The Science of Luck: How to Manifest Your Dream Reality | Stanford Researcher

So is there a science to being luckier in your life?

Oh, absolutely. The definition of luck is success or failure apparently caused by chance. It looks, and it might look to you, it might look to someone else like it was caused by chance. But when you pull back the curtain, you see all the things that happened, like applying for that job. I'm lucky that I got an interview or a second interview. Guess what? I wrote that thank you note, or I was prepared. There were lots of things I did to get me to the next step.

She's a Stanford professor, a bestselling author, and one of the world's leading voices on creativity. Please welcome Dr. Tina Seelig.

The most common thing I say at work is, what can I do for you? What can I do for you? How can I be helpful? Most of the time people don't need anything, but if they do, it's usually something little that would be easy for me, like a little 5-minute favor that I can do. It's really meaningful to them.

What would you say then is the formula to creating more luck in your life?

Okay.

The framework that I present in my book is that So is there a science to being luckier in your life?

Oh, absolutely. I think it's very, very important for us to start with the definition because— Of luck? Yes.

What is the definition of luck? Okay.

So when I ask people, there's a lot of hand waving. It's like, but the definition is really important. The definition of luck is success or failure apparently caused by chance. Apparently. It looks, and it might look to you or it might look to someone else like it was caused by chance, but when you pull back the curtain, you you see all the things that happen that set the stage for something really lucky to happen. Also, it's extraordinarily important to differentiate between fortune and luck.

What's the difference?

Big difference. Fortune is the things that happen to you. Luck is something over which you have much more control. So you're fortunate or unfortunate where you're born, who your parents are, what the weather is on your birthday. I mean, all these things that are out of your control. I was thinking this morning, boy, I'm so fortunate there's no traffic on my way to the airport, right? These things were out of my control. But luck is something that I control, like applying for that job, right? I'm lucky that I got an interview or a second interview. Guess what? I wrote that thank you note or I was prepared. There were lots of things I did to get me to the next step. And we're in a constant dance in our lives between fortune and luck, the things that happened to us and how we respond. And sometimes that dance is so closely tied that it's hard to differentiate. But if you really tease them apart, you start seeing the places where you have more agency than you might think.

Where do you feel like you're the luckiest in your life?

Oh my goodness. I would say the people in my life. I really have the most wonderful family, the most wonderful friends. And I realize that I cultivate that. I spent a lot of time doing things for other people. The most common thing I say at work is, what can I do for you? What can I do for you? How do I— how can I be helpful? And also with friends, you know, what can I do to be helpful? Usually the things that most of the time people don't need anything, but if they do, it's usually something little that would be easy for me, like a little 5-minute favor that I can do that it's really meaningful to them. Making introduction, giving them a resource, helping them find their way through some, you know, political quagmire that they don't understand. Like, oh wow, thank you so much. And then it comes back later and it's like, I didn't even remember I did it because it was such a little thing, but it was so meaningful to them.

In some of my talks that I give, I like to do an exercise towards the beginning of my speech that has everyone take out their phone and think about one person in their life that has done something for them that they want to appreciate and send them a quick little text towards the beginning of my speech appreciating them and just say, I appreciate you for this. And it's amazing. At the end of my speech, I say, take out your phone and see if those people reply.

I love that.

People are like, the responses they get are so much gratitude and appreciation in return. And I say, listen, what you just created with 15 seconds of sending an appreciation text to a friend or whoever, family member, coworker, the bond you created with that individual and how it made them feel today. Goes so far into the future for creating luck for you, the potential for more good to happen. And all it took was 30 seconds.

Well, it's such a great example. I just love that. That's so totally brilliant to do that. And, you know, in a short period of time. Well, just a few weeks ago as an experiment, right? Do a lot of experimenting. And that's actually another aspect to luck is try lots of things, keep what works. I mean, clearly this podcast at some point was an experiment and you just kept adding more fuel to the fire. That's another thing, like building on success. So again, you know, pulling it apart, but I did an experiment. I ran a free online luck makeover workshop. I thought, what's the minimum viable intervention I could have to help people get luckier? And I just put it on LinkedIn. I had about 75 people who signed up and I just did two Sunday, two 1-hour workshops, one week apart. And then we went through all these different things that people can do to be luckier. And they had to then make a commitment to do something during the week and then report back the next week. A number of people chose appreciation. So can I give you some examples of what happened? As one of the things they were gonna do that week. So can I give you some examples? Yes, please. Okay, so one person went to get their car fixed and when they got their car fixed, they were so appreciative of the mechanic. They said, "Thank you so much. You did a great job. The car is working so beautifully now and it's really clean." I couldn't be more delighted with how your customer service was. And the guy said, you know what? I'm gonna give you $80 off instantly. Right? Appreciation.

Just because of appreciation?

Because of appreciation. Another person called up someone who had been a mentor to them and helped them get a job a year earlier and gave them some coaching. And they said, you know what? Called them up a year later and said, I just wanna let you know how things are going and I really appreciate all the advice you gave me. At the end of the call, they had some other really cool opportunities they had to know about before. And a third person contacted their chess coach. It was a woman. She was, I think, at Oxford and she was now a poor grad student. And she had been a professional chess player. She called up her chess coach she hadn't talked to in 3 years and said, "I just want to thank you so much for everything you did for me that was really meaningful." And at the end of the call, he said, "You know what? I'd be happy. I know you can't afford it. I will coach you for free." If you, maybe you can help me hone my English. And all 3 of them, I mean, realize there's no statute of limitations, right? It doesn't mean you have to do it right away. Like even 3 years later, it was valuable.

Wow. That's beautiful. What would you say then is the formula to creating more luck in your life?

Okay, so the framework that I present in my book is that luck is ubiquitous. Opportunities for good luck are everywhere. Plentiful, but they're like the wind. They're invisible. They're powerful and they're ever-present, but they're invisible. And so if they're like the wind, you need a sail to catch them. And so how do you catch the winds of luck? That's the framework. And so there are 3 things you need to do, major things. One is you need to build that ship. That's all the internal work you have to do. Think of the quote, fortune favors the prepared mind. That ship is your prepared mind. Next, you need to recruit your crew because luck seldom sails solo. You need other people. This is the appreciation plays into that.

Team sport.

Exactly. Luck is a team sport. And third is how do you hoist the sail? So that is the things you do every single day to catch that wind that's blowing by.

Wow. Didn't you have an image of this too?

I do. I do.

I do. You want to see?

Yes.

See it.

Well, where did it go?

It's right here. Yeah.

Yeah, so I created this little image. Can you see that? Yeah. And the thing that's really fun about this image is I wanted to capture all the ways that you can engage with the winds of luck.

Okay.

So if you are engaging with the winds of luck, you can stay inside. You can essentially ignore it, shut the curtains, shut the blinds, say, I really don't care. My life is my life. I'm not gonna do anything about it. You can be a wind vane on the top of the house.

Spinning, huh?

