Transcript of 693: Tina Seelig - Fortune vs. Luck, The Power of Curiosity, Why Your Words Change Lives, Failure Résumés, Thank You Notes, and Creating Luck Through Relationships, Observation, & Daily Action

My next book, The Price of Becoming, will be out soon. I have sent it to a number of authors and leaders that I really look up to, and I asked them what they thought. And here is what Liz Wiseman, one of the greats of our times as both a leader and a writer, said about The Price of Becoming. Quote, Ryan Hawk is a master of dualities. He's a great leader, but also a ferocious learner. He's an accomplished athlete, but he's also excelled in the business world. He's eminently interesting, but he's also genuinely interested. It is kind of weird reading these things about yourself. Anyway, Ryan has uncovered the secrets of what the best leaders do and how they think. Do yourself and your team a favor and read this book. I am so grateful for Liz's support and all of yours. I would love it if you'd go to learningleader.com and pre-order The Price of Becoming right now, or go straight to Amazon and pre-order The Price of Becoming right now. Thank you so much for your support. Welcome to The Learning Leader Show presented by Insight Global. I am your host, Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here.

Go to learningleader.com for show notes of this and all podcast episodes. Go to learningleader.com. Now on to tonight's featured leader. Tina Selig has spent 27 years at Stanford teaching some of the most ambitious people in the world how to see and seize opportunities. She's a neuroscientist, an executive director of Knight-Hennessy Scholars, and the author of 18 books. Her TED Talk on luck has been viewed over 3.4 million times. Her newest book is called What I Wish I Knew About Luck. During our conversation, we discussed the critical difference between fortune and luck and why a lot of people confuse the two in ways that cost them opportunities every single day. Then how talking to the person next to her on an airplane changed her life. In fact, we would not have met if she didn't do that. And then the value of keeping A Failure Journal, and Why Writing Thank You Notes Will Make You Luckier. Ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy my conversation with Tina Seelig.

So I thought it was really cool that you dedicated your book to your dad. My mom and dad both are heroes of mine, very much my life. And you said for his 100th birthday, I'm so fortunate to be your daughter now. I know some things happened from between when you wrote it and when you published it, but I'd love to learn the story of your dad and some of the greatest learnings from your dad?

Oh my gosh, thank you so much for asking that. My dad was amazing. He died at 99 and a half, literally 3 weeks before his first great-grandbaby was born. So I sort of feel that she looks at me, you know, that it's his eyes, that he's, he's looking at me through her eyes. He was amazing. My father was sort of larger than life. And so curious. Obviously, he was 99 and a half, but he was still driving. He went to 3 dinner parties that week. I talked to him every single day. The night before, he said, "Everything's under control. Love you." And literally, he was walking to get the newspaper and just— it was over. I learned so much from him. I think the most important is his incredible curiosity. He asked questions all the time about anything. When I was as a kid, he would say, "Do you want me to come to your class and talk?" I'd say, "What do you want to talk about?" He said, "Anything." When he was living in this retirement community, he gave 66 lectures in 20 years on topics ranging from nuclear weapons to climate change. He just picked topics.

He would do a deep dive because he was just so curious. So I think that's one of the most important things I learned from him.

Mm. How does that— because I think that's a superpower to be a curious person. I've felt the benefit from developing— I think it's a skill— from developing that skill personally, as well as it's one as a dad now that I'm trying to make sure, like, stays very constant and present in the lives of our children. What did your dad being such a curious person do for you as a leader, as an academic, as a teacher? I'm very curious.

Yes. And you're curious, right? So he, uh, he just taught me how to ask really good questions. And to question what I was seeing. You know, one of the things, in fact, here's a little trick maybe you can do with your kids. How old are your kids?

All the way from 19 down to 11.

Oh my goodness. Okay. How fortunate for you. I just have one child, but he just had a baby and I'm hoping for more. So, uh, that'll be a good return on investment. But you know what he used to do with his grandkids? Whenever they would go into a new room, let's say we were at a family event or at a party, he would tell them to go look around the room. He'd give them a minute, and then he'd say, "Shut your eyes." And he would test them to see how observant they were. Wow. How many doors were there? How many windows? What color is the carpet? It was really fascinating. And they got trained to walk into any room and just pay exquisite attention to everything. Huh.

I've never heard of that, but that has— awesome of an idea to train and teach people to have their eyes open, to be aware of the world, to be professional noticers. I found great leaders are that. They're professional noticers of the world, people, of the way people move, of their body language, of, of all that. What an advanced skill. I've never heard of somebody doing that.

Well, when we were kids, he used to turn everything into a science experiment. So for example, we would be at dinner at a restaurant and there would be a bowl of olives and he would blindfold us and and see whether we could tell the difference between black and green olives. Or we would— somebody left the cap off the toothpaste tube, and he'd line us up and he'd take our pulses and do a lie detector test. What's your name? What's your birthday? What's your favorite color? Did you leave the cap off the toothpaste? And you know what? We sort of just learned to see everything as an opportunity for an experiment.

I love it. That's awesome. That's awesome. I want to get to another story about you now, and that's the origin not only of this book but some other books. So a lot of us, we get on an airplane and we're going to fly cross-country, and it's like, all right, let me put on the headphones and listen to music and read a book or watch a movie or take a nap. And you decided one of these flights to not put the headphones on and have a conversation with this guy named Mark sitting close by. Can you tell me what you did that day and how maybe you created some luck for yourself by not putting those headphones on?

