E8: How Can We Create Luck?

What if luck is not random, but it is something you can create? 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 with that. Let's get started with today's episode. And today I want to maybe tackle something that's a little different. We may not use the lenses specifically for this, but I think it's an interesting question. And the question is, how do we create luck? How can we create luck? Now, that's an interesting question. And so first, let's go back and talk about luck a little bit, because, look, we seem to know people who are lucky. There are some people just always seem to be in the right place at the right time. Things are easy for them. So the question is, can we create it? Or to use the phraseology that we use in this podcast, is how can we create it? So I just went and looked at a few quotes around luck. One is from Samuel Goldwyn, who is the film producer. He said, the harder I work, the luckier I get. Thomas Jefferson said, I'm a big believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it. So it seems to be that there's a perspective that luck is a result of hard work. The more you put in, the more you get out. But I want to argue in this podcast that maybe luck does not necessarily come from hard work. It is not as random as it may appear. But luck is actually a probabilistic model. It's a probabilistic model which increases when you take on certain activities, because I really do believe you can create your own luck. So for those who know me, you know that I have an engineering background. In particular, I had an industrial engineering degree from Cornell University, and one of the areas of mathematics that I really enjoy is probability. And so when we look at luck through the lens of probability, we might start to see some things that we can do in order to increase our level of luckiness. So I think the key is to recognize that life, it doesn't always turn out the way we expect. I mean, when we have blinders on, when we have limits on what we do, we are going to limit our ability to be lucky. When we have specific outcomes, you might be limiting your range of possibilities and reducing your luck. So let's just dig into this from a probability perspective, because one of the things which I always find interesting is the odds of any two occurrences coming together. Very likely. The odds of a particular Thing happening, a particular occurrence happening is actually very low. So in other words, if you were open to any outcome, rather than a narrowly defined specific outcome, you have a really good chance of good things happening. Now, let me just give you an example, a very simple example. Some of you, many of you may have actually heard this before, but I think it's worth repeating because it will then help us explain how luck can actually work. So the example is the birthday game. And I just want you for a moment to imagine back before the pandemic, when you'd be in a room of people mingling about, you're swapping stories, you're having a great time, you can hear the clinks of the glass as people are drinking their drinks, and it's just a. It's a great time to celebrate. Maybe it's a Christmas party. And you are asked to share one simple piece of data with every person you meet, the month and day of your birthday. So each person goes up to the next person, they shake hands, they say what their birthday is, and in a matter of minutes, you will inevitably hear someone shout out, whoa, someone has the same birthday that I do. We have the same birthday. What are the odds of that? And we use that expression a lot. What are the odds of that? And I think that's a really great question. So what are the odds of two people having the same birthday, the month and the date in a room of people? Now, for those of you who enjoy probability, you would probably know that you need 367 people to guarantee that two people in the room have the same birthday, 367 people to be 100% certain that two people have the same birthday. The reason for that is there's 366 days in a leap year, and therefore. So you need one person for each day plus one. But it gets more interesting if you ask the question, how many people do you need to have in a room to have a 50% chance that two people will have the same birthday? Some people immediately assume it is half of 367, so roughly 184. And that's a logical guess, but it's not correct. In fact, you only need 23 people in a room to have a 50% chance that two people have the same birthday. Try it out. Sometimes you will be shocked. With just 40 people in a room, you will have a nearly 90% chance that two people will have the same birthday. So that's the odds of two people having any birthday, any birthday matching somebody else. But here's where it Gets really interesting. How many people do you need to have in a room in order for there to be 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? Now, surprisingly, the number now increases to over 600 people. So when we're looking for any occurrence, any birthdays matching up, we only needed 23 people. But we're looking for a particular outcome, we need over 600. So the likelihood of any event happening is quite high, whereas the likelihood of a particular event happening is quite low. Think about sometime that you were sitting on a plane and the person next to you happened to be a friend of your cousin or something like that, and you think to yourself, what are the odds of that? Well, it's actually really good because the odds of any occurrence happening is extremely high. Now, if you said before you got on the plane, what are the odds that the person sitting next to me will be a friend of my cousin? Well, that's really unlikely because you've stated a specific outcome. So here's the thing is, when we set narrowly defined goals, we are looking for a particular outcome to occur. That is, we've defined a specific outcome we're looking for. So to make that happen requires a large number of things coming together in a particular way. In an earlier episode, I talked about my Goal Free Living book. Now, I want to be clear. The book does not suggest that you live without goals, but rather you change your relationship to goals. And I always describe Goal Free Living as having a sense of direction, not a specific destination. And then you meander with purpose. And what I mean by meandering with purpose is as you get new insights, as you get new data, as you get new experiences, you change and adjust your direction. So instead of going directly from point A to point B, we're now just sort of meandering, we're navigating, we're making adjustments as we move forward. So when you are not looking for a specific outcome, but are open to any outcome that could be of interest, the likelihood of synchronistic events happening is quite high. So to further increase your probability of success is what you want to do is have. Have more experiences, collect more experiences. Because the more experiences you have and the more you can bring them together, the more you're able to create those synchronistic events. So it's in some respects, about the quantity of experiences and I love this quote from Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs once said, creativity is just having enough dots to connect. Creativity is just having enough dots to connect, connect experiences and synthesize new things. And the reason creative people are able to do that is, is they've either had more experiences or they thought more about their experiences than other