What Lucky People Do Differently, According to Science | Tina Seelig

Luck is not a personality trait you either have or you don’t. It is something you build, and science tells us there are specific, learnable skills behind why some people consistently seem to be in the right place at the right time while others walk right past the same opportunities.

Tina Seelig has spent over 25 years at Stanford teaching and studying exactly this. As Executive Director of the Knight-Hennessy Scholars program and a longtime faculty member at the Stanford d.school, she has watched thousands of students move through the world, and the differences between those who generate luck and those who don’t are far more concrete and actionable than most people realize. Her new book is What I Wish I Knew About Luck: A Crash Course on Turning Aspirations into Achievements.

In this conversation, you will explore:

What separates fortune from luck, and why that distinction changes everything about where you actually have agency in your life The ship, crew, and sail framework for understanding what it really takes to become luckier, and where most people skip a step Why your mental model of failure, whether it feels like a trampoline or a black hole, may be the single most powerful predictor of how much luck you create The hidden social behaviors that consistently show up in the luckiest people, from thank-you notes to a very specific way of asking for help Why luck is a long game, and the story of how behavior at a disastrous Costa Rica resort determined the outcome of a job interview fifteen years later

If you have ever looked at someone who seems consistently lucky and wondered what they are doing differently, this conversation will give you some clear answers.

You can find Tina at: LinkedIn | Episode Transcript

Next week, we are featuring one of our most talked-about conversations from the archive, Tj Power on the four brain chemicals that are quietly running your life and why the modern environment is throwing them out of balance in ways that make everything from motivation to genuine connection harder than it should be. Be sure to follow Good Life Project wherever you get your podcasts so you don’t miss any upcoming episodes!

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photo credit: Micaela Go

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Episode Transcript:

Tina Seelig: [00:00:00] Opportunities for luck are ubiquitous. They’re abundant. There’s a prize in every room, and it’s up to you to find it. And so if luck is like the wind, invisible but powerful, you need to build a sail to catch the winds of luck.

Jonathan Fields: [00:00:15] So if you’re like me, you have probably watched someone land an opportunity that just seemed to come out of nowhere and thought, that person is so lucky. Followed by why am I not that person? Here’s what Tina Seelig found. After 25 years at Stanford, watching thousands of people move through the world and scientifically examining luck and how to create it, the luckiest people are not simply more fortunate. They’re doing specific, invisible things that most people never notice. If you do not know what those things are, you cannot do them. Tina’s a neuroscientist, executive director of the Knight-hennessy Scholars Program at Stanford and author of what I Wish I Knew About Luck. I’m Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. And the place that I want to start with, Tina is that word luck. And what most of us get wrong about it from the very beginning. We’ll jump in there right after this short break.

Jonathan Fields: [00:01:13] When most people hear the word luck and, um, I think of something that happens. I think often they think of something that either, you know, it happens to you or it doesn’t. It’s kind of not really in our control. You’ve spent some 25 years or so at Stanford watching what actually makes people lucky or luckier than others. So especially in this context of control, what did you find? Take me into this.

Tina Seelig: [00:01:40] Yes. Thank you so much for asking that. And I’m so delighted to be on this program. I’ve been teaching young people for over 25 years, and it’s so fascinating to see those people who know how to see and seize the opportunities in their environment and those people who walk right by them. And of course, it’s not appropriate for me to sort of point it out in the moment. You know, you just missed that opportunity. It would be rude and inappropriate, but I decided to write this book to capture all the things I’ve learned over my long years about what makes those people luckier than others and the things that happen, especially behind the scenes that are not obvious.

Jonathan Fields: [00:02:24] Talk to me a little bit about the notion of control here. Um, chance, because I think a lot of people hear the word luck and what they think is chance.

Tina Seelig: [00:02:32] Well, I think there’s something very, very important that we have to start out with. And that is some definitions which people often confuse. There is a very big difference between fortune and luck. Fortune is the things that happen to you, and luck is what you control. And because we’re in such a dance with them and that dance is so close, we often conflate them, but it’s incredibly important to figure out how to disentangle them so you can understand where you have agency. So I do an exercise with my students at Stanford, where I have them describe what is their mental model of failure. Now you might say, what does that mean? I mean, literally, what does it physically like when you fail? Are you hitting rubber? Are you hitting concrete? Is it a black hole? Is it burning lava? Is it broken glass? Is it a trampoline? And you go around the room and it was fascinating. Everybody had these crazy different mental models. Like when I fail, it is a black hole and I will never get out. Or it’s quicksand and I get stuck and I need someone to pull me out. And you realize that if you have a mental model, that failure or disappointment is a black hole.

Tina Seelig: [00:03:54] You’re not going to try anything new, right? You’re going to get stuck and say, I can’t take a risk, I can’t, I don’t want to be in a black hole. But those people like your friend who saw it as a trampoline, like, okay, fine. I just bounce back and I asked them after we go around the room, who told you this? Where did you get this story? Because this is just a story. I mean, honestly, if you don’t do well on an exam, are you really going to die? No. Right. If somebody doesn’t call you back after a date, is it really the end of the world? No. But we so often think it is that we’re not willing to go out and do it again. And so your your friend. That’s such an interesting thing. I have a whole chapter in this book about about resilience and about by fostering it, you get second and third and fourth and fifth chances. But if you don’t, you get stuck and it’s much less likely that you’re going to be lucky.