Where you are looking at it, you notice it, but you don't do anything. It's funny, I was thinking about this yesterday because I was giving a talk at a part of Stanford campus I hadn't been to frequently, and I thought, wow, there are all these things out the window here that I'm actually not very familiar with. And here I am on this campus and I'm— see it. Am I going to engage or not? We often see things that are there, opportunities, but we don't do anything. God, you know what? I need to go to that museum. I need to introduce myself to that person. I need to engage because otherwise I'm just a wind vane spinning around seeing it, but not actually doing it. Yes. You can be a hot air balloon, and that's actually an interesting thing. Sometimes in our life we have to be a hot air balloon, letting the winds take us where they may. I know that when I moved out to California when I was much younger and I was like, I just want to be a leaf in the wind. I want to see what opportunities surface. And so there are times in our life where we want to sort of, like when you're in college, take lots of classes.

Who knows what I'm going to major in?

Exactly, exactly. Before something's your passion, it's something you know nothing about. So I'm going to go try lots of things. You can be a windmill. A windmill is capturing that luck efficiently in a local place, in a job, in a class, in your lab, in your podcast. Like saying, okay, I'm gonna harness this right here and squeeze all the juice out of the opportunity right here. Or you can say, there's something I wanna accomplish or something I wanna do. It's not here right now, and I'm gonna build a sailboat and I'm gonna go out in search of the winds and I'm gonna go move my sail. I'm gonna trim that sail to catch luck to take me to my destination.

Wow. What if you're in a sailboat and you don't know where you're going? Well, and you don't see it in front of you. What's ahead?

Yeah, you have to have a compass. You need to know where you're going. And that's one of the parts of your prepared mind is having some very clear objectives. Otherwise, I mean, I guess you can go out for a day and go sailing around the bay and come back, but if you wanna, which is also fun, right? But if you have a destination, it's much easier to point the sail in the right direction.

What has been the most surprising part of your research around luck that would shock most people?

You know, there are some foundational things that people don't realize affect their luck. So the opening chapter is about values and why you need to be really clear on your core values to be luckier.

Why is that?

Because, well, all you have to do is read the newspaper every day and see people who weren't clear on their core values who end up in prison. Oh, right. People who get on a slippery slope, make decisions that we're not smart. If you take the time to really think about what's important to you, what you won't compromise, so that when you're asked to do something, "Whoa, will you just fudge these numbers or will you just exaggerate what this product does?" Or for me, it was a situation when I was in just my first job out of school, I was asked to misrepresent myself at a conference.

Wow.

And to go there, not tell people I was part of the working for the company and to say I was Tina Seelig from Stanford. Just be there.

Research and spy a little bit. Exactly.

Yeah, but I got caught. I got caught.

Because you lied.

I lied. I lied. I mean, and I didn't for one second even take the time to think that, wow, this was actually not okay. And there are lots of ways to inoculate yourself against making decisions like that. You can have a personal board of advisors, people who you can go to and say, "Hey, listen, Lewis, does this smell right? I'm being asked to do this. Is this okay? Imagine it on the front page of the newspaper. How would I feel if the story of what I did was something that everybody knew?" And also being able to walk away, knowing that that's an option, that you can, if you're being asked to do something that you doesn't isn't consistent with your values, that you can say no.

That's so, that's so interesting because, you know, I say that not all money is good money. And in my business, you know, it's mostly run through sponsorships. And there's a lot of different shows out there have different sponsors, but for me, I decided early on there's certain categories I'm not going to promote on my show. My show's all about positivity and personal growth and development and becoming a better version of yourself. And there's a lot of companies that, let's say, don't support that, you know, that want to give me a lot of money. And I've said no to from the beginning. But sometimes you're like, oh man, that's, that's a lot of money to say no to. Like, do I really want to say that? Can I get behind this? You know, and it's— and you've got— I think you've got to be so clear on your values. And because I'm clear on that, maybe I've made less money over the time But I feel at peace. Yeah. And what I'm endorsing, let's say.

Exactly, exactly.

And yeah, but not all money is good money.

Yeah, it's interesting. We do a number of case studies with our students that help them practice doing this.

What does that look like?

We'll say, well, it might be a donor, you know, to the university who wants to give you money, but they have a lot of strings attached. At what point do you say, no, I'd rather not take it, even though it would be game-changing, right? Like, oh my gosh, this is gonna help us get out of debt. This is going to help us retain our faculty. It was like, at what point do you say, no, I won't do this? There's a case that I use in my classes. It's a Harvard Business School case about a young man who really has a lot to prove in his life, and his boss starts asking him to fudge the numbers. And he's the CFO of the company. And it's really sort of like a proving expense reports of things that really are not kosher.

They both have wrong values. Exactly. The boss and the CFO.

Exactly. But you're seeing the story from this young guy's perspective. And at what point do you say, I say no to your boss or quit your job? Yeah. Sometimes what happens though is you get so far into it that you're putting sort of, you're now so deep into it, you can't leave. Now you are also culpable.

You can't leave and you're the one who's probably gonna take the fall.

Exactly.

Because the boss is not going to take the fall. It's going to go on you probably.

Yeah, exactly.

Say, "Oh, you're the one who made these mistakes, not me." You might be the one going to jail or who knows what.

Yeah. And I really, sometimes young people are so in a hurry. I see this. They're so in a hurry to be successful as measured by making a lot of money. And I really try to urge them to just slow down, just not get out over your skis because Patience, right? This is a long game. Yes, you might see someone who like won the lottery essentially by instantly at a very young age having early success.

Mm-hmm.

But it doesn't preclude you're doing it in the long run.

That's true. And it might compound even more in the long run, the more patient you're willing to be. There's so many relationships I built from 2008, 2009, 2010 when I was just getting started in the online business world. That I didn't do anything with for the first 10, 15 years that are just now because we've stayed connected and something opened up for one of us just now starting to work together or, you know, and it's how we've called, how we both cultivated the relationship over time that we both have the ability to help one another or something like that. And had I pushed everyone early on, out and thinking, what can you do for me? I don't think I'd be here today.

Yeah, well, I think it's also really interesting to differentiate between networking as people define it and actually building real relationships.

Real relationships.

I mean, honestly, I can't stand the concept of networking. I mean, silly, what a waste of time. It's really about building trust. And so when you ask what are the things that people misunderstand about luck, building trusting relationships over time is really powerful. In fact, I have a story about one of my former students who ended up becoming the videographer for Kamala Harris at the White House. Wow. How did she get that job? Well, she had a professor when she was in college who she took a documentary class, loved the class, and stayed in touch over 10 years, just stayed in touch with this professor, sent samples of things she was doing, and they just became colleagues and friends. When she graduated from graduate school, She sent out hundreds of applications for jobs and could not get a job. She was really panicked and she reached out to this professor and said, "Hey, I'm just really struggling. I just need one job. I can't even get an answer." The professor said, "You know, I just got a call from a friend who's trying to source some candidates for this job at the White House. May I throw your hat in the ring?" Lo and behold, she got the job. Wow. She would not have gotten the job if she just reached out to this professor, you know, out of the blue, right? It was, they, they had a 10-year-long real relationship.

Yeah.

That opened the door to something really special.

