How to Make Your Own Luck
with Neuroscientist Tina Seelig
What if you can learn to be lucky?
In our first episode of season 3, Lisa Kay Solomon is joined by author, educator, and neuroscientist Tina Seelig to explore how curiosity, generosity, and small daily choices can dramatically expand what’s possible over time.
Drawing from decades of teaching at Stanford, her leadership as the Director of the Knight-Hennessy Scholars, and her forthcoming book What I Wish I Knew About Luck, Tina reframes luck as a skill that can be cultivated rather than an accident we stumble into.
Tina shares how taking risks, showing appreciation, and staying open to unexpected opportunities can create compounding advantages. She also reflects on what she’s learned from teaching thousands of students, leading the Knight-Hennessy Scholars program, and watching ideas evolve when people are given permission to experiment.
In this conversation, you’ll learn:
Why luck often shows up at the intersection of preparation and openness
The role generosity and curiosity play in long-term success
How to design environments that make luck more likely
The future is something we shape through the questions we ask, the risks we take, and the people we choose to learn alongside. If you’ve ever wondered how to tilt the odds in your favor, Tina offers practical wisdom and hopeful perspectives on how to get started.
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Tina Seelig: You can learn the tools to become luckier, and it's very sad that we don't teach people these tools. The way we engage with the world in everything we do can unlock luck if we have the right approach.
Lisa Kay Solomon: I'm Lisa Kay Solomon, and this is How We Future, where I talk to some of my favorite changemakers about shaping tomorrow starting today. Do you consider yourself lucky? What if luck isn't something that happens to you, but something you could actually learn to harness? Welcome back to How We Future. This season, we're focusing on essential skills we wish we learned earlier, the ones that help us navigate uncertainty, spot hidden opportunities, and shape the futures we're excited to be a part of. There's no better place to start than with my friend, Tina Seelig.
Tina is a bestselling author, celebrated educator, and the director of Stanford's Knight-Hennessy Scholars Program. She's spent decades teaching creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurial thinking. Her new book, What I Wish I Knew About Luck, helps us understand that luck isn't random. It's a skill we can all practice, develop, and expand.
In this conversation, we get into the difference between fortune and luck, why a thank-you note or a hello to a stranger can compound into something extraordinary, and why imposter syndrome might actually be improvement syndrome in disguise. This episode is a master class in building your ship, recruiting your crew, and hoisting your sail to catch the wind of opportunity. Be sure to stay to the end. Tina leaves us with one small action you can take this week to start expanding your luck right now. Let's get into it with Tina Seelig.
Tina: Oh, I couldn't be more delighted, and so looking forward to our conversation.
Lisa: Tina, you've written over 18 books among other resources. I want to start with why luck? What was it about luck that captured your imagination this time around?
Tina: My father and I have debated the role of luck in our lives forever. I don't remember a time when my father wasn't saying, the harder I work, the luckier I get. As I got older, I realized that expression was correct but incomplete, and that you really needed to understand, "Okay, yes, that might be true, but what is the hard work? What is it you actually have to do to become luckier?"
Lisa: I think that captures so much of what this book does, which is takes these big concepts that we've heard, sometimes cliches, sometimes abstract sayings, and breaks it down to these very concrete, actionable ways of being and acting in the world. It's just every chapter I found myself going, "Yes, that's so true," and "Oh my gosh. Wow, now I understand that better." This book felt so personal, Tina, and you open it up with the beautiful story of your family. It just feels like it captures so much of your ethos, your personality. This is not just a how-to book. This is a very vulnerable, personal, and inviting book. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about what it was like to have this book represent so many facets of your life.
Tina: I really appreciate that you noticed that. I tell a lot of stories about places where I've made mistakes and where I didn't know how to do this, as opposed to being on high, saying, "Well, you need to do this, and you need to do that, and shame on you if you don't know." Nobody knows these things when they're young. It's really an incredible gift I'm hoping to give people to learn from some of the big mistakes that I made as I was trying to craft my path to the future.
