else was into blues. I'm also into blues. They started chatting. and then they created the Rolling Stones. So it's such a powerful hook and a way to get things moving. Absolutely. And that's the interesting thing that, you know,

I think a lot of times when we think about the unexpected, we think about it as a threat, right, as something that interrupts our plans. I'm at the train station because I have to go to X, Y, Z. I have this plan and I'm here. But, you know, a lot of times the unexpected can be a potential source of joy, of meaning, or of these kind of beautiful collaborations.

And so a lot of the kind of work that we've been doing is around saying, how do we reframe our perspective towards saying, let's make the unexpected part of our plan because that's actually where a lot of the potential meaning can come from. It's so true because the problem is, is that the corporate world has encouraged us to think in very, very rigid ways.

I'm going to do this job for three years, and I'm going to have this position, now I'm going to go to move to this job, and then I'm going to go to do this position, and then I'm going to do this, the five-year plan, if you will. But the reality is life simply doesn't work like that. Absolutely. One of my favorite images is this idea, you know, that life, we always think it's like a line, but it's more like a squiggle, right? And that's, I work a lot with executive teams. And if you're the CEO of a company, you go into a boardroom, what you're essentially saying is, this was my strategy. Then we did exactly this and then exactly this happened, right? And everyone in this room knows, nah, that's not true. Like, there were probably quite a couple of unexpected things along the way. And so what I found fascinating is, you know, we just finished a study, for example, with over 40 of the world's leading

CEOs where we asked them, what is it that truly makes you successful? And we sat down with them and tried to reflect on it. And one thing that they do exceptionally well is to say, we have a certain sense of direction. So if I'm MasterCard, I want to bring 500 million people who were previously unbanked into the financial system using our technologies. That's kind of a sense of where we're going. But hey, here's a strategy. You know, we try to follow this. But I'm already telling you now that we will, as soon as we get new information, adjust the strategy, if it is a better way now to get to that kind of idea of what we want to go. And in a way, what you're doing here is you're reframing the unexpected from a threat to your authority to your control of everything to actually your

potential ally on finding an even better solution because locals might know much better what the solution could be than you might plan in your office and things like this. And so I've been very fascinated by this, you know, to exactly your point, Francis, I grew up in Germany. We get trained. You know, you go to high school and you get trained to have this plan and like, and then you go out into real life and you're like, oh my God, this is scary. This is anxiety enhancing. But then when you see what those people actually do in their life, how they navigate it. It's kind of like, yeah, saying, look, I have a plan here that helps me to know where I'm going. But you know what?

I'm building in a curiosity here that maybe there's even more interesting things and are going to be open to that. And I think one of the great dangers with life is that you see someone be successful in a particular way. And then you think to yourself, you know what? And this comedy was exactly like this. If I do everything this person does, I'm going to get the same result. and you go, that's not how life works. But we see patterns, even when sometimes, they don't really exist. They're just a series of events which have just happened.

But we think if we repeat this pattern, we're going to have the same result. Absolutely. And I've always been fascinated by this when you think about things like mentorship, right? Should you have one mentor who you try to become like, and this is the one thing you want to do, right? Like there's this one stand-up comedian who's the best in the world and you want to be exactly like them. And then you realize, well, but they had a very different starting position. They might have left out conveniently that it wasn't just a self-made story, but maybe they got this funding and the theater boss was a friend of a friend who just plugged them in, right? So they conveniently leave out a couple of things where even if you would try to follow their story, you can never really recreate all the conditions that were there.

And so by definition, it's impossible in a way to recreate exactly the same thing. And so I've always found it fascinating to then think about how do you have a couple of mentors where you just take the best of each, right? I'm sure when you do stand-up comedy, you're saying, well, you know what, this guy or this girl is really good at X, Y, Z, like doing always the same spiel. I can learn that from them, but you know what? They're not as good at this. So maybe I learned from someone else for this. So I've always been fascinated by this idea of how do we pick the best of each and then create our own self? And I think, Francis, to your point, you know, if you would use something like the hook strategy or other things that help us to have serendipity happen, it always is much easier when it's actually authentic in the sense that it feels true. to ourselves who we want to be, right, versus like who someone else is and we try to aspire to just be them. It's really interesting that you mentioned that actually because when we were starting trigonometry, we had certain ideas about how it needed to be. And rather than imitating people who were already doing it, we would actually look and go, well, this piece is really good

and they're doing this very badly. So let's take this from this guy and this from this person and put it together so that it's true to who we are. But I'm fascinating because obviously you being, an academic as well. You mentioned studies. Because right now, if I'm listening to this, I'm going, yeah, yeah, this is all great, new age, woo-woo, fantastic stuff, you know, serendipity, lug, be open-minded, whatever. Can you talk to us about some of the science behind of this conversation? Yeah, absolutely. And that's a great question. And I think, you know, there are studies, for example, that look at inventions. How do inventions come about? So if you would study what did people get a grant for as a research project and what did they end up with,

you can literally follow, oh, they unexpectedly did something completely different than, you know, what they were set out to do. And so there are studies that show that up to 50% of these things tend to be serendipitous. So it tends to happen very often, no matter how people tell the story afterwards. But then also, you know, a lot of times what we do, the way we study serendipity is using qualitative methods where you go into a setting and then you, let's say you go into a business incubate. And you then look at networking events and other things and you study what, happens when people unexpectedly meet, what happens over time, how does it unfold? And then you can see the process, which tends to be the same where there's some kind of unexpected serendivity trigger, right? So spilling the coffee or the kind of like bumping into someone, whatever it is. And then