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Well, let me tell you, it can go both ways, right? You can have a negative experience that people basically say, no, I'm not gonna work with you. I mean, luck is a long game. I mean, sure, you get calls for references for people. Sure. And you have to decide, wow, is this someone who I wanna support or not? There's a funny story about 18 years ago. I was on a trip with my family to Costa Rica, and I'm so excited about this trip. Our son was about 16, 17 years old. So excited. Trip was over the Christmas break, and we got there and this trip turned into a disaster. Disaster. It was a Stanford alumni trip. They had scoped out the trip during the off-season. And when we got there, it was high season. And it turned into a party. Bling. There were bars in the pool. The drinking age was not enforced. The music was blaring day and night. We were right at the beach, so it was really dangerous. The alcohol, the water. There were a lot of parents who were so upset, they just took off. Other parents, who were really angry and screaming and yelling at the staff who certainly had nothing to do with planning this trip. They were just running it. I apparently was very supportive and helpful. I don't even remember. Honestly, I don't remember. Over time I forgot about it. Tragedy plus time equals comedy. We went through it. But guess what? 15 years later, I was being considered for my current job, which is my dream job. And it turns out one of the people on the team was the person leading that trip.

No way. And they remembered?

Of course they remembered. I didn't remember her. I mean, it was 15 years earlier.

I didn't remember her. They remembered how you handled it and made it better and made it more.

It wasn't until after I was hired several months that she told me that she had led that trip and it was a nightmare for her. And I know and She told me there's no way I would've gotten that job if I had behaved badly 15 years earlier.

Well, of course. Well, that's crazy.

Yeah, but that's the point. I mean, think about it. You know, you hear from someone who, you know, I see this all the time, like somebody who's behaving badly and I feel really bad for them. I think this is gonna come back to bite you. I'm sorry.

It's so interesting because what you're saying there is like every decision we make on a daily basis, is setting ourselves up for 5, 10, 20 years in the future to have the most incredible luck and life of our dreams based on how we act today.

I love it. The one of my favorite things I ever told my son when he was in high school was the choices you make today determine the choices you will have tomorrow. Mm-hmm. Um, I, I think that we don't realize that, that we are making choices every single minute, every single day. And it sets the stage for the opportunities that flow to you in the future.

What is actually happening in the brain that causes most people to miss lucky opportunities even when they're right in front of them, even if there's something right in front of them that they could take, but they miss it?

Okay. I love that question. I mean, I don't know if you know, I'm a neuroscientist. Yes. Right. So I certainly— I'm not going to answer this from a neuroscience perspective, but it's kind of fun that you asked me about the brain. I think a lot of it has to do with the story people tell about who they are in the world, that we all have a story, not just the story we tell about ourselves, but also the story other people tell us about ourselves. We're constantly integrating how people are treating us and how we think about the opportunities. And sometimes we don't take opportunities because we don't think we deserve them or we don't think we can do it. We limit ourselves. I have such— because I have so many students, I get to see every single day how their stories get manifest in the world. Those people who have a can-do attitude and feel, "Sure, I can do that. Give me a hard problem. I can crack it." I'll figure it out. I'll figure it out. And the others who go, "Oh, no, no, I can't do that." Or, "I want to be the president of my home country." Or, "Oh, gosh, I would like to..." They have very low aspirations for themselves. And I I think it's incredibly important for us to each own our story. If you think about it, it's the same skills, same skills to do something on a tiny stage as a big stage. And you get to decide what stage you play out your life.

That's true. Wow.

You get to decide. Now, there's nothing wrong with playing out your life on a small stage. That might be super comfortable and that's what you want, but I think you should be intentional about it.

Is there anything that's felt scary to you when luck has come to you?

Oh, that's an interesting question. And what would be an example? Tell me, how would you answer that?

I mean, like where you're like, wow, this massive opportunity came to me and like every week and every month there's just more good things that come to me constantly. My life is so lucky and it's just bigger and bigger. Have you ever felt that way? Like, why is this happening to me versus it doesn't happen for others? Do you feel guilty about how lucky you are?

When one person, I'm gonna say this more generically than personally, but when one person in a friendship or in a group of friends, family, family is having a lot of luck and someone else is struggling, it creates a lot of tension because the person who's really struggling is probably frustrated, envious, disappointed. And there may be things that they're doing. It might not just be bad fortune. It could be health issues. It could be— I mean, there are all sorts of things that can happen that really get in the way, that are headwinds that really push you back. But I think that's the biggest problem when one person is really successful and has a lot, had a lot of good fortune, even if they've worked really hard for it, even if they have, it's difficult when there are people who haven't and that creates a tension. I think the question then is how can you be as generous as you can to those and help them in a way that would be meaningful?

You had another graph here as well, right? Yeah. Can you share what this is?

Yes. So one of the things that I spend a lot of time with my students, is helping them understand how to take risks because—

Do you have to take risks in order to be lucky?

You bet. You have to push yourself. You have to get out of your comfort zone. But let me ask you a question. Are you a risk-taker?

Yes. Okay.

That was a trick question though, because there are lots of different types of risk, right? Risk is not binary, right? There are physical risks.

Yes.

Probably you very comfortable taking physical risks. There are intellectual risks, right? Taking on a problem.

Social risk.

Social risk, so getting up and giving a talk in front of a big group. Okay, emotional risk, telling people how you feel. There are financial risks, right, investing in a company. Political risks, you know, speaking truth to power. So this is a riskometer, a riskometer that we developed in our class where students get to And you can do it too. You don't have to be a student. Yeah, yeah. Map their risk profile. So it's called a spider chart because it looks like a spider web. The inside is at the bottom and the ordinate is 0 and then 10 at the end. And so you map your risk profile.

So 1 to 10, 10 being you're willing to take the most risk.

Exactly.

Exactly. And you do it in each area.

Exactly. Okay. So are you a—

let's start with Political is probably my lowest.

Okay. I think you're a pretty high risk taker all the way around.

I'm going to go— I'm very high all around except for political. I went right to the least already.

Low political.

But it's more like I want to— I don't want to talk about it on my show because I want to be able to have everyone involved.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. In fact, right. You're probably not going to say your opinion because you want other people to be able to express.

But I also don't— also, I'm not as knowledgeable in that category. So I'm also like, well, I don't have as much intellect in that area to really speak about certain things. So, you know.

Let's ask questions.

Yeah, yeah. Right.

So intellectual risks. Tactical risks.

What does that look like?

It means a problem. Like, okay, I'm gonna have a, there's a problem, I'm gonna solve it.

Yeah, I would say it's pretty high then.

Pretty high.

Yeah, yeah.

Financial?

Pretty high.

Pretty high.

Yeah, yeah. Social is the highest because it used to be That and emotional used to be the lowest because I was so afraid of embarrassing myself, afraid of looking silly, afraid of judgment of other people, and I was afraid of exposing my emotions. So I would mask them when I was kind of my teens and 20s. So those were the lowest, but I've made those probably the biggest.

Well, I love this. Here's what's so important about what you just said. They weren't fixed. No, you stretched.

I stretched.

You stretched and you said, you said, I want to be able to accomplish this, therefore I need to do this. I need to get comfortable making social risks.