Lisa: I want to start with also the beginning of the book, where you really dive into definitions of luck, because I think luck is one of those words we throw around a lot. "Oh, I'm lucky, they're lucky." It's different than, say, I know you talk about the difference between luck and fortune and maybe some other adjacent words. Can you talk a little bit about that important distinction and why that was so important to name upfront in the book?
Tina: Yes. This is a big pothole for people. They conflate the concepts of fortune and luck. Fortune is things that happen to you, things that are out of your control. It's either fortunate or unfortunate that it rains today. It's fortunate or unfortunate who your parents are. There are so many things that happen to you that are out of your control. Luck is something over which you have more control.
Now, we are in a dance with the world, right? We're constantly in a dance between what happens to us and how we respond. Because luck and fortune are so closely interwoven, it's easy to imagine that they're actually one thing, but once you parse that, once you create in your mind an understanding about what's happening to you and how you respond, you gain much more agency.
Lisa: I'm so glad that you focused on agency as a key theme. As I read every chapter, I was like, "Yes, this is a way where we can help shape the future versus having the future happen to us," which is, of course, a big theme of the class that we taught for many years together at Stanford on inventing the future. I wonder again if you could just talk a little bit about how you thought about these different facets of your life and how you came back to this idea that luck is something that can be shaped and harnessed.
Tina: Well, I have been teaching at Stanford for many years. It's now 26 years. I get the opportunity to observe so many young people and how they navigate the world. Some, you see, they know how to squeeze the juice out of every opportunity, and others leave those opportunities on the table. I realize that it's my responsibility to help them understand where those opportunities are.
I truly believe that there's a gift in every room. It's up to you to find it. When I see people walk right past these opportunities, I want to be able to tell them, "Hey, look, if you had behaved this way or if you had done this thing or if you had followed up, who knows what wonderful opportunities would have befallen you." It's often not appropriate for me to do that in real time. I thought, "You know what? I'm going to write a book that shows people all the ways, all the tools they have at their disposal to unlock luck in their lives."
Lisa: I appreciate that it's not just these big concepts. They're really, oftentimes, these small, micro moments, whether it's introducing yourself to someone that's next to you or writing a thank-you note or just sharing appreciation, which I definitely want to get into because I know gratitude and appreciation is a big part of your practice as it is mine. This very idea that it can be teachable, I think, is so enlightening.
Tina: It's interesting. One of the things that I really try to teach young people how to do is how to make yourself easy to help. Now, people, especially when you're younger, and certainly it happens throughout your whole life, but luck comes often through other people, other opportunities, or other people who have to help you realize your dreams. How do you set the stage for people to want to help you? That's part of the framework. If we go back to the beginning, the idea is that luck is like the wind. Luck is ubiquitous. It might be invisible, but it's very strong. You need to build a sail to catch it.
There are three major parts of the framework. One is that you need to build your ship. That's all the internal work you're going to do. You need to recruit your crew. That's getting other people excited about helping you. You need to then hoist the sail. If we talk about recruiting your crew, how do you get other people excited? One of the most important things is to know how to ask for help and to make yourself easy to help. It's not always obvious because, for example, someone might send an email to someone that they want some help from.
There's so many different ways that you could craft that message to either make it so likely that someone's going to write back instantly, or someone's going to either leave it in their inbox or hit delete. You need to know what it is you want to have in that email so that they instantly want to say, "Wow, I want to learn more. I want to connect."
Lisa: Is that something that you have explicitly taught some of your students on how to do?
Tina: Absolutely. In fact, sometimes it's even alumni who send me a message, and they want me to introduce them to someone I know. I say, "Okay, fine, write an email that I can easily forward to that person." Then they'll write the email, and I go, "Okay, let me show you how you have to do this." Again, it's not obvious. The key thing is to look at it from the perspective of the person who is going to be getting it. Not looking at it from your perspective of what you want, but how can you frame it in a way that is interesting enough to them that they are going to want to respond
Lisa: I love that so much, Tina. It reminds me of a class that I used to teach at Stanford called Networking by Design. It was very much that this idea we think of networking as transactional. This whole book is about how you center your values in a way that can create more value for more people and the world. There's really nothing transactional about it. It's like, how do we make different choices in order to make deeper connections, in order to help people help you? You're exactly right.
