E24: Generate Luck and Creativity By Seeking Out Adventure

What if seeking out new experiences can help you be more creative? Welcome to Invisible Solutions. I'm your host, Steven Shapiro. Each week we tackle your most complex problems using the lenses from my book, Invisible Solutions. If you need the lenses, go to get the lenses.com with that. Let's get started with today's episode. And today I'm going to take a slightly different approach than I have in previous episodes. And the reason for this is last month, a good friend of mine passed away, and it got me reflecting and thinking about life. And this individual, Dr. Jeff Sauls, he was an adventurer. That was his whole life. He was a doctor of anthropology. I mean, he literally would seek out adventure and new experiences whenever possible. In fact, he wrote the book the Way of Adventure. And so as I was reflecting on this episode, what I wanted to do was to pay tribute to Jeff Salz. And to do that by talking about the power of making connections, the power of new experiences, and the power of adventure. Because I do believe that experiences are critical for problem solving. And I love this quote from. From Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs once said that creativity is just having enough dots to connect. Creativity is just having enough dots to connect, connecting experiences and synthesizing new things. And the reason creative people are able to do that is they've either had more experiences or they've thought more about their experiences than other people. So I love this quote because to me, it really gets to the essence of creativity and problem solving, which is about connections, making connections. So our ability to have experiences and to reflect on those experiences can help us find creative solutions to difficult problems. And so, therefore, I wanted to dedicate this episode to the memory of Jeff Salz, the quintessential adventurer. And in a little bit, I'll share some stories of Jeff, how we met, but I'll also share some of the great insights that he has as it relates to creativity and adventure. But first, I want to just explore a little bit about why experiences matter. And to do that, I want you to think about someone who seems lucky, someone who seems to be in the right place at the right time. Things seem easy for them, and it's quite possible that you feel like, well, you've got a completely different experience, you're not lucky. The world is organized against you, and you have to work hard to make things happen. But the truth is, you can probably create your own luck. And in order to explain luck, people have their own definitions of luck. And I'm not going to get into everybody else's definitions, but for me, it's how can we create the greatest likelihood of a positive occurrence happening? And so I'm going to look at luck through a probabilistic model. Probability. I'm an engineer by background. I love probability. And one of the things that we know is the odds of any two occurrences coming together is very likely, but the odds of a particular thing happening is actually very low. It's very unlikely. And so if we look at luck from that perspective, some fascinating things start to emerge. So what I want you to consider is if you were open to any outcome, you have a really good chance of good things happening and it appearing lucky. So I'd love to do a little exercise with you. That is, I talk about it in my Goal Free Living book, which I'm going to refer to later when I talk about Jeff. And it's a probability model that you may have heard before, but I think it's worth repeating. And I want you just for a moment, for a moment to imagine that you're in a room full of people. You're mingling about, you're telling stories, and people are sharing, you know, things that have happened in their lives, their accomplishments, their dreams. And then you ask one simple piece of information. The month and day of their birthday. Each person goes up to the next person, shakes their hand and says what their birthday is. And in a matter of minutes, you will inevitably hear someone shout out, wow, we have the same birthday. What are the odds of that? What are the odds of that? And that's a very good question. What are the odds of two people having the same birthday in a room of people? So for those of you who enjoy probability, you probably know that you need 367 people to be 100% guaranteed that two people in a room will have the same birthday. The reason is because there's 366 days in a year, in a leap year. And so you need one more person to get to 100% chance. So if the first person had January 1st as their birthday and the second person January 2nd, well, the first 366 people could all have different birthdays. But you're guaranteed that that last person is going to match someone in the room. But here's the more interesting question. How many people do you have to have in a room for there to be a 50% chance that two people will have the same birthday? Some people immediately assume that it's going to be roughly half of 367. So maybe 184. And that's a logical guess, but it's actually not correct. In fact, you only need 23 people in a room to have a 50% chance that two people will have the same birthday. Try it sometime. You will be shocked. But with just 40 people in a room, you have a 90% chance that two people will have the same birthday. So the odds of two people having a shared birthday is actually much more likely than we think from a probability perspective. But here's where it gets interesting. How many people do you need in a room