TRIGGERnometry - The Science of Making Your Own Luck

00:00:00.000 The most purpose-driven, successful, inspirational people around me, they seem to have something in

00:00:05.020 common, which is that they intuitively cultivate serendipity. They see a little bit more in

00:00:09.880 unexpected moments, and then they connect the dots and turn that into positive outcomes. And so

00:00:14.120 the fascination was, is there a science-based framework for this? Is there a science-based

00:00:17.920 framework for cultivating this kind of smart luck? And so that's kind of in a way what I'm

00:00:21.960 most excited about now.

00:00:30.000 Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kissin.

00:00:53.140 And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people.

00:00:58.720 Our brilliant guest today is the author of Connect the Dots, The Art and Science of Creating Good Luck.

00:01:04.460 Dr. Christian Busch, welcome to Trigonometry.

00:01:06.780 Thanks so much for having me.

00:01:08.080 It's really great to have you on. Can't wait to talk to you.

00:01:10.840 Before we do, though, you've had an interesting life, traveling around the world, researching things.

00:01:15.780 Tell everybody, who are you? How are you where you are?

00:01:18.500 What has been the journey through life that brings you to be sitting here and talking to us about your book and good luck?

00:01:24.040 Yeah. Well, I used to be that kid in high school. I was thrown off high school, had to repeat a year.

00:01:28.720 probably held the unofficial world records of how many dustbins and trash cans you can knock over

00:01:33.260 on your way to school when you're driving and then one day wasn't so lucky anymore and

00:01:37.900 and crashed into four-part cars um you know all cars completely destroyed including my own

00:01:43.400 and i won't forget the policeman who came to the scene and he was like oh my god he's still alive

00:01:48.340 and so that idea that i was supposed to be dead that stuck with me and i asked myself all these

00:01:53.520 weird questions you know if i would have died who would have come to my funeral who would have

00:01:57.760 actually cared? Was it all worth it? And at that point, I had mostly depressing answers. And so

00:02:02.460 it took me on this intense search for meaning, trying to figure out what is life all about.

00:02:06.540 And I read this amazing book, Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning, which is all about

00:02:10.340 how do we find meaning in tough circumstances? And when reading this, what I realized is that

00:02:16.040 what I enjoy doing is connecting ideas, connecting people, and seeing how that spark that comes from

00:02:20.460 making those connections. And so I started out as a community builder, bringing together young

00:02:25.900 innovators and then went into entrepreneurship and later into academia. And what I found fascinating

00:02:31.100 on this journey, you know, is that the most purpose-driven, successful, inspirational people

00:02:36.340 around me, they seem to have something in common, which is that they intuitively cultivate serendipity.

00:02:41.200 They see a little bit more in unexpected moments, and then they connect the dots and turn that into

00:02:46.100 positive outcomes. And so the fascination was, is there a science-based framework for this? Is there

00:02:50.320 a science-based framework for cultivating this kind of smart luck? And so that's kind of in a way what

00:02:54.840 I'm most excited about now. Well, that sounds absolutely fascinating. It's something we think

00:02:59.680 about here because Trigonometry, our YouTube channel, has kind of gone from being a podcast

00:03:05.140 by two comedians to what is now a bigger YouTube channel and we employ people. And so we're trying

00:03:12.360 to build something and we're always thinking about what is the next step and how do we improve

00:03:16.680 things and how do we, you know, recognize opportunities and capitalize them and all of

00:03:21.800 that. That's absolutely fascinating. So when you said that the most kind of creative and

00:03:26.480 innovative people that you've, you met had something in common in terms of cultivating

00:03:31.280 serendipity, how does one cultivate serendipity? Yeah. Well, it's fascinating. I mean, think about

00:03:36.960 the quintessential coffee shop example where, you know, imagine you're in a coffee shop and

00:03:41.520 if you have your radicant movements like I, you spill a lot of coffee. And so imagine you spill

00:03:46.780 coffee over someone and that person looks at you slightly annoyedly, but you sense there might be

00:03:51.420 something there you don't know what it is you just sense there might be something there now you have

00:03:55.100 a couple of options right one option is you just say i'm sorry you walk outside and you think ah

00:03:59.760 what could have happened had i spoken with a person another option is you know you start that

00:04:04.000 conversation and that person turns out to become the love of your life your co-founder your next

00:04:09.020 hiking buddy you name it the point is that our reaction to the unexpected moment making the

00:04:13.560 accident meaningful is what a lot of times creates serendipity and so a lot of this kind of is then

00:04:18.280 around saying what are the barriers that usually hold us back from this right we probably all have

00:04:22.380 this unexpected idea in a meeting that we didn't bring up because we didn't feel ready we had a

00:04:26.980 fear of rejection or whatever it is or we all kind of probably were at a conference where we had this

00:04:31.900 idea that you know when the speaker talked about something we're like oh my god this could relate

00:04:35.400 to my business but we didn't then go to the speaker because we didn't feel ready and so on

00:04:40.080 and so what i've been fascinated about is a how do we in a way decrease those self-limiting

00:04:45.180 constraints that we have and work on those kind of deeper psychological things, but also then what

00:04:49.800 are some of the strategies we can all use that are easy to do? So for example, one of my favorites

00:04:54.660 is the hook strategy. And the hook strategy is all about saying, how do you build in memorable

00:04:59.100 talking points into every conversation? So if someone asks you this dreaded, what do you do

00:05:03.300 question, you wouldn't just say, I'm a podcast host, or I'm an entrepreneur. You would do it

00:05:08.860 perhaps like Ollie Barrett does, who's a wonderful entrepreneur in London. If you would ask him the

00:05:12.820 dreaded what do you do question he would say something like well i'm a technology entrepreneur

00:05:16.760 recently started reading into the philosophy of science but what i'm really excited about is

00:05:21.060 playing the piano and so what he's doing here is he's giving you three hooks where you could be

00:05:24.420 like oh my god such a coincidence we're hosting piano sessions you should stop by oh my god such

00:05:28.840 a coincidence my sister is teaching on the philosophy of science you should give a guest

00:05:32.300 lecture the point is we can all reflect on what are some interests we have at the moment in our

00:05:36.960 life and then seat them into conversation so to have other people connect the dots for us and so

00:05:41.340 the long story short is there's a lot of these kind of things we can do to build a muscle for

00:05:45.100 the unexpected but also to create it and create more meaningful accidents and you know christian

00:05:50.080 that particular that particular example you gave has got very real resonance for me because one of

00:05:56.200 my favorite bands is the rolling stones and mick jagger met keith richards at a train station and

00:06:02.540 i think it was keith richards who had a blues album under his arm and mick jagger went i didn't

00:06:07.960 know anybody else was into blues i'm also into blues they started they started chatting and then

00:06:13.420 they created the rolling stones so it's such a powerful hook and a way to get things moving

00:06:18.720 absolutely and that's the interesting thing that you know i think a lot of times when we think about

00:06:23.740 the unexpected we think about it as a threat right as something that interrupts our plans

00:06:27.660 i'm on at the train station because i have to go to xyz i have this plan and i'm here

00:06:32.260 but you know a lot of times the unexpected can be a potential source of joy of meaning or of these

00:06:37.160 kind of beautiful collaborations and so a lot of the kind of work that we've been doing is around

00:06:41.120 saying how do we reframe our perspective towards saying let's make the unexpected part of our plan

00:06:46.640 because that's actually where a lot of the potential meaning can come from it's so true

00:06:50.820 because the problem is is that the corporate world has encouraged us to think in very very rigid ways

00:06:57.460 i'm going to do this job for three years and that's going to i'm going to have this position

00:07:00.960 now i'm going to go to move to this job and then i'm going to go to to do this position and then

00:07:05.080 I'm going to do this as a five-year plan, if you will. But the reality is life simply doesn't work

00:07:10.240 like that. Absolutely. You know, it's one of my favorite images is this idea, you know, that life,

00:07:16.380 we always think it's like a line, but it's more like a squiggle, right? And that's, I work a lot

00:07:21.540 with executive teams. And if you're the CEO of a company, you go into a boardroom, what you're

00:07:25.300 essentially saying is, this was my strategy, then we did exactly this, and then exactly this happened,

00:07:29.520 right? And everyone in this room knows, nah, that's not true. Like, there were quite a couple

00:07:34.140 of unexpected things along the way.