someone actually doing something with it. And so you can see it unfold over time. Something that I found fascinating there is how long sometimes there is an incubation time, right? So you might run into someone at a conference five years ago. And only now when you're doing this podcast and you have this conversation, you might be like, oh my God, that person told me five years ago about this, we should build now a business around this that could help our podcast, whatever it is. So it's the idea that when you studied over time, you can see it unfold as a process, or, and that's, I think, where it gets really exciting, is doing experiments around it. So where you put people into exactly the same situation, where they face something unexpected,

and then see who of them turns it into a positive outcome versus who doesn't. And so to give you one example, maybe also that's a bit more related to luck in general, but it's one of my absolute favorites. I'd love to ask your listeners, if you consider yourself to be lucky or unlucky. And the reason I'm asking you this is, because to exactly your point, this is not about some kind of voodoo,

oh, like manifest what you want and everything plops magically in your leg. But what's fascinating is that if you consider yourself to be lucky, you tend to be luckier in the future, not because of the voodoo stuff, but because you tend to look differently at the world, you tend to spot opportunity differently. And so to show you one experiment,

That's my favorite. They pick people who self-identify as very lucky. Things tend to happen to me together, yada. And people who self-identify is very unlucky. So people who say, bad things tend to happen to me. I'm always in accidents and so on. We probably all know people on this continuum of lucky versus unlucky. And so they pick one of each and they say, walk down the street, go into a coffee shop,

sit down, grab a coffee, and then we'll have our conversation. What they don't tell them is that there's hidden cameras along the street and inside the coffee shop. There's a five pound note, so money right in front of the coffee shop. And inside the coffee shop, there's this extremely successful businessman who sits next to this one empty seat that's there that's still in. Now, the lucky person walks down the street, sees the five pound note, picks it up, goes inside the shop, orders the coffee, sits next to the businessman, they have a conversation, they exchange business cards and potentially an opportunity coming out of it. We don't know that part. The unlucky person walks down the street, steps over the five pound note so it doesn't see it, goes inside the shop, orders the coffee, sits next to the businessman, sits next to the businessman, ignores the businessman, that's it. Now, at the end of the day, they asked both people,

how was your day today? And so the lucky person says, well, it was amazing. I found money in the street, made a new friend, and you know, potential opportunity coming out of it. The unlucky person just says, well, nothing really happened. Are you tired of using bulky old wallets, giving you a bulge where you don't want it to be? My old wallet was massive, so it brought all the ladies to the yard, which was a huge distraction and got in the way of my esteemed work on Trigonometry. Ridge wallets have an incredible solution for you. This is mine, sleek, stylish and with an industrial look to it. It can fit 12 cards with cash on the back using a clip like this one or a strap.

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you 10% off and free worldwide shipping and returns. To take advantage of this incredible offer, go to ridge.com forward slash trigger. That's ridge.com forward slash trigger and use our special code, which is, of course, trigger. There's a lot of these kind of experiments where when you put people into exactly the same situation, depending on their mindset, they have very different outcomes. In this case, of course, it helps you if you actually talk with a person. But there's a lot of strategies for a closet introvers like myself where certainly comes from quiet sources, from comm sources.

And I find a lot of money in the street because I expect it to be there. Mostly pennies, unfortunately. So it doesn't really change my lifestyle. But once you start looking for the positively unexpected, you start to see it more because that tends to be hidden everywhere. Wayne perceives himself as being very unlucky. Look, if it weren't for bad look, I wouldn't have any. I'm jinxed.

Is that the word? But I wanted to put this to the test and find out if Wayne is simply missing opportunities. So we set up a little experiment. First, a fake scratch card made up by us. It's 7.40 in the morning, very early. Wayne the butcher arrives at his butcher shop at 8 o'clock, and Darren has asked me to drop this scratch card in the door

before he gets there with a bundle of other leaflets. Idea being he'll either look at it and discard it or look at it and scratch it and if he does then he's going to win a telly. Did Wayne grab this opportunity? We went back the following week to find out. Did you pat the dog? I patted the dog, yes. Anything lucky happened? Nothing at all. Nothing lucky? Nothing lucky to me. Because Wayne had never won anything before, he thought,

he thought he never would, so he ignored the scratch card and missed out on a free TV. We thought we'd be bolder, so we set up another potentially lucky opportunity for Wayne to see if he'd take it. Hi there. Have you got a minute? I'd like you to take part in some market research. It's literally just one question if you can take part. Can you name me five cuts of beef? Yeah, of course I can. Top side, silver side. Silver side.

Knuckle. Nucle. Nucle. Sirlines. airline. Chuck tender. Chuck tender. Cool. Well, thank you for taking part and because you got them all right. I'm going to give you a little bit of money. What, 20 quid? Oh no, no, you're right. No, it's for you. But why is it? It's just, you know, because you got them all right and it's 20 quid. Are you sure? Absolutely, no strings attached. Go on then. There we go. 20 quid. Yeah, go on then. So thank you very much for taking part and that's for you.