Jonathan Fields: [00:04:50] I want to kind of double tap on part of what you just said here also because, you know, so our approach to failure and also our capacity for resilience is not just a, you have it or you don’t have a type of thing. Like these are trainable skills or capacities, but you notice something which is like where it may come from, which is I’m really curious about this aspect of it because we kind of think like, you know, our approach just this is where our life has been. This is what we’ve been told. It is what it is like if we fail, this is the way that our model is, you know, um, but these are sort of like models that get instilled often by friends, by family, by the culture around us. You know, they don’t they don’t exist at birth. We learn these over time. And if that’s true, then in theory, we could unlearn them and re and relearn a different model.

Tina Seelig: [00:05:39] I agree, I was talking with a friend of mine the other day, and he told me a story I thought was just so fascinating about his little daughter, who’s not that little. Maybe she’s 12 and she had come home from school and she had biked home, and he opened the door for her and she was crying. And he said, oh my gosh, what happened? She said, I got lost on my way home now. There were lots of ways in which he could have responded. He could have said, oh my gosh, that must have been so scary. I’ll pick you up tomorrow. I don’t want that to happen again. He said, wow, you figured it out. Mhm. And I thought, how brilliant as a parent, right? That little moment where he could have decided how he was going to respond when she was upset about failing or being disappointed, or being frightened that he basically empowered her and said, great. You figured it out. You’ll figure out the next thing. And her confidence will be, you know, increased as a result of this.

Jonathan Fields: [00:06:37] Yeah. I love that. That feels like there’s some overlap there also with Carol Dweck’s, you know, like early work on growth mindset. It’s like when you bump up against the edge of something, do you look at it as well? I’ve hit the edge of my capacity. Like I’m just or I’ve hit the edge of my quote talent. Like there’s no opportunity to grow beyond this or I’ve just okay, so this didn’t go as planned, like, but it’s an opportunity to explore what happened and, and, and do things differently or learn from it and keep expanding my, you know, exactly.

Tina Seelig: [00:07:06] I don’t know it yet. Right. It’s the yet I don’t know it yet, but I’m on a journey to get better. I mean, honestly, it’s so funny. I have my students create failure resumes, write resumes of all their biggest screw ups personal, professional, academic. But it’s not good enough to just write down where you failed. You have to write what you learned and what you’re going to do differently. And I have to tell you, when I was younger, when I was in my 20s, 30s, even 40s, I was a sort of person who would beat myself up again and again and again and again when I failed. I mean, I was so good at perseverating around the things I was disappointed about until I started doing this. And then it allowed me to move forward if I can actually process it. Like, okay, I spoke before thinking there and I’m kind of embarrassed, next time I’m going to take a beat before I say something and I’m going to be much more prepared. And then I go like, okay, tomorrow I get to do it differently. And it allows you to move forward without constantly revisiting your failures and realize that you just haven’t learned it yet.

Jonathan Fields: [00:08:17] Yeah. So if part of our experience of, quote, being lucky relates to our model of failure or rejection and our ability to recover, that’s one piece of the puzzle. You have a larger frame or model though, around sort of like the general approach to like use this metaphor of, of building a ship and hoisting a sail. Walk me through this.

Tina Seelig: [00:08:39] Yes, yes. So this is something I’ve been very fascinated by luck for a very, very, very long time. I grew up in a family where my father talked about luck a lot, and I questioned his understanding of what luck was. He sort of thought things just happened to him. And I watched as he moved through the world and I realized, no, no, no, you are setting the stage for these lucky incidents all the time. And so I realized that there are several things that you have to keep in mind. First of all, opportunities for luck are ubiquitous. They’re abundant. There’s a prize in every room, and it’s up to you to find it. And so if luck is like the wind, invisible but powerful, you need to build a sail to catch the winds of luck. So there are three pieces of the puzzle. First is if you’re going to build a sail, you need to start with your ship. And your ship is all the internal work that you need to do to set the stage for being lucky. The second is you need to recruit your crew, right? Most people are not lucky by themselves. There are other people who contribute to that success. And third, you hoist the sail. And so I then unpack all the things you need to do to build your ship, to recruit your crew, and to hoist your sail.

Jonathan Fields: [00:09:58] And we’ll be right back after a word from our sponsors. So let’s jump into these things. Let’s just start out with those three different things, sort of like the three buckets here, um, starting with building your ship. So you talk about really changing your relationship with yourself as the first step. Um, if you’re sort of further into life, if you’re in your 40s or 50s, you know, and you kind of feel like you know who you are, maybe too well at this moment in your life, um, what does it actually look like? And how does that play into this?

Tina Seelig: [00:10:31] Yes, we all have a story that we tell about who we are in the world. It’s kind of interesting because, right, you think about? If you were to write your life story, it might take you a few hours, but you’ve lived for decades, and what have you extracted to create that story? We have created a story about our lives, and it is our responsibility to actually revisit that story and see if it’s helpful. Because I know, I mean, I guess, Jonathan, that probably this is true for you. I could tell my story through the lens of all the incredible opportunities I’ve had, or I could tell that story about all the misfortunes and all the disappointments and all the things that didn’t go well. And we get to choose what story we tell, and it behooves us to think about the story we tell, because sometimes it’s really limiting and sometimes it’s really empowering. And those people who tell an empowering story are much more likely to get to where they want to go.