It's interesting, I met someone when I was 23. I was actually learning to salsa dance because that was a big fear of mine. So this was a social risk, was like being in a Latin dance club as like a tall white guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was like, I do not belong here based on like society's standards. And that's why I went there, because I was like, I want to learn how to, how to belong in some place that I'm not supposed to belong, right? And I met a guy who was an amazing dancer that I was like just observing when I went to the club, the nightclub. And I asked him what he did for a living, and he said, I'm a public speaker. I go, man, that would terrify me also. I was like, this is from one fear to another. And he said, let's meet up like tomorrow, we'll go get coffee, and I'll tell you what I to do or whatever. And he taught me, he was like, if you want to change the world in any way, if you want to change the world at a company you're with or on a bigger platform, you need to be able to speak in front of people, you know, 5 people at a time or 5,000 people at a time. If you want to enroll people, you need to be able to communicate. And he was like, you've got to go to Toastmasters, go every week, it's a public speaking class, and overcome your fear until it pierce.

I love that.

And I did that every week for a year, and I humiliated myself and embarrassed myself, but it was my social experiment. How can I improve? And so that expanded on this web of— what do you call it again? Web of—

yeah, this is your riskometer.

Riskometer. So that expanded on the social, and then also the emotional side expanded when I got into relationships and intimacy, and when I started healing wounds of the past and exposing myself by talking to other people about my my insecurities from my past. And once I was able to expand those, I felt unlimited in what I could create. Isn't it amazing? Like I was superhuman almost.

You know, it's such a funny thing when you said you went to Toastmasters, a couple of thoughts. One is we teach storytelling. We have an entire year-long program on communication skills for all of our first-year students.

That's cool.

And they say this is one of the most important things they learn.

It should be mandatory.

Exactly. Get up and every week they're practicing telling stories and learning new approaches to know your first and last lines, add in mystery, add in deep, like all different things to help you become a better storyteller. But I also thought, what would I do if I wasn't afraid? Like, what is it? And it's funny, I was like, oh my gosh, I don't know. It's like, it's so off the radar for me that I don't even, wouldn't even consider it. Is singing. Like, I've been told since I was a little kid, you can't sing, you can't carry a tune. So I'm thinking that that's your next level.

That's your next level. Whatever you're afraid of, exactly.

Like, you know, could I actually—

100% you could, but you got to commit every week for a year. Yeah, but this is your new social challenge. You know, it's interesting because you said before we got started, I want And keep that up for a second, because you said when I asked you before we started, I said, what's the biggest thing blocking people from becoming luckier in their lives? You said the story they tell themselves about themselves. Yeah. And the story that other people tell about you that you heard, maybe it was only one time, but you believed it over and over. Maybe you heard it over and over. You can't sing. Don't go do dance.

Do something else. Just move your mouth, right?

Just— Yeah, yeah. Maybe don't sing. Means you're not there yet. So whatever story you believed, you've held on to it your entire life, and now it's time, Tina, for you to break free.

Okay, okay. Imagine— I'm gonna sing.

Yeah, imagine the, the next level of luck you create because of the next level of internal freedom you develop. You know, you're the one talking about in the sailboat you need the values and the internal skills to be able to then have the crew and everything of the sail open, but That's the next level. We all have something.

Exactly. Well, it's funny, funny, not funny. When my son was in second grade, his teacher told him he couldn't draw.

Oh man. Yeah, I had that too.

Did you really? Yeah.

When I just, you believed it and you're like, ah, I'm not going to try anymore.

Then he stopped. I mean, what a tragedy. And so the messaging that adults can give their students, What are your thoughts on, on words being a program? Say more.

So, you know, the words we hear and the words we speak about ourselves become a program that we believe. You heard you're not a good singer, and it became a psychological program, essentially a weapon against you, because you interpreted that story as true. And if we speak over and over, I can't do this, I'm not good at singing, I'm not able to do this, I can never find love again, I can never trust someone again, I'm not good with money. Whatever the words we're saying, it becomes a psychological program, and I believe it becomes an imprint in our nervous system where our body starts to believe what we're thinking.

Of course.

And therefore we're manifesting that belief in a negative or positive way.

You're absolutely right. I mean, it's again, these stories. So this is a major thing that gets in the way of people achieving their dreams is the story they tell. I have some sort of both positive and negative experience of this in my own life. I mean, when I was a kid, I was really interested in the brain. I mean, I used to, we didn't have the internet and I would read my parents' medical encyclopedia. That was like the only thing I had access to to find out. Like, how do you do brain surgery? And my parents had a friend who is a neurosurgeon, and I asked him some question. I got up the nerve to ask him, and he made some joke and was really dismissive. And it was terrible. Honestly, I could have been his protégé. I could have been. I mean, it was such a disappointment to be really dismissed because of my interest. You're curious. I was really curious. But when I was in college and I had a professor teacher who wrote on the top of my paper, "Tina, you think like a scientist." Boom. Every cell in my body, every cell shifted at that moment.

Isn't it fascinating?

It's amazing. When someone gives you that, and I'm very aware of it, that we have such power over what we say to people.

Stanford professor and as a neuroscientist yourself, what have you noticed through the study of neuroscience on the words we use about ourselves and the words we speak into others on how it unlocks greater possibilities for their life?

Well, first of all, I have not been in the lab for a long time, so I'm not gonna speak as a neuroscientist, but I, I just think that we need to really be very aware of those messages. And change the story. And we can change the story. I have often asked people to write their life story from different perspectives. Write your life story from perspective of all of the trauma that you've had. Now write your story from all of the amazing good fortune you've had. Now write the story with all the funniest things that have happened to you. And you realize, oh, every single day, You have a choice of which way, which frame you wanna use. So I think I spent a lot of time thinking about framing problems and how you could look at things from different directions to completely unlock new solutions. Really? Yeah.

So gimme an example. If someone is faced with a challenge in their life right now, maybe something that's really hard, they're going through a breakup, a breakdown, bankruptcy, they're not getting the opportunity they want. They feel like a friend betrayed them, whatever it is. Is and they're experiencing this challenge right now, how can they tell a different story around that? Not to bypass the pain, but to see it for what it is, to create more opportunities in their life.

Having the ability to framestorm— so that's what I call it, to framestorm, framestorm— that is to brainstorm the question you're asking before you even start coming up with the solutions is really important because what you're asking is, you're assuming that you know what the problem is. If you're saying, I want to get married, well, what is it that you really want? Is it that you want companionship? Is it that you want security? Is it you want children? There are lots of things.

You don't want to be alone.

I don't want to be alone. So it's really important to framestorm and to think what problem you're really trying to solve before you run to the solution. We so often think that we know what the right problem is and we race, especially in school. You're like, how quickly can you do your multiplication tables? You rush to the answers. But living in the problem space and really understanding what the issue is at the beginning is one of the most powerful things you can do. Can I, okay, you want me to give you a fun example from my classes on creative problem solving? So I will ask people, okay, since I just flew here, I'll say, you know, everybody has a suitcase, right? And I'll say, okay, make a list of all the things you love and hate about your suitcase. So people will make all sorts of, you know, the handle gets stuck, the wheels get dirty, there's not enough space. Blah, blah, blah. It's too heavy. I have to lift it, whatever. All the things they don't like about their suitcase. So I said, great, design a new suitcase that solves these problems. So they go and they quickly, you know, they're so excited designing this brand new suitcase. And I go, great, why do we use a suitcase in the first place? And they're stuck. It's like, what? What problem were we really trying to solve with a suitcase? And it takes them a while to figure it out. Because we just assume we have to use a suitcase, but we use a suitcase because we want to have the things we need at our destination. We don't use a suitcase because we love packing a suitcase or we like dragging a suitcase around or we like losing our suitcase. We use a suitcase despite the fact that we hate using a suitcase. So I go solve that problem, the problem of how do I have the things I need at my destination.

