SERENDIPITY: Good Luck and How to Get It

The Next Big Idea

Next Big Idea Club

Self-improvement, Arts, Books, Society & Culture, Education

4.5 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 10 March 2021

⏱️ 60 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In all likelihood, some of the biggest moments in your life, like meeting your spouse or finding your job, were the result of a chance encounter or fortunate coincidence. You got lucky. But Christian Busch, who directs the global economy program at NYU, says that with the right mindset, you can regard luck not as something that happens to you but as a skill you can cultivate. In this lively conversation, he gives Rufus pointers on how to live serendipitously, describes the surprising power of near-death experiences, and argues that spilling coffee on people may not be such a bad thing.

Transcript

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0:00.0	That's what I find so fascinating about this certainly be mindset that we say, you know
0:09.7	what, rather than seeing the unexpected as something that is about imperfection, it's
0:13.9	about our inability to plan something, quite the opposite, you know what, it's actually
0:18.8	our ability to see something that could be even more valuable.
0:23.6	I'm Rufus Griskum and this is the next big idea.
0:27.1	Today, Christian Bush and I discuss the magic of serendipity and how to get more of it
0:35.1	in your life.
0:50.0	In the spring of 2017, on a beautiful sunny morning, I was eating breakfast at a cafe
0:55.2	in the West Village.
0:56.6	I was sitting outside on the sidewalk enjoying some poached eggs at a cup of coffee when I noticed
1:01.4	get this Malcolm Gladwell.
1:03.8	He was sitting a few tables away reading scribbling some notes, just a legendary writer enjoying
1:08.8	a solitary breakfast.
1:10.8	At the time I was working on an idea, a digital platform where readers and writers could
1:15.2	connect in powerful new ways.
1:17.3	I couldn't help thinking that Malcolm would be a perfect collaborator, but did I really
1:22.0	want to interrupt him with a sales pitch while he was sipping coffee, clearly trying to
1:26.9	work in peace?
1:28.4	So I sat there, I'm sure you bit in this place, teetering back and forth, should I talk
1:33.3	to him, should I not, while my eggs got cold.
1:37.4	I think about this moment a lot actually, and the reason I think about it, the reason
1:41.4	the memory of it still fills me with glee and a little bit of fear too, is that it so
	...

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