Jonathan Fields: [00:11:32] Yeah, I mean, I love that. And then, you know, the long time New Yorker me also sort of like recoils a little bit.

Tina Seelig: [00:11:38] Okay. Say more.

Jonathan Fields: [00:11:39] But I’ll tell you why. Um, because maybe it’s just sort of like my upbringing to a certain extent. I’m somebody who tends to be very, very possibility oriented and have been for most of my life. And yet, um, you know, I’ve been an entrepreneur for most of my life. I’m, I’m somebody who starts a lot of things and often takes a lot of risks. Um, and I have, like you just said, I can talk about the wild string of failures and the misfortunes and all the bad stuff. Or I could talk about like the really fun wins and great examples. Um, when, when you invite us to tell this story from sort of like the frame of the positive, I love that and I get it. And at the same time, is there a line where we start to get a little bit delusional, a little bit sort of like polytheistic? And is that actually and even if that line exists, is it okay to cross it?

Tina Seelig: [00:12:25] Well, of course, of course. But there’s also the question of, okay, when something unfortunate happened to you, right? We’re talking about fortune and luck. When something unfortunate happened or you did something that was unlucky, How do you respond? Right. I think, again, we’re in this constant dance. It doesn’t mean everything is going to be peachy keen and wonderful. I mean, there can be an illness, there can be a economic downturn, and you get laid off. I mean, there are lots of bad things that happen. But the question is, what do you do next? And if you have a story where you feel empowered, where you have a sense of agency, you are much more likely to find your way out of that bad situation.

Jonathan Fields: [00:13:06] Yeah. And I guess that’s where really continuing to revisit this distinction between fortune and luck. It’s important in understanding how to tell your story also, because it gives you the opportunity to keep dropping into, okay, so there’s a part of my life which is going to happen to me where I don’t have agency, where I don’t have control, and I’ll do the best that I can with that and kind of move on and learn what I can. But there’s probably a whole bunch of other stuff that I didn’t really realize I do have control over. So what if I tell the story from that place more than the place of just what is completely and utterly out of my control?

Tina Seelig: [00:13:41] Yeah. So there’s a sort of a famous story that is at the beginning of my book, what I wish I knew when I was 20. This is a story that has gone viral many times, and I think the reason it has is because it’s so captures this idea. I give the students $5 and two hours to make as much money as possible. And I knew they could do something. I knew they could have a lemonade stand or they could do a car wash, or they could do something little. There was something they could do. But the students started continuing to frame and reframe all the possibilities. And there were the students who said, hey, listen, that $5 is actually a distraction. My skills are worth a lot more. And they started doing things using their skills, like, okay, I’m going to set up a bike tire pressure measuring in the middle of campus and charge people a dollar to pump up their tires, and they were extremely successful. The ones who said, hey, there are all of these restaurants in Palo Alto near campus that have long lines. On Saturday night, I’m going to go make reservations and then sell them as the time comes up.

Tina Seelig: [00:14:46] Or so they just kept doing things where they were making several hundred dollars, and then the team that realized, hey, the $5 and that two hours were a distraction. Their most valuable thing was a three minute presentation time in class that they sold to a company that wanted to recruit those students for $650. And the lesson from this is that opportunities are actually abundant. We often just don’t see them. And so the framing just has to be you need to think about the frame you’re using all the time. Because, for example, let’s imagine that you lose your job and you just keep looking for jobs that are exactly the same, but those jobs don’t exist anymore. Well, what skills do you have that could be applied to something else? And so that reframe is empowering. And this happens every single day, whether you open your refrigerator and say, what can I do with what’s in here? You know, I mean, it’s just every single day we have an opportunity to think about how to use the resources we have to create something of greater value.

Jonathan Fields: [00:15:54] Yeah. I mean, that makes a lot of sense to me, you know, and the idea of your ability to reframe the moment that you’re in and this relates to the story that you’re telling about yourself. But, but it goes beyond that, right? It’s not just about the story that you tell. You’re like, okay, so let me tell a different story. What you’re really inviting us to do is widen our aperture. Um, and which, you know, it brings me back to years ago, I stumbled upon this kind of fun study that Richard Wiseman did. You know where you’ve seen that all over the internet. If you’ve never heard of it, you know, he gave a bunch of people a newspaper and said, count the number of photos. He asked people to identify whether they felt like they were lucky or unlucky. The lucky people generally did it in a couple of seconds, and the unlucky? It took them a couple of minutes because on the inside front cover of the newspaper, in giant block letters, it says there are 43 pictures here. Stop counting.

Tina Seelig: [00:16:43] Exactly, exactly. It’s a great story because.

Jonathan Fields: [00:16:45] What does that actually teach us though?

Tina Seelig: [00:16:47] Right. So it’s such a great such a vivid example because the information was there, the people who were lucky saw it. They were not just counting the pictures, they were looking at the larger context and saying, oh, I have more information that’s going to help me reach my goals than the person who’s just so focused on that one thing right in front of them.