Hmm. The School of Greatness is brought to you in partnership with Airbnb. And when you travel for a big event, you realize how much the right space matters. It's so important. A game, a conference, a tournament, a weekend that you've been looking forward to for months. After a full day out, it feels so good to come back to a place that feels comfortable, grounded, and more like home. That's one of the things I appreciate about Airbnb. Because people are traveling for meaningful moments all the time, and having a space that feels warm and welcoming can make the entire experience better. And it also makes me think about how many moments are happening in our own cities all the time, whether it be a game or a tournament or a conference or a big weekend that can bring so many people into town. And for anyone who has a space that they've thought about sharing those big event weekends can be a great opportunity to list it on Airbnb and also earn some extra income. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.com/host. You know, I go back and forth to Mexico a lot because my wife is a movie star and makes movies there. And so she films a lot of movies there in Mexico City mostly. And we were going back and forth and And I was like, ah, I don't really like staying in a hotel. It's just like a different hotel every time and carrying this luggage and all this stuff. And I go, why don't we just get a small little place and we just have our stuff here for enough for like a week or two at a time that I don't have to travel with a suitcase. So maybe I went a little extreme where I was like, when I go to Mexico City, I just bring a backpack with a laptop and I just show up and I'm relaxed and everything is there for me ready to go.

But guess what? You didn't even need to buy the apartment. You could have just left your suitcase.

I could have done that too.

You could have just like had a hotel where you just leave the suitcase.

Or we could ship our stuff beforehand or whatever it is. Exactly.

Or think about all the creative solutions. What about, um, you've got Airbnb for clothes. Let maybe you find your body double. That's cool. Down in Mexico City and they just sort of rent you their closet.

I like that too.

Or my favorite, which I think it used to sound like real science fiction, but what about 3D printed clothes? What if I have my closet in the cloud, and in the morning I just go online and I go, "Oh, I wanna wear this and this and this. In fact, I'd like that jacket not in purple, I'd like it in green tomorrow." Wow. That's happening in the future. Or I want it in red, right? And I just print it out.

That's happening.

I mean, so the point is we're gonna put that suitcase companies out of business.

Exactly.

Because nobody really wants a suitcase. So anyway, the point I'm making is you need to question the question you're asking in the first place. So when you're really struggling to think about what What problem am I really trying to solve for? And then start thinking about, okay, what are all the different ways in which I could address that?

Of all the things that you teach at Stanford in your classes, what are the 3 things that surprise you the most that people get the most benefit out of? Maybe it's something small, maybe it's something not even in the main curriculum, but it's a little off thing, or I don't know, what are 3 things that you get the biggest response from with your students?

Okay, that is such an interesting question. Okay, I want to make sure that I really think it through. One would be, so we talked about the riskometer and risk-taking. I ask my students what the bottom is made of when they fail. When they fail, what is the bottom made of? What's their mental model of what the bottom is made of?

What do most people say?

A black hole, burning lava, broken glass. Really, if you get a B on that exam, you're going to die. So I'm curious, when you hit bottom, what is it made of?

It's more like sadness.

Depression. No, you need a physical.

You need a physical thing.

Is it rubber? Is it a trampoline? Is it a—

Rocky cold.

Okay.

Yeah. Like hard, rocky cold. Okay.

So this is so interesting though. Because who told you that? Like, where did you get that? And so there are some people who say a trampoline or a safety net.

I like that. You just bounce right up.

Bounce right up. But the thing is, you get to tell that again, the story you tell.

That's cool.

And to help people become more resilient because resilience is one of the best ways to become luckier. Yes. Because every time you bounce back, you get another chance. Yeah.

Isn't Angela Duckworth is all about resilience and grit, right? Yes. Is she Stanford also?

Yeah. No, no, she's at Penn.

Penn.

Okay, sure.

Close. Oh, yeah, yeah. Not as good as Stanford. No, I was kidding. Yeah, but it's all like the key determinant for successful people is like grit, and that's really resilience, right? It's like being able to be resilient.

Yeah, and keep— right, try again and try again. I don't know it yet, right? I haven't done it yet. So I haven't learned to public speak yet. So that's one is understanding—

Or stand in publicly yet.

Yeah, so one would be definitely getting more comfortable with failure. In fact, I have my students write failure resumes, all their biggest screw-ups, personal, professional, academic. And it's okay to fail as long as you capture what you learned and what you're gonna do differently.

Yeah, I think of failure as feedback. It's information that—

Exactly.

—telling you what didn't work and what you can do differently to work next time.

Well, let me ask you, did you walk the first time you tried? No. Did you ride a bicycle the first time you tried? No. What about anything else hard? What about salsa dancing?

I wish. Public speaking. Painful moments for months of this humiliating myself in front of people, you know?

Yeah, but now you're probably pretty good.

I'm really good. I bet you are. I can say that confidently. My wife, who's Mexican, says that I'm better than her. So as long as she says that.

Okay, great. So the point is, Being willing to like, what did I do wrong? What do I do differently? I mean, think as an athlete, you are practicing and getting better and have a coach. And being willing to own your failures and to move on. So one is about risk-taking. The other is really is about framing and the idea that you really need to understand what problem you're really trying to solve. And that if you live in that problem space long enough and do your real need finding and understand, there's a great, famous quote, Einstein, it's attributed to Einstein, which is that if I had a daunting problem to solve, I had 1 hour to solve it, and my life depended upon the solution, I would spend the first 55 minutes framing the problem because once I framed it properly, the answer would become obvious. Really? Interesting.

So can you give an example for your personal life of what that would look like? Okay, let me— framing the problem and then finding the solution because of the frame rather than just the pain of the problem.

Well, let me just see. I don't, um, I want to make sure I get—

maybe something from the past or like—

yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So maybe I want to get a job. I really want to get a job. And you're applying, you're applying, you're not getting it, and you're like, Actually, I wanna work. I can start my own company, right? So instead of sort of thinking, oh, I've got to have someone else who hires me, you know, I actually wanna have meaningful work. Right. And I wanna have an income. I don't need someone else to do it for me. I could do it myself. Mm-hmm. So that would be an example. Okay.

Got it. Awesome. And then back to the, the, the, the riskometer. If we— if you show that up one more time and people go through this, they go 1 through 10 on each area of like where are you able to take risks at, right? And let's say it expands higher in some places and shrinks in other places. What does that show you when you take this riskometer for yourself? You know, should we be trying to expand in all areas? Well, not necessarily.