Well, I think this is really, really important, Ryan. I learned from one of my colleagues years ago that you should assume that there's a million dollars in every room. It's up to you to find it, that there are opportunities everywhere. And that's actually the thesis of my work on luck is that opportunities are ubiquitous. And so when you walk into a situation, it could be sitting on an airplane, it could be standing in line next to someone at a coffee shop, it behooves you to at least Just say hello. And so you're referring to the story I tell in the book about how I am sitting, getting on this early morning flight. You know, you're just tired. You want to just go to sleep. But, you know, after a little rest and breakfast, I turned to the guy next to me and started chatting. And it turned out he was a publisher. We ended up having a fabulous conversation. In fact, halfway through the discussion, I said, by the way, I happen to have a book proposal on my laptop, and he was kind enough to look at it and said, well, this is not for us, Tina, but thank you so much for showing it to me.

But we stayed in touch. In fact, as we left the plane, he texted me and said, hey, you know, let's stay in contact. And I did. Again, most people would just drop it there, shut the door, but I didn't. And I kept the relationship going. I invited him to come to my class. I had a class course I was teaching at Stanford on creative problem solving. I said, hey, let's do a project on the future of publishing. And I got him engaged. I started sending him projects my students did. This relationship continued until at one point he was at campus with one of his editors actually exploring the possibility of doing a project with my students. When his editor said, "Hey, Tina, have you considered writing a book?" And I was able to give him the exact same proposal I had given Mark, And within a couple of weeks, I had a contract. So even though he said no initially, just by keeping the conversation going, and I think this is one of my luck superpowers, is I'm willing to try anything, you know, willing to just ask. But if there's a little bit of a spark, to just keep adding a little bit more fuel to it.

And maybe it may— you make a new friend, maybe you end up with a collaboration, maybe you end up with hiring someone. There are all sorts of things that result from saying hello. But you know what? If you didn't do that, that entire world would not have existed. You know, I always love to think that we are always one decision away from a completely different life. And if I had decided not to start that conversation, we would not be talking now.

You think about the butterfly effect of all the things that have happened since then because you— didn't take a nap, or you said, yeah, let me do the thing that may be a little bit uncomfortable and say hello and strike up a conversation. Maybe he doesn't want to. I don't— you, you're right. We start telling ourselves all these stories in our head as to why we don't do things when the only way to create some luck or even to give yourself a chance to get lucky is to potentially do the uncomfortable thing or to take some sort of action to, to show up at the place. I love those stories. I think those stories are inspiring and they actually will motivate and inspire others to, ah, okay, I'm gonna go do it.

You know? Okay, I'm gonna go do it.

I, I think that's why it's important to tell, tell all of these. There's a difference between fortune and luck. Can you compare and contrast the difference between fortune and luck?

I, I sure can. And I, I just wanna double down on the other topic for one second, which is that one of the ways to start a conversation with someone is to even have some hook. For example, you know, if you're standing in line next to someone and they're wearing a logo from an organization you know about, or they're carrying a coffee cup that has, I don't know, some drawing on it, something that you can mention, something to start the conversation, because it can be an easy, easy thing to do. I mean, just a few weeks ago, I was standing in line in Brooklyn at a coffee shop. I know this intrinsically that I should say hello to someone. So I just turned to the nice young woman standing next to me and I said, "You have a beautiful dress." And she said, "Oh, it's Rent the Runway." And we ended up having a really nice conversation. At the end, we got linked on LinkedIn because we found we had so many interests in common. And it came from just literally saying, "Oh wow, you have a nice dress." Yeah, I just had the thought.

I was on a cruise out of the country and I had a guy on this podcast who I've now, I love and he's become a great friend. He's the head baseball coach at Denison, so college baseball coach. And after the podcast, he sent me a shirt, just a Denison baseball. I'm kind of prone to wearing shirts like I'm wearing right now, just like kind of a plain black shirt, whatever. I don't really like to think about clothes anyway though. I was on this cruise, I'm with my brother and I wore the Denison baseball shirt this one day because we're just going to go out for a swim or whatever., and a lady stops me who gets off the cruise boat.

She goes, Dennis and Baseball?

I never see a Dennis and Baseball shirt anywhere.

Amazing. How do you know that?

I said, well, you know, I kind of told her a little bit about Mike Deegan is his name, and he became one of my friends or whatever.

She goes, what?

And then said, my son played for Mike Deegan.

I love him.

He's one of my favorite humans. And then I saw her literally throughout the rest of this cruise, and we kind of bonded over Mike Deegan and Dennis and Baseball and had so many good conversations that went a lot further than that. And so you never know. I'm just wearing a random shirt that a friend gave me of a school that not a lot of people have heard of, and I create a friendship over the course of that. So there's just millions of stories.

Exactly.

Yeah, that you just never know.

