The Big Leap

Mike has something super special for you in this week's podcast episode — a fascinating conversation about luck, opportunity, mindset and manifesting positive outcomes with two unconventional thinkers.

Gay and Mike sat down with Stuart Lacey for a fascinating exploration of luck.

You're going to absolutely love hearing Gay and Stuart dive deep into what luck really means, how to cultivate it in your life, and their unique formulas for manifesting more luck.

These are two guys who have thought more about luck than almost anyone Mike knows. Gay literally wrote the book on Conscious Luck and Stuart's new book is called "The Formula for Luck." So they've got some profound wisdom to share.

They covered things like:
  • The key mindsets and behaviors that "lucky" people have in common
  • Practical techniques to help you maximize serendipity and flow
  • How to quickly recover when things don't go your way
  • The role of empathy, connection, and community in enhancing luck
  • And much more!
Mike had so much fun geeking out with Gay and Stuart on this topic. As three naturally curious people, they got into the metaphysics, neuroscience, and social dynamics behind luck and good fortune.

So whether you want to understand luck on a theoretical level or learn how to have more of it in your own life, you're going to find tremendous value in this episode.

Jump in and let Mike know what gems you uncover!

Key Takeaways
  • (03:48) Developing a luck mindset through conscious thinking
  • (09:24) The nature of luck and manifestation
  • (13:14) Luck, mindset and decision making
  • (23:36) The neuroscience of luck and flow state
  • (32:22) The formula for manifesting luck and personal growth
  • (45:04) The importance of self acceptance and gratitude to open yourself up to new opportunities
Additional Resources
 

Creators and Guests

Host
Gay Hendricks
Gay Hendricks is a psychologist, writer, and teacher in the field of personal growth, relationships, and body intelligence.
Host
Mike Koenigs
Mike Koenigs helps business owners and entrepreneurs get paid for BEING, instead of DOING by becoming Transformational Business Influencers, authorities and thought-leaders to create impact, income and a great lifestyle.

What is The Big Leap?

The Big Leap is about two main things; one, Your Upper Limits. How much we can accomplish or achieve? How much love and abundance we can receive? And two, Discovering Your Zone of Genius. The difference between stagnation and success lies in the decisions you make in the moments that matter. This podcast is about those turning points -- the single decisions in life and business that change everything because the difference between stagnation and success lies in the decisions you make in the moments that matter. Gay and Mike will talk about business, relationships, limiting beliefs, and creating freedom and from time to time, you’ll also meet some of their favorite thinkers, thought leaders and celebrities and hear about their Big Leaps.

Mike Koenigs [00:03:57]:
Thing here just because you get crotch cam there. That was just there we go. But I'm doing triple redundant backups right now just because. So here we go. I'll begin and then on three oh, I'm do five claps. So I've got a reference here, 1234 or five. All right, I'm here with two of my favorite people, gay Hendrix, of course, but also Stuart Lacey. We know each other from Summit series, but also YPO.

Mike Koenigs [00:04:44]:
You're one of the geniuses who put together the YPO AI event that took place at MIT's Media Lab. But what brought us here together is the thing that both of you have in common other than some recent operations. But you wrote a book called the formula for luck leave nothing to chance ten Powerful principles for building a Luck mindset. And it also has a foreword written by Salim Ishmael, which is a story upon itself. But part of the reason I wanted to bring you two together is because, of course, gay wrote a book on luck, too. We've done multiple podcasts on this, but I might begin this and say, well, first of all, say, hi, guys. And then I'm going to ask the opening question.

Stuart Lacey [00:05:29]:
Hi, guys, everyone, great to see you.

Mike Koenigs [00:05:34]:
So here's the best way to get this thing rolling because I want to ask Gay the same question, which is, Stuart, why did you write this book, and why is luck so important to you?

Stuart Lacey [00:05:45]:
Well, great question, and thank you for your time today. So excited to be with both of you, mike and Gay. So love the kickoff. Know, for me, my life has definitely been trials and know one of those make a lot of money at a very young age and then develop some bad habits and lose it all. And then as I rebuilt, I look back on my life, to be honest. I really tried to figure out what were these operating principles that had served me so well prior to in that journey that had then, ultimately, maybe when I maybe left them behind for a short while when I was all wealthy and extravagant, if you will, led to my decline. And so I tried to map through Mike what this looked like. And what I realized is that there had been a series of life circumstances, stories and scenarios which I developed certain operating behaviors and rhythms from a very young age which were different from the majority of people, mostly in response to a heavy amount of bullying as a kid and not wanting to fight back.