00:07:35.940 And so what I found fascinating is,

00:07:37.560 we just finished a study, for example,

00:07:39.740 with over 40 of the world's leading CEOs

00:07:41.800 where we asked them,

00:07:42.880 what is it that truly makes you successful?

00:07:44.640 And we sat down with them and tried to reflect on it.

00:07:47.060 And one thing that they do exceptionally well

00:07:48.920 is to say, we have a certain sense of direction.

00:07:51.380 So if I'm MasterCard,

00:07:52.700 I want to bring 500 million people

00:07:54.860 who were previously unbanked

00:07:56.180 into the financial system using our technologies.

00:07:58.160 That's kind of the sense of where we're going.

00:08:00.520 But hey, here's a strategy.

00:08:02.680 We try to follow this,

00:08:03.600 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 where we want to go.

00:08:11.920 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.

00:08:21.800 Because locals might know much better what the solution could be than you might plan in your office and things like this.

00:08:26.860 And so I've been very fascinated by this, you know, to exactly your point, Francis.

00:08:30.500 I grew up in Germany.

00:08:31.660 We get trained.

00:08:32.380 you know you go to high school and you get trained to have this plan and like and then you go out

00:08:36.480 into real life and you're like oh my god this is scary this is anxiety enhancing but then when you

00:08:40.840 see what what what those people actually do in their life how they navigated it's kind of like

00:08:45.720 yeah saying look i have a plan here that helps me to know where i'm going but you know what i'm

00:08:50.040 building in a curiosity here that maybe there's even more interesting things and i'm going to be

00:08:53.720 open to that and i think one of the great dangers with life is that you see someone be successful

00:08:59.140 in a particular way. And then you think to yourself, you know what? And this comedy was

00:09:03.840 exactly like this. If I do everything this person does, I'm going to get the same result. And you

00:09:09.400 go, that's not how life works. But we see patterns, even when sometimes they don't really exist.

00:09:18.180 They're just a series of events which have just happened. But we think if we repeat this pattern,

00:09:23.120 we're going to have the same result. Absolutely. And that's, you know, I've always been fascinated

00:09:27.420 by this when you think about things like mentorship right should you have one mentor who you try to

00:09:32.400 become like and this is the one thing you want to do right like there's this one stand-up comedian

00:09:36.600 who's the best in the world and you want to be exactly like them and then you realize well but

00:09:40.580 they had a very different starting position they might have left out conveniently that it wasn't

00:09:44.480 just a self-made story but maybe they got this funding and the theater boss was a friend of a

00:09:49.100 friend who just plugged them in right so they conveniently like leave out a couple of things

00:09:53.020 where even if you would try to follow their story,

00:09:55.940 you can never really recreate

00:09:57.440 all the conditions that were there.

00:09:59.020 And so by definition, it's impossible in a way

00:10:01.120 to recreate exactly the same thing.

00:10:02.760 And so I've always found it fascinating

00:10:04.180 to then think about how do you have a couple of mentors

00:10:06.820 where you just take the best of each, right?

00:10:08.880 So I'm sure when you do stand-up comedy,

00:10:10.340 you're saying, well, you know what?

00:10:11.440 This guy or this girl is really good at X, Y, Z,

00:10:14.240 like doing always the same spiel.

00:10:15.640 I can learn that from them,

00:10:17.200 but you know what?

00:10:17.720 They're not as good at this,

00:10:19.080 so maybe I learned from someone else for this.

00:10:21.080 And so I've always been fascinated

00:10:22.360 but this idea of how do we pick the best of each

00:10:25.260 and then create our own self?

00:10:26.900 And I think, Francis, to your point,

00:10:29.020 if you would use something like the hook strategy

00:10:31.140 or other things that help us to have serendipity happen,

00:10:34.620 it always is much easier when it's actually authentic

00:10:36.800 in the sense that it feels true to ourselves,

00:10:39.700 who we want to be, right?

00:10:41.060 Versus like who someone else is

00:10:42.300 and we try to aspire to just be them.

00:10:44.660 It's really interesting that you mentioned that actually

00:10:46.580 because when we were starting trigonometry,

00:10:48.840 we had certain ideas about how it needed to be.

00:10:51.380 and rather than imitating people who were already doing it we would actually look and go well this

00:10:57.640 piece is really good and they're doing this very badly so let's take this from this guy and this

00:11:02.240 from this person and and put it together so that it's true to who we are but i'm fascinated because

00:11:07.700 obviously you being an academic as well you mentioned studies because right now if i'm

00:11:13.260 listening to this like i'm going yeah yeah this is all great new age woo woo fantastic stuff you

00:11:18.100 serendipity, luck, being open-minded, whatever. Can you talk to us about some of the science

00:11:23.300 behind this conversation? Yeah, absolutely. And that's a great question. And I think there are

00:11:28.540 studies, for example, that look at inventions. How do inventions come about? So if you would study

00:11:33.480 what did people get a grant for as a research project and what did they end up with,

00:11:38.820 you can literally follow, oh, they unexpectedly did something completely different than

00:11:42.700 what they were set out to do. And so there are studies that show that up to 50% of these things

00:11:47.740 tend to be serendipitous so it tends to happen very often no matter how people tell the story

00:11:52.880 afterwards but then also you know a lot of times what we do the way we study serendipity is using

00:11:59.100 qualitative methods where you go into a setting and then you let's say you go into a business

00:12:04.120 incubator and you then look at networking events and other things and you study what happens when

00:12:09.480 people unexpectedly meet what happens over time how does it unfold and then you can see the process

00:12:14.300 which is tends to be the same where there's some kind of unexpected serendipity trigger right so

00:12:18.620 spilling the coffee or um the kind of like bumping into someone whatever it is and then someone

00:12:23.600 actually doing something with it and so you can see it unfold over time something that i found

00:12:27.960 fascinating there is how long sometimes there is an incubation time right so you might run into

00:12:32.100 someone at a conference five years ago and only now when you're doing this podcast and you have

00:12:37.040 this conversation you might be like oh my god that person told me five years ago about this

00:12:40.920 We should build now a business around this that could help our podcast, whatever it is, right?

00:12:44.720 So it's the idea that when you study it 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.

00:12:53.320 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.

00:13:01.720 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.

00:13:08.580 I'd love to ask your listeners, if you consider yourself to be lucky or unlucky.

00:13:13.680 And the reason I'm asking you this is because to exactly your point, Konstantin, this is

00:13:18.300 not about some kind of voodoo, oh, like manifest what you want and everything plops magically

00:13:22.280 in your leg.

00:13:24.400 But what's fascinating is that if you consider yourself to be lucky, you tend to be luckier

00:13:29.080 in the future, not because of the voodoo stuff, but because you tend to look differently at

00:13:32.500 the world, you tend to spot opportunity differently.