Exactly. I was wearing up— carrying a backpack which had a logo of a conference I had gone to, and I was getting on a plane, and the woman standing next to me said, oh, did you go to this conference? And I said yes. We started chatting. We actually changed our seats on the flight so that we could sit next to each other. We talked for 5 hours. She became a fast friend. We are now collaborators for the last 15 years. Wow. It would never have happened if I hadn't been carrying the backpack with the logo. And she said, hey, that's, you know, I'm curious, tell me more. So I, I think there are little ways that you can tempt luck your way by even inviting people to have a conversation, whether it's your backpack or your shirt or your hat, or starting a conversation with somebody who has something that you see a connection.

Hmm. Okay, let's get to— let's get to the difference between fortune and luck.

Super. Very, very, very important. People use these terms interchangeably, and it's a big mistake. Fortune is the things that happen to you, the things out of your control. I don't control the weather. I don't control who my parents were. I don't control where I was born or what decade or what century. But I have some control over luck in my life. Luck requires you to take a chance. It requires you to do something. And if you understand the difference between fortune and luck, you start claiming the agency you have to make the things you want happen.

How lucky of a person are you?

I feel extraordinarily lucky, but I also, I'm very aware that I'm also very fortunate. So I have my students do a fortune and luck resume. Essentially, take a piece of paper, draw a line down the middle. Write down all the things that you're either fortunate or unfortunate to have happened in your life, and then the things where you're lucky and you realize there's a dance between them. This is very, very important. So let me give you an example. Mm-hmm. I was fortunate growing up that my aunt and uncle were scientists at the National Institute of Health. Like that was something totally outta my control, but I was lucky because I asked if they would help me find a summer internship. Right? I could have ignored it. I was fortunate that they were able to find someone who would be happy to have me in their lab. I was lucky because I worked really hard and designed my own research and ended up writing some papers. So you are in a constant dance between fortune and luck, the things that happen to you and how you respond, right? If you ask me a question, I get to decide how to respond.

Or if we're in an argument, you might yell at me, I get to decide how to respond. We're in this dance all the time, and that Agency is one of the most powerful things to harness in your life.

I wanna bring up a pet peeve of mine and I wanna just get your response. Okay. As well as how my wife Miranda and I both handle this. Okay. I don't know if I said that right, but we'll get to it. Okay. When somebody says, Tina, with my luck, and then they fill in the blank with something that's really negative. With my luck, it's gonna rain. With my luck, and then fill in with something negative. This is a big part of our relationship from the very beginning where we said, with our luck, and then we would fill in the blank with something that was very positive. Started on our wedding day because it was supposed to rain. And Miranda, I've told this story a lot. With our luck, it's going to be a bright, beautiful, sunny day for all of our guests and for us to celebrate. It's going to be amazing. And it was. Now, we don't control the weather. I realize that. But my point is, it is so nice and so enjoyable to be in a relationship with a person who genuinely thinks they're lucky, who genuinely says, "With my luck," and then fills in the blank with something that is positive.

It is not that fun, in my opinion, to be around people who say, "Well, with my luck," and then they fill in the blank with something bad. Hearing all of that and you being the person of understanding luck, what do you think?

I think that's such an interesting example. I'm gonna start using that. Can I, can I borrow that from you? With my luck, you know, it's gonna be sunny tomorrow. So much about being lucky starts with your attitude.

Mm-hmm.

And if you have an attitude that good things are going to happen, you are much more likely to see them. If I walk into a room and said, gosh, there's probably gonna be someone interesting here I wanna meet, you're gonna go around and start saying, gosh, there's some interesting connection here. If you go into the room and think, oh, this is going to be boring, I can't believe I have to be here. Oh my gosh, this is another burden. You're going to shut yourself off. And so, you know, yes, having the attitude that it's going to be sunny on your wedding day is not going to change the weather. But when you walk through life with the possibility of good things happening, there's a higher likelihood that you will see those positive things. Now, if it had rained on your wedding day, maybe you would've, you know, said, let's, okay, how do we make, you know, we would've danced in the rain though. Like we would've made it. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

I think the whole point is, and also from a leadership perspective, like nobody wants to follow somebody who's in a bad mood all the time or who, who was such a negative thinker that also thinks they're not lucky. Again, us thinking that doesn't technically make us more luckier. I do think, as you said though, the way you phrase it is really good. It almost has your eyes opened for the possibilities of the good things, especially like, yeah, I'm going to an event. Oh no, I'm tired. I don't want to go. Instead of saying, hey, I might meet someone who changes my life today. I'm going to try to walk into this event being really curious and excited and have a good positive attitude. Let's see what happens. Let's see what happens. Again, that doesn't guarantee anything good is going to happen, but I like your odds a lot more if you show up with that type of juice and energy and enthusiasm versus someone who says, oh, This sucks. I don't really wanna do this.

Well, also people wanna be around people who are positive and optimistic.

Yes.

Yes. So it's a self-fulfilling prophecy, right? If you walk in the room and you're open and you're generous and you're curious about who other people are in the room. And in fact, this brings up a really good point though. One of the things I talk about is the fact that luck seldom sails solo. Mm-hmm. Luck, most luck comes through other people. And so actually spending the time to cultivate meaningful and authentic relationships means that you're much more likely for wonderful things to come your way because you have more people on your team, right? As an athlete, I'm sure you know this, right? I mean, the better the relationships with those people you have on your team, the more lucky you will be collectively. And understanding that sets the stage for more positive things to happen.

Yeah, it's funny. I had a guy on, one of my favorite writers. He's named Tim Urban. He writes at waitbutwhy.com. You know Tim? Yeah, beautiful writer.