And so it's a really good question. You're going to find out like, okay, some people are really, you know, their risk profile is really small. Shallow, very small. Yeah. Some people are very angular, like it looks like a bow tie. You know, there are a couple of things or 3 or 4 things that they're really strong at and very comfortable taking risks. And others, they're not. Now, one thing that keep in mind, right? People who like are venture capitalists, You might say they're very high financial risk takers, but they're really not because they're trying to squeeze all the risk out of it.

They don't wanna lose money.

They don't wanna lose money. They want the best team, they want the best product, they want the best market, they want the best timing. They're gonna try to squeeze the risk out. Nobody's gonna jump out of a perfectly good airplane unless they know their parachute has been packed properly. So when we take risks, the best thing to do is to take tiny risks from where you get a little better, a little better, like push a little bit further. I'm not gonna decide that tomorrow I'm gonna run a marathon. If I decided I wanted to run a marathon, each day I'm gonna run a little bit more. And we all know, I mean, not necessarily all know, but if you get 1% better every day or 1% better every week, it's amazing what happens. Do you know, are you familiar with this? If you take 1.0, you do the same thing every day, 1.0, and you multiply it times 365, What do you get? 1 times 365. 365. No, 1. 1 times 1 times 1 times 1 times 1 times 1 is 1. If you multiply 1.01, 1%, 1.01, 365 times. What do you get? 38. Wow. So if you get better 1% a day or 1% a week, if you did 1% a week, you would be twice, you would be at 2. So it compounds again, the compounding effect. We talk about appreciation, the compounding effect of taking risks, the compounding effect. I think that's another thing, right? The compounding effect of the things you do. Luck and life is a long game. And that by compounding, you end up tempting really good things your way.

So how do you learn to retrain yourself to be lucky? If you've always been risk-averse and never felt like luck comes your way.

But there are lots of little experiments you could do. One of my favorite things about being lucky is just meet new people. Like, every new person you meet. I am addicted to talking to people standing next to me in line, talking to people sitting next to me on airplanes. Lines. I could tell you so many stories about the things that have happened. So my best friends have resulted by standing in line on the way to get on an airplane. Really? Yeah. And they've like changed my life. You know, we're sitting there chatting on the way and then one person, my friend Beverly, we ended up switching seats to sit next to each other on the plane. And then we talked the whole way. We've become— became fast friends. We've done a bunch of collaborations. Yeah, and it's amazing. We met on an airplane.

And you took a risk just by saying, hello, how's your day? Tell me what's going on. Where are you going?

Yes, exactly. And one of the hacks there is have something with you, whether it's a bag. I usually travel wearing something with a Stanford logo on it.

So it attracts and it's a signal.

Something that doesn't say something. Oh, is that Stanford? What is it? I went to Stanford. What is that?

Big Trees or something? What is it? Big Trees.

Exactly. And there's something, or you see something someone else has, oh, that's so interesting.

So funny you say that because I'm from Ohio and anytime I see someone with an Ohio State hat, I say, I say, "OH," and you try to get a response, "IO," and just a little moment.

And it starts something. Right. Starts it. Yeah. I'll tell you a funny, can I tell you a funny story? Yes. So when Josh, my son, was maybe around 7 or 8 years old, I was at the grocery store And this man came up to me and he was with his little daughter and he asked me how to make lemonade. And I said, that is kind of interesting because most people sort of knew, like mix 3 cans of water with lemonade, but it didn't say it on the can. So I explained it to him, but I was sort of curious. So I got in line behind him, right? I took a little risk. I got in line behind him at the grocery store and I said, "Hi, I don't recognize your accent. Where are you from?" And he said, "I'm here from Chile." I said, "Really? That's interesting." What brings you here? And he said, well, I'm in town to learn about entrepreneurship. I'm going to be taking over my family's business and I'm here in Silicon Valley to learn about entrepreneurship. I said, so interesting. I run the Entrepreneurship Center at the School of Engineering at Stanford. Here's my business card if I can be helpful. Well, he reached out and I introduced him to some people who could be helpful. He ended up bringing an entourage of people to Stanford. I helped them just secure a space, things that were easy for me to do. End of that story, but we had sort of stayed in very loose touch. I then, 2 years later, was going to Chile. I was running a conference in Santiago. So I reached out to him and I said, "Hi, would you like to get a cup of coffee?" And he said, "Sure, that sounds great." But as the time came up, he said, "I can't get away, but do me a favor, bring a couple of your colleagues with you and meet in the lobby." of my building, my company's building. So I grabbed a couple people, didn't know what was gonna happen. We went over there, we got met by one of his colleagues, taken to the roof of the building. We got invited to go onto their helicopter and flown around the city of Santiago. Wow. Up to their family's ski resort and then back down. How lucky, right? That's cool. But of course, Of course, most people think of luck as like, "Oh, I'm turning lemons into lemonade." But that's an example where I'm turning lemonade into helicopters. That's cool. Right? And that's the way it works. It's like there is a million dollars in every room. It's up to you to find it. Oh, man. And if you think of life that way, that there is a million dollars in every room and it's a game. Who should I know here? Who's going to be my new best friend? Who's going to be my business partner?

So true. I feel like you and I think a lot alike in that way because I didn't grow up thinking I had like the intellect from school. I was like in the bottom of my class and I didn't feel like I had skills outside of sports, but I could ask questions and I was very curious, kind of like you were with that, that person when you were younger trying to ask someone, but you got stymied. Stunted in being curious. But I always had the courage to ask people much older and wiser than me, like, man, how'd you do that? You know, tell me more about this or how you overcame this. And just being fascinated on how people became who they were. And I didn't have to have any other skill or talent other than curiosity and being present. I love it.

Curiosity is, is so important. I mean, it is. A superpower. And I learned how to be curious from my father. Really? My father was the most curious person in the world, and he taught his grandkids to be, to me, but also I watched him with his grandkids. Here's something you can do with your two daughters. Yes, tell me. Okay, this is really a fun thing he used to do with his grandkids. Whenever they would go into a new room, it could be a restaurant, it could be a party, it could be somewhere, he'd say, okay, look around. "Take a minute to look around," and then say, "Shut your eyes." And he would do test them. How many windows are there? What color is the carpet? How many doors are there? What kind of light fixtures? And how many tables are in the room? And they got so good at observation because they always knew their grandfather was going to test them on paying attention.

Gosh. Observation is a superpower. Power. And if you can observe people on their body language, what they're saying, what they're not saying, and just ask follow-up questions, I just feel like it goes a long way. Yeah, Ben.

And also just being so curious about everything. Another thing my dad used to do, we were kids and someone left the cap off the toothpaste tube. Okay, that was a very big transgression, right? So he lined the three of us up and he did a lie detector test. He measured our pulses.

Who left the cap off?

What's your name? What's your favorite color? What's your birthday? Did you leave the cap off the toothpaste tube? Boo boo boo boo. And just like turning everything into a bit of an experiment. Cool. Yeah. So I think growing up in environment where curiosity and experimentation are sort of everyday activities trains your mind to think that way. 100%.

