TysonTime

I was at the Sunday market, downing Juanita’s ridiculously fantastic tamales with Magno (short for magnificent), a retired teacher who inspires one to think.

Our conversation turned to the philosophical and the basic question of serendipity and chance arose.  What follows is my treatise on the matter.

The are mountains of cliches (which of course are true, or they wouldn’t have achieve the status of cliche): opportunity knocks, success comes to those who seek it, planets are lined up, don’t rest on your laurels, and so on.  These are the most true basic framework of laws when contemplating the meaning of life, so I think any theory of everything must permit these truisms to exist within it.

My theory is one of super-serendipity.  The idea that there are combinations of times and places where things are incredibly perfect for some other thing to happen.  Taking the omnipotent view, there are millions of these coincidental happening occurring at each moment.  Taking the personal view, they don’t happen too often, but I think they happen more often than most people recognize.

In the great world of complex systems, serendipity is a reality and is defined as the occurrence of a mathematically significant event.  If we think of a large family of complex mathematical formulas which were randomly defined, those which result in a prime number, for example, would exhibit mathematical serendipity.  Out of a family of trillions of formulas, only say, a million are super-elegant and therefore super-serendipity has struck.  These are your lotto winners.  A hundred times more events than that are merely serendipitous, like finding a great friend, and the remainder is just noise.  The key here is that serendipity is a reality, and given any level of complexity, is certain to exist in a system.  The real problem is, how does one make sure that he, as an individual, is the one to experience this serendipity and super-serendipity, and not some other lucky chap?

Well, if the above mathematical matrix of trillions of random formulas and were our world, it is just a matter of being someone that checks the values on as many times as possible.  You must get out there and get in the way of lots of happenings before you find one that is serendipitous or super-serendipitous.  You must be consistent, and willing to try a lot of mundane things to find the ones that shine.  Interestingly, this process, over a fairly short period of a few months, should overturn unheard-of serendipity.  It is just a matter of the mechanisms of this world.  But so many people are daunted by this effort, that they don’t bother to look and they develop the excuse that chance is at hand, and there is nothing they can do to affect chance.  Bullshit.  This isn’t a casino, the house isn’t rigged to win.  Its a non-biased complex system.  The more you play, the more it will pay.

Then why are there those people that play a great many hands and still turn up fruitless?  Because they don’t really believe and they aren’t open to opportunity when it knocks.  You can go through the effort of trying a great many things and getting involved in a great many happenings, but many people don’t capitalize on serendipity when it strikes because they don’t trust that it is real.  It’s too good to be true.

So you must not only be persistent and put yourself out there, a lot, but you must be ready and willing to recognize and act on and believe in serendipity.

But that is only part one of a two part story.  Once you are on a path of aligned planets, because of the nature of this system I describe, those particular planets won’t be aligned for long.  You must keep hunting,  and never rest on your laurels.  As long as you hunt and are open to new and unforeseen serendipities, your success will continue.

Interestingly, science is confirming the existence of statistical harmony in the formation of super-string theory, but for now, I will just ask you to believe that science backs this up as opposed to penning yet more paragraphs as proof.  

So what does this mean for you?  You absolutely can make unrealistic success happen all by your own initiative.  They key is that you cannot predict or control what serendipities you will happen across, you can only control your willingness to embrace them as they come along.  Be driven to constantly look for new serendipities, and never settling for less than that.  Only then can the world be your oyster.

Benchmark Trade Show Booth, originally uploaded by tysonmcdowell.

Our team is genious!!

So, as you may or may not know, I am doing the Personal MBA course (www.personalmba.com) and have been reading “First Break all the Rules” by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman. In that book, in a section discussing the best ways to interview a new employee candidate, they ask the question “How do you feel when people doubt you?”

They say that, when asking a salesman, the best answer is “upset” because salesmen hate having their credibility challenged. Their integrity is all they they have to sell! If a teacher answers the questions, it should be “happy” because it implies that the student is “actively learning.” How do I feel about it? Well, indifferent. I wouldn’t do well on this question in an interview!

I feel indifferent to someone doubting me because I expect to have to earn that person’s trust over time. The fact that they doubt me is their choice, and often times, since I am talking to them about things outside of or a stretch from their domain, I don’t expect them to believe me on day 1. When I am doubted, I feel resolve to educate and convince, but I am certainly not upset, or happy, or anything truly emotional. It just is. When someone doubts me so much that the expense I must incur to get them on my side is great, I just move on.

Here’s my point of reference: I don’t bullshit, and I don’t lie (unless it’s funny, and you disclose once the punchline has passed), and so you have no real reason to doubt me. I know that I am not wasting your time feeding you lines.  So if you doubt me, it just means you haven’t come to understand or trust me yet. To me, that isn’t an emotional issue. It doesn’t inspire feeling as much as indicate work that I yet must do.

I don’t think someone questioning me should inspire emotional response, that is unless you know me, trust me, and have a momentary lapse in remembering who I am…

Every now and again it is good to sit back and take a look at one’s self.  Life is pretty hard-hitting sometimes (in good ways and bad) and it is easy to lose perspective.  Anjuli and I are out on our Italian vacation where she is reconnecting with her adopted heritage and I am sticking out like a sore thumb.

We are over here in the UC Centro Studiti (probably spelled that wrong) and Anjuli is shooting the proverbial stuff with her advisor of several years ago.  I sat down with the Internet for the first time in a week and took a look at some of my life on here and realized I have a lot to be proud of, and a lot to be happy about. 

Honestly, I don’t feel remarkable, but from the looks of things, we are rockstars.  It is all summed up in a comment left on one of our YouTube videos, “Tale of the Gucci Jets“: “An L-39, Hooverphonic on the decks, and a pretty girl in the back seat. Life really doesn’t get much better than that. :)”.  Wow, how cool is that!?  I wish I were that guy!  Wait, I am…

It turns out that I really DO need to take a step back and smell the roses!