Jonathan Fields: [00:17:12] So how do we teach ourselves to, to sort of move through life with a more expansive lens then if because so much I feel like so often we’re actually told to do the exact opposite, have a singular focus, like narrow, narrow, narrow. That is how you get ahead in life. That’s what you’re rewarded for.

Tina Seelig: [00:17:29] Yeah. I, yeah, I would give I think there’s a there’s the flair and focus aspect of life right there, sort of opening the aperture and then focusing and knowing when to do, when to flare and when to focus. I am there’s so many, so many different ways. But let’s, let’s talk to a few of them. One is talk to everybody. I mean, even if you’re introverted, you know, you can certainly say hello. So many of the most important people I’ve met in my life have been sitting next to me on an airplane. And you, you know, you just start a conversation. You have no idea where it’s going to go. The other day I was in New York visiting my son and daughter in law, and they were just had a new baby and I was staying at a hotel nearby, got up in the morning to get a cup of tea at the little cafe in the hotel. And I know this, I’m very tuned to the fact that you never know what opportunity is in that room. So there’s a lovely young woman standing next to me in line, and I just turned to her and I said, oh, what a beautiful dress. And it was a beautiful dress that she had on. And she said, oh, it’s rent the runway. I said, oh, that’s so interesting. Some of my former students tell me they use it and they really, really like it. So we ended up having a conversation and then she said, oh, well, you have students, where do you teach? And I said, I teach at Stanford.

Tina Seelig: [00:18:44] She said, oh, I went to Stanford Business School. We ended up the conversation continued. By the time we finished, we were connected on LinkedIn. And who knows where that relationship will go at some point in the future. The fact is that would never have happened if I didn’t just say hello. And some of my closest colleagues have have resulted from having these very informal connections with someone. One of them is a woman. I was standing in that line on getting on, getting onto an airplane, and I had a backpack that had a logo from a conference I had gone to, and she said, oh, are you? You know. Did you go to that conference? I said yeah. She said, no, I was at that conference too. And we started talking like we literally switched our seats so that we could sit next to each other on the plane. After talking in line, getting on, we talked for five hours. She’s now a very, very close friend, and we’ve been collaborating on projects for the last ten years, and that whole door would have remained closed if I hadn’t just said hello. In fact, I think one of the worst things, I mean, here we are wearing headphones, but seeing young people walking around campus with earbuds and headphones and looking at their phone, I look and say, wow, you have just this is the anti luck machine. If you are not looking people in the eye and just saying hello, you are missing huge opportunities to capture the luck in your environment.

Jonathan Fields: [00:20:12] Mhm. I love that. Um, that’s such an easy invitation also for anybody because we do, we move through so much of our lives with, with headphones on or earbuds in and not realizing thing. Okay, so we’re listening to something fun. Also, we’re distracting ourselves from being bored, but not really realizing part of what we’re saying yes to is isolating ourselves and really turning inward. And even if there was somebody who was interesting who would maybe like start a conversation, if they see something in your ears, they’re not even going to bother.

Tina Seelig: [00:20:42] Exactly, exactly. It’s it’s, you know, it’s funny. I go around like, hello, hello. Um, there’s another thing that is I, I think a superpower of people who are lucky. Something you don’t often see. It’s, they’re extremely appreciative and they say, thank you. Now you’re thinking, okay, that’s so quaint. Tina, you’re writing thank you notes, but I am the thank you note queen. And I can assure you, Jonathan, please be prepared for a thank you note later today. Uh, the that showing appreciation, I mean, sincere appreciation when someone does something for you is a huge step in the direction of having more luck. Why is that? Any time someone does something for you, they are taking time away for themselves or doing something for someone else. It is a gift. And if you don’t acknowledge that someone has done something for you, it is a, first of all, much less likely they’re going to ask you or help you in the future. I know that I talk to people all the time who say this, especially when you’re in a position where people are always asking you for things. Those people who show appreciation for what you’ve done are more likely to have another favor in the future. In addition, there will be opportunities that surface and they’re going to think, hey, Jonathan, he was such a great guy. I’m going to give this opportunity to him. And so it’s this hidden force field that happens when you show appreciation that those who don’t do it don’t realize.

Jonathan Fields: [00:22:17] Yeah. Um, that land so true to me. Um, and it’s funny, you know, I’ve had conversations with um. I’m like a grumpy old phrase with like the younger generations these days, um, in thinking about the job world and which is for a lot of folks in their 20s right now is brutally, brutally hard. And a lot of people are applying all over the place. And, and a couple of times I’ve been asked, like, should I be sending thank you notes or messages these days? Because it seems like nobody does that. It’s like, it’s not, it’s not necessary. It’s not part of the process anymore. It’s just life just isn’t that way anymore. And grumpy old me rolls my eyes and I’m like.

Tina Seelig: [00:22:55] Wait, you missed it. You like, yeah, you know, you like that is that is certainly not the case. It’s just not the case. And, uh, in fact, because people don’t do it anymore, you are really going to stand out and it does not have to be something fancy. I have a ritual and I really feel uncomfortable when I don’t have time to do it. I get to the end of the day. I look at my calendar and I send thank you notes to all those people who did something to help me that day. It takes a whole five minutes. It is not a huge, huge burden. But not only have I shown appreciation, but I also feel much more grateful. And I think that’s an interesting distinguish as well is gratitude and appreciation. People keep gratitude journals. Oh, here are all the nice things that happened to me. If you don’t close the loop and actually show appreciation to those people who did something for you, you’ve missed a huge opportunity.