Have a nice day. Bye-bye. Excuse me, sir. Have you got a minute? I'm doing some market research. I was wondering if you could help me with it. I'll come back in about five, is it all right? You're there to dinner?

Five minutes? Yeah. Yeah, cool. Thank you. Frustratingly, Wayne didn't come back in five minutes. But I wasn't giving up. I was determined to make him see an opportunity, so this time we placed a £50 note right in Wayne's path.

Surely there's no way he could miss it. But he just couldn't see what was right in front of him. of him. You know what? That resonates with my own experience of life so much. And my wife, she's like the luckiest person in the world, always getting what she wants randomly, completely by accident, quote, unquote. And also when I took, when I sort of looked at her and went, well, what if I was a bit more like this? I started to notice the difference in my, in my own life as well. So what I'm hearing out of you, Christian, is number one is openness and openness to new experiences, I suppose, is a trait that helps you to be more lucky.

and belief in the fact that you are someone who is benefiting from luck. What other qualities can one cultivate in oneself in order to accrue some of these benefits? Yeah. Well, it's fascinating. My wonderful wife, who's the most amazing dot connector I know, she is the kind of person. She would consider herself to be a negative Nancy, right? So she would say a lot of times wouldn't necessarily be in a good mood

and wouldn't consider herself by positive. but she has serenivity happen all the time. And that's what I found fascinating about serendipity, that it's almost like a bend diagram thing where, yes, if you're more positive and consider yourself to be lucky, that can help you because you see potentiality more, right? You see more what could be in different situations. But then someone like her, for example,

who might not necessarily be that positive, but who always, when she has a conversation, thinks about how can I make one introduction, how can I contribute one idea? By doing this, you train yourself to connect the dots. And you then tend to get really, really good at this too. And so I've been fascinated by how, depending on our authentic self, like what is better to us, right? We can't all just be positive people or things like that,

but we can train ourselves to, for example, connect the dots more. We can, when we have a conversation, think about, can I make one link to something that I've thought about recently? Or when reading a book, we can think about how does that relate to something else? Or, you know, is these kind of small things where we can all do something that potentially has more serendivity happened to us. And so some other traits, you know, you mentioned in that example, right, extraversion can help us because, you know, actually talking with someone opens that potential opportunity space, that we could have something in common. But, you know, as mentioned, those intovers like myself get a lot of serendipity from quiet sources, from reading a book,

from listening to a podcast and then thinking, oh, my God, that could be a business, things like that. So that's the beauty of it. And, you know, I remember a colleague of mine, I used to teach in London, and a colleague of mine there, he went to me at some point, he was like, Christian, you know, you know, I love what you're doing. I love you, but I don't need serendivity in my life. Like, I have everything. I'm a, I'm a great professor. I'm, I have everything I need. I have a great family. Why do I need more serendipity in my life? And so he would be the kind of person, right, who would intuitively not necessarily be inclined to do that. And so we made a deal. And we said, do a couple of small things different. Like when you ask questions, don't just ask

what do you do, ask what do you enjoy doing. When you, when you introduce yourself, cast a couple of hooks you're interested in at the moment. And small things like this, which had nothing to do with traits, but more into practices and bringing that in. And then, you know, we meet a month later, and he comes back and he's like, Christian, I didn't know life can be so joyful. And, you know, to me, that's kind of like a big takeaway that some traits can help us, right? Positiveity can help, optimism, extroversion and so on. But everyone, no matter who we are, can use simple practices to get into it. And then the more we do it, the more we get excited and the more it's almost like a multiplication that happens. Okay. So what are these practices? We're

We've talked about the hooks. What else is there, Christian, that we can use? I'm a big fan of very simple ones. So if we, for example, let's say we run a team asking people what surprised you last week. It's a very simple question. But by doing this, we're now thinking about, let me give you an example of the potato washing machine. Right. So potato washing machine a couple of years ago, a company that produces washing machines and refrigerators, a huge company,

they received calls from farmers. And the farmer said, your crappy washing machine is always breaking up. And so they asked, well, why is it breaking up? down while we're trying to wash our potatoes in it and it doesn't seem to work. So what would we usually do? We would probably just say, well, let's educate the customer. Let's educate the people and say, this is a clothes washing machine. You're not supposed to wash your potatoes in this. They did 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 dirt filter and make it a potato

washing machine? And that's how unexpectedly saw the potato washing machine became one of their key products. The point here is, Francis, to your question, if I ask in the weekly meeting, what surprised you last week, someone might say, you know what? It really surprised me that people use our product differently than we thought. Maybe there's something in there. And so what it does is you're very early on spot maybe that there might be a better use case for whatever you're working on or that there might be a problem in what you're doing or whatever it is. And so it's these kind of simple things where you focus on the positively unexpected. As you do that, it tends to happen more and more. Christian, how powerful do you think there's a subconscious when it comes

to these types of things. Because obviously this was way before we spoke, but when I was doing comedy and being in the comedy industry, I used to think to myself, I would love to do this particular thing. And then within a few months or a year, an opportunity arose as a result, or maybe not as a result,

but just because I was more open to it. Do you think the subconscious plays a major role in that? Definitely. And that's the interesting thing, right? when you think about the subconscious and more broadly, even intuition, like related to this, right, once you have a feeling for what you're looking for, you tend to then, you know, make decisions differently, right? You might, if you're saying, I would really, really love to do a gig at some point on Broadway,