I know his work.

Yeah, I've recorded him a few times. And he was talking about how to get lucky in dating. He then eventually met his wife. They have kids, all this stuff. And he's like, well, I can tell you how not to get lucky in dating. Never go on dates. It sounds basic, but increase your surface area, the potential for luck. And I think you could take that same metaphor to anything else. Just like you going on the airplane, not having the headphones in, having conversations, doing the thing. If you want to get lucky and meet somebody to potentially be a life partner, well, then you got to get out there. You got to go see them. You got to go meet people. And so I love, again, your whole mentality, this idea of how we can create more of a surface area for luck in all aspects of our life. Now, let's think about this in relation—

can I dive in here? Because I really don't want to leave point.

Please.

There are two important things here. One thing I want to bring up and one fun story. Okay. First of all, I see people right now on campus at Stanford walking around campus with earbuds in, headphones on. I think this is the worst thing that can happen to the community because the most powerful things happen when you engage with people, especially people who you randomly run into. And if you're walking through campus with— that has essentially been curated with some of the most interesting people around and you're not engaging, what a missed opportunity. And I think that this happens when people are walking through the city, not looking at each other, standing in line for coffee. In fact, I got an email from someone I didn't know who heard me talking about this recently. And she said, you know what, I decided to break my routine and take out my earbuds and I'm standing in line with coffee. I started a conversation with the person next to me and they became an investor in my company. And it's like in just a very short time, taking off those earbuds. The other thing is a really fun story about dating my neighbor, my next door neighbor, Monique.

She really, really wanted to find her life partner. And she's lovely and beautiful and brilliant and interesting and charming. But she just was staying home. She was at the end of the day when she would get at home, put on her pajamas, get into bed, read a book and go to sleep. And one night, her friend— it was a Friday night about 5 years ago— her friend came over on Friday night and said, "We're going to this party." She's, "No, I don't want to. I'm tired. I'm already in bed. I'm in my pajamas." And she said, "No, no, no, no, no, you're going to come." And finally she relented. She got up. She put on her boots and her jacket over her pajamas. She didn't even comb her hair. And they went out to this club. And to make a long story short, 2 weeks later, she was engaged. I mean, she met this guy there. It was clear from the get-go that this was a match, and she would never, ever have had that situation happen if she had stayed at home reading your book in bed.

You got to get out.

Got to do it. Got to do it.

One of your quotes I love, I want you to expand on that I thought was helpful. This is a little shift to careers. Quote, "You don't get a job, you get the keys to the building." You don't get a job, you get the keys to the building. Say more about that.

Oh, I tell this to my students all the time, and I try to keep it in mind for myself as well. When you have a job, if you just do the job that you've been hired to do, you've let people know that's what you want to do and that's your job. But that if you volunteer for new things, if you see other opportunities that where you can be helpful and say, pick me, pick me, or how can I help? How can I help? Amazing things happen. People look around at others who get ahead and they think, what did they do? Why are they so lucky? But if you look behind the scenes, you will see what they did. There are all these sort of things that are invisible. And what I'm trying to do is pull back the curtain and say, look what these people did. It might have been that they helped someone with a problem and like, wow, I really trust this person. I'm going to put them in a bigger role. Or they showed appreciation, right? They said thank you when someone did something. Now, maybe that sounds quaint, but most people don't do that.

And it's these little things that set you apart, that set the stage for luckier things to happen.

You called Robert Sapolsky. This guy writes a book that, I don't know, argues against kind of what you believe, what you think, and you just said, I'm just gonna call him, right? Talk about like making it happen. Pick up the phone, go see him. Can you tell me that story?

Yeah. So, well, Rob Sapolsky, he's a super famous guy. He's written all these books. He's a very, very famous primatologist and has, you know, spends a lot of time out with the baboons looking at their behavior. And he wrote a book called Determined, basically arguing that there's no such thing as free will. And I thought, that's just crazy. If I think there's no such thing as free will, then like I just think everything is predetermined and there's no such thing as I can't create my own luck.

I don't know his work that well, but that seems— I wanna be respectful— not fun. I don't, you know, like, can you describe the backstory of that work? Because I don't, I don't understand the, the idea of I, that I live and I don't have agency over my life seems insane to me.

Yeah. Apparently when he was a teenager, he woke up one day and said, oh, everything is predetermined. And so he's been sort of working with this framework that that, you know, starting from the moment you were conceived, you know, everything is just playing out based on your genetics and your, you know, the things that happen to you. But I beg to differ. I think we do have choices, and our choices determine what happens. Now, we had a very long conversation, and it was really interesting. And so I ultimately conceded that there are some constraints, right? I'm not going to become a world-famous basketball player, right? I'm not tall enough. I'm not big enough and strong enough to go be a football player, but within this very large, large frame, I have lots and lots of choices. And in fact, you know, one of my favorite quotes is from the famous psychologist Viktor Frankl, who says, you know, between stimulus and response is a choice. And that's the point. What I'm really focused on is what happens in that choice. What are the things we get to decide every single day? That point us closer and closer to the directions we want to go.

How does thinking that way make you better as a teacher, make you better as a leader?