My experience was like, we're just not taught this. Once you're taught it, then it's a total game-changer. Even that notion of, "Hey, help me help you, write a quick request, write a little blurb." The other thing that you say, which I love so much, is this idea of be specific. Not let me sit down and have a chat, but to be very specific in your request.
Tina: It's funny. The worst messages I get, the worst, are the ones where someone says, "I want to meet with you to pick your brain. Like, "Oh my gosh, what does that mean?" First of all, it also is a strange visual concept. The idea is like, be very specific because it might be that I'm actually not the right person to talk to. It might be that there's someone else that I could refer you to. By being very specific, I can either sometimes just help you right away, like, "Oh, here's an article, or here's a person you should meet, or this is an event you might want to attend, or here's an answer to your question." Often, I can be very helpful if I know exactly what you're looking for.
Lisa: Which is another way of honoring your time, not having you sift through it. Also, asking the person to do some of that work ahead of time. Wait a minute, how can I honor this person by really being clear? Then, the important thing that I try to teach my students, you come back to them, and you let them know, "Hey, thank you so much for doing this. Let me tell you what happened as a result of that introduction, as a result of that article." I wonder if you could talk about that part of it.
Tina: I think you're absolutely right. I think closing the loop is so important, and people miss the opportunity. Whether it's closing the loop and saying, "Thank you so much." That is the minimum viable response is, "Thank you so much for helping me with this." When someone helps you, it is time, effort, and energy that they're not putting into themselves or someone else. There's an opportunity cost. You need to understand that. People aren't just sitting around waiting for your message or your request. They've got a lot of other things on their plate. You need to honor that by saying, thank you.
There's a great story which I tell in the book, and I just love it because it's such a perfect example of so many of these concepts in action. There was a young man named Oliver who watched my TED Talk on luck. He was really intrigued, and he's a very lucky guy. He thought, "Oh, I'm going to go become a luck coach." He shot me an email, and he said, "I saw your TED Talk. I really liked it. It resonates with me, and I'm thinking of becoming a luck coach." I thought, "Oh, what a great idea." In fact, part of me thought, well, I wish I thought about that."
[laughter]
Tina: I thought it was a great idea, and I had just started working on this book in earnest. I said, "Great, happy to have a call". He had a very small request. I'd love to just have 10 minutes of your time. We got on a call, and I listened to some of his ideas, gave him some feedback. He followed up with a very nice thank-you note, but he didn't stop there. That's the most important thing. He didn't stop there. He sent me a link to a Google Doc where he made a list of all the ways he could help me with my book.
Now, nothing that was on his list was exactly what I needed, but I was so taken with his initiative and his creativity and his enthusiasm that I said, "Would you consider being a research assistant for the book? Now, I've never, ever, ever used a research assistant. That was a real leap for me. I thought, I think he could help me because what I wanted him to do is to help me find research that was out there that reinforced some of the concepts that I was talking about in the book. He jumped at this chance. We had a great time getting to know each other through this process. I learned about the ways that he attracts luck and ended up writing an entire chapter about him in the book.
It shows you that what can happen if you ask in a way that people respond, you show appreciation, and then you also build on those small wins. He didn't just leave it there. He built on it and then ended up building a relationship that resulted in a win for him as well as for me.
Lisa: Such a great story. There's so many shades of that story, too, not just that one. I know you talk about when students apply to the Knight-Hennessy Scholars Program that you now lead or other fellowships that you have led in the past, and the response that they have, whether they just respond to say thank you or they respond with curiosity to continue the relationship in some way. Time and time again, those that come back with an offer, with an idea, with appreciation, and an extension just seem to pay so many more dividends, not just the kinds of things that are possible, the expanding of surface area, but in the connection that you have, the relationship that you build.
Tina: I think an important part here is that nobody else would see what people did. No one would have seen what Oliver did to end up with a chapter in the book. I saw it, and I can then share with you, this is the magic that's happening behind the curtain. This is what's happening. Another story I told in the book, which is about another student, Azza, who ended up becoming the videographer for Kamala Harris while she was at the White House. Now, how does a young person get this job documenting the vice president at the White House?