right? Now, when you hear Broadway, wherever you go, like, this will be, oh, my God, like, I want to listen to this now, whatever they talk about, I want to hear about Broadway, because you now, want to put yourself into those kind of situations. So you feel yourself attractive potentially to those kind of settings now that have that. So, you know, once we kind of, in a way, and that's where, you know, I'm not a big fan of all these kind of voodoo type manifestation things that fall into your lab. But I am a big fan of trying to figure out what do I feel pulled towards. What's the curiosity or what's something that that could be a potential North Star at the moment? Because then it becomes

much easier consciously and unconsciously, subconsciously, subconsciously, subconsciously, to potentially connect the dots to it. And to say, oh, my God, I didn't even realize that my sister's, like, friend works on Broadway and can help us. And I think that's Francis where it gets really interesting with a hook strategy, because a lot of times, let's say, for example, you would love to do a performance on Broadway. If you now build that into every introduction you do when you talk with something, right,

where it's like, oh, and I'm so looking forward to exploring how I could do something on Broadway in a kind of modest sense, you would say that from the most unexpected of places people might say, oh my God, such a coincidence. Like, I just talk with someone who used to work there. I put you in touch things like this. It makes it more likely. But I think, for instance, to a bigger point of the subconscious. And so I've been a big, big kind of fan of the question of trying to understand how does

our intuition work in the sense of how do, you know, when a lot of times the unexpected, when we have to act on it, we feel that we want to act on something versus not, right? And understanding why is that? And I think we all start in this world with a quite naive gut feeling, right, with a quite naive kind of fight or flight type. We are in a situation and then we either run or don't run, right, depending on fear and things like this. But then when you look at executives and we studied some of them, for example,

how they make decisions, they've developed this mature gut feeling, where they have some kind of intuition about something, some kind of gut feeling about something, something that they feel is there, they don't know what it is, and then they get as much information as they can. And then they triangulate this. They say, okay, I have this gut feeding, this information, so now I will make this decision. And so in a way, trusting the gut more because it's more mature becomes actually a key leadership skill

because a lot of times you don't have all the information, but it gives you more information. Your subconscious always knows more than your conscience in a way. It's funny. When you were talking about telling people you want to perform on Broadway, that's when I knew that while you're clearly an expert in the subject, you've never done the British comedy circuit. If you told anyone your dreams, they would immediately try to crush them. and not help you in any way. But, you know, it's funny because very much on that subject,

I think one of the challenges that a lot of people often face in trying to work out, I'm a big fan of speaking things into existence, like saying, this is what I want to do, this is what I want to get to. But on the other hand, I often also feel like I don't want to jinx certain things. Like right now, for example, we've got some cool things in the pipeline,

but I don't want to kind of tell anyone publicly about it. Like, how does one manage and navigate that? sort of, you know, different options for a decision when you're anticipating something or you're planning something. Yeah. Yeah, that's fascinating because, and to your point also, in terms of how much do you share your dreams, right? Because I think we've all faced that situation where if you're oversharing something or if you're too excited about something, then people might be like, oh, like, yeah, you're either like someone who's kind of not here, you know, or like, there's, to your point, there's an Irish saying for a Christian, which is you've got the notions.

It's when you've got too many ambitions. Yeah, you shouldn't have that. Exactly. Exactly. And so I think that's really about, again, coming back to the authentic self to then thinking about what is a hook that I could use that does that indirectly. Right? So in a way, I'll be in New York next month and I'd love to connect with people who are

related to Broadway or something like that that's achieving the same thing, the introduction to someone who's involved on Broadway, but without saying, look, I want to be the superstar on Broadway. And I think that's kind of in a way, again, coming to our authentic self, like what feels authentic to us. But to your question, I think it's really interesting in general, and I would probably give a similar answer to this in terms of that. I've always experienced that when I was kind of more involved in entrepreneurial endeavors,

where in a way, how much do you put out there so that people can rally around it and can help you build it and can do it versus how much you first want to almost kind of like failproof and make sure that you have a minimum viable proposition that is strong enough so that you can't fail with it and things like that. And so I think that's always a fascinating tension. I found it fascinating how Pixar, so one of the most creative companies in the world, they've been extremely good at creating these informal brain trusts or advisory boards where you have four or five people who are around you,

whom you just bounce ideas off from time to time. And then they are like, hey, yay. And if they're yay, then it's kind of like, okay, now we go a bit more, a bit more, a bit more. And so it's almost kind of like, you know, unfolding with more and more people. And I found that extremely useful to have this kind of internal advice. board in a way that in a way I can bounce these ideas off and then they can take it a bit more and then once it feels safe to go to the next stage. But I feel to your point, I'm not sure I have a golden answer here, a golden bullet in the sense that it feels very dependent on the situation.