Jonathan Fields: [00:23:49] Yeah, I mean, that makes so much sense to me. And we’ll be right back after a word from our sponsors. I’m curious what you think of there’s a practice that I’ll often do. I just call it text roulette because it’s fun. Um, every once in a while when I have some free time, I’m hanging out at 15 minutes between a meeting or something like that. I’ll take out my phone and instead of scrolling a social app, I’ll open my message app. You know, I’ll hold the phone and I’ll just give it a really big flick. And wherever it lands, whoever’s name appears, I’ll just send a quick note. Hey, just thinking about you. It’s been a minute. Like, um, I so appreciate you. Love to catch up sometime.

Tina Seelig: [00:24:25] I love it.

Jonathan Fields: [00:24:26] Um, does that count? Something like that.

Tina Seelig: [00:24:28] You bet, you bet. In fact, maintaining relationships. Right? Adding some more fuel to that fire is incredibly important. In fact, it’s funny, I have, um, over the last few years, I decided that I really, really wanted to put more energy into my friendships and to really focus on fostering those deeper friendships I have, as opposed to really focusing just on work and my family. And so now I have a ritual that when I get to the end of a social event with some friends, an individual or a group of friends, we can’t leave before we’ve made another date. Mhm. That you just because what happens is if you don’t do that, then all of a sudden weeks, months go by and you go, gosh, I haven’t seen Jonathan in a long time, and now it’s going to take us another two months to get something on the calendar. Given schedules, so you always at the end of a date, you make the next date.

Jonathan Fields: [00:25:21] Mhm. I love that. Um, we’ve sort of moved from, um, that first bucket, build your ship into a bunch of the second bucket and some of the third, you know, the, the idea of recruiting a crew. And it’s this invitation that you offered earlier, which is this idea that very few of us actually get lucky alone. Um, tell me more about this, because I feel like a lot of people think that they actually are largely solitary, like individually responsible for their own luck. If in fact there’s someone who sees it that way.

Tina Seelig: [00:25:55] Well, you know what? It’s just so not true. If you think about it, we are so. I mean, even so. Right. I have a new book coming out. You say, well, you wrote that book by yourself. Well, that is just not true. There are zillions of stories in there of people I needed to to get excited about contributing. But then there’s a publisher and then the marketing people, there’s a whole team that even though something might look like it’s got your name on it, there’s a whole crew of people who have supported this effort. And this is true with everything you do. You are part of a team and understanding the relationships of how you build trust, how you resolve conflicts, how you ask for help, how you help others. All of these things contribute to building a community who is supporting each other in reaching their goals. And this is notice I didn’t say a network. A network sounds very transactional, but you’re really building a community. You’re building real relationships that where people want to support you. I mean, and honestly, it feels so great when you have been someone who’s been very generous to other people. And then you ask for something and everything comes pouring back because you realize you have so put so many fertilizer on that soil that when your seed is ready to sprout, everyone is there ready to help you.

Jonathan Fields: [00:27:17] Yeah. I mean that that lands as being really true. You know, it reminds me of Cialdini’s famous reciprocity principle, like you’re priming the pump and over time, you’re not necessarily doing it just for that because, you know, someday you’re going to have an ask, but it also feels good. I mean, I think we forget sometimes it does feel really good to be generous, to be giving. But you make another really interesting point in your book. It’s this notion that you say one of the most important luck building skills is actually making yourself easy to help, which I think sometimes we don’t think about that. We just think it’s obvious how to help us. And we’re missing something big when we do that.

Tina Seelig: [00:27:53] Oh my goodness. You know, it’s so funny because yesterday I got an email from a former student who wanted something from me and I read this email and I literally laughed out loud because I thought, this is the worst ask I have ever seen. I mean, here was what the email said. It said I could pull it up. Probably. It said, are you around today? I wanted to just meet you today to pick your to pick your brain like right.

Jonathan Fields: [00:28:21] Red flag, red flag. Yeah.

Tina Seelig: [00:28:22] It’s like what? No. And then there are the people who do it right there. Like here. Here’s a here, let me just make one up. Dear Jonathan, it was so nice to spend time with you today. I have some follow up questions about x, y, z. I wonder if we could set up a time to meet. Here are three questions that I’d love to get answered. Um, okay. Or here’s another one. Jonathan. I really enjoyed our time together. You mentioned your friend or colleague X, y, z and I’m I would love to get an introduction. Below is an email that you can forward to them. You know, letting them because that that I’ve written that that would help you make that intro because now it’s super easy. All you have to do is forward the email, cut out the top part and say, I want to introduce Tina. I talked to her on my podcast and you know, she’s really cool.