It's such an amazing story. Again, you have to look behind the curtain. She took one videography class when she was in college, and she was taken with it. She ended up staying in touch with that professor for 10 years, keeping this professor up-to-date on her progress, when things went well, when things didn't go well. She ended up coming to graduate school at Stanford. When she graduated, she was having a really tough time finding a job. She sent hundreds of letters out to all different news outlets and media companies. Nobody even responded.
She reached out to this professor and said, "I'm really struggling. I just need one opportunity." The professor said, "You know what? Someone just reached out to me about the fact that they're looking for someone for this role. I'd love to throw your hat in the ring." It happened 10 years after she took that class. It was 10 years of cultivating a relationship. Now, of course, she didn't cultivate the relationship because she wanted this job. When you do cultivate really meaningful relationships, good things come to life that you could never even have imagined.
Lisa: It just gives me chills. I know I read the story, but hearing you talk about it gives me chills all over again about that there are opportunities everywhere. It connects to another core theme throughout the book. You talked earlier about that idea that we often hear, the harder I work, the luckier I am. Another core quote that you come back to comes from Louis Pasteur, around fortune favoring the prepared mind. I think that story, in many ways, captured 10 years in the making. I wonder if you could talk a little bit more about what was so captivating about that quote.
Tina: Whenever I tell people I'm writing a book about luck, they go, "Oh, yes, fortune favors the prepared mind." There are these throwaway lines like, "The harder I work, the luckier I get. Oh, yes, I get it." I'm like, okay, what is a prepared mind? [laughs] If fortune favors a prepared mind, what the hell? How do I do that? The first part of the book is essentially unpacking that. What does it mean? I talk about really understanding your core values, understanding your risk profile, understanding the story you tell about yourself, and understanding what your aspirations are and, of course, putting in the effort to increase your knowledge base.
These things all set the stage. They build your ship because you know what? If you don't have core values, for example, that's like the ballast under the ship that keeps you from falling over. We see people in the news all the time. I don't even have to make you a list of people who have not had strong core values and have ended up on a slippery slope of bad decisions and end up in prison. It is an easy thing to happen. I tell a story about how, when I had just first graduated, I was asked to do something that was unethical; it wasn't illegal, but it certainly was unethical. I didn't question it. I ended up getting caught.
It was such a wake-up call that, "Oh my gosh, I didn't even think about this. I had been asked to do something by someone with authority who made it sound like this is just a normal thing to do." You know what? I learned my lesson and have since then really been doing whatever I can to strengthen my core values and to think about that every single time I have to make a hard decision. Then, also to teach our students to do this themselves.
Lisa: It's so critical, especially in a world that's moving so fast. It can be hard, first of all, to find the time to do that deep reflective work, to check in with yourself about what are the principles and values that you want to honor in the choices that you make with your time, with the kind of job you're going to do, and also how that shows up in the kind of relationships that you build. Again, Tina, I just really want to compliment you for being so vulnerable and authentic throughout that book.
I just have to read something from the book because this really captured my attention. You say, "Capturing luck is a skill that can be mastered. The key is understanding the physics of luck and how to apply it to reach your goals. There is no magic. We live in a world of cause and effect. What you do determines what happens next. However, like gravity, luck is invisible, and you need to trust that it is there. Mastering the underlying mechanics of how the world works enables you to harness the abundant opportunities that surround you.
Tina: Wow, who wrote that? That sounds pretty good. [laughs]
Lisa: Isn't that incredible? That's incredible. I also think it's important that the tagline of this book is about turning your aspirations into achievements. It's about having a fulfilling life. It's not even just about building the resume. It's who you are as a human. It felt like this book about luck was almost like an amplifier of the other books that you have written about creativity and about innovation. This was both very personal, about how you show up, not just on behalf of bringing a new product to market or scale. Also, if you do this, when you then read your other books, as everybody should, you're going to be that much more successful in how you think about those other processes and practices.
Tina: It's interesting that you reference my other books. The last three books are about creative problem-solving and about entrepreneurship, right? What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20, Creativity Rules, and Ingenious. You could ask, "Well, what is the relationship with luck, creativity, and entrepreneurship?" They are all closely related because one of the core underlying tools for being luckier is to be a great problem-solver, right? The world is presenting us with challenges all the time. If you can be a creative problem-solver, you're going to be able to find a way out of those and come up with a solution that might end up becoming even better than what you even imagined.