Christian, it seems to me that when we're discussing what we're talking about a lot as well as the importance of being in the moment. The people who feel that they are lucky are more in the moment. They're more connected. They're more aware of their surroundings. Therefore, they see opportunities. Whilst people who deem themselves to be unlucky are more likely to be in their own head, creating a narrative for themselves about their life, and therefore they miss the five-pound note. They sit down next to a businessman who may be able to help them, but they're unaware of them. Yeah. Well, and that's really interesting. That's why I'm a huge fan of meditation, for example, because in a way it's so much easier to connect the dots and to see potential overlaps if you actually

are there and also if you have a feeling for what could be good. which is easier to have when you're grounded and when you're there. And so I'm a big fan of those simple things like meditation or grounding oneself in whatever way, walks in nature, whatever it is. And then to your point, I think it's a fascinating thing also how we frame the world, right? Francis, to your point, do we look at the world as something that is our enemy, right? And then it's almost like a self-filling prophecy, right? If I go into a meeting, even if I would sit next to this businessman,

If in my head, that person next to me could be someone who just wants something from me, who will anyways mess with me if I talk with them and like it's not worth it, then we will not either not speak with them or if we speak with them, it will most likely not lead to somewhere versus if we have this idea of, hey, look, there could be something in every conversation, then actually it turns more likely that we actually find those overlaps. I've always been fascinated by this idea, you know, people who come and say, oh, I was at this boring event where I had the boring conversation with someone.

I always feel, I'm sorry, that's a reflection on yourself in terms of that a lot of times, you know, yes, there's people who are more exciting than others and some people are more boring than others. But even the, I mean, not wanting to name names, but let's say even the accounting and accountant in the basement somewhere, they have something in there, right? They might also have lost someone recently to cancer. And once you find that overlap, you're like learning from them how to cope with the grief that comes from just having lost your mother to cancer, things like this where I think it's really that and that's why I'm such a big. fan of trying to figure out what are the overlaps we have by allowing others to connect the dots for us. So imagine the situation. You go to a fishing village in Italy and you're on holiday there and you meet this fisherwoman. theoretically, you have not much in common, right? She's a fisher woman who's very local and doing her thing. You're kind of like very international, like global

in London. But if you would kind of start asking them something like, what do you enjoy doing at the moment? And she would say, well, I enjoy the sea because the sea is all about the endlessness of things. And you would be like, you know what? This is how life feels to me because endlessness of philosophy is all about this. You know what I mean? And so it's really about once we start asking questions slightly differently, we get away from I'm an accountant and working in the basement to I'm an accountant. But what I'd really love to do is actually learning more about grief because I just lost someone and I really want to talk more about it. And again, you know, to your point. Like sometimes it feels more authentic to ask these

kind of questions than in other situations. But I feel, you know, it's almost impossible to have a boring conversation once you start asking questions slightly differently and approach situations from that perspective of everyone has something to offer. And it's also as well, it's about being connected. And one of the things that I'm really working on, the older I get, is to become more playful. Because the moment you become more playful, opportunities just present themselves naturally. Whereas if you go into somewhere thinking to yourself, I've got this objective, I need to do this. immediately that's not a very good energy to present someone with.

But if you go in and just be playful, be in the moment, opportunities present themselves much more because it feels more like an authentic conversation. Absolutely. And that's the interesting thing. I'm always thinking about this, you know, when it comes to, let's say, networking organizations, right? Let's say networking events, let's say you go to an event and you have this superstar speaker and, like, everyone wants something from them, right? So everyone goes to them and expects that there's a clear thing they can get from them.

So you go to them and you'd say, I would love to work on Broadway. Can you help me with a connection? Things like this, right? Just making it up. But, you know, that's not memorable to them. That's something like you're one of a thousand people now who comes to them and like just want something from them. But if you're the only person who comes over and like in a way kind of goes there without an

agenda and says, hey, look, like, isn't it funny that X, X, X, or something to your point that is more playful, that actually is much more fun for everyone. but also that will most likely lead you to something much more beautiful with them, where you will probably be the only person they would make an introduction for in the end. And so I've always found that fascinating, that idea that if we come with too much of an agenda or too much of a plan, we might a lot of times actually not necessarily achieve that, or if we achieve it, it might not have been the best thing that could have happened in that moment. I always remember that mentor of mine, you know, he always used to say, Christian,

people like you always think there's one road to Rome, the city, and then you realize you don't even want to be in Rome. And to me, that's always been the big thing, right? That to your point, you might go into an interview, right, in a podcast interview and ask someone about something. And then in the end, they might kind of become your key sponsor, right, because they unexpectedly said, you know what, we have a new marketing budget and we want to help you. That didn't come because you pushed them for it. It came because they're excited about what you're doing.

And so I've become a big fan of this, that, yes, it's good to have some information and prepare, right? Like luck favors the prepared, right? So it's always beautiful to prepare for things. but then to be playful enough to allow for these unexpected beautiful moments that in a way give us a lot of the real opportunities. Well, Christian, I can confirm in the history of the show, no former guest has ever chosen to sponsor it. So in order to make your theory true, you're going to have to do it now. But I was actually going to ask you, and this isn't to get you into trouble at all,

but I'm just curious because you probably know we talk a lot about the political environment that we operate in at the moment. And I would certainly argue that in recent times, in particular sections of the political spectrum, the idea of victimhood has become quite prominent. I suppose victimhood is in a way saying you're subject to bad luck over time or evil forces that are putting you in a certain position. Is there any studies or any kind of research in terms of the politics of this and how these mindsets affect the political attitudes people have and how they behave political? politically. Yeah. Well, that's really interesting. I mean, I'm certainly not an expert in that area. So I tread very, very lightly there. But what came to mind actually when you were speaking about it is, you know, Victor Frankel, because Victor Frankel talks a lot about this idea, right, that a lot of times we cannot choose the situation we're in. Like we will be in a situation and some people will be in a really tough situation and they will, by definition, have less luck than others just because of the circumstance there being.