people. So I find this to be really interesting. If we want to increase our luck, we need to have more dots, we need to have more experiences and we need to be more open. So in order to live a creative life, you want to be able to seek out adventure, you want to try new things, you want to gather new experiences. People who live extraordinary lives, they think like explorers. They know that diverse experiences can enrich their view of the world. And every day will give them an interesting opportunity to discover something new. So I want you to just think about children. I mean, I don't have any children, but I love to observe and talk with people who have children. And one of the things which I found is that, and there's so many studies that support this, is that young children are more creative. In fact, there was one study that was done that showed that 98%, 98% of five year old children who were tested were highly creative, while only 2% of adults over the age of 25 were. So we went from being creative, passionate, playful children to a nation of adults filled with burdens, self doubt and stress. And I think one of the obstacles to our diminished ability to be creative and to live creatively is that playful mindset. It's that mindset of being able to, you know, see the world with fresh eyes. And so children are always looking at the world with fresh eyes. They're always collecting new experiences. Most things are new to them at the peak of their creativity at five years old, it starts to diminish quickly because by the time they're 10, it's down to 30%. So what's happened? Well, at the age of five, we go to school and we're taught to memorize and regurgitate facts. We are focused on particular outcomes. So we start narrowing our range of possibilities. Peer pressure sets in. We feel compelled to wear the same brand of sneakers. We stop thinking for ourselves. And as we get older, we continue through life planning and eliminating dots. We go to college and we choose a major, and then eventually, what do we have Left? We have one dot. We know that.it's our area of expertise. It's what we know really well, but we have nothing else to connect it to. So instead of collecting new Experiences, we become focused on one area. So we are no longer trying new things. We might try new things that are in our area of expertise, but we lose our breadth. And breadth is where we get creativity, and breadth is where we generate luck. I want to give you just a very simple exercise. So we're not going to use the lenses from the Invisible Solutions book today, but I want to give you a different set of lenses that anybody can use to increase their luck by increasing their experiences and their breadth of experiences. And this is going to sound silly, but it really does work. Because what ends up happening is most people go through life like they're wearing these glasses, these glasses that filter out most of the world and let in only a small percentage of what they see. And the filter is almost always based on our past experiences, our education, our beliefs, our interests, basically anything that makes you you. So to change your perspective, you need to change your filter, change your lens. Now, unfortunately, it's very difficult for us to identify the assumptions and beliefs and everything else that's so deeply ingrained inside of us. So because it's so hard, I'm just gonna give you a very simple way to change the way you see the world. I'm going to have you change your lens. Now, in this case, I just want you to wake up in the morning and make believe you're someone different. Make believe you're someone different. Now, this sounds like it's a really goofy activity, but I really do believe it works. So make believe you're a detective. Make believe you're a mechanic, an artist, a gardener, it doesn't matter, as long as it's someone other than you. And then you'll start to see things over the course of the day that you have had never seen before that were right in front of your eyes. Because what you focus on, what your filter focuses on, what your lens focuses on, is going to come into focus, and everything else will remain blurry. So if your Mozart, one day, you're gonna focus on the music, the auditory aspects. You're gonna hear the birds, the jackhammers, the honking horns, and you're gonna hear things that maybe you didn't hear before. If you're Rembrandt, you'll see the world as art. You'll see shapes and patterns and notice beauty and lighting revealed before your eyes. Imagine you're Oprah. What would she say? From an entrepreneurial business perspective. I live in Orlando, Florida. Imagine you're Walt Disney. You'll see some levels of creativity you've never seen before. Or ask yourself, what would Bill Gates do? What would Stephen Spielberg do if they were in your shoes? Just try this. I find it to be a very, very simple exercise that's extremely powerful. We don't need the lenses from the Invisible Solutions book to increase our luck, to change the way we see the world. We can just try on somebody else's lenses, somebody else's glasses, stand in someone else's shoes. And I have had the great pleasure of meeting and talking with Richard Wiseman, who has done so much great work over the years. And in particular, the book that I want to refer to right now is his book called the Luck Factor. He wrote this many, many years ago. But one of the things that I liked that he said in that book was he said that you want to be open to new experiences. Unlucky people are stuck in routines. When they see something new, they want no part of it. Lucky people always want something new. They're prepared to take risks. They're relaxed to see opportunities in the first place. So for me, the key to answering the question is, how can we increase our level of luck? How can we create luck? Is to broaden our perspective, to not be so focused on specific outcomes. Remember that probabilistic model where if we're looking for a particular outcome, it's unlikely to happen, but if we're open to anything, we have a much greater likelihood of something very amazing happening. So in order to make that work, we need to have more experiences. And the best way to have more experiences is to increase our level of creativity. And the technique I shared with you is just changing your lenses changes your filter. Change the way you see the world by making believe you're someone else. Try that out for 10 days. I think you'll be amazed at what you see and what luck starts to get created. So I want to come back to where we started in the very beginning, where the definitions of luck were all about hard work. I don't want you to believe that hard work is the only aspect now. Hard work is, of course, part of it. You can't sit on your butt and do nothing. But the right work done purposefully will have the greatest impact. So again, I think, meander with purpose, have a sense of direction, not a specific destination, and then allow life to unfold and adjust and course, correct and identify new opportunities. Be open to new experiences. Be open to opportunities that may not have been in your peripheral vision in the past. But once you start expanding what you are open to and what you're willing to take on, you'll increase your luck again. If you want to get the lenses from the book, go to getthelenses.com if you want to learn more about the Goal Free living book, go to meanderwithpurpose.com and with that, we will end today's episode. I look forward to being with you next week. Happy problem solving.