Stuart Lacey [00:06:44]:
As a bully, I started to develop other ways to try and connect with people or diffuse situations, change behaviors. And I applied those very successfully at a young age and then again in kind of my second mountain. And so many people, including finally, the editor of Inc magazine, Kevin Dahme, who I did a lot of work with, with one of my tech startups, finally said, Stuart, I hear from everyone that you're one of the luckiest guys we've ever met. Would you unpack it with me? I said sure. And he said, do you have a recipe for luck? And I inadvertently responded immediately, and, you know, it's more of a formula for luck. And that started the article. And then Forbes asked me to write the book, and I literally unpacked this mindset and wanted to get it on paper so that I could pay it forward. So that was kind of my Genesis story.

Mike Koenigs [00:07:32]:
Good. Well, Gay, you of course, wrote Conscious Luck eight Secrets to Intentionally Change Your Fortune just for the framing the sake of this conversation. What caused you to write that book? Why was it so important to you? Because we've talked about this plenty, but I think it's good to have it all in one place.

Gay Hendricks [00:07:53]:
Well, all of my books, going back to the very first one I wrote, which is now 48 years ago, almost 50 years ago, they all have to do with helping empower people to develop and manifest some skill that will be useful to them in life. Like, Katie and I have written a series of relationship books, which is basically the principles and practices of what will make a successful relationship. Well, when I was 14, I heard a brand new way of thinking from a kid that was very lucky. He won a prize on a day that there was a couple of hundred people in the audience, and I was sitting next to him and they were having a drawing, and he said, Watch this. I'll win one of the three prizes. It turned out he won the number one prize, and I didn't win anything. My ticket was in the same fishbowl his was, and he got picked out. And I said, well, how did you do that? And he says, It's really easy.

Gay Hendricks [00:08:55]:
He said, I just one day decided that I was going to be one of what he called the lucky ones. And he said he looked around his family and he saw them talking all the time about how bad things were and they were always predicting doom and that kind of thing. And then he had I think it was an uncle who was just the complete opposite. He considered himself the luckiest man in the world, and good things happened to him. And so this kid I was sitting next to, he said he had decided to adopt that mindset. Well, he didn't say the word mindset that was to come, but he said basically, that was what he was talking about. He installed this new way of thinking, and I decided on the spot that I was going to do it, too. And then I had an event happen right after that, the next couple of days, where I found a bag full of rare coins on the street and was able to return them to the man who owned them.

Gay Hendricks [00:10:00]:
And I made the front page of the paper in Leesburg, Florida, because I was the kid that returned the $5,000 worth of coins and didn't take any of them or anything like that. So anyway, I was a hero for a day, but that let me know that you could make changes in your life just by rearranging the thought molecules in your mind. And I didn't know at the time, but William James, the granddaddy of American psychology in the 19th century, he said the greatest discovery of his time was that you could change the outer circumstances of your life by making inner mental changes. And so later on, I would learn all that kind of stuff when I started reading books about manifestation and things. But that was later to come. So it took me six months to write Conscious Luck. But I'd been thinking about it since I was 14 years old, and I'd been gradually collecting what I thought were principles that fed into lucky people. And I would talk to dozens of people and say, you're an incredibly lucky person.

Gay Hendricks [00:11:11]:
What do you think makes you so? And surprisingly enough, people are very thoughtful about that if you ask them the right kind of question. And I imagine, Stuart, you found the same thing, that people were quite willing to share what they knew about their own luck because they weren't trying to keep it a secret or anything, just nobody had ever asked them. And so that's how I got a lot of my own information. And also I've come to feel that there's certain general principles about how life itself works, and if we honor those principles and stay in harmony with them, then things happen all the time that look like great luck, but they're just the sequel of a change in your thought process.

Mike Koenigs [00:12:02]:
That's good. So I thought of one more important question, because I would suspect that you guys both agree on and probably have arrived at a lot of similar conclusions, but I'd be curious, what isn't luck? So I'm looking for an area where you might have a heated disagreement or not agree on what luck is or how to manifest it. Because for you, Stuart, you talk about the formula for luck and the process of building a luck mindset. And you started out right away about habits, behaviors, actions. And one thing I know about gay is he just decides to make it. So I wouldn't say that the distinction is there's a mindset difference, but I hear a little more process through your lens. And one thing I know about gay is he just shows up and he makes it. So it's sort of like he just assumes that the universe is going to follow his direction.