put it. And so a lot of our work, by the way, also then focus on how do we make sure that the societal inequality gets less and less and less. That's the objective constraints, right? So that's there. And then to your point, I think sometimes there's also the subjective limitations we put on ourselves in some way or the other. And that's where Victor Frankel has been extremely interesting. And I always reread him whenever I'm in a tough time because he essentially, he was in a concentration camp, which as you can imagine is the toughest of situations you can ever face. There's no hope, objectively speaking. There's no idea that you would ever get out and you will most likely die. So it's an extremely depressing situation where you're an actual victim,

like you're an actual kind of, you're in that moment of, wow, like nothing can really happen. And so what Frankel did in those moments was to say, is there some meaning I can still imbue in this objectively meaningless situation? Is there something here that I can still take some power? Is there something in there that I can still do? And so he would do things like saying, if I get out here, I still want to write my book. Or, you know, when I wake up tomorrow morning, I want to speak with a fellow prisoner and make them feel better about themselves.

And by doing this, I now have a purpose of waking up tomorrow morning. And so what he did here, and that's always been one of my absolute favorite ideas that if you can't choose the situation, you can still always choose your response to it. And that's where a lot of our agency and freedom and liberty and serenivity, frankly, comes from.

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about technology, privacy and censorship. And to touch on another controversial subject, but you kind of raise it and what you're talking about, is that need for meaning and to make meaning of difficult circumstances? Is that where a lot of the human religious instinct comes from? Because it seems to me that religion has been away historically for dealing with that issue. How do you cope with terrible events that seem to be completely unfair, chaotic, random? well, you could say the meaning is God is teaching me something or whatever it is. I am humbled by his. That's how I'm not religious, but that's how it has been historically.

Do you think that's part of it as well? It's a fascinating question. I actually had a conversation recently with a very religious person I'm very close to. And, you know, we ended up, because we talked a lot about how do you reconcile fate, destiny, and your own agency of making luck, right? And so how do you reconcile that? if God has a plan for you, why would I then have to do something? Because either God already decided that or not, and those kind of dynamics, right?

And so we ended up on this compromise of saying, you still got to buy a ticket. Like there's this, there's this beautiful metaphor. I wouldn't, or analogy, I wouldn't do it justice. But essentially it goes along the lines of, you know, there's this man who prays to God and says, well, like, please let me win the lottery. And he prays and prays and prays, like, let me win the lottery. Let me win the lottery. let me win the lottery.

And then at some point he's like, why don't you let me win the lottery? And so God was like, well, you got to buy a ticket. I can only let you win if you actually buy a ticket. And so we kind of like in a way found that compromise of there's still some agency even if there's some kind of broader plan. But to your bigger point and bigger question of beliefs, you know, we all have a longing for connection, right? Connection with others with oneself and that kind of belief that you can believe in

something and someone, right? So for some of us, it might be religion. In my case, it's always been philosophy. In other people's cases, it might be particular people. But this idea that we want to connect with a higher power or nature or whatever it is, right, it gives us some kind of more certainty in a world that is so uncertain. And so I've become a big fan. A friend of mine, she does a lot of work around this idea of prayer.

And, you know, I'm not a religious person. But what I found interesting about prayer is, in a way, it's a form of meditation, right? You're connecting to something and you're grounded. yourself. And so I've become much more relaxed about, you know, I grew up in an environment. I feel a lot of people where I grew up were a bit disillusioned by the institution of the church, not necessarily by beliefs, but by the institution. And so we grew up kind of more with philosophy and trying to reconcile that than with religion. And what I found fascinating, though, is that I think a lot of times religion actually funny enough. And that was the beauty of or the nice

excuse of writing a book about it, that in a way, a lot of religions and science say the same. thing, which is essentially saying, if you put good things out there, good things tend to happen to come back to you, not because of voodoo or stuff, because people actually then want to connect with you, people want to do something for you, people want to be in a community with you. And that's actually what some kind of groups have done extremely well to kind of build community around core beliefs. Again, I wouldn't want to go into the kind of more political realms of this, but long story short, I feel that idea that we want to connect to a higher power, whatever it is, nature, oneself, others, I think can be quite powerful sometimes if it doesn't distract us from saying,

but we still have to do something on our own here because, you know, life unfortunately is a lot about that kind of putting things in motion. Christian, let's talk about trauma a little bit. So particularly childhood trauma, how does that impact the way that you perceive the world, but also luckiness, your luckiness? because there are people who will say, you know, I didn't have a great start in life, but that taught me so many lessons. And then there are other people who go, I didn't have a great starting life, which is why I am the way I am.

It's a fascinating question. And, you know, I recently was on a podcast of a psychiatrist, and I found that fascinating because a lot of the conversation was exactly around how in a way the things that happen to us in our lives put us on certain paths and how much power do we have on that path versus what is path dependency where essentially it's playing out because that's how we've been programmed in a way. And what I found fascinating is how much he focused on that idea of that he puts his patients into situations where they face those deeper fears in a controlled environment.