It makes you better because, A, you are much more open to what's happening in a classroom. I compare being a teacher to surfing because you're constantly responding to what's happening and you can be very nimble And so it makes you a better leader. It makes you a better teacher, right? The world is changing. The people in the room are changing. In fact, I've been teaching for 27 years now, and you could say, wow, doesn't that get boring? But not at all, because every year you have new students, you have a new context, and it's fresh every single year. Think about how different the world is now than it was a few years ago. We have so many different issues that we need to think about, problems we get to solve. Students come in with very different backgrounds. And so if you have this nimbleness and you're paying attention and you're curious, you can respond in a very different and fresh and appropriate way to every one of these different situations.

What do you like best about teaching?

Oh my gosh, I love teaching. The students are so wonderful. I learn something new from them every single day, and it is just an incredible honor to be able to influence them at this time in their life. Now, let me tell you a story. When I was a student way back in the Stone Ages, I was studying neuroscience, and I had a professor who read one of my papers And at the top he wrote, "Tina, you think like a scientist." At that moment, I was a sophomore in college, I became a scientist. It was as if every cell in my body changed in that moment when he gave me that encouragement. I realized that I have that power with my students too. I have that power to say something or do something or encourage them to do something or reframe a situation. That they may be struggling with that allows them to see the possibilities they might not have seen before. Now, it's funny, that story is actually more interesting because 20 years later, after I got this comment from my professor, 20 years later, I started teaching at Stanford, and I wrote this professor a thank you note 20 years later.

I wrote the letter saying, thank you so much for being such an inspiring teacher. Look what's happened. I got my PhD in neuroscience, and now I'm teaching at Stanford, and I'm trying to embody the same sort of skills that you demonstrated for me. Now, I didn't hear from him, and I actually didn't know if he got my letter, even if he was still alive. But 20 years later, last year, I got an email from his granddaughter, and she said, my grandfather just died at 95 years old. And at his funeral, my father read an excerpt of your letter. It's a reminder that showing appreciation not only is just a nice to have, this was so powerful that this letter of appreciation was moved through two different generations. And it, I think not only was he an amazing teacher teaching me, had inspired my students, but reminding me the power of showing appreciation for those people who have done something meaningful for you.

When we're in influential and leadership roles, sometimes this is where humility can actually hurt somebody because they don't think of the weight and the power of their words. That's why I, like, wanted to be in this leadership world and focus on it and help others become better as leaders is because there's so much power that you can then lift others up simply by what you say. This teacher changed your life and not only changed your life, but changed tons and tons of other people's lives because of what he said to you. Because now you have gone on to be a leader, you've gone on to teach lots of people and impacted them. So the ripple effect is far and wide because that teacher was wise enough and used his power for good. And that's the beauty of leadership. That's the beauty of lifting others up. And that's our responsibility. Like, how cool, like, how awesome of a responsibility is it that we get as leaders that we can make that type of an impact? But you got to do it, though. You see it. Oh, there's something in Tina. There's something about her. You're a scientist.

I see it in you. Those are great reminders for all of us as leaders. To understand the weight of our words and then to use that power for greatness in the world.

Right. And it's not just your words, it's also your actions. You know, things happen and people see what you do. And, you know, I run a leadership program now at Stanford, and I know that one of the most important lessons is how I lead. You know, I had a student who did something last week that was pretty unfortunate. They made a decision that was a bad decision. And my initial reaction was, Wow, they need to get punished. This was a bad decision with a bad outcome, and I'm really mad and I'm gonna do something. But I took the time to calm down. And when I met with the student, I said, help me understand what happened. Tell me, tell me more. What set the stage for this? And once I learned what was going on, I I could be very supportive and empathetic because the student had been going through a very difficult time and was not their best self. And I realized if I had punished them, it would've been a very, very bad outcome for everyone. But not only did this student get to see my behavior, they got to see what it looks like to treat someone that way.

And the rest of the community gets to see what it looks like to treat someone with empathy and humility and open-mindedness and curiosity. And even though in times when it's difficult to do it, I mean, we live in a world where there's a lot of conflict. And one of the things that I know and that I write about is the importance of conflict resolution to be luckier. Because if you wake up in the morning and you are in the middle, like the first thing you think about is a conflict you have with someone. And if that is a conversation that you're having in your brain all day long is an enormous distraction. It sucks the energy out. And if you can resolve that and especially resolve it in a way that you're proud of, all of a sudden you're taller, you're lighter, you're more open. To more positive opportunities.

Another person you've helped, I've read about this in the acknowledgments, Oliver Greenwald.

Hahaha.

Yes. He watched your TED Talk. He reaches out to you. I love stories like this. What happened with Oliver Greenwald?

Oh, I love Oliver. He's like one of my favorite people on the planet. He sent me an email about a year and a half ago. He said, I saw your TED Talk on luck and it really resonated with me. I do all of these things. I wanna become a luck coach, and could I have just a few minutes of your time to talk about what I'm doing? So I actually thought about it for a little bit because I had just started writing my book on luck, and I wanted to figure out what sort of stance I wanted to have with him about this. And I was super busy, and I get lots of emails for people who wanna, you know, a few minutes of my time. But I decided, you know, I read his email again and I thought, you know what, let me, let me take the call. So I took the call with Oliver. He was super kind. He had lots of good ideas, and I, I gave him my feedback, but he didn't stop there, right? He sent me a thank you note, right? He did the right thing. He sent me a thank you note.