Jonathan Fields: [00:29:25] Yeah, I, I love that, um, as you’re speaking, it took me back to a moment a million years ago. I, I owned a yoga studio in New York City actually, and we got a ton of media. We were in all these big glossy magazines really quickly out of the gate. And I’m a nobody, you know, and, and people are like, how are you? How is this happening? And I was doing exactly what you’re saying here, which is I knew that, you know, editors were constantly on the hunt for, for really interesting, different stories to tell. So I’d figure out an interesting, different angle. And then I would basically write a press release, but I would write the press release, not as an announcement of this cool thing and saying, please cover it. I would basically write a pre-written article that I knew they could literally just cut and paste, or a little blurb or a mention. So I was doing exactly what you’re talking about. I was like, okay, I have an ask. I actually don’t have a relationship with this person. So it would be a total give, but I’m trying to really not just get them to give me some kind of benefit, but really understand what they want and need.

Tina Seelig: [00:30:26] Made it easy for them.

Jonathan Fields: [00:30:27] Right. And just literally make it. So all you have to do is copy and paste. And now you’ve actually, like, you filled the little thing in the magazine or the newspaper, whatever it is for the day. Um, so by, by making it effortless for them, that was the secret to how we ended up in so many different places. I love it. I had no relationships or connections at all. It was just I made it effortless for them.

Tina Seelig: [00:30:47] Exactly. Because if you if I say Jonathan, you told me you could introduce me to this people person, you know, will you do that? Now you have the work. Now you have to craft the email. You have to figure out what it is you want to say about what I want. But if I say listen, in fact, it’s even easier said. I’m going to follow up with an email. Right. Thank you for the introduction. I’m going to follow up with an email that you can just forward with an introduction. Um, Adam Grant talks about five minute favors. And I think this is really important. Often the five minute or even the one minute favor that I can do for you is going to be invaluable to you. So figuring out how to ask for something little, in fact, just like in any sort of negotiation, the goal of one ask is to maybe get to the next ask. I tell the story about my friend and colleague Piya Sarkar, who started a company called Teachaids. This was a company that started during the Aids epidemic, where they were creating educational materials to teach people about Aids prevention and HIV prevention. And she knew that in India this was a huge issue because the teaching materials were actually taboo. Talking about anything having to do with sex was something that nobody would would teach in their curriculum. So she came up with some really clever and culturally appropriate materials for India. So she wanted to have an Indian, someone from India who was a famous actor or actress to be the voice over in these animations she’s created.

Tina Seelig: [00:32:27] How is she going to do that? First of all, she asked everybody. She just told everyone she was looking for and one of her neighbors, she was literally standing in the parking lot of her apartment building, and she was telling her neighbor about this. And her neighbor said, you know, my uncle is an eye doctor in India, and one of his patients is a famous actor there. Maybe he could make an introduction. And like most people would just dismiss it like, that’s crazy. But she said, no, no, no, no, no. So she writes an email her. Her neighbor sends it off. The eye doctor makes the intro. The actor says, I’ll give you five minutes. She already asked. I just want five minutes. She flew to India and he said between takes on the set she could have five minutes. So she flew to India. She talks to him. He says, that’s super interesting. Wait till the next break. So between takes, he’s doing these five minute favors for her. And ultimately he. Without going into all the rest of the details, he took this on. He got very excited. He got his wife, who was also a famous actor involved. And they’ve been involved with the organization ever since. But she started not only by first asking everybody, asking everybody, because you never know who’s going to have an interesting resource for you. And she was asking for a tiny little favor.

Jonathan Fields: [00:33:49] Mhm. I, I love that. It’s just because a lot of times I think we, what we think is there is something much bigger that we want at the end of the day, and we could never even bother somebody or we couldn’t. It’s just too big to even try. Um, but if you really, if you start out saying, okay, so what is like, what is the first step in what is the most simple, granular, lowest lift thing that I could start as an ask with, um, and make it really defined. So nobody has to try and figure out what I really want and make it possible. Doable. And the fact that this, this person got on a plane to India for a potential five minute conversation, mind blown.

Jonathan Fields: [00:34:27] Yeah. Because you have to say, okay, there’s something in here and I’m going to, I’m going to like, I don’t want to miss this opportunity.

Jonathan Fields: [00:34:33] Yeah. Like that is manufacturing luck. That is not just sort of like waiting for something to happen.

Tina Seelig: [00:34:38] Exactly, exactly.

Jonathan Fields: [00:34:39] So I mean, we’ve been talking a fair amount weaving in and out of our conversation, this notion of building relationships, um, um, building community. And, you know, one of the things that I think tends to happen with a lot of people is that as we get older, our social circles tend to organically narrow, not expand. The research on midlife friendship also shows that this is a period where oftentimes relationships are most at risk of just kind of quietly disappearing. Um, which is the opposite of what you’re saying here. And often we look and we say, life is just really busy. I have my people already, like, there’s no room for anyone new. Um, how does the framework, how does your approach really deal with the reality that recruiting new people or allocating sort of like the bandwidth, the energy, it tends to feel harder, like a heavier lift the further we get into life?

Tina Seelig: [00:35:30] Well, I don’t know. I mean, there’s a lot of research that shows that even those small interactions during the day can be extremely generative and make you feel better, and you never know where they’re going to go. We always have room for one more interesting person in our lives. And in fact, I’m a big fan that sometimes you have to send your Rolodex to the dry cleaners? You know, maybe there are some people who are there who, who are not fuelling you in a way that feels good. I think that if you go through life realizing that, of course I’m not going to befriend every single person. In fact, it’s funny, I was on a flight back from New York recently, and I was super tired, and I had just a short conversation with the person next to me who was actually pretty eager to talk to me. And I just thought, you know what? I don’t have the bandwidth right now. Like, I could have a very long conversation with this person, but I just didn’t it wasn’t in the cards. And I don’t think you have to do it all the time. You just have to be aware that if when you do open the aperture, you never know what you’re going to find.