And again, I'm not a psychiatrist, so I wouldn't want to wind too deep into that. But what I found fascinating is when you have, like when we look at our studies of successful people where a lot of times they had some inflection points, right? So they, maybe they had cancer and found meaning in that journey. Like when Steve Jobs had cancer, right, that's kind of like when he in a way discovered a lot of meaning where he was like, look, like death is life's greatest motivator now. Because when you know that death is around the corner, you're like, oh my God, like, what can I still do so that it feels meaningful? And a lot of times, you know, when you look at people, how they evolve over time, I feel there's always that question, right? Is that inflection point defining them for

the rest of their life? Or do they try to redefine that inflection point as something that could be the start to something where that point then, you know, in that case, maybe cancer then building a momentum around, writing a book around how to cope with cancer. And then that was the one piece in their life where they're really proud of or things like this where you use it as an inflection point to do something. And I found that fascinating in my own life how I feel, again, I've been fortunate enough to not have deeper trauma. So I can't talk about this from a personal perspective too much. in the kind of tough moments I face in life, they've a lot of times become inflection points.

One of my companies almost went bankrupt, and that was actually then an opportunity for us to rethink the business model and to say, oh my God, our business model really sucked. Like, hey, there's a much better thing here. And that actually became then much bigger than it would have if we wouldn't have been almost bankrupt. Or, you know, the breakup with someone where you feel,

oh, my God, this is the end of the world because this was the one person I'll ever love. But you needed that breakup to be free for the person who you were really supposed to be. And so that's becoming then the inflection point for something different. I think to your point, it's always tough, I guess, when it's deep trauma. But I think in general, a lot of times the question of how much power do I try to take over the situation? What can I control?

I think that's the very Viktor Frankl question in terms of, yes, there will be things I can't control in terms of path-dependent things of maybe now a mental health question that is surrounded to it. But also then what can I control and then focusing on that? So we're talking about Lott. And it seems to me as well that what we're really discussing is the openness to opportunities. Whereas people who seem to themselves to be unlucky actually have a craving for safety in that they don't want to talk to the businessman. And I was like that for a long time because I don't want to expose myself to something

which could then come back and bite me, as it were. Whereas the lucky person is more positive, more open to opportunities and go, oh yeah, I'll talk to this guy in the suit. What have I got to lose? Yeah. Well, it's interesting because, you know, we talked earlier about how what I presume also then, from what you're saying, us closet introverts, right? So I'm also the kind of person, right? No problem speaking in front of people and then hiding in the restroom afterwards because I can't catch up with so many because I need to replenish my energy. So it's kind of, you know, in a way that the kind of, I've actually, you know, we were thinking about this recently with a community builder friends of mine where we realize people always think we're so extrovert. but actually we're very introvert

but we have these spikes of extroversion where everyone then thinks oh my god they're so extrovert but so I actually found that there's a lot of strategies we can use so that we can in a way work with extroverts to do those kind of things that we don't want to do so for example when going let's say you just have your book out or so

and you go to an event or a dinner party what I'm always trying to do is to talk to the host first and get them somehow interested in it so that they then talk with everyone. And so in a way, I'm trying to kind of almost hand over the job of the extroversion to someone who then could become the ambassador of taking that or do around. I've recently talked with an insurance who, you know, one thing they do is they try to map the internal network. When would they go to, like a university, for example, where they want to sell an insurance?

They try to understand who are the two or three people here who are best connected, who people go to for advice. And if we can convince one or two of them, they will do the work. They will go around, they will do the pitching. And if you're the person, the salesperson who really doesn't like pitching and you get one of them on your side, right, they will do the job for you. And so I've become a big fan of thinking about it that way in terms of what can I do to push myself out of the comfort zone that actually is authentic to me, right? So yes, I can do a couple of more practices. I can, I can ask questions differently. I can cast a couple of hooks. These are things we can all do. That's a bit of kind of boundary pushing, but it's fine. But then at the same time, I know I will never

enjoy it to pitch to people so much. And so then is there a way? that I can work with extroverts on this. And, you know, if you look at a lot of times, you will see that introverts and extroverts, like, works so well together because one of them essentially takes that ambassador function and goes out there. But then also the introvert being the great person a lot of times who reflects with them and makes sense and grounds it.

And so I think there's a beautiful complementarity also. And Christian, we've talked for the entire interview about good luck. How do you know that you are the sort of person that's creating bad luck in your life? Well, that's an interesting question. And, you know, I think it's important also probably to say that we can never blame anyone for bad luck. I mean, bad luck happens to everyone. We all at some point have real bad luck happen.

And unfortunately, that's what happens a lot of times. Also, you know, a lot of my work is in extreme poverty context. So a lot of times in some circumstances, there is a design for more bad luck to happen every day. Because every day someone around you dies, every day around some. So you can have systemic problems around bad luck that are there. And then one of the ways, of course, that sounds easier than it is, is to take oneself out of that. I mean, I'm, you know, I've always been the kind of person, let's say, for example, you have toxic friendships, right?