00:13:34.880 And so to show you one experiment that's my favorite,

00:13:37.780 they pick people who self-identify as very lucky,

00:13:40.820 things tend to happen to me, yada, yada.

00:13:42.780 And people who self-identify as very unlucky.

00:13:44.520 So people who say, bad things tend to happen to me,

00:13:46.880 I'm always in accidents and so on.

00:13:48.280 We probably all know people on this continuum of lucky versus unlucky.

00:13:51.540 And so they pick one of each and they say,

00:13:53.340 walk down the street, go into a coffee shop,

00:13:55.620 sit down, grab a coffee, and then we'll have our conversation.

00:13:58.260 What they don't tell them is that there's hidden cameras

00:14:00.380 along the street and inside the coffee shop.

00:14:02.700 There's a five-pound note, so money, right in front of the coffee shop.

00:14:06.140 And inside the coffee shop, there's this extremely successful businessman

00:14:09.240 who sits next to this one empty seat that's there, that's still in.

00:14:13.460 Now, the lucky person walks down the street, sees the five-pound note,

00:14:17.880 picks it up, goes inside the shop, orders the coffee, sits next to the businessman.

00:14:22.020 They have a conversation.

00:14:23.160 They exchange business cards and potentially an opportunity coming out of it.

00:14:26.440 We don't know that part.

00:14:27.160 The unlucky person walks down the street, steps over the five-pound note,

00:14:31.340 so he doesn't see it, goes inside the shop, orders the coffee, sits next to the businessman,

00:14:35.980 ignores the businessman. That's it. Now, at the end of the day, they ask both people,

00:14:39.480 how was your day today? And so the lucky person says, well, it was amazing. I found money in the

00:14:43.920 street, made a new friend and, you know, potential opportunity coming out of it. The unlucky person

00:14:48.040 just says, well, nothing really happened. Are you tired of using bulky old wallets,

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00:16:02.260 and use our special code which is of course trigger there's a lot of these kind of experiments

00:16:08.280 where when you put people into exactly the same situation depending on their mindset

00:16:11.480 they have very different outcomes in this case of course you know it helps you if you if you

00:16:15.560 actually talk with a person but there's a lot of strategies for closets and drivers like myself

00:16:19.920 where serendipity comes from quiet sources from calm sources and i find a lot of money in the

00:16:24.240 because I expect it to be there. Mostly pennies, unfortunately, so it doesn't really change my

00:16:27.680 lifestyle. But once you start looking for the positively unexpected, you start to see it more

00:16:32.880 because it tends to be hidden everywhere. Wayne perceives himself as being very unlucky.

00:16:38.400 Look, if it weren't for bad luck, I wouldn't have any. I'm jinxed. Is that the word?

00:16:45.120 But I wanted to put this to the test and find out if Wayne is simply missing opportunities.

00:16:50.360 So we set up a little experiment.

00:16:53.200 First, a fake scratch card made up by us.

00:16:56.240 It's 7.40 in the morning, very early.

00:16:59.400 Wayne the butcher arrives at his butcher shop at 8 o'clock

00:17:02.420 and Darren has asked me to drop this scratch card in the door

00:17:06.100 before he gets there with a bundle of other leaflets.

00:17:09.480 Idea being, he'll either look at it and discard it

00:17:12.600 or look at it and scratch it,

00:17:14.600 and if he does, then he's going to win a telly.

00:17:17.260 Did Wayne grab this opportunity?

00:17:18.940 we went back the following week to find out.

00:17:21.760 Did you pat the dog?

00:17:22.960 I patted the dog, yes.

00:17:24.220 Anything lucky happened?

00:17:25.520 Nothing at all.

00:17:26.900 Nothing lucky?

00:17:27.860 Nothing lucky to me.

00:17:29.880 Because Wayne had never won anything before,

00:17:32.220 he thought he never would,

00:17:33.240 so he ignored the scratch card and missed out on a free TV.

00:17:37.740 We thought we'd be bolder,

00:17:39.460 so we set up another potentially lucky opportunity for Wayne

00:17:42.620 to see if he'd take it.

00:17:44.600 Hi there.

00:17:45.560 Have you got a minute?

00:17:46.660 I'd like you to take part in some market research.

00:17:48.720 it's literally just one question if you can take part can you name me um five cuts of beef yeah

00:17:54.880 of course i can top side silver side silver side knuckle knuckle sirloins sirloin chuck tender

00:18:05.600 chuck tender cool well um thank you for taking part and because you got them all right um i'm

00:18:11.600 going to give you a little bit of money what 20 quid oh no no you're right no it's for you

00:18:16.880 but why is it it's just um you know because you got them all right and it's 20 quid are you sure

00:18:23.600 absolutely no strings attached there we go 20 quid yeah so thank you very much for taking part

00:18:30.960 and that's for you thank you very much have a nice day bye-bye excuse me sir have you got a minute

00:18:40.800 i'm doing some market research i was wondering if you could help me with it i'll come back in

00:18:44.720 in about five. Is it all right? You're there till dinner? Five minutes? Yeah. Yeah, cool. Thank you.

00:18:53.060 Frustratingly, Wayne didn't come back in five minutes. But I wasn't giving up. I was determined

00:18:58.100 to make him see an opportunity, so this time we placed a £50 note right in Wayne's path.

00:19:07.180 Surely there's no way he could miss it.

00:19:08.940 But he just couldn't see what was right in front of him.

00:19:20.060 You know what? That resonates with my own experience of life so much.

00:19:23.780 And my wife, she's like the luckiest person in the world,

00:19:26.400 always getting what she wants randomly, completely by accident, quote unquote.

00:19:30.960 And also when I took, when I sort of looked at her and went,

00:19:34.140 well, what if I was a bit more like this?

00:19:35.700 I started to notice the difference in my own life as well.

00:19:38.940 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.

00:19:55.300 What other qualities can one cultivate in oneself in order to accrue some of these benefits?

00:20:01.200 yeah well it's fascinating right i my wonderful wife who's who's the most amazing dot connector

00:20:06.940 i know she is the kind of person she would consider herself to be a negative nancy right

00:20:11.120 so she would say she a lot of times wouldn't necessarily be in a good mood and wouldn't

00:20:15.780 consider herself that positive but she has serendipity happen all the time and that's what

00:20:20.140 i found fascinating about serendipity that it's almost like a venn diagram thing where yes if

00:20:24.180 you're more positive and consider yourself to be lucky that can help you because you see

00:20:28.740 potentiality more right you you see more what could be in in different situations but then

00:20:33.500 someone like her for example who might not necessarily be that positive but who always

00:20:37.980 when she has a conversation thinks about how can i make one introduction how can i contribute one

00:20:42.100 idea by doing this you train yourself to connect the dots and you then tend to get really good at

00:20:47.380 this too and so i've been fascinated by how depending on our authentic self like what what

00:20:52.160 is better to us right we don't we can't all just be positive people or things like that but we can

00:20:56.600 train ourselves to for example connect the dots more we can when we have a conversation think

00:21:00.520 about can i make one link to something that i've thought about recently or when reading a book we

00:21:04.800 can think about how does that relate to something else or um you know it's these kind of small

00:21:08.640 things where we can all do something that that potentially has has more serendipity happened to

00:21:13.620 us and so some other traits you know you mentioned in that example right extroversion can help us

00:21:18.360 because um you know actually talking with someone opens that potential opportunity space um that

00:21:24.100 that we could have something in common.