to have a 50% chance that two people have a particular birthday? So, for example, My birthday is April 25th. How many people would I need to have in a room to have a 50, 50 chance that there's another person in the room with my birthday? I've done this at events and it is fascinating. Surprisingly, the number now increases to over 600 people. So the likelihood of any event happening is quite high. The likelihood of a particular event happening is quite low. So the key is, and this comes back to my goal free living concept is when we set goals, we're looking for a particular event to occur. That is, we've defined specific outcomes we're looking for. And to make that happen requires a large number of things coming together in a particular way. But if you're not looking for a specific outcome, but are open to any outcome that could be of interest, the likelihood of a synchronistic event happening is actually quite high. But regardless of whether you're going to be goal oriented, goal free, or whatever other term you want to use, in order to make things happen, you need to collect experiences. You need to collect experiences in order to be more creative. Because when we collect these experiences and connect these experiences, we become better problem solvers. In order to do that, one of the things we need to do is to seek out adventure, to try new things, to gather new experiences. And people who live extraordinary lives think like explorers. They know that diverse experiences enrich their world and that every day offers a chance to explore and discover. So think about that Steve Jobs quote. It's about collecting and connecting experiences, seeking out adventure to collect new experiences so that connections can happen and create one wonderful things in your life. So you may think that as you get older, you gather more experiences, but the reality is for many of us, we get the same experiences over and over and over. So instead of 20 years of experience, we've actually had the same one year of experience 20 times. That's not collecting new experiences, that's just going deeper. Now think about children for a moment. With children, everything is a new experience. As children we were passionate. We're creative. Our minds were filled with limitless possibility and wonder. In fact, there are numerous studies that show that 98% of five year old children are highly creative. 98%. Yet only 2% of adults are. What happened? What happened? How did we go from nearly everyone being creative to nearly no one being creative? And I believe one of the things is our diminished ability to be creative and to live creatively and to seek out adventure and to have new experiences and to be looking at the world through fresh eyes. Children aren't focused. They're collecting dots. They're collecting experiences. And that changes when we go to school because we're taught to memorize and regurgitate facts to generate particular outcomes, to do well on tests. Peer pressure sets in. We all feel compelled to wear the same brand of sneakers. We stop thinking for ourselves. And as we get older, we continue through life planning every step and eliminating dots. We go to college, we choose a major, eventually get the best job we can. What do we have left? 1 DOT. Our deep experience, our degree, our area of expertise. We know that dot well, we know our area of expertise, but we have nothing else to connect it to. Instead of collecting new experiences, we become focused on one area. We no longer try new things. We continually choose the same path on a repeated basis and use the same approaches for living life, neglecting to check if they're actually producing the results we want. So hopefully this makes a compelling case for why we want new experiences. Because new experiences give us new insights. It increases our creativity. It can also create more luck, because the more dots we have, the more luck we have, the more connections we can make. And this really epitomizes Jeff Sauls. And I got the opportunity to meet Jeff when I was actually working at Accenture and I was leading a group and I was putting on a big conference for several hundred executives at Accenture. And I decided I wanted to hire a keynote speaker. And somebody had recommended Jeff. He talks about climbing mountains and the challenges of trying to do something that seems impossible and talked about how one of the mountains he was climbing, he survived, but one of his best friends didn't survive. And it sort of haunted him. And so he would go and he would try to climb it again and again. And it was just so moving and so powerful. And I remember after Jeff spoke, I was in tears. I was so deeply moved by what Jeff was saying and how he said it and the stories and the power of those stories. And I was supposed to say a few words after he was done it was my conference. I was supposed to say something of brilliant wisdom, I guess, afterwards. And I just couldn't talk. And I got up there and all I could say was under choked breath break. And it was time for everybody to take a break because I just couldn't say anything. And that was Jeff. Jeff is. He's inspirational, he's moving, he's passionate, he just lived life so fully. And so that was probably in the late 90s, I think it was probably like 1997 or so when I first hired him. And we stayed in touch because we really disconnected quickly. And then in 2003, I decided I was going to write my second book. And so I hopped in my car and I drove 12,000 miles and I spent 90 days living out of my car in random hotel rooms, not knowing where I was staying