They're definitely related. Also, the other interesting thing is that whenever I talk to people about creativity, the first thing they always ask is, "Oh, come on, can you really teach creativity?" I just laugh because it's like, no one says, "Can you teach science?" Nobody says, "Can you teach history? Can you teach math? Can you teach sports? Can you teach art?" We teach these things. Why should you not be able to teach creativity? There is a set of tools, a set of attitudes that can be fostered, can be mastered, and the same is true with luck, is that you can learn the tools to become luckier. It's very sad that we don't teach people these tools.
In fact, it's really quite funny because I was thinking this morning, there are even more chapters I could have added to this book because every day I think of other tools that we have that like, "Oh, I should have put in a chapter about negotiation. Oh, I should have put in a chapter about some other tool that we have, because the way we engage with the world in everything we do can unlock luck if we have the right approach.
Lisa: That's why I love that this book is about your mindset, as it is about these practical takeaways. After every chapter, you have questions, reflective questions, and prompts for people to consider. I want to build on this notion of agency and harnessing luck to help you become more successful. We talked a little bit about it earlier, but this idea of gratitude and appreciation as something that you can do as a daily practice that can actually increase your chances of being lucky.
Tina: It's really interesting because those are another two terms that get conflated, gratitude and appreciation. Gratitude is how you feel. I feel grateful. You could keep a gratitude journal and every day write down all the nice things people did for you. If you don't actually show appreciation by doing something to thank that person or those people, then you have missed the mark. You need to close that loop because, as we talked about before, anytime someone does something for you, they're not doing it for someone else. I think we underestimate the importance for the other person of being appreciated.
Let me tell you a story, which I think that you probably read, about how I was in college, and I had a professor who was extremely impactful in my life. He was this absent-minded professor. It was in neuroscience. It was my first neuroscience class. He would give us these big questions like, "How would you figure out what this part of the brain did?" Of course, this was the first time I felt like I was at the frontier of science. I wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote. I got my paper back, and at the top it said, Tina, you think like a scientist.
At that moment, I became a scientist. It felt it was literally as if every cell in my body changed as he told me, which also goes back to the question about what's the story we tell about who we are. He helped me change the story about what I could accomplish by telling me I felt like a scientist.
Twenty years later, when I started teaching, this was rattling around in my brain, this impact he had, and what's the impact I could be having on my students?
I sent him a thank you note thanking him for having such a big impact on me, and that now I am teaching and I'm using a lot of the same skills that he used, and that he was an inspiration. I didn't even know if he got the letter because I didn't hear back. I didn't know if he was even still alive. Twenty years later, so last year, 20 years later, so 20 years after I started teaching, 40 years after I had been a student and got his note, I received a letter from his granddaughter. She said, " My grandfather just died at 95, and at his funeral, her father read an excerpt from my letter."
To realize that the thank you note I had written 20 years earlier in response to his encouragement 20 years before that is truly remarkable. I think we have to understand that our showing of appreciation is extraordinarily meaningful and an opportunity that should never be missed.
Lisa: I love that story so much. The generational impact of showing appreciation. Oh my gosh, that must have been so meaningful to hear that story. You wrote it just to show your gratitude. You weren't even expecting anything bad.
Tina: Yes, of course. I didn't expect anything, exactly.
Lisa: Incredible. We just finished teaching the winter quarter of You From the Future. This year, the main assignment besides the final reflection paper was to have our students write two handwritten thank-you notes-
Tina: Wonderful.
Lisa: -to the speakers that came in. I wanted them to be handwritten because I didn't want it to be outsourced to Gen AI, bot. The other, there is something about taking time to really write down something meaningful. We haven't sent them out yet. I think our speakers are not expecting them, and they are going to be so surprised. These are many speakers that are top of their field. They do this all day long. I don't know how many handwritten thank-you notes that they get.
I imagine our students will look back on this as being one of the most meaningful assignments and to realize the power of just taking time to, as you say, both be grateful and show appreciation.