Mike Koenigs [00:13:08]:
And I've watched it before. I've witnessed some insanely lucky things because he just wills it into being. And he and Ariel Ford are two people who just profoundly command the universe to bend to their wills. They're fascinating people to be around, but what shows up for you when you.

Stuart Lacey [00:13:27]:
Hear, well, it's a great with I'd love to talk about luck mindset a little bit later because I think we do have some unpacking there. But on this question specifically, Mike, and it's a great one, let me start with luck is not chance in my view, okay? And let me mention one of the top ten books on most CEOs shelves is Thinking Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. Right? And in that book, which was turned into a movie, it was very much a manifestation kind of mindset. Think of it and it will happen. And I can tell you it's a great book and for a lot of people, they love it. But many people have found it difficult to wield or apply. I think some people like, if I think of a big bag of money tomorrow, will it show up at my doorstep or not? And so what I wanted to do was to honor a deeper, more thoughtful operating system approach. Whereas here's ten things that you can do and understand them that's very accessible, that will absolutely create change in order to complement potentially what Gay has talked about or what Napoleon Hill talked about, but a very accessible manual to do it.

Stuart Lacey [00:14:30]:
What I mean by that is the following luck is not chance. I mean, chance is odds. ODS are things you can find at Vegas. The best ODS are craps at 48.9%. You can improve your ODS, you can decrease your ODS. But if you think of luck as odds, you bring yourself, unfortunately not to the full idea of what a luck mindset is. You rather stay close to what a growth mindset is. And a growth mindset, which is Carol Dweck's amazing, seminal work, but 20 years old stops at this concept that the harder you work, the lucky you are, the better you are.

Stuart Lacey [00:15:05]:
And whilst true, it's anecdotal at best because unfortunately, the world is full of incredibly hardworking people that aren't lucky. So how do you define that? How do you define Michael Phelps, which is genetically a dolphin and swims 1000 hours versus someone that swims 5000 hours, maybe is genetically a dolphin but didn't? And why is Subway Girl in the New York City subways still busking after plane for 20,000 hours? What are the breaks? What are the changes? I also view luck as positive and negative. And I'd love Gay's comment on that because luck can transpire both for and against, you know, flow states, which we studied a lot of and I speak about in the book, speak to this concept of continued manifestation. And, for example, if you are Mike in a club and smoke billows across the roof and you go charging for the exits like everyone else, that choice in that moment could lead to your demise because more lives are lost in a stampede to the exit than the actual fire. In fact, my question would be, why didn't you slowly turn around and walk to the kitchen? Why? Well, there's a door in every kitchen to the outside, so how you respond can both magnify, both positively and negative, your luck. So I look at luck in a series of very thoughtful ways to help people understand what behaviors and actions and habits they can generate and how those decisions can both amplify and reduce their outcomes in any specific situation. And then I try and apply that in a very easy to access kind of workbook framework with exercises so people can hopefully improve upon it.

Gay Hendricks [00:16:46]:
Could you give us an example, Stuart, of one practical thing that you suggest in the book?

Stuart Lacey [00:16:54]:
Yeah, so a great question there. And if I used that example of being in that moment I was in that fire, if you will, smoke billowing or we've worked with people that have heard the popping sound, and then afterwards they go, I didn't realize it was gunfire. I mean, how often do you have to hear that? That sound of popping is probably not a car backfiring. It could be. So how do you respond in a situation, Gay, where you might be at an airport or on a tube train and you're concerned about your well being and safety? And one of the things that we coach people to do is to follow something, for example, called the OODA Loop. The OODA Loop, which we talk about in the book, which starts with observe, orient, decide, act. Most people act immediately. So in the chapter that I write about on situational awareness, we talk about this concept of rather than knee jerk acting, which is rushing, you stop immediately and you observe what's going on very rapidly.

Stuart Lacey [00:17:50]:
You orient what's my position within what I've now observed? You then make a decision, and then you act. And you can do that in seconds when well trained or thought of, but the outcome can change your life. And so that's just one of many, many exercises and practical applications. If you want more, I can chat you later about them. But that's an example using the Use case, I just shared with you how a small, quick process can actually dramatically change the outcome.

Gay Hendricks [00:18:19]:
Yeah, well, in conscious Luck, one of the things we talk about is kind of metaphysical, which is in the sense of