00:21:26.020 But, you know, as mentioned,

00:21:27.000 those entrepreneurs like myself

00:21:28.040 get a lot of serendipity from quiet sources,

00:21:30.140 from reading a book,

00:21:31.160 from listening to a podcast

00:21:32.620 and then thinking, oh my God,

00:21:33.580 that could be a business, things like that.

00:21:35.760 So that's the beauty of it.

00:21:37.560 And, you know, I remember a colleague of mine,

00:21:40.440 I used to teach in London

00:21:42.680 and a colleague of mine there,

00:21:44.240 he went to me at some point,

00:21:45.200 he was like, Christian, you know,

00:21:47.540 I love what you're doing, I love you,

00:21:49.520 but I don't need serendipity in my life.

00:21:51.300 Like I have everything.

00:21:52.420 I'm a great professor.

00:21:54.100 I have everything I need.

00:21:55.600 I have a great family.

00:21:56.320 Why do I need more serendipity in my life?

00:21:58.360 And so he would be the kind of person, right,

00:21:59.720 who would intuitively not necessarily be inclined to do that.

00:22:02.600 And so we made a deal and we said,

00:22:04.240 do a couple of small things different.

00:22:06.000 Like when you ask questions, don't just ask what do you do?

00:22:09.180 Ask what do you enjoy doing?

00:22:10.640 When you introduce yourself,

00:22:12.800 cast a couple of hooks you're interested in at the moment.

00:22:14.660 And small things like this, which had nothing to do with traits,

00:22:17.380 but more into practices and bringing that in.

00:22:20.260 And then, you know, we meet a month later and he comes back and he's like,

00:22:24.100 Christian, I didn't know life can be so joyful. And, you know, to me, that's kind of like a big

00:22:29.200 takeaway that some traits can help us, right? Positively can help, optimism, extroversion,

00:22:35.280 and so on. But everyone, no matter who we are, can use simple practices to get into it. And then

00:22:40.360 the more we do it, the more we get excited and the more it's almost like a multiplication that

00:22:43.880 happens. Okay. So what are these practices? We've talked about the hooks. What else is there,

00:22:49.100 Christian, that we can use? I'm a big fan of very simple ones. So if we, for example,

00:22:53.480 let's say we run a team asking people what surprised you last week it's a very simple

00:22:57.460 question but by doing this we're now thinking about let me give you an example of the potato

00:23:01.820 washing machine right so potato washing machine a couple of years ago a company you know that

00:23:06.940 produces washing machines and refrigerators a huge company they receive calls from farmers

00:23:11.580 and the farmer said your crappy washing machine is always breaking down and so they asked well

00:23:16.320 why is it breaking down well we're trying to wash our potatoes in it and it doesn't seem to work

00:23:20.820 So what would we usually do?

00:23:22.060 We would probably just say, well, let's educate the customer.

00:23:24.680 Let's educate the people and say, this is a clothes washing machine.

00:23:27.640 You're not supposed to wash your potatoes in this.

00:23:30.440 They did the opposite.

00:23:31.280 They said, you know what?

00:23:32.140 That's unexpected.

00:23:33.280 But there's probably a lot of farmers in the world who have a similar problem.

00:23:36.020 So why don't we build in a dirt filter and make it a potato washing machine?

00:23:39.400 And that's how unexpectedly so the potato washing machine became one of their key products.

00:23:43.340 The point here is, Francis, to your question, if I ask in the weekly meeting what surprised

00:23:47.560 you last week, someone might say, you know what?

00:23:49.520 It really surprised me that people use our product differently than we thought.

00:23:53.620 Maybe there's something in there.

00:23:54.900 And so what it does is you very early on spot maybe that there might be a better use case

00:23:58.900 for whatever you're working on or that there might be a problem in what you're doing or

00:24:02.900 whatever it is.

00:24:03.540 And so it's these kind of simple things where you focus on the positive, the unexpected.

00:24:08.820 As you do that, it tends to happen more and more.

00:24:11.740 Christian, how powerful do you think there's a subconscious when it comes to these types

00:24:16.160 of things?

00:24:16.660 because I obviously this was way before we spoke but when I was doing comedy and being in the

00:24:22.420 comedy industry I used to think to myself I would love to do this particular thing and then

00:24:28.180 within a few months or a year it was an opportunity arose as a result or maybe not as a result but

00:24:36.620 just because I was more open to it do you think the subconscious plays a major role in that

00:24:40.940 definitely and and that's the interesting thing right when you think about the subconscious and

00:24:46.300 more broadly even intuition like related to this right once you once you have a feeling for what

00:24:51.920 you what you're looking for um you you tend to then um you know make decisions differently right

00:24:57.900 you might if you're saying um i would really really love to do a gig at some point on broadway

00:25:04.520 right now when you hear broadway wherever you go like this will be oh my god like i want to listen

00:25:10.440 to this now whatever they talk about i want to hear about broadway because you now want to put

00:25:14.520 yourself into those kind of situations so you feel yourself attracted potentially to those kind

00:25:18.020 of settings now that that have that so um you know once we kind of in a way and that's where

00:25:22.960 you know i'm not a big fan of all these kind of voodoo type manifestation things that fall into

00:25:27.260 your into your lap but i am a big fan of trying to figure out what do i feel pulled towards what's

00:25:32.460 the curiosity or what's something that that could be a potential north star at the moment because

00:25:36.520 then it becomes much easier consciously and unconsciously subconsciously not unconsciously

00:25:41.280 but subconsciously to potentially connect the dots to it, right?

00:25:44.260 And to say, oh my God, like, I didn't even realize

00:25:47.620 that my sister's, like, friend works on Broadway and can help us.

00:25:51.740 And I think that's, Francis, where it gets really interesting

00:25:53.980 with the hook strategy, because a lot of times,

00:25:56.460 let's say, for example, you would love to do a performance on Broadway.

00:26:00.060 If you now build that into every introduction you do

00:26:02.700 when you talk with someone, right, where it's like,

00:26:04.440 oh, and I'm so looking forward to exploring

00:26:06.540 how I could do something on Broadway in a kind of modest sense,

00:26:09.660 you would say that from the most unexpected of places people might say oh my god such a coincidence

00:26:14.300 like i just talked with someone who used to work there i put you in touch things like this it makes

00:26:18.200 it more likely and but i think friends it to to a bigger point of the subconscious and and and so

00:26:23.560 i've been a big big um kind of fan of of the question of trying to understand how does our

00:26:28.820 intuition work in the sense of how do you know um when a lot of times the unexpected when we have to

00:26:34.620 act on it um we feel that we want to act on something versus not right and understanding

00:26:40.000 why is that and i think we all start in this world with a quite naive gut feeling right with a quite

00:26:45.280 naive kind of um fight or flight type we are in a situation and then we either run or don't run

00:26:50.240 right depending on fear and things like this but then when you look at um executives and we studied

00:26:55.900 some of them for example how they make decisions they've developed this mature gut feeling where

00:27:00.140 they have some kind of intuition about something some kind of gut feeling about something something

00:27:03.760 that they feel is there, they don't know what it is. And then they get as much information as they

00:27:08.340 can. And then they triangulate this. They say, okay, I have this gut feeling, this information.