Tina: I save all the thank you notes I get. In fact, if you were here in my office, you would see there's a whole bunch of them all here on my desk. It's really meaningful when somebody takes the time to actually write down, "Wow, thank you so much. That class, that lecture, whatever it was meaningful," because there was a huge amount of time and effort that goes into preparing this. I think about you, the amount of time and effort you put into this podcast or to your teaching or to anything you do. It is so rewarding for somebody to say, "You know what? I see you. I see the effort you put in, and you stuck the landing. Thank you."
Lisa: Thank you. I agree. It's one of the reasons why I love spending time with you, Tina, because I see you do it so generously. You actually make that point in the book that luck is not to be hoarded. Luck is to be given away. Luck is to be circulated and shared. That in and of itself can help others feel lucky and can make the opportunities grow for everybody, lifting all boats. Back to the wonderful metaphor that really frames this whole book.
Tina: Thank you. It's interesting because there are other chapters about other aspects of interpersonal dynamics, like resolving conflicts, right? It's not just about saying thank you. Yes, it's easy to say nice things to people who've done things for you that you really appreciate, but how do you get rid of the baggage of difficult relationships? When we have a difficult relationship, when we have a conflict, it takes up a tremendous amount of your brain space, your mind space, your energy. It is such a huge weight that you're carrying around. It's such a relief and a lightening when you can resolve those conflicts. The sooner you resolve a conflict, the easier it is. I give a bunch of tools for how to think about doing that.
Lisa: Well, I think we so often think about managing our time. You hear that a lot. "Oh--" it's really about managing energy, right? I think, to your point, when we have those things hanging over us, when we are, going back to an earlier point, operating outside of our values, it causes stress, and that stress takes a toll.
When you talk about, and I love that you open up the book with values, it does remind me of a quote I often think of from Bob Johanson, I've mentioned in a couple of podcasts, the future will reward clarity, but will punish certainty. If you have that clarity of your values, as you said, it acts like a foundation of your boat because we can't necessarily predict what is going to happen, but we know who we are, that we get up every day. We go to bed every day, hopefully, and in between, some stuff's going to happen. When we know who we are, that gives us power to make choices that we may not even have realized that we had.
Tina: I quote Viktor Frankl, the famous psychotherapist and Holocaust survivor, who said, "Between stimulus and response, there's a space. That's where your agency, that's where your power comes, is in that space when you get to choose what you do." I think owning that power, that's where your agency comes in, and understanding that that space exists, and that's where you make your future.
Lisa: It's so powerful, not only for people that want to bring new ideas forward, but I say, do you want to be someone who is never without options? That's a pretty powerful place to be, to always know that you, regardless of the tricky situation you're in, have the tools to come up with an option to move beyond it. I think that's what this book does, Tina, for so many people. There's a lot more questions I have. I won't get to all of them, but I have to ask, of course, about luck in the long game as someone that is trying to teach long-term thinking and how to think beyond the immediacy and the reactive moment.
Tina: This is, I think, one of the most important things that I teach is that the choices you make today determine the choices you're going to have in the future. To understand that so clearly, and that we are constantly laying the foundation for the options we're going to have. Some of the stories that I told earlier are perfect examples.
Just yesterday, I got a call from my cousin who's a doctor on the East Coast. He said, "You know what? I just met with a former student of yours. Tell me about them." I realized whatever I said was going to influence what happened next, and that person would have no idea. We are constantly planting the seeds for the future. If we're not thoughtful about it, we really, really can hurt ourselves in the long run because luck is a long game.
Lisa: Such a great story and such a great reminder that how we show up every day matters. Just this morning, went for what I call my regular slow runs. My runs are getting slower. I've started to realize that I'm measuring my runs by how many people I can smile at when I pass them and wave to. Those moments where it's like, what an opportunity to be around my neighborhood and share some joy. I'm just going to smile. It's just for me. It's just fun. It's like, oh, what can you create in the moment?
Tina, when you and I used to teach together, I just remember how much care and thought you put into greeting the students and meeting them where they are. You would often bring up the Maya Angelou quote about people don't necessarily remember what you say, but they remember how you make them feel. You don't even necessarily have to be in a position of status to do that. You can do that-
Tina: Of course not.
