THE JOURNAL
Dr Christian Busch believes that we can make our own luck. Far from thinking it’s an intangible phenomenon that we cannot control, the lecturer is convinced that by arming ourselves with the right tools and thought processes, we can become “lucky”. He calls this “serendipity”, which, in his new book The Serendipity Mindset, he defines as “unexpected good luck resulting from unplanned moments in which proactive decisions led to positive outcomes”. To illustrate this central thesis, he presents us with the following experiment, conducted by psychologist Dr Richard Wiseman.
Dr Wiseman’s experiment involves two people, whom Dr Busch calls Martin and Brenda. Martin considers himself a lucky person; Brenda thinks she is unlucky. Martin and Brenda take separate trips to a coffee shop, where a £5 note has been placed on the pavement outside. Inside, a businessman has been planted near the bar. When Martin approaches the coffee shop, he notices the money and picks it up. He also notices the businessman, starts talking to him, and gets into a productive conversation. Brenda, however, is oblivious to both the £5 note and the businessman, and sits in silence while she sips her drink. By perceiving ourselves as lucky, and consequently being open to unexpected things happening, we can radically change how we experience the world.
Dr Busch’s main argument is that serendipity is the hidden phenomenon at the heart of a great many success stories. In 2009, when he started researching his PhD – on how people and businesses can increase their social impact – he noticed that most of the successful people he spoke to cultivated a kind of “serendipity field” that helped them experience more positive outcomes. He set out to write a book to help the average person harness this skill as well.
I find this idea fascinating; that our frame of mind can so drastically change our path in life. Being positively proactive – not being afraid to ask for help, to talk to new people, to remain open-minded – these are all things I struggle with, and which Dr Busch prescribes in the book. So, how do we go forth and cultivate serendipity? How to be a Martin, and never a Brenda?
“We need to see links or bridges where others see gaps”
The answer is multi-faceted, of course. Dr Busch outlines a game plan for those who would like to maximise serendipity: look for the hidden value in unexpected events; converse with strangers, who may exponentially be opening up possibilities; acknowledge when random events have contributed to success; never underestimate influence of optimism; and value feedback from the people you admire.
“Serendipity is about seeing what others don’t,” he writes, “about noticing unexpected observations and turning them into opportunities.” History is littered with examples. Sir Alexander Fleming’s curious, open mindset, for example, meant that when the mould penicillium chrysogenum accidentally formed around – and killed – a bacterium that he was researching, Sir Alexander didn’t throw the dish in the bin, he showed it to his colleagues. In doing so he helped create life-changing medicine. “We need to see links or bridges where others see gaps,” says Dr Busch.
As someone who would probably not only ignore the £5 note but also trip over on my way into the coffee shop, I feel like trying to turbo-charge my serendipity. I decide to follow some of the exercises that Dr Busch puts at the end of each chapter. Some are inward-facing, and some involve engaging with others.
Because of the global pandemic, I focus largely on those that do not involve instigating meetings with large groups of people just because I’m writing an article. Besides, some of the exercises that involve other people seem as though they would be hard to pull off with a straight face. For example, Dr Busch advises asking people you meet, “What is one word that encapsulates your aspiration for the coming year, and why?” The author’s sincerity carries you a long way as a reader, but some of his tips could leave you sounding like a bit of a moron.
Dr Busch recommends sending three thank-you notes a week to people who have had a positive impact on your life. “Thank-you notes have been proven to have a surprisingly strong impact on both the sender and receiver,” says Dr Busch. Sending them will mean that other people are more likely to help us connect the dots and realise serendipity. I can attest to this: I send half a dozen or so, and they honestly make me feel a little emotional. Because of the impact the notes have on the people I send them to – they are clearly moved and surprised to receive such a heartfelt message – I instantly feel motivated to simply be more kind to people, and more often. This is honestly driven by a desire to self-improve but, from a position of self-interest, it is clear that staying connected to people like this can only help in the long run.
Because research has shown that kindness and gratitude improve sleep, happiness and alertness – things that will in turn improve one’s chances of enjoying serendipity – Dr Busch recommends incorporating gratefulness into your life. That is why I find myself downloading an app called Gratitude and writing down the things for which I am grateful, attaching a photo for each. This, though more abstract, is good for my mental health, reminding me how lucky I am to have a working body, a partner, a baby and a healthy family. This isn’t one of those articles in which I pretend that straight after filling in the app I got a phone call from someone who offered me £1m, but the practice does make me realise that I’m rather jaded, and tend to waste time obsessing over insignificant things.
“Once we put ourselves out there, magic can happen”
The other emotion that the Gratitude app – and the thank-you notes – make me feel is vulnerability. This, Dr Busch says, is key to cultivating serendipity. (I would argue that it is also crucial to the majority of personal development.) To open yourself up to serendipity, you have to take a chance, risk feeling foolish. In the case of my thank-you notes, this risk paid off. I was sending “serendipity triggers”, in Dr Busch’s words, and with each note my mood improved and the receiver became more likely to remember me in future.
The Serendipity Mindset is a convincing read, despite being overlong by 50 pages or so, and some of its stories having rather tenuous links to serendipity. And, to its credit, it doesn’t pretend that a simple change in mindset will radically alter your life: Dr Busch acknowledges the role that privilege and structural inequality play in hampering people’s access to serendipity. We are only able to reach out to high-profile people in our field if we have access to these people in the first place: “A popular software billionaire, for example, started out in a wealthy family who sent him to a private school, enabling him to develop his hobby of programming…”
And this is part of Dr Busch’s point: we need to be honest about the roles that chance, privilege and serendipity have played in making us who we are. Too often people will pretend that a moment of chance was in some way inevitable. “By definition,” he says, “we cannot know or programme serendipitous outcomes.” What we can do is be on the look-out for them and react with an open mind when they occur.
Inevitably, after trying a number of the book’s exercises for a couple of weeks, I am a little miffed that I am not the CEO of a vast international empire. But the book has changed my life for the better. During idle moments in which I might previously have second-guessed myself, I am now determined to say something kind, to thank someone, to make a connection.
If there is one thing to take away from the book, I believe it’s that serendipity is not an abstract concept that alights on people at random. It is people, and our willingness to engage with people, that makes all the difference. “Once we put ourselves out there,” as Dr Busch says, “magic can happen.”
Illustration by Mr Pete Gamlen