I believe the brain is wired to scan for threats mostly. For most people, it's like, where's the threat, you know, in our brain? And it's not necessarily wired for opportunities unless you've been trained that way, like by your dad. But most people aren't seeing the opportunities, they're seeing the threats. So how do we override this default setting that a lot of us have where our brain is worried more about what will go wrong rather than what will go right?

I think it just takes experience, right? Yes. Right. You just have to do little experiments. One of my favorite things I learned teaching was with my colleague Alberto Savoia, who has a book called The Write It, and he helps people do tiny little experiments to test their ideas. You don't wanna do experiments that are just gonna, like, if they don't work, you're gonna lose all your money or lose your leg. No. Small, small stuff. You wanna do tiny things. And how do you do tiny things? He calls them pretotypes, right? A prototype tests if something will work, but a pretotype tests if it's the right thing to be working on. And so there are lots of ways to do some really, really fun pretotypes to test things in your own life. Yes. Let's imagine, so my son and daughter-in-law and our new grandbaby live in New York. Well, I think, oh, should I move to New York? It's like, well, I don't need to move to New York. Maybe I pretotype it. Maybe I stay for a month and see if I like it. You don't have to go And like, you didn't need to go and buy a place in Mexico City, but you did. How nice. That's great. But you could have said—

I went there for a few, for years and did these things. Exactly.

And then I— And then you said, okay, let me, let me try it out. Let me spend enough time. And you can do that in so many other parts of your life. Yes. You can take little tiny risks and therefore you get better at knowing if you're doing the right thing.

You know, a lot of people in their manifestation or visualization space, and the mindset space, think about the idea of just thinking of something and they're going to manifest it. But a lot of your research talks about luck heavily rewards people who act and who move and really take action. Where's the line between getting your mindset right and thinking and believing something is possible versus acting consistently to create that luck?

Yeah, the concept of manifestation is really funny to me because Yes, it's a starting point to envision where you want to go. That's like having your compass and knowing where you want to go, but you have to do something, right? I can't manifest getting into medical school, right? Now, I have to say, one of my students, he told me the story, which I thought was brilliant, which he does. He writes a letter to himself from the perspective of the future of all the things he's accomplished. Accomplished. I love that. And he writes it in blue text, and every time he accomplishes something, he turns the text black until finally the whole letter is black, and then he writes a new letter. And so by writing this letter, he sort of sets an intention, but then he has to do it. So he actually went to medical school. So he said, "I wanna go to medical school." And so what he did is, okay, it's like, okay, I need to go study for my MCATs and I need to go write my essay and I need to go do all of these things. So the manifestation is really about setting an intention. You know, you had to set an intention to salsa dance. Yes. You were not going to learn to salsa dance. No. By, you know, thinking about it. Thinking about it. Yes. You need to get out there and move your feet.

Yeah. I love that you talk about the intention because in your book on page 80, it says, luck favors those who are both clear in their intentions and bold enough to ask. And you give a framework framework for asking. And the first question is, what do you need? Who will you ask? And how will you ask such that it is likely to get a lucky response?

Okay, this is important. Okay, all right. You need to ask for what you want from people who can help you, but you need to know how to ask in a way that they're likely to say yes. How do you do that? My guess is you get a lot of people asking for things and sometimes you just hit delete. Oh yeah. And sometimes you answer right away.

Yep.

So first of all, people need to do their homework, right? They need to know, like to say, hey, listen, you know, I know you're an expert in XYZ. I listen to your podcast. I have one question for you, right? Ask for something little, ask for something that is very specific to the person and do your homework. Don't say, "Can I meet you for coffee tomorrow?" That's another way. "Can I meet you for coffee tomorrow so that I can pick your brain?" No.

Why? Read my book first. Yeah. Go listen to a podcast.

I've taken everything I know and put it in this content. Please do your homework. It's interesting. It's really funny. This last week there was a little bit of an aha for me. This woman said, "I'm on campus." this summer. Can I meet you for a cup of coffee? And I said, I'm really busy. Why don't you send me 1 or 2 questions and I'll do my best to answer. She then wrote back and she said, I just bought your book. Would you be willing to sign it for me?

That's good. That's good. I like that. I was like, of course I'll sign my book. If you're going to come to my office, I'm sure.

Exactly. And now I said, of Of course. So come on over. And of course I'll have 15 minutes with her when she signs the book. But she was going to go read the book and she— like, it was like— and it's not that she needed to buy the book. Like, that was not the issue, but she was doing something that indicated that she was doing her homework. And she also found something that would resonate with me. You know? So here's a great example. I love this example. So this young man named Oliver reached out to me. He was living in Japan. He had graduated from college and decided he wanted to live in Japan and have an experience living somewhere else and having a new, brand new experience for a couple years before he moved back to the States and got a job. He watched my TED Talk on luck and he said that really resonated me and I want to become a luck coach. Would you be willing to talk to me? That's cool. So I said, that's cool. And I just started working on this book. So I said, sure, I'm happy to talk to you for a few minutes. So I got on a call and we had a very nice conversation, maybe 5, 10 minutes we chatted. And then afterwards, what did he do? What did he send me? Thank you note. Thank you. Send me a thank you note. But he didn't stop there. He sent me a list of 10 things he could do to help me with the book. Wow. Like, wow, right?

Like real things. Real things.

Like, here are 10 things I could do. I understand you're writing this book. Here are things I could do to help you. Nothing was on there that was exactly what I needed, but I was so taken with his initiative that I asked him if he wanted to be a research assistant for the book. You have to realize I've never, ever, ever had a research assistant for a book. That's not something I do, but I thought, I think he can help me. And so I hired him and there's now a whole chapter about him in the book. Come on. And the things he does to become luckier. And it started with him just asking a favor, but then building on it.

And it goes back to chapter 7 on here, page 81. Appreciate luck. Luck favors those who give thanks. Goodwill grows into good fortune. Exactly.

Which is where we started.

He was creating goodwill for you. Exactly. Saying, how can I help you?

Here's ways that I can help you. He was very specific.

He was even asking, how can I help you? Which is also not even, it's not a bad thing to do. I think him saying, here are 10 ways that I could help you. Yes. Makes you not think of, okay, here's what I mean. I have to figure out, I have to come up with the work, right? Not that it's a bad thing. I think offering, hey, how can I help you, is a great starting point. But the next level of that, the advanced, the extra credit version of that, speaking in professor talk, is here are 3 things that I see might be helpful for you.

Right. I see you're struggling with this day. You know, you see, someone and you go, let me help you with that. Yes. Right. I know you're working on this thing. The other thing is, I know you're working on this. Here's an article that might be interesting. Right here's someone you might want to talk to. Yes.

These skills, the cool thing about luck is you don't have to go get a master's degree in learning these skills. You teach it in this book. That's like send someone an email thanking them, appreciate someone, offer solution for someone, be curious, take a risk. You don't need to go to school to learn this. You can go through your book and just take a 2-minute action a day to create more luck in your life.

Yes. What I find is that people are leaving like gold coins on the table. So I'll give you an example. I might invite in an amazing speaker. You come in. And give a talk to the students and at the end you go, you know what, if you have any further questions, feel free to reach out. Here's my email. How many people are going to reach out?

Maybe one, maybe. Maybe. And you're like— I gave my email to anyone.