Lisa: -wherever you are, and that has power in and of itself. It feels good. It comes back to you in ways that you may not realize. Even if you just go to bed that night knowing, "You know what? I did my best today. I tried to be a good human. I tried to care about someone." I think people really underestimate what kind of generative and creative power that can offer because we don't necessarily think about that as an approach to going through the world in that way. I just love how you call it out. Again, you don't even necessarily need to be a certain title, a certain position to make a difference in someone's life.
Tina: You know what's so interesting, though? I noticed in the last few years, students walking around campus with their earbuds on and their headphones on, and they don't look at you. They don't wave. They don't say hello. I make a point of saying hello to everyone I pass, but I realize that having these devices on that essentially separate us from everyone else is an anti-luck. It's an anti-luck machine that so many of the most important relationships I have in my life, and I kid you not, are people I met sitting next to on an airplane.
There's someone who, instead of putting on my headphones and going to sleep, you'd say hello, and you have a conversation. There's this wonderful mixing that happens on airplanes or standing in line for coffee. A couple of weeks ago, I was in New York, and I was standing in line to get a cup of coffee at a cafe, I'm thinking about this all the time. I'm thinking, "Okay, where's the luck in this room? Where's the luck in this room? There's something here." This lovely young woman was standing next to me, and I turned to her and I said, "Oh, that's such a pretty dress." It was a pretty dress. I said, "Oh, that's such a pretty dress." She said, "Oh, it's Rent the Runway." I said, "Oh, that's so interesting. So many of my former students use Rent the Runway. What do you think of it?" We had a conversation. She said, "Oh, students. Where do you teach?" I said, "Oh, I teach at Stanford." She said, "Oh, I'm a graduate of the business school."
We ended up having a really great conversation. By the end of the conversation, we were linked on LinkedIn. Who knows where that relationship will go, but it came from just saying hello to the person standing next to me. These opportunities are all day long. You don't have to be an extrovert. There are lots of different ways to engage with the world where you invite new inputs, and you follow up in ways that you take them to their logical conclusion.
Lisa: You just don't know. I'm smiling, too, having concluded The View from the Future, where again, a speaker series. A couple of students said to me, they said, Lisa, we love the guests that you bring in, but we're also interested in how you met them, because one of them was someone that I met on a plane 10 years ago.
Tina: Really?
Lisa: Yes. Yes. It turns out we were just exchanging information. He was a very senior person at ESPN, and we stayed in touch over a decade. Sure enough, he came in. He talked about the future of sports. You just don't know. It doesn't have to take much. I appreciate you saying that you don't have to be an extrovert to be able to do it. I've got one more really important question to ask you that I thought was so essential to the book, and I'm so glad you put it in, which is the idea of sometimes what holds us back from saying hello, or just you have a lot in there about taking risks, about being okay to push yourself. That's just this idea of imposter syndrome.
You and I are lucky, fortunate, all of the above, to be working at Stanford. There are a lot of students that we know are high-achieving who are walking around with imposter syndrome. You have just a beautiful reframe on that. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about it.
Tina: In thinking about imposter syndrome, aren't we all imposters all the time?
Lisa: Absolutely.
Tina: Nobody gave me a script for today. Nobody gave me a script for tomorrow. We're constantly making it up along the way. If you think of it actually as improvement syndrome instead of imposter syndrome, I'm always getting better. I haven't mastered this yet. Think about it, Lisa. Did you walk the first time you tried? What about a bicycle?
Lisa: For sure not.
[laughter]
Lisa: For sure not.
Tina: I'm watching. I have a brand new grandbaby, and watching this little baby who's just a few weeks old trying to figure out where her hands are. We are constantly learning when we're children. Why do we assume that really complicated things that we've never done before, why do we assume that we shouldn't make a mistake or we shouldn't have to stretch to accomplish them? If we have that mindset that we're constantly improving as opposed to impostors, it's a much more realistic view of the world.
Lisa: A much more forgiving view. A much more energizing and human way of thinking about it. I love that reframe, that imposter syndrome to improvement syndrome. What a gift.