each night. And my goal was to interview really creative people. And so I interviewed about 150 really creative people over the course of those three months. And ultimately that experience, those stories got encapsulated into my Goal Free Living book. And one of the people I had a chance to spend time with was Jeff. And I got to really get to know him at a much deeper level. And so what I want to do is just share with you this excerpt from the Goal Free Living book that really provides a nice snapshot of Jeff's thoughts on life. And I hope you enjoy this. So this is directly out of the book, Goal Free Living. Several years ago, while speaking at a large corporate event, I met an amazing man, Jeff Salz. Since he was 17 years old, he led explorations into the wildest corners of our planet. Patagonia, the Amazon, Outer Mongolia, Eastern Siberia, the Himalayas, the Andes. An explorer of unchartered territories, now a doctor of cultural anthropology who has a passion for studying folklore, legends, myths, current and ancient civilizations. Jeff really knows how to face adversity with a sense of adventure. I caught up with him at a coffee shop in Del Mar, California. While we were sitting there enjoying the sun in our faces, I asked him what makes him tick, what makes him different. His response was, some men see the world as it is. I see it out of focus. As a kid, he lived in a magical world. And as an adult, he refused to leave it. He believes that is the key. He said that most people learn to compromise. But I live in the cartoon version of the way the world might, might be. I live a charmed life. Although I am an adventurer and climb mountains that have killed many before me, I've never broken any bones. You can Always find a way of operating beyond the ordinary if you try. The key is not to get dragged down by the ordinary. Don't take stuff seriously. I don't have much money. I'm always living life on the edge. But I feel incredibly successful. Wonderful work, good friends, and and a family who loves me. I move through life with a fanatical degree of confidence and an unreasonable degree of security. I operate from the belief that there is no way I can fail. This erases all fear from my life. A great deal of unhappiness comes from living out of the fearful aspect of one's nature. If you lived more fearlessly, you would take risks even if you knew you would fail. So that's Jeff. And I was surprised to learn that he was the son of an accountant, which seems like unusual routes for someone who's become a top adventurer. He said. As a kid, I used to tell my parents that I was going to a bar mitzvah on Long Island. Instead, I'd go to Central park in New York City, sleep in the park, and hang out with the bums, hookers and cops. When I traveled out west, I once swiped a tray from a cat cafeteria and the national park headquarters, went to a glacier, sat on the tray, and scooted down the glacier at 30 to 40 miles an hour. I was always trying new things. I believe you need to leap before you look, end quote. And I think this is a great lesson for everyone. So that's the excerpt from Goal Free Living. And I hope you liked that, because I really feel like it was a touching trip tribute to Jeff, a person who I really just love and admire his happiness, his adventure, and his zest for life. For many, Jeff's adventures may seem a bit extreme. And I'm not proposing that you model your experiences around what he's done with his life. These may not be the adventures for you, but what if you just tried something new? When was the last time you drove a different route from work? Or ordered an exotic food that you've never heard of? Or struck up a conversation with a tollbooth attendant? Read a section of a newspaper that you'd otherwise avoid? Maybe try a different brand of toothpaste? Ate dessert first? Start being more adventurous by changing little things first. Not only might they act as a catalyst for engaging in other more adventurous activities, but you may also discover something more fulfilling than your tried and true ways. If you sometimes leap before you look, you may just try some things that you've wanted to try in the past but were too afraid to attempt. So in today's episode, which was dedicated to Dr. Jeff Sals, we talked about why creativity is just having enough dots to connect that Steve Jobs quote. We talked the power of those connections. We then talked about how you can create your own luck by being open, being open to new experiences, open to new connections, not always looking for things to look a particular way, but having them look maybe differently than you expect them to look. Because when we do that, just like children and we seek out new experiences and we're open to new opportunities and open to new connections, we now create new solutions. We, we become more creative, we become better problem solvers. And the key with all this is to seek out adventure to try new things. Whatever it is, doesn't matter. Each of these will help you build new experiences, new dots, greater luck, and better skills. And with that, we are at the end of this week's episode. Typically we would solve one of your listener submitted problems. So if you have a problem you would like to submit, go to invisiblesolutionspodcast.com while you're there you can post a challenge that you want me to work on in the future. Also, even though we didn't use the lenses this week, you can always get the lenses from Invisible Solutions by going to getthelenses.com I look forward to being with you next week. Until then, happy problem solving. Sam.