Yes. Really and truly, you didn't follow up? Crazy. Even just to say thank you. Thank you. Even to say thank you.

There's a kid, now that I'm thinking about this, there's this kid who I spoke at my Mile O' Almodóvar a couple years ago, and there was a kid who graduated like last year who's been emailing me just saying thank you from like my talk there a couple years ago. And now he's coming to like live in LA, and he's been following up like every 6 months for the last couple years just saying thank you and hey, I would love to meet you someday. And now he's moving here, and I'm supposed to meet him in the next couple weeks, I think. But it's because he continues to follow up, because he followed up after I spoke, that I'm like, yeah, come by the office and I'll meet you for an hour. Yeah, who knows? Who knows what'll happen? I don't know. But it's just taking the initiative when someone's willing to reach out and say, hey, here I am, feel free to reach out to me.

Most people don't follow up on it. Yeah, this is the, you know, luck seldom sails solo. Luck comes through other people. Yes. And understanding that and understanding the relationship get built. I also talk about conflict resolution. You might like, why is there conflict resolution? Well, think about it. If you wake up every day and there's a conflict in your life, not only is it something negative, but it's something that weighs you down. Yes. If you can get up in the morning and say, my slate is clean. I don't have anyone. I don't have anything that's perseverating in my brain, that story, right? I don't have a story that's going on. Your mind is free, your energy is more expansive. Exactly. When you— and so one is it's good for you, but it's also good again to have those relationships clean because again, good luck comes through relationships.

Absolutely. One of the things is there's two questions I try to ask most people is what are you most excited about in your life right now? Because For me, when someone is able to express their biggest joy and excitement, you never know what they're going to say and how you can relate to that as well and connect on that level. And then the second question I like to ask is, what's the biggest challenge you're faced with in your life right now? And to see what opens up for them. Maybe it's not related to their career or business at all. It might be like, ah, my health challenge or relationship or this and that. And if you can be a problem solver for someone's biggest challenge, or add to their base excitement, that is going to, in my mind, it's always created more luck for me as well.

Absolutely.

Yes.

Yeah. And asking people, right, what are you excited about? What's getting in the way of that? And how you can contribute to it. I think it's brilliant. Yeah, totally brilliant.

Tina, this is amazing. I'm super excited about this book, What I Wish I Knew About Luck: A Crash Course on Turning Aspirations into Achievements. I want everyone to go get a copy of this book or give it to a friend who is really lucky. To see how they can be luckier, or someone that maybe feels like they don't have luck on their side so they can start getting luck on their side again. What I Wish I Knew About Luck. I've got a couple final questions for you, but people can get this online. But where else can they follow or support you? I know you're a professor right now at Stanford, but what else?

Well, I love to— I tend to use LinkedIn. Okay.

And I'm pretty easy to find on LinkedIn. Connecting with you after this?

Yes. Yes. I— that's I use, I use LinkedIn to share a lot of things. My publisher has been encouraging me to use Instagram, which I really don't.

You're not on there much.

I'm on there. I'm not on very much, but I might be. But I think LinkedIn is going to be—

What is your link? Just your name on LinkedIn?

It's my name, it's Julie Seelig. Yeah.

And if anyone is watching or listening and you message her on there, maybe if you message the right way—

I always answer. I answer everything. I do answer everything because it might take me a few days. But you know what, if someone takes the time, the other thing is, trick though, send a short message.

Short, not a long story of your whole life.

Don't send something really long. Now I have to go through and figure out what is it that's in here? Too much. Yeah, just send it. You know, the goal of a conversation is to get to the next conversation, you know, not to like have it sitting in my inbox. Exactly. You know, waiting, you know, for me. Okay, when am I I'm going to have— okay, I'll get to this when I have time.

Yeah, exactly.

I'm not even going to have time.

This question is called the Three Truths. So imagine, Tina, hypothetical, um, you get to live as long as you want to live, but it's your last day on Earth, many years away, and you get to create and do all the things you want to do, but for whatever reason, you have to take all of your work with you on the last day. So this book, you know, your— the 30 books that you have by that point, this conversation, it's gone, hypothetical, but on the last day you get to leave behind 3 lessons to the world, I call it 3 truths, what would that be for you?

Okay, well, I can tell you I did my homework. I know you did.

You came prepared.

So I've actually had some time to think about this, which was really fun. Most people don't.

They're like, oh, you know.

Yeah, it was really, no, but I've really thought about it seriously. What would the 3 truths be? So the first one is that we all have value. More agency in our life than we might think. And whenever we feel stuck, to realize what are the things I really do have, what can I do with what I have? Constraints are often an incredible stimulator of creativity and problem solving. What do you have? Where is the agency that you have? Okay, that's one. The other is, is that most problems are actually opportunities. And the bigger the problem, the bigger the opportunity. And so if you are struggling with something, probably other people are too. What is it that maybe you can not just solve it for yourself, but you can solve it for others? And that turns into a pretty big opportunity. So reframing problems as opportunities. And the final one is, you know, luck really is a long game. And we are investing. I love the appreciation appreciates. So I'm gonna quote you on that. I'll give you attribution. Cool. Is that, you know, it is a long game and we are investing every single day. And the more you invest, the more comes back to you. It really, really happens. I can tell you that, you know, I wrote a book, What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20, I really wish I knew these things when I was 20 because at that stage when you're sort of primordial and you don't have much you can do except for just investing, just invest a little bit every single day and the payoff is truly remarkable.

Well, two things, Tina. I wanna acknowledge you and thank you for being here. Thank you for coming down here from Stanford and for having so much excitement and passion about this because I believe the world makes room for passionate people. And you have created luck in your life in so many different ways from, from creating a beautiful, rich life for yourself, I think because of your passion and excitement. So I acknowledge you for that. And I thank you for being here and sharing this wisdom with my audience. Thank you very much.

This is a huge opportunity. I could not be more delighted. And thank you so, so much for inviting me to join you. I am learning so much from your podcast, and I know it's just the beginning.

Thank you. I have one final question. What's your definition of greatness?

My definition of greatness? I think it's different for every person. It's about finding who you are in the world and resonating. I am a strong believer that before something's your passion, it's something you know nothing about. And so you need to experiment and try lots of things until you find like, oh my gosh, This is what resonates with me. It wasn't until I was 41 years old that I ended up in a job that just finally sang for me. I changed careers, not just jobs. I used to joke, I used to change careers every 2 years, whether I needed to or not. I mean, really, I started as a neuroscientist, then I ended up teaching entrepreneurship to engineers. There's a lot of pivots in there. And I can tell you that when you when they find the place that really resonates, it's remarkable. And so it's different. Greatness is different for every single person. It's about finding your place in the world. Yeah. Dr.

Tina, thanks for being here. Appreciate it.

Thank you so much.

It was really a joy. Amazing. Our brains are not equipped to have access to everything everywhere all of the time. Since the introduction of infinite scrolling, people have gotten more bored. If you give people like 20 videos that they can scroll through, They'll be more bored than if you just take one of those 20, give it to them, and make them focus on it. If you have tons of options, they'll do something you've seen before or that's easy or convenient.