Tina: There's another piece of the puzzle here, if you don't mind. I asked the students to share what's their mental model of failure. What happens when you fail? At first, they think, "What are you talking about?" I was like, "No, when you think about failing, what is the bottom made of? Are you going to hit concrete? Is it going to be rubber? Is it a black hole? Is it a trampoline? What is it?" We go around the room, and people are like, " It's burning lava. It's broken glass. It's a dark black hole I'll never get out of."
You're like, "Wow, if you have a mental model that failure means that you're going to be in burning lava, well, of course you're not going to take any risks." If you can tell a different story about it being a trampoline or rubber, all of a sudden it's like, "Okay, yes, I might hit bottom, but I can bounce." How do you build that resilience and tell yourself a story about resilience as opposed to one of failure?
Lisa: Spoken like a true neuroscientist [laughs] exploring the plasticity of our brain. Tina, this is just one of your many gifts. I'm so grateful that you talked earlier about the metaphor and the framework for this book because I think that ability to pause and connect it to a metaphor that gives us a chance to deepen our understanding about it or to reframe something as binary that has a multiplicity of possibilities. Again, just another layer of agency. Who do you hope reads this book?
Tina: I am hoping that people read it and want to share it with others. Not any specific person, but that they see in here tools that other people around them could use to increase the opportunities in their life because we often see in other people ways that they could improve that they might not be able to see themselves. If you see someone and go, "Oh, you know what? They would really benefit." That's what I'm hoping people will do.
Lisa: Well, I love that it's coming out in spring, just before graduation for many folks. I think it's the greatest graduation gift ever. I hope that everyone listening to this will buy multiple copies, particularly for the young people in their life. Going back earlier, when I read this book, Tina, I felt like this needs to be a class. We need a class on luck.
I also thought a few weeks ago I had a great opportunity to speak to some members of the Stanford Women in Business, an incredible group of talented young women. Very ambitious. They want to put their talents to work on behalf of making the world better. My advice to them was to encourage them to be excellent, not perfect. I was like, "Be excellent." Now, if I had to go back, I would say, "Be lucky. I want you to learn how to be lucky and to do it on your own terms."
I want to close with just yet another fabulous quote that I took away from the book, Tina. You say, "Luck is a long game that compounds over time. Construct your ship in preparing your mind. Recruit your crew by developing trusting relationships and hoist your sail by doing the hard work of seizing opportunities as they blow by. Luck is like the wind. It's always there. It's invisible but ever-present, ready to be caught and capable of carrying you far, transforming your aspirations into tangible achievements."
Tina: Thank you, Lisa. I am so delighted that you found meaning in this book. You are one of my personal heroes, and I look forward to many more conversations.
Lisa: This conversation was such a great way to start our new season of How We Future. Tina's framing of luck as something we're capable of benefiting from is such a useful, positive way to move through life. Here's a first step to increasing your chances for luck. This week, write one thank-you note to someone who's made a difference in your life. Be specific, and maybe even find out if there's a way you can return the favor. Showing appreciation doesn't just make someone else's day. It plants seeds for your own future in ways you can't predict.
Tina's new book, What I Wish I Knew About Luck, drops April 21st. You can pre-order it now in the link in the show notes. If you know a recent graduate or someone navigating a big transition, this is a perfect gift. If you've enjoyed this episode, leave a comment and tell us what idea, question, or reframe stayed with you. For deeper dives, reflections, and behind-the-scenes context from each episode, check out the How We Future sub-stack. That's where we extend the conversation and share more ways to practice futures thinking in everyday life. Thanks for being a part of How We Future. I'm so glad you're here for Season 3.
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Links from the episode:
Preorder What I Wish I Knew About Luck: A Crash Course on Turning Aspirations into Achievements by Tina Seelig
What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20: A Crash Course in Making Your Place in the World by Tina Seelig
inGenius: A Crash Course on Creativity by Tina Seelig
Creativity Rules: Get Ideas Out of Your Head and into the World by Tina Seelig
Tina’s Ted Talk: The Little Risks You Can Take to Increase Your Luck