Thank you so much for your time. But he took it to the next step. He said, I understand you're writing this book on luck. If I can be helpful in any way, please let me know. In fact, here's a list of 10 ways that I might be able to help you with your book. Nothing on his list was exactly what I wanted, but I was so taken with his initiative, and fortunate for him, the timing was perfect. I said, "Hey, Oliver, do you wanna be the research assistant for my book?" I have never had a research assistant for any of my books, but I thought this could be helpful. And so I hired him. It was great. I would give him different examples of things I was working on and ask him to source different research. That either supported or didn't support what I was doing so that I could bake that into the examples. He was great. He's now launched his coaching, luck coaching business, and I'm a big supporter of his.

He coaches people how to get luckier?

Yeah, he's a luck coach.

I've never heard of a luck coach before.

I know, but isn't that a great idea?

I love it. I'm a big fan of luck. I try to make it happen as much as possible. So I'd, I'd be curious. To say, it's like, hey, I just hired a luck coach.

I'm getting luckier.

I mean, but, but it's probably more of just kind of a how to go out and live life coach. But maybe it's just an interesting marketing tool. I don't know.

I don't know. You know what? I'm doing a workshop that I'm doing a prototype actually next couple of weeks, a luck makeover workshop just for free for people. I've got about—

Luck makeover workshop.

A luck makeover where we're going to talk about all the levers you have at your disposal to be luckier. And then we're gonna meet a week later and see what, what happened to people.

I bet that's an enjoyable group of people to be around.

I, I don't know. I'm gonna do it starting next week, but if it's successful, I'll keep doing it.

Okay. I might wanna join it too.

Okay. Okay.

Is this in person or online?

It's gonna be online.

Okay. All right. That even, even easier then. Okay. I love this idea. Metaphors can bring things to life, and I think the core idea of this book is built on this metaphor. The fact that luck is not necessarily like this lightning strike, it's not isolated or dramatic, but it, it's this wind. It's, it's a wind that blows constantly and you gotta build a sail. The sail is made up of these tiny behaviors, right? To catch the winds of luck. Walk me through this metaphor of it's, we think, oh, you just, boom, you just got lucky. Like, that's not actually how it works. It's, it's more about building the sail.

Exactly. So this framework has come together over the last number of years. The idea is that Opportunities to be lucky are ubiquitous. They're like the wind. They're blowing constantly. Sometimes, you know, strongly, sometimes weakly. They're very powerful, but you, they're invisible and you're not gonna see them. You're not gonna catch them unless you have a tool to do so, like a sail. So the framework is that you need a sail to catch the winds of luck. And so you start with building your ship. That's the internal work you have to do. You then have to recruit your crew. That's how do you engage other people in your world? And 3, how do you hoist the sail? Those are the things you do every single day to essentially get closer and closer to your goals, right? How do you trim that sail in a way to catch the lucky opportunities around you? Now, it's actually much more nuanced than this because if luck is like the wind, there are lots of ways to respond, right? I could stay inside. I don't have to get in my ship. I can stay inside and shut the shutters and not pay attention.

I can be a wind vane, just looking at it, not doing anything. I can be a hot air balloon, letting the winds of luck sort of take me where they will with very little agency. I can be a windmill, catching the luck very efficiently in a very local environment, like in a job, on a team, you know, something very local. Or I can get on my sailboat and seek out those opportunities. And there are different times in our life where we want to play these different roles. There might be a time when you go, I really wanna be a leaf in the wind. I wanna be a hot air balloon and see where the winds take me. Another time you go, I need to be a windmill right now. Like I'm in this job, I'm gonna focus on being the best I can in this location. And then there are other times, you know, maybe you're starting a company, maybe you're doing something where you're like, I don't know, where the opportunities are, I'm gonna get on this sailboat and I need to really seek out where they are.

Let's get practical and let's specifically think about potentially a cynic. Tina, you don't understand. I've been dealt a bad hand. And by the way, that's true. Like sometimes there are people who are just, they're dealt a lot of bad luck, illnesses, family members, and some of that would be considered fortune, I realize. But let's say just that we have a cynic, someone who thinks they're unlucky, says the thing, well, with my luck, and then they fill in the blank with something bad. What are some tangible, some tactical, practical things that that person could do to change that? To say, you know what, Tina, with my luck, and then they fill in the blank with something good.

This is super important, Ryan. This is super important because yes, there are people who are incredibly unfortunate. I mean, we have racism. People aren't born with it. Are poor, people are in dysfunctional families. I mean, let's be serious here. There are people who are in very, very unfortunate circumstances. It might be a war zone. And sure, I mean, there are some situations that feel totally untenable. If somebody has a very terrible illness, and honestly, we're all gonna die. So there is an endgame. So within this context, what can you do? I have been working for the last 10 years working with a group called The Last Mile at San Quentin State Prison, where they teach entrepreneurship and coding skills to actually men and women in other prisons to help them so that when they get out of prison, they will be able to have a gainful employment. These are folks who in most cases have been extremely unfortunate circumstances in their lives, right? They've been born into poverty, they've had to join gangs to to protect themselves. They've made a lot of bad choices based on their circumstances. Even in prison, where they might be there for 20 years, these people I've worked with have made the choice to turn their life around.