Jonathan Fields: [00:36:37] Yeah. And it also, I mean, it brings me back to something you said very early in our conversation, just in passing this notion of being an introvert, I feel like I heartily identify as somebody who is definitely more on the introverted side of the social spectrum. And what you’re making me wonder is how much of an excuse have I been using that for not widening the aperture when it comes to social opportunities? Like, I’m going to be on a plane in two days. As a general rule, I sit down on a plane. I put my noise cancelling headphones on regardless of who’s around me or next to me, and I just drop into my own world and I’m like, what if I just challenge myself? And I think part of my concern as an introvert, I’m like, I’m on a four hour flight. Um, I don’t want to have a four hour conversation with a stranger.

Tina Seelig: [00:37:24] Yeah, but you don’t have to, but like, you know, like you get.

Jonathan Fields: [00:37:26] Yes, A story I’m telling myself,

Tina Seelig: [00:37:27] You say hello, you say hello. Are you heading? You know, here’s okay. Jonathan, you know. Oh, you know, nice to meet you. I’m. Are you heading home or are you going away? And you say, oh, that’s so interesting. Why are you, you know, why are you doing that? Oh, that’s so interesting. Well, I hope you have a great flight and you can put on you know, I’m going to go take a rest and shut my eyes. I mean, you don’t have to commit to a whole flight, but having a couple sentences, you know, you might find. Oh, my gosh, that’s so interesting.

Jonathan Fields: [00:37:58] Yeah. And I’m telling and what I’m realizing, I’m telling myself the story that if I open my mouth or if I open the door to this conversation, I’m opening the door to basically what, what is going to be a four hour conversation? And it’s a story. It’s just a story I’m telling myself. It could be a 3 or 5 minute just like delightful short.

Tina Seelig: [00:38:16] Exactly.

Jonathan Fields: [00:38:18] Settle back into our books and stuff like that. Or maybe in those 3 or 5 minutes you’re like, oh, wow, this is there’s something really interesting happening between us here. There’s a shared curiosity that maybe actually then at that point, I want to have a longer conversation. Who knew?

Tina Seelig: [00:38:33] Exactly, exactly. It’s I think that, um, you never know. I mean, maybe it’s like, oh, that’s such a cool book you’re reading. I heard about that book. What do you, you know, are you enjoying it? I mean, it could be anything. There’s the story, which is that I got on a plane a number of years ago. It’s 18 years ago, and the guy sitting next to me was a was a publisher at Harpercollins. And I started a conversation with him that turned into an entire public group of publishing articles. I mean, books, because I started the conversation with the guy sitting next to me on the plane. Right. And it certainly didn’t happen on the plane, but we stayed in touch. After the flight was over, we had such an interesting conversation. I invited him to come to my class. I sent him different materials over time. At two years later, I got a book contract, but that started with saying hello on an early morning flight.

Jonathan Fields: [00:39:27] Yeah, it’s like that. That idea, like it’s the little seeds. You never know where are they going to lead over time? It also ties into this notion that you share in the book that, um, luck tends to amplify over a course of a lifetime. Take me into this a little bit.

Tina Seelig: [00:39:42] Oh, I think this is one of the most important things to keep in mind. Luck is a long game. It is a long game. You do things that you have no idea how they’re going to play out. I’ll tell you a story. About 18 years ago, 18 years ago, I was on a flight an early on a on a trip to Costa Rica with my family. And the trip was a disaster. The trip was everything you didn’t want it to be. They had scoped it. It was a Stanford alumni trip and they had scoped it out during the off season. It looked great, but now it was like in the middle of a spring break, and there were all these music blaring of a bar in the pool. The drinking age was not enforced. Here we are with our kids. It was a terrible, terrible thing. And so many of the people who were on the trip were so upset they some of them left. Many of them got very angry with the staff that was running the trip. I tried to be very calm and say, hey, listen, nobody died. This is just unfortunate. Um, how can I be helpful? I don’t even actually remember this, by the way, I don’t remember this, but here’s what happened. 15 years later, I’m in consideration for my current job. And it turns out that the person who was leading that trip was now on the interviewing team for me. Had I behaved badly 15 years earlier, there is no way I would have my job. And luck is a long game I look at sometimes. I mean, yesterday one of our students did something that was just not very respectful, and every bit on our team just looked at each other and like, why would you do that? You just burned bridges long into the future. What happens in five years when you when I get a reference call for you, someone says, oh, I understand that this was your student. Right. So you need to understand that the choices you make today determine the choices you will have in the future.

Jonathan Fields: [00:42:05] Yeah. And that you’re seeding the potential for luck today that might actually manifest five, ten. 15 years down the road.

Tina Seelig: [00:42:13] Exactly. Good or bad luck. Exactly. And so if you and so I’m so aware, I mean, listen, I’m an old person now. I wish I knew this when I was younger that every time I do something, it is part of how people see me and that they’re going to be making choices about how they engage with me in the future based on how I behave today.