00:27:12.800 So now I will make this decision. And so in a way, trusting the gut more because it's more mature

00:27:17.460 becomes actually a key leadership skill because a lot of times you don't have all the information,

00:27:22.140 but it gives you more information. Your subconscious always knows more than your

00:27:25.660 conscience in a way. It's funny when you were talking about telling people you want to perform

00:27:30.280 on Broadway. That's when I knew that while you're clearly an expert in the subject, you've never

00:27:34.360 done the British comedy circuit. If you told anyone your dreams, they would immediately try

00:27:39.380 to crush them and not help you in any way. But you know, it's funny because very much on that

00:27:44.300 subject, I think one of the challenges that a lot of people often face in trying to work out,

00:27:49.520 I'm a big fan of speaking things into existence, like saying, this is what I want to do. This is

00:27:54.060 what I want to get to. But on the other hand, I often also feel like I don't want to jinx certain

00:27:58.740 things like right now for example we've got some cool things in the in the pipeline but I don't

00:28:04.280 want to kind of tell anyone publicly about it like what how how does one manage navigate that

00:28:10.040 sort of you know different options for a decision when you've you're anticipating something you're

00:28:15.520 planning something yeah yeah that's fascinating because and to your point also in terms of how

00:28:20.060 much do you share your dreams right because I think we've all faced that situation where

00:28:23.540 if you're over sharing something or if you're if you're too excited about something then people

00:28:28.560 might be like oh like yeah you're you're either like someone who's kind of like not here you know

00:28:33.520 or like there's to your point there's an irish saying for a christian which is you've got the

00:28:38.920 notions it's what it's when it's when you've got too many ambitions yeah exactly yeah exactly and

00:28:44.860 so i think that's really about again coming back to the authentic self to to to then thinking about

00:28:49.280 what is a hook that i could use that said that does that indirectly right so in a way i'll be

00:28:54.260 in new york next uh next month and i'd love to connect with people who are related to broadway

00:28:58.860 something like that that's achieving the same thing the introduction to someone who's involved

00:29:02.960 on broadway but without saying look i i want to be the superstar on broadway and i think that's

00:29:08.240 kind of in a way i'm again coming to our authentic self like what feels authentic to us but to to

00:29:12.880 your question i think it's it's really interesting in general um and i i would probably give a

00:29:17.080 similar answer to this in terms of that i've always experienced that when i was kind of more

00:29:21.860 involved in entrepreneurial endeavors, where in a way, how much do you put out there so that people

00:29:26.700 can rally around it and can help you build it and can do it versus how much you first want to

00:29:31.660 almost kind of like fail proof and make sure that you have a minimum viable proposition that is

00:29:37.000 strong enough so that you can't fail with it and things like that. And so I think that's always a

00:29:41.620 fascinating tension. I found it fascinating how Pixar, so one of the most creative companies in

00:29:45.980 the world, they've been extremely good at creating these informal brain trusts or advisory boards

00:29:50.880 where you have four or five people who are around you

00:29:53.280 whom you just bounce ideas off from time to time.

00:29:55.740 And then they are like, hey, yay.

00:29:57.240 And if they're yay, then it's kind of like,

00:29:58.780 okay, now we go a bit more, a bit more, a bit more.

00:30:00.800 And so it's almost kind of like,

00:30:02.160 you know, unfolding with more and more people.

00:30:04.860 And I found that extremely useful

00:30:06.040 to have this kind of internal advisory board

00:30:08.200 in a way that in a way I can bounce these ideas off

00:30:11.180 and then they can take it a bit more.

00:30:12.700 And then once it feels safe to go to the next stage.

00:30:15.120 But I feel to your point,

00:30:16.340 I'm not sure I have a golden answer here,

00:30:18.720 a golden bullet in the sense

00:30:19.640 that it feels very dependent on the situation.

00:30:23.340 Christian, it seems to me that when we're discussing

00:30:25.340 what we're talking about a lot,

00:30:26.960 as well as the importance of being in the moment,

00:30:30.040 the people who feel that they are lucky

00:30:31.900 are more in the moment, they're more connected,

00:30:34.680 they're more aware of their surroundings,

00:30:36.620 therefore they see opportunity.

00:30:38.420 Whilst people who deem themselves to be unlucky

00:30:40.600 are more likely to be in their own head,

00:30:42.820 creating a narrative for themselves about their life,

00:30:45.700 and therefore they miss the £5 note.

00:30:47.640 they sit down next to a you know a businessman who may be able to help them but they're unaware

00:30:53.200 of them yeah well and that's really interesting that's why i'm a huge fan of meditation for

00:30:57.960 example because in a way it's so much easier to connect the dots and to see potential overlaps

00:31:02.780 if you actually are there and and also if you have a feeling for what could be good right which is

00:31:08.260 which is easier to have when you're grounded and when you're um when you're there and so i'm a big

00:31:12.600 fan of those simple things like meditation or grounding oneself in whatever way walks in nature

00:31:17.420 whatever it is um and and then to your point like it's i think it's it's a fascinating thing also

00:31:22.040 how we frame the world right francis to your point do we look at the world as something that is is our

00:31:27.520 enemy right and and and then it's almost like a self-filling prophecy right if i go into a meeting

00:31:32.460 even if i would sit next to this businessman if in my head that person next to me could be someone

00:31:37.520 who just wants something from me who who who will anyways mess with me if i talk with them and like

00:31:42.600 it's it's not worth it then we will not either either not speak with them or if we speak with

00:31:46.540 them it will most likely not lead to somewhere versus if we have this idea of hey look there

00:31:50.920 could be something in every conversation then actually it turns more likely that we actually

00:31:54.740 find those overlaps I've always been fascinated by this idea you know people who come and say oh

00:31:59.060 I was at this boring event where I had the boring conversation with someone I always feel I'm sorry

00:32:04.400 that's a reflection on yourself in terms of that a lot of times you know yes there's people who are

00:32:09.060 more exciting than others and some people are more boring than others but even the I mean not wanting

00:32:13.820 to name names but let's say even the accounting and accountant in the basement somewhere they

00:32:17.880 have something in there right they might also have lost someone recently to cancer and once you find

00:32:22.840 that overlap you're like learning from them how to cope with the grief that comes from just having

00:32:27.600 lost your mother to cancer things like this where i think it's really that that that and that's why

00:32:32.680 i'm such a big fan of trying to figure out what are the overlaps we have by allowing others to

00:32:37.180 connect the dots for us so so imagine the situation um you go to a fishing village in in italy and

00:32:42.980 you're on holiday there and you meet this fisherwoman theoretically you have not much in

00:32:47.260 common right she's a fisherwoman who's very local and doing her thing you're kind of like very

00:32:50.820 international um like global in london but if you would kind of start asking them something like

00:32:56.280 what do you enjoy doing at the moment and she would say well i enjoy the sea because the sea

00:33:00.280 is all about the endlessness of things and you would be like you know what this is how life feels

00:33:04.100 to me because endlessness of philosophy is all about this so you know what i mean and so it's

00:33:07.840 really about once we start like asking questions slightly differently we get away from i'm an

00:33:12.880 accountant, I'm working in the basement to I'm an accountant. But what I'd really love to do is

00:33:17.160 actually learning more about grief, because I just lost someone and I really want to talk more about

00:33:21.140 it. And again, you know, to your point, like sometimes it feels more authentic to ask these

00:33:24.800 kind of questions than in other situations. But but but I feel, you know, it's almost impossible

00:33:29.660 to have a boring conversation once you start asking questions slightly differently, and approach

00:33:33.960 situations from that perspective of everyone has something to offer. And it's also as well, it's

00:33:39.640 about being connected but and one of the things that i'm really working on the older i get is to

00:33:45.960 become more playful because the moment you become more playful opportunities just present themselves

00:33:51.580 naturally whereas if you go into somewhere thinking to yourself i've got this objective i

00:33:56.280 need to do this and immediately that's that's not a very good energy to to present someone with but

00:34:03.120 if you go in and just be playful be in the moment opportunities present themselves much more because

00:34:09.200 it feels more like an authentic conversation absolutely and that's the interesting thing

00:34:14.480 i'm always thinking about this you know when it comes to let's say networking organizations right

00:34:18.420 let's say you networking events let's say you go to an event and you have this superstar speaker and

00:34:23.600 like everyone like wants something from them right so everyone goes to them and expects that there's

00:34:28.420 a clear thing they can get from them right so you go to them and you say i i would love to work on

00:34:33.420 broadway can you help me with the connection things like this right just making it up but but but you

00:34:37.640 know that's not memorable to them that's something like you're one of a thousand people now who comes

00:34:42.420 to them and like just want something from them versus if you're the only person who comes over

00:34:46.480 and like like in a way kind of goes there without an agenda and says hey look like isn't it funny

00:34:50.880 that xyz or you know something to your point that is more playful that actually is much more fun for

00:34:55.620 everyone but also that will most likely lead you to something much more beautiful with them where

00:35:00.720 you will probably be the only person they would make an introduction for in the end right and so

00:35:04.500 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.