They have decided, "Okay, I'm gonna be on my best behavior. I'm not gonna join a gang here. I'm gonna keep learning. I'm gonna get a new degree. I'm gonna participate in the Last Mile." and they get out and have changed their life. We see lots of examples of people who are able to escape really bad circumstances. It doesn't mean it's easy. We really need to acknowledge that. That doesn't mean it's easy, but it doesn't mean it's impossible. You know, I often think about the fact that if I ended up with nothing, like if I ended up right now with nothing in my life, what would I do?

What would you do?

I was like, I would go be a barista and I would work at Starbucks and I would work my way up in the organization. I often think about like, where would I start if I had nothing? And what kind of skills could I leverage? What building do I wanna get the keys to in order to make my life better?

So what are some of the tangible, practical things that people could do if, let's just say, not someone who's in prison or a life like that, but maybe just has a combination of the wrong attitude as well as is just kind of existing but not taking control. What are some things they could do to be more lucky?

Okay, so let's just talk about building your ship. Yep. This comes from, you know, if you ask people, oh, talking about luck, they often say, oh yes, yes, yes, fortune favors a prepared mind, right? This happens, you know, I get this all the time. Fortune. Oh yes, fortune favors a prepared mind. I go like, okay, what is prepared mind? Like, what does that mean? To me, that is your ship. That is the internal work you need to do. So let's talk about the first thing is understanding your core values. If you don't have your core values straight, you, it's like your ship has no ballast. It has no keel. It has nothing underneath. And you're gonna get tipped over. That wind comes and you're just gonna capsize. All you need to do is read the newspaper to see the stories of people who do not have their values straight. Who end up in prison because they've ended up on a slippery slope of making decisions that were not correct. I can share a story. When I was— got out of graduate school, I was asked to misrepresent myself at a— by a company that I was working for, to misrepresent myself at a conference, to tell them I was Tina Seelig from Stanford, not Tina Seelig from this company, so I could, you know, essentially be a spy.

And I got caught. And afterwards I said, "What the heck happened? I'm so unlucky." Well, I was unlucky because I hadn't taken a minute to think that what I was being asked to do was unethical. And so we need to, from the time we're young, think about what our core values are and stick with them. And when we're asked to do something, to question it. And if someone is unrelenting, to say, "I'm sorry, I can't be here. I need to go somewhere else." else. That's one example. Um, also there, I mean, there's so many others. There's like understanding the story you tell about who you are in the world, because that story shapes the opportunities you see. It's understanding your risk profile and being willing to stretch in different ways. And also then, you know, knowing where you wanna go, putting together in your mind some sense of what your objectives are, because if you don't know where you wanna go, you don't know where to sort of point your sailboat.

Yes. You also encourage people to keep a failure resume, like an inventory of your mistakes and setbacks and things you've learned from that. Tell me more about this failure resume.

Yeah, super important. I keep mine up to date and honestly, you know, it's a very long list.

Is it?

Yes, of course. Of course. Every single day I'm making mistakes. I am like everyone else. You know, I'm sure maybe you walked the first time you tried. I certainly didn't. Or rode a bicycle or did complex physics, math, we take on difficult things and we know that with trial and error, we are going to get better, sort of a growth mindset. But we make mistakes along the way. And if you're willing to capture what you did wrong, like what didn't work and what you're gonna do differently next time, you propel yourself forward as opposed to perseverating about the thing. I mean, I used to, when I was younger, beat myself up again and again and again. Oh, I shouldn't have said that. I shouldn't have done that. Why did I do that? Kicking myself. Now it's like, oh, that didn't work. I put my foot in my mouth, or I went too quickly, or I said something I shouldn't have said. Or it's like, all right, acknowledge it and then move on. And you're willing then to like move on to the next chapter. I always tell my students, one of my favorite quotes is, it's all good in the end.

If it's not good, it's not the end. We're always in the middle of the story, and it's up to each of us to figure out what the next chapter is going to be.

Well, just this idea of documenting your days, both the things that happen that are good and you're grateful for, as well as the things that are not, and what you learn from them so that you'll be in a better position the next time. I think there's a lot of power, and, and just, it doesn't have to even be that a huge investment of time, but if you spent 5, 10, 15 minutes at the end of every day documenting maybe some of your failures and/or mistakes, as well as key learnings and things you'll do next time, and you stack day after day after day of doing that again, I like your chances of becoming a luckier person. You can make that happen. You can do that.

It's easy, but, and there's something else really important. So yes, you can at the end of every day think, okay, what did I do that I'm really proud of? What are things I want to do differently? What am I grateful for? And to whom should I show appreciation? I have a habit that I have developed over the last decade of sending thank you notes at the end of every day.

Every day?

Every day. Wow. And honestly, it takes a whole 5 or 10 minutes. I look at my calendar, I scan it, and I go, oh, Ryan, we had a great conversation. I'm so appreciative. That, you know, that we, I was on this podcast, uh, you will surely get an email from me tonight saying, thank you so much. I really enjoyed our conversation. Please let me know how I can be helpful to you. It's just like 3 or 4 sentences, but every single day sending thank you notes, you lend the day, not just feeling grateful for the opportunities you've had, but you also have closed that loop. And honestly, Ryan, can I ask you how many people send you a thank you note after they've been interviewed by you? Um, what percentage of people?