Jonathan Fields: [00:42:37] Yeah. Right. Because we’re I mean, the same way that you invited us to sort of like, reexamine our own stories about ourselves and our own lives, every interaction that we have is shaping the story that somebody tells themselves about us.

Tina Seelig: [00:42:49] Exactly right. It’s not just the story you tell about yourself. It’s a story people are telling about you. I think that’s really smart.

Jonathan Fields: [00:42:56] Yeah. So if somebody’s joining us for this conversation, they’re kind of nodding along and say, okay, this is interesting. You know, like I’m buying into this notion that luck may be more within my control than I really realize. And they’re like a series of real things that I can do practical, regular things that I can do. Um, they want to build a bigger sale using your language, right? Raise it up and catch more of that wind. Where would you tell them to start?

Tina Seelig: [00:43:21] I think one of the most important things is to understand your risk profile. When I ask people, are you a risk taker or not, they typically say yes or no. But that’s a trick question because risk is not binary. There are lots and lots of different types of risks, right? There are physical risks, emotional risks, social risks, intellectual risks, ethical risks, physical risks. So you need to figure out how your what your risk profile is and where you’re willing to take risks and where you’re not and where you need to stretch. So, for example, I’m a very big social risk taker. I will get up in front of a big crowd. I have no problem, you know, giving a toast at a wedding or talking to a thousand people. I’m a very comfortable emotional risk taker telling people how I feel, but I’m not a physical risk taker, and I’m not a financial risk taker. And I’m not an ethical risk taker. And you’re like, okay, I feel really good not being an ethical risk taker. That’s like really comfortable for me, but maybe I should take a few more physical risks. Maybe I should get out of my comfort zone and try a new sport, or try to push my limits there. Someone else might say, gosh, I like am so afraid of public speaking, but that’s maybe getting in the way of their success. So you’re like, hey, maybe you could start pushing that, pushing that risk a little bit further. So understanding your risk profile and the risk profile of those with whom you’re working to see if they’re complementary and whether they, whether you help each other by, by exploring these different risks from different perspectives.

Jonathan Fields: [00:44:55] Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I love the distinction that you make to say like, you could actually have a very high tolerance for risk in one sort of like domain of your life and very low in the other. It’s not like you’re just universally high or universally low. So it’s sort of like, look at the different, you know, like significant domains of your life and get an assessment for each one of those. And then that gives you almost like a benchmark, a starting point.

Tina Seelig: [00:45:15] Exactly, exactly.

Jonathan Fields: [00:45:16] It feels like a good place for us to come full circle. So in this container of Good Life Project, if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up?

Tina Seelig: [00:45:25] Living a good life is about realizing where you have agency in your life that there is a difference between fortune and the things that happen to you and the things that you control that make luck happen. And by understanding that you see the things you can control, I’ve recently been realizing like, you know, you have a disagreement with someone and someone says something that you can pause, like take that time, take that space and figure out how do I want to respond at this point? Or maybe you walk into a room and instead of instantly going to the people you know, you start to go, maybe I should go and talk to someone I don’t know. There’s just understanding where your agency is and how you can harness it to get from where you are now to where you want to go.

Jonathan Fields: [00:46:21] Mhm. Thank you. So let’s talk about some of the big AHAs and actionable takeaways from this conversation. One thing I keep coming back to is the distinction that Tina draws right at the start between fortune and luck. Fortune is what happens to you. Luck is what you make happen, which isn’t always the way that we look at it. We spend so much of our our lives conflating the two, which means we give away agency that we actually have a few things I want you to carry forward from this. First, your mental model of failure. Is it a black hole or is it a trampoline? That image really stuck with me because I have absolutely had the black hole version in different seasons of my life. And it’s not just a metaphor. It shapes every decision that you make about whether to try something new. Second, the sale framework. You build the ship by doing the internal work, changing your story, widening your aperture, understanding your risk profile. You recruit the crew by building real relationships, not a network, a community, and making yourself genuinely easy to help. And then you hoist the sail by staying open, saying hello. Sending the thank you note and asking for the five-minute favor instead of waiting for the big ass to just somehow become magically possible on its own. And the third thing, luck is a long game. Tina’s Costa Rica story is worth sitting with. She does not even remember behaving well on that trip. She just did it. 15 years later, it determined whether she got the job. The seed you’re planting today are going to come at moments that you often cannot predict and in ways that you can’t see. So maybe notice this week where you may be making yourself hard to help, or where you’re walking through a room with your headphones on and your aperture closed. Those are the moments where luck gets decided. And hey, before you leave next week, we’re reaching one of our most talked about conversations from the archives Tj Power on the four brain chemicals that are quietly running your life and why the modern environment is throwing them out of balance in ways that make everything from motivation to genuine connection harder than it should be. So be sure to follow Good Life Project wherever you get your podcasts so you don’t miss any upcoming episodes, including that one. And do me a favor, a short favor. Share this episode with just one person who could use a fresh way of thinking about luck and what it is, and how to actually bring it into their own lives. This episode of Good Life Project was produced by executive producers Lindsey Fox and me, Jonathan Fields. Editing help by Troy Young, Kris Carter crafted our theme music. And of course, if you haven’t already, follow us wherever you get your podcasts so you never miss a conversation. Until next time, I’m Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project.

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