And those toxic friendships then tend to cause more bad luck in your life, right? Because that kind of, in a way, is that dynamism. I've always been a big fan of trying to, you know, influence that person as much as I can and then kind of like convince them if there's something there. And then at some point also realized, well, sometimes it's easier to take oneself out of these kind of relationships and maybe, you know, kind of focus on on surrounding with people who are more kind of towards, you know, doing or focusing on what we can do in the world. All right.

Your disclaimer is duly noted, duly noted. But what are some of the habit? Because look, I hear what you're saying. We don't want to blame people. But I think it's also helpful for all of us to go like, well, I do this and I do that. And maybe I don't need to do that anymore. That's the only angle I'm coming out of from. So how do you know that you're maybe exacerbating the problem or contributing to it at least?

Yeah, that's a great question. And that's the academic in me. The footnote is always longer than the actual. No, but it's a, no, to exactly your point. You know, there's a lot of studies actually around how, for example, when you are, when you perceive yourself to be less lucky, you tend to perceive situations differently, right? So take one example. Imagine you're in a bank and, you know, there's this person coming in and there's a person coming in,

and there's a bank robbery going on and they they shoot like there's one shot fired and that shot is in your in your shoulder now if you're if you're the kind of bad luck type person you will go out of this experience saying this is so unfair that I was the only one being shot here like everyone else is fine but I'm the one person who was being shot here in the shoulder if you perceive yourself to be as a lucky person you would go out and say thank god I wasn't killed thank God this was actually okay and so there's a lot around this idea that if you kind of perceive the world as, oh, like, this is unfair and this is like, you know, I'm the kind of person who's the, like, who came out the worst here, then that tends to perpetuate it versus if you, in a way, say, look, like, it could have been worse. That's what tends to actually make it easier than also to find some kind of meaning in it, right? And to your answer, I think an actionable point here is really going back to the Victor Frankel idea of to, in any situation, ask, is there some meaning in this? Is there some meaning here?

If there was this shot fired, like, maybe there. that's an opportunity now similar to COVID, right? COVID was a collective near-death experience for a lot of us. Maybe that's an opportunity to revaluate what's important to me. We could be shot every day. We could be running in front of the car every day. I had two near-the-earth experiences in my life, and I can tell you. Life can be very short.

So you might as well do the things now that feel meaningful to you. And so I feel it's those kind of things in terms of where in every moment and maybe asking what is the meaning in this, is there something I can take from this that's still positive. I think that helps reframe. And that's fascinating. I mean, for instance, and constant to your point, there's fascinating work actually around neuroplasticity, right?

When you look at how the brain works, how you can reframe your brain away from this idea that, oh, like, everything is like kind of going this way and I'm supposed to be this person and this way to, oh, no, actually I can try to see more in the unexpected. We can train ourselves to do more of this and have that happen more often. Well, I think that's a lovely positive note to wrap up the interview on.

Before we ask you some questions from our supporters, the last question we always end the show. is what is the one thing that you think we're not talking about as a society that we really should be? Well, look, I think, you know, when you look at the education system, when you look at universities, when you look at companies, we kind of put people into boxes, right? We essentially say, you're this person, you're doing this, you're doing this, you're doing this. And we try to plan things to your point, Francis, at the beginning, right? We're trying to plan things out and map things out. And that puts a lot of pressure on people.

That puts a lot of pressure, especially on kids, to be perfect, to have the plan. to know what they want to do with their life and everything else. And so there's a lot of anxiety, right? Because the anxiety is, oh, my God, I haven't, I'm 15 years old now and I haven't figured out my life. Oh, my God, what can I do? Right. And I think when we kind of refocus away from this idea that you can map everything out,

that you have to have a plan all the time to saying, let's plan as much as we can, but then essentially build a muscle for the unexpected. That actually decreases a lot of anxiety. That takes a lot of pressure off of especially kids who live in a world, which is so unexpected and full of uncertain moments that, in a way you can't plan things out. And so I think, you know, to me, one of the biggest questions in the public discourse is to get away from this idea of,

you know, like everyone has to know everything and be everything to know, like let's try to figure out what is the authentic self of someone and how can we help them discover this by having serendipity spaces around them. And so it actually, you know, I wouldn't do justice to my philosophical roots in Heidelberg. We have this philosopher's way. And Goethe, he was writing a lot of his poems there. and he had this beautiful idea that if you take someone as they are, you make them worse, but if you take them as what they could be, you make them capable of becoming what they can be.

And that's what serendipity is about. Serendipity is about potentiality. But if we don't allow that potentiality because we're so fixated on the particular plan or what my child should be like, then we take that away from them. We take away from them that they might enjoy other things much more. And so enjoying giving them the opportunities to discover their own potentiality, I think, would be the biggest gift the education system can give, but also organizations can give their employees. Amen. Thank you very much, Christian. If people want to find you online,

where is the best place to do that? The homepage is www. www. This Serendipity Mindset.com, and I'm at Chris Serendip on Twitter. And of course, the book is connecting the dots. Christian, we're going to ask you a couple of questions from our local supporters, so don't go anywhere. But in the meantime, thank you so much for coming on the show. It's been a real pleasure chatting with you. And thank you all for watching and listening. We will see you very soon with another brilliant episode like this one or a show, all of them go out at 7pm UK time. And for those of you who like your trigonometry on the go, it's also available as a podcast. Take care and see you soon, guys. Is good, bad luck, just a state of one's mind or mood?