More, it's actually started more and more of this has happened over the last couple of years than in the earlier days. I don't know, it's less than 50%, less than probably like a third at most, at most.

So that, that's great. That's great. It's that much, I think, for most situations.

Yeah, it might be less.

Yeah. Does that change your dynamic with that person if they've sent a thank you note?

Oh, for sure. Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, I'm, I'm more grateful for them. It deepens the relationship. It goes beyond what some view as the transactional nature of this thing where, which is not this endeavor, this whole, if I can go on forever about it, but this whole purpose of me doing this is to build transformational relationships with incredible people so that we could hopefully be friends for life. That's my goal. That doesn't happen all the time, but when I started learning about you and all the great things you've done, And my intention coming into this, just so you know, not to make it weird, Tina, was I hope Tina could become a friend for life. And hopefully this is the start of that. This is the first hour of that friendship, because why else do it? Relationships are what make the world go round. With the Harvard study, what does it mean to live a great life? It's love, full stop. And so anyway, I could go on for— but that's what this is about.

Exactly.

So that's a really good point. No, but I really appreciate that. And you know what? We may become new best friends. But it's not going to happen unless we actually cultivate that. Yeah. And most people drop the ball.

Yeah.

Drop the ball. In fact, another thing that I do that has become a habit is if you spend time with a friend who you really want to have in your life, you never end the dinner, the lunch, the walk without making another date.

Yeah.

You get the next date on the calendar like, wow, this was so great. When should we do it again?

Love that.

And so you say it might be 3 months. I don't know. It might be same time next year. It might be next week. It might be in a month. It doesn't matter what it is, but getting it on the calendar so you don't drop the ball.

Yeah. Another version of this gratitude, Tina, I'm glad you brought this up. The instant you are thinking something positive about somebody, the instant, tell them, text them, email them, call them. If you're in person, tell them directly and be very very specific. I just did this last night. I sent kind of a text that was this big, you know, a solid paragraph to a person that I had just seen, and I had not seen him in a while. And I tried to be very specific about why I appreciated him and how he showed up and all this stuff. And he just wrote me back, "This made my day. This made my day." Well, it made my day too, you know. And so the instant you're thinking something positive about somebody, tell them right now. Don't wait. Write the letter, send the text, give them a call, all that stuff. And if you just— you get in this habit of doing it more and more and more, and what does it do? It enriches your relationships, which then enriches your life. And so I don't know if that has anything to do with luck.

Oh, I think you're absolutely right. Like, you know, when you say to someone, I love that sweater on you, or like, your eyes are bright and shiny, I love— you know, I, I spent a lot of day with, with with young people. And when someone comes to my office and I say, "Oh my gosh, you have such a fabulous smile." Yeah. I am never making it up. I am, like, it's something real. You see them light up in a way that they have been seen.

Yep.

And if you're seeing something positive, say it.

Say it.

It changes the whole dynamic when people feel seen. So I, I'm sure that this is one of your superpowers of being lucky, is, is doing this. And I'm so glad that you shared that example.

One more question. So Tina, it's a year from now, okay? And you're surrounded by the people that you love and you guys are all popping bottles and spraying it all over each other's faces. Okay. I have no idea if you do that or not, but just go with me. Okay. You're popping bottles, you're celebrating. It's one year from now. You're with everybody you love. What are you celebrating?

Oh, that is super easy. I have a brand new grandbaby and she will be 1 year old a year from now. And I can tell you, she's actually just 3 months old right now, but she just learned how to turn over and she looks so proud of herself. And I can't wait to see who she is and where she is in 1 year.

Oh, that's so cool. I love it. I love it so much. Book is called What I Wish I Knew About Luck: A Crash Course on Turning Aspirations into achievements. It is so well written. It's fun, great storytelling, great people, and very practical. You can do this stuff like right now to change your life for the better. So I highly, highly recommend people read it. Tina, this was awesome. I meant it when I said it earlier. I would love to continue our dialogue as we both progress.

It would be my joy.

It That is the end of the Podcast Club. Thank you for being a member of the end of the Podcast Club. If you are, send me a note, ryan@learningleader.com. Let me know what you learned from this great conversation with Tina Seelig. A few takeaways from my notes: keep a failure resume, document your biggest mistakes, what you learned, and what you will do differently moving forward. Tina argues It's one of the fastest ways to build the resilience that luck requires. Then, hey, send a thank you note today. Specific, genuine, unprompted gratitude creates a current of goodwill that flows back, sometimes many years later, from directions you never expected. Send at least at least one thank you note today. And then know the difference between fortune and luck. Fortune is what happens to you. Luck requires your action. Most people are waiting for fortune and calling it bad luck. Be a person of action. Increase your surface area for luck by going out there and getting after it. Once again, I'm gonna say thank you so much for continuing to spread the message and telling a friend or two, hey, you should listen to this episode of The Learning Leader Show with Tina Seelig.

I think she'll help you become a more effective leader because you continue to do that and you also go to Spotify, Apple Podcasts, subscribe to the show, rate it, hopefully 5 stars, write a thoughtful review. By doing all of that, you are giving me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis and And for that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you so, so much. Talk to you soon.

Can't wait.