00:35:13.280 Or if we achieve it, it might not have been the best thing that could have happened in that moment.

00:35:16.980 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.

00:35:27.980 And to me, that's always been the big thing, right?

00:35:30.080 That, to your point, you might go into an interview, right, in a podcast interview and ask someone about something.

00:35:35.640 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.

00:35:41.640 That didn't come because you pushed them for it.

00:35:43.340 It came because they're excited about what you're doing.

00:35:45.420 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?

00:35:52.120 So it's always beautiful to prepare for things.

00:35:53.940 but then to be playful enough to allow for these unexpected beautiful moments that

00:35:57.700 in a way give us a lot of the real opportunities. Well, Christian, I can confirm in the history of

00:36:02.520 the show, no former guest has ever chosen to sponsor it. So in order to make your theory

00:36:07.800 true, you're going to have to do it now. But I was actually going to ask you, and this isn't to get

00:36:12.240 you into trouble at all, but I'm just curious because you probably know we talk a lot about

00:36:16.300 the political environment that we operate in at the moment. And I would certainly argue that

00:36:22.180 in recent times that in particular sections of the political spectrum, the idea of victimhood

00:36:30.480 has become quite prominent. I suppose victimhood is in a way saying you're subject to bad luck

00:36:36.140 over time or evil forces that are putting you in a certain position. Is there any studies or any

00:36:41.960 kind of research in terms of the politics of this and how these mindsets affect the political

00:36:47.400 attitudes people have and how they behave politically? Yeah, well, that's really interesting.

00:36:51.880 I mean, I'm certainly not an expert in that area, so I tread very lightly there.

00:36:57.680 But what came to mind, actually, when you were speaking about it is, you know, Viktor Frankl, because Viktor Frankl talks a lot about this idea, right, that a lot of times we cannot choose the situation we're in.

00:37:10.360 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 they're being put in.

00:37:19.920 and and so a lot of our work by the way also then focuses on how do we make sure that the

00:37:24.340 societal inequality gets less and less and less that's the objective constraints right so so that's

00:37:28.720 there and then to your point i think sometimes there's also the subjective limitations we put

00:37:32.620 on ourselves in some way or the other and that's where Viktor Frankl has been extremely interesting

00:37:37.460 and and i always reread him whenever i'm in a tough time because he essentially he was in a

00:37:42.720 concentration camp which as you can imagine is the toughest of situations you can ever face there's

00:37:47.300 no hope objectively speaking there's no idea that you would ever get out and you will most likely

00:37:52.220 die so it's an extremely depressing situation where you're an actual victim like you're an

00:37:57.160 actual kind of you're in that that moment of wow like nothing can really happen and so what what

00:38:02.340 Frankl did in those moments was to say is there some meaning I can still imbue in this objectively

00:38:07.860 meaningless situation is there something here that I can still take some power is there something in

00:38:12.620 there that I can still do and so he would do things like saying if I get out here I still

00:38:17.800 want to write my book or you know when I wake up tomorrow morning I want to speak with a fellow

00:38:22.500 prisoner and make them feel better about themselves and by doing this I now have a purpose of waking

00:38:27.040 up tomorrow morning and so what he did here and that's always been one of my absolute favorite

00:38:31.240 ideas that if you can't choose the situation you can still always choose your response to it and

00:38:36.040 that's where a lot of our agency and freedom and liberty and serendipity frankly comes from

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00:39:44.540 And to touch on another controversial subject, but you kind of raise it and what you're talking about.

00:39:50.560 Is that need for meaning and to make meaning of difficult circumstances?

00:39:54.960 Is that where a lot of the human religious instinct comes from?

00:39:58.300 Because it seems to me that religion has been away historically for dealing with that issue.

00:40:04.220 how do you cope with terrible events that seem to be completely unfair chaotic random well you

00:40:11.340 could say the meaning is god is teaching me something or or whatever it is i am uh humbled

00:40:17.700 by his that's how i'm not religious but that's how it has been historically do you think that's

00:40:22.260 part of it as well it's a fascinating question i actually had a conversation recently with a

00:40:26.500 with a very religious person i'm very close to and um you know we ended up because we talked a

00:40:32.180 lot about how do you reconcile fate destiny and your own agency of making luck right and so how

00:40:38.540 do you reconcile that if god has a plan for you why would i then have to do something because

00:40:43.040 either god already decided that or not and and those kind of dynamics right and so and and so

00:40:47.900 we ended up on this compromise of saying you still got to buy a ticket like there's this there's this

00:40:53.460 beautiful metaphor i wouldn't or analogy i wouldn't do it justice but essentially it goes along the

00:40:57.800 way along the lines of um you know there's this man who prays to god and says well like please

00:41:03.060 let me win the lottery and and and and he prays and prays like let me win the lottery let me win

00:41:08.280 the lottery let me win the lottery and then at some point he's like why don't you let me win

00:41:12.040 the lottery and so so god is like well you got to buy a ticket i can only let you win if you

00:41:17.340 actually buy a ticket and so we we kind of like in a way found that compromise of there's still

00:41:21.760 some agency even if there's some some kind of um broader plan but to your bigger point and bigger

00:41:25.740 question of of of beliefs um you know we all have a longing for for connection right connection with

00:41:32.300 others with oneself um and that kind of belief that you can believe in something and someone

00:41:37.260 right so for some of us it might be religion in my case it's always been philosophy in other

00:41:41.860 people's cases it might be particular people but this idea that we want to connect with a higher

00:41:46.880 power or nature or whatever it is right it gives us some kind of more certainty in a in a world

00:41:52.480 that is so uncertain and so I've become a big fan a friend of mine she does a lot of work around

00:41:57.100 this idea of prayer and you know I'm I'm not a religious person but what I found interesting

00:42:02.320 about prayer is in a way it's it's a form of meditation right you're connecting to something

00:42:06.760 and you're grounding yourself and so I've become much more relaxed about you know I grew up in an

00:42:11.520 environment I feel a lot of people in where I grew up were a bit disillusioned by the institution

00:42:17.020 the church not necessarily by by by beliefs but by the institution and so we grew up kind of more

00:42:22.220 with philosophy and trying to reconcile that then with religion.

00:42:25.920 And what I found fascinating, though, is that I think a lot of times religion actually funny

00:42:30.120 enough, and that was the beauty of the nice excuse of writing a book about it, that in

00:42:35.260 a way, a lot of religions and science say the same thing, right?

00:42:38.020 Which is essentially saying, if you put good things out there, good things tend to happen

00:42:41.800 to come back to you, not because of voodoo or stuff, because people actually then want

00:42:45.740 to connect with you.

00:42:46.440 People want to do something for you.

00:42:47.980 People want to be in a community with you.

00:42:49.440 And that's actually what some kind of groups have done extremely well to kind of build community around core beliefs.

00:42:55.540 Again, I wouldn't want to go into the kind of more political realms of this.

00:43:00.140 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.

00:43:13.560 Because, you know, life, unfortunately, is a lot about that kind of putting things in motion.

00:43:19.440 Christian let's talk about trauma a little bit so particularly childhood trauma how does that

00:43:26.540 impact the way that you perceive the world but also luckiness your luckiness because there are

00:43:32.800 people who you know who will say you know I didn't have a great start in life but that taught

00:43:37.640 me so many lessons and then there are other people go I didn't have a great start in life

00:43:41.440 which is why I am the way I am it's a fascinating question and and you know I recently was on a

00:43:48.360 podcast of a psychiatrist and I found that fascinating because a lot of the conversation

00:43:52.540 was exactly around how in a way the things that happen to us in our lives put us on certain paths

00:43:59.620 and and how much power do we have on that path versus what is path dependency where essentially

00:44:03.960 it's playing out because that's how we've been programmed in a way and and what I found fascinating

00:44:08.940 is how much he focused on that idea of that he puts his patients into situations where they face

00:44:14.240 those deeper fears in a controlled environment and and again i'm not a psychiatrist so i wouldn't

00:44:19.360 want to wind too deep into that but what i found fascinating is when you have like when we look at

00:44:25.940 our studies of successful people where a lot of times they had some inflection points right so

00:44:30.400 they maybe they had cancer and found meaning in that journey like when steve jobs had cancer

00:44:34.500 right that's kind of like when he in a way discovered a lot of meaning where he was like look

00:44:37.860 like like death is life's greatest motivator now because when you know that death is around the

00:44:42.620 corner you're like oh my god like what can i still do so that it feels meaningful and and and a lot

00:44:47.720 of times you know when you look at people how they evolve over time i feel there's always that

00:44:52.720 question right is that is that inflection point defining them uh for the rest of their life or

00:44:58.140 do they try to redefine that inflection point as something that could be the start to something

00:45:03.000 where that point then you know in that case maybe cancer then building a momentum around writing a

00:45:10.200 book around how to cope with cancer. And then that was the one piece in their life where they're

00:45:13.680 really proud of or things like this, where you use it as an inflection point to do something.

00:45:17.620 And I found that fascinating in my own life, how I feel, again, I've been fortunate enough to not

00:45:22.500 have deeper trauma. So I can't talk about this from a personal perspective too much. But in the

00:45:27.600 kind of tough moments I faced in life, they've a lot of times become inflection points. One of my

00:45:31.700 companies almost went bankrupt. And that was actually then an opportunity for us to rethink

00:45:36.520 the business model and to say oh my god our business model really sucked like hey there's

00:45:40.180 a much better thing here and that actually became then much bigger than it would have if if we

00:45:44.160 wouldn't have been almost bankrupt or you know the breakup with someone where you feel oh my god

00:45:49.360 this is the end of the world because this was the one person i'll ever love but you needed that

00:45:53.160 breakup to be free for the person who you were really supposed to be right and so that's becoming

00:45:57.560 then the inflection point for something different i think to your point it's always tough i guess

00:46:02.120 when there's deep trauma. But I think in general, a lot of times the question of how much power do

00:46:07.040 I try to take over the situation? What can I control? I think that's the very Viktor Frankl

00:46:11.040 question in terms of, yes, there will be things I can't control in terms of path dependent things

00:46:15.560 of maybe now a mental health question that is surrounded to it. But also then what can I

00:46:20.180 control? And then focusing on that. So we're talking about luck. And it seems to me as well

00:46:25.400 that what we're really discussing is the openness to opportunities. Whereas people who seem to

00:46:31.320 to be unlucky actually have a craving for safety in that they don't want to talk to the businessman

00:46:37.520 and I was like that for a long time because I don't want to expose myself to something which

00:46:43.020 could then come back and you know and bite me as it were whereas the lucky person is more positive

00:46:49.440 more open to opportunities and go oh yeah I'll talk to this guy in the suit what have I got to

00:46:53.820 lose yeah well it's interesting because um you know we talked earlier about how what I presume

00:47:00.340 also then from what you're saying us closet introverts right so yeah i'm also the kind of

00:47:04.600 person right no problem speaking in front of people and then hiding in the restroom afterwards

00:47:08.440 because i i can't catch up with so many because i need to replenish my energy so it's kind of

00:47:12.660 you know in a way that the kind of um i've actually you know we were thinking about this

00:47:17.140 recently with a community builder friends of mine where we realize people always think we're so

00:47:21.080 extrovert but actually we're very introvert um but we have these spikes of extroversion where

00:47:25.920 everyone then thinks oh my god they're so extrovert um but but so i've actually found that there's a

00:47:31.040 lot of strategies we can use so that we can in a way work with extroverts to to to do those kind

00:47:38.480 of things that we don't want to do so for example um you know when going let's say you just have your

00:47:42.840 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

00:47:47.520 the host first and get them somehow interested in it so that they then talk with everyone and so in

00:47:52.300 a way i'm trying to kind of almost hand over um the job of the extraversion to someone who then

00:47:57.220 could become the ambassador of taking that idea around i've recently talked with an insurance who

00:48:01.840 you know one thing they do is they try to map the internal network when would they go to to like a

00:48:07.280 university for example where they want to sell an insurance they try to understand who are the two

00:48:10.940 or three people here who are best connected who people go to for advice and if we can convince

00:48:15.620 one or two of them they will do the work they will go around they will do the pitching and if you're

00:48:20.420 the person the salesperson who really doesn't like pitching and you get one of them on your

00:48:23.900 side right they will do the job for you and so i've become a big fan of thinking about it that

00:48:27.880 way in terms of what can i do to push myself out of the comfort zone that actually is authentic to

00:48:32.580 me right so yes i can do a couple of more practices i can i can ask questions differently i can i can

00:48:38.160 cast a couple of hooks these are things we can all do that's a bit of kind of boundary pushing

00:48:41.920 but it's fine but then at the same time i know i will never enjoy it to pitch to people so much

00:48:46.880 So then is there ways that I can work with extroverts on this?

00:48:50.120 And, you know, if you if you look at a lot of times, you will see that introverts and extroverts like work so well together because one of them essentially takes that ambassador function and goes out there.

00:48:58.560 But then also the introvert being the great person a lot of times who reflects with them and makes sense and grounds it.

00:49:03.200 And so I think there's a beautiful complementarity also.

00:49:06.720 And Christian, we've talked for the entire interview about good luck.

00:49:10.720 How do you know that you are the sort of person that's creating bad luck in your life?

00:49:14.960 well that's an interesting question and and you know i think it's important also probably to say

00:49:20.840 that that we can never blame anyone for bad luck i mean bad luck happens to everyone right we all

00:49:24.920 at some point have real bad luck happen and and and unfortunately that's what happens a lot of

00:49:29.880 times also you know a lot of my work is in extreme poverty contexts so a lot of times

00:49:34.060 in some circumstances there is a design for more bad luck to happen every day because every day

00:49:39.580 someone around you dies every day around some so so so you can have systemic problems around bad

00:49:45.120 luck that that are there and then one of the ways of course that sounds easier than it is is to take

00:49:50.400 oneself out of that um i mean i'm you know i've always been the kind of person let's say for

00:49:55.220 example you have toxic friendships right and and those toxic friendships then tend to cause more

00:49:59.700 bad luck in your life right because that kind of in a way is that dynamism i've always been a big

00:50:04.500 fan of trying to um you know influence that person as much as i can and then kind of like convince

00:50:09.180 them if there's something there and then at some point also realize well sometimes it's easier to

00:50:13.320 take oneself out of these kind of um relationships and maybe um you know kind of focus on on on

00:50:18.640 surrounding with people who are who are more um kind of towards um you know doing um um or focusing

00:50:25.200 on what we can do in the world all right your disclaimer is duly noted duly noted but but what

00:50:31.440 are some of the the habit because look i i hear what you're saying we don't want to blame people

00:50:36.000 But I think it's also helpful for all of us to go like, well, I do this and I do that.

00:50:41.040 And maybe I don't need to do that anymore.

00:50:42.600 That's the only angle I'm coming at it from.

00:50:44.320 So how do you know that you're maybe exacerbating the problem or contributing to it at least?

00:50:50.220 Yeah, that's a great question.

00:50:51.180 And that's the academic in me.

00:50:52.100 There's always the footnote is always longer than the actual statement.

00:50:55.060 No, but it's, no, to exactly your point.

00:50:57.720 I, you know, there's a lot of studies actually around how, for example, when you are, when

00:51:02.840 you perceive yourself to be less lucky you tend to perceive situations differently right so uh

00:51:07.460 take take one one example imagine you're in a bank and um you know there's this person coming in

00:51:13.040 and there's a bank robbery going on and and they they they they shoot like there's one shot fired

00:51:19.260 and that shot is in your in your shoulder now if you're if you're the the kind of bad luck type

00:51:24.740 person you will go out of this experience saying this is so unfair that i was the only one being

00:51:30.500 shot here like everyone else is fine but i'm the one person who was being shot here in the shoulder

00:51:34.640 if you perceive yourself to be as a lucky person you would go out and say thank god i wasn't killed

00:51:39.720 thank god this was actually okay and so there's a lot around this idea that if if you kind of

00:51:44.760 perceive the world as oh like this is unfair and and this is like you know i'm the kind of person

00:51:50.400 who's the like who came out the worst here then that tends to perpetuate it versus if you in a

00:51:55.840 way say look like it could have been worse that's what tends to actually make it easier than also

00:52:00.100 to find some kind of meaning in it right and and and to your answer i think an actionable point

00:52:04.160 here is really going back to the victor frankl idea of to in any situation ask is there some

00:52:08.680 meaning in this is there some meaning here if there was this shot fired like maybe that's that's

00:52:13.680 an opportunity now similar to covid right covid was a a collective near-death experience for a

00:52:17.840 lot of us maybe that's an opportunity to re-evaluate what's important to me we could be shot every day

00:52:21.940 we could be um running in front of the car every day i had two near-death experiences in my life

00:52:26.240 And I can tell you, life can be very short, so you might as well do the things now that feel meaningful to you.

00:52:30.740 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?

00:52:36.000 Is there something I can take from this that's still positive?

00:52:38.600 I think that helps reframe.

00:52:39.980 And that's fascinating.

00:52:41.040 I mean, for instance, and constant to your point, there's fascinating work actually around neuroplasticity, right?

00:52:45.520 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.

00:52:52.640 and I'm supposed to be this person in this way to,

00:52:56.120 oh no, actually I can try to see more in the unexpected.

00:52:58.540 We can train ourselves to do more of this

00:53:00.220 and have that happen more often.

00:53:03.340 Well, I think that's a lovely positive note

00:53:05.160 to wrap up the interview on.

00:53:07.640 Before we ask you some questions from our supporters,

00:53:10.680 the last question we always end the show on

00:53:12.560 is what is the one thing that you think

00:53:14.680 we're not talking about as a society

00:53:16.640 that we really should be?

00:53:19.540 Well, look, I think, you know,

00:53:20.860 when you look at the education system,

00:53:22.120 when you look at universities, when you look at companies, we kind of put people into boxes,

00:53:26.640 right? We essentially say, you're this person, you're doing this, you're doing this, you're

00:53:31.700 doing this. And we try to plan things to your point, Francis, at the beginning, right? We're

00:53:35.120 trying to plan things out and map things out. And that puts a lot of pressure on people that

00:53:39.520 puts a lot of pressure, especially on kids to be perfect, to have the plan to know what they want

00:53:43.200 to do with their life and everything else. And so there's a lot of anxiety, right? Because the

00:53:46.620 anxiety is, oh, my God, I haven't, I'm 15 years old now, and I haven't figured out my life. Oh,

00:53:51.160 my god what can i do right and and i think when we kind of refocus away from this idea that you can

00:53:56.460 map everything out that you have to have a plan all the time to saying let's plan as much as we

00:54:00.920 can but then essentially build a muscle for the unexpected that actually decreases a lot of

00:54:05.540 anxiety that takes a lot of pressure off of especially kids who live in a world which is

00:54:09.420 so unexpected and and full of of uncertain moments that in a way you can't plan things out and so i

00:54:14.320 think you know to me one of the biggest questions in the public discourse is to get away from this

00:54:18.780 idea of you know we like everyone has to know everything and be everything to know like let's

00:54:23.920 try to figure out what is the authentic self of some someone and and and how can we help them

00:54:28.540 discover this by having serendipity spaces around them and so it actually um you know i wouldn't do

00:54:34.000 justice to my philosophical roots in heidelberg we have this philosopher's way and goethe he was

00:54:39.160 writing a lot of his poems there and he had this beautiful idea that if you take someone as they

00:54:43.160 are you make them worse but if you take them as what they could be you make them capable of

00:54:47.720 becoming what they can be and that's what serendipity is about serendipity is about

00:54:50.900 potentiality but if we don't allow that potentiality because we're so fixated on the particular plan or

00:54:56.380 what my child should be like then we take that away from them we take away from them that they

00:55:01.200 might enjoy other things much more and so enjoying giving them the opportunity to discover their own

00:55:05.420 potentiality i think would be the biggest gift the education system can give but also organizations

00:55:09.640 can give their employees amen thank you very much christian if people want to find you online where

00:55:15.920 is the best place to do that?

00:55:18.060 The homepage is

00:55:19.200 www.theserendipitymindset.com

00:55:22.080 and I'm at

00:55:23.400 Chris Serendip on Twitter.

00:55:25.480 And of course the book

00:55:26.380 is Connecting the Dots.

00:55:28.240 Christian, we're going to ask you

00:55:29.360 a couple of questions

00:55:30.920 from our local supporters

00:55:31.960 so don't go anywhere.

00:55:33.180 But in the meantime,

00:55:34.040 thank you so much

00:55:34.820 for coming on the show.

00:55:35.660 It's been a real pleasure

00:55:36.420 chatting with you

00:55:37.220 and thank you all

00:55:38.260 for watching and listening.

00:55:39.820 We will see you very soon

00:55:41.120 with another brilliant episode

00:55:42.460 like this one

00:55:43.180 or also

00:55:44.120 So all of them go out at 7pm UK time.

00:55:46.640 And for those of you who like your trigonometry on the go,

00:55:49.660 it's also available as a podcast.

00:55:51.600 Take care and see you soon, guys.

00:55:55.160 Is good bad luck just a state of one's mind or mood?

TRIGGERnometry - July 21, 2022

The Science of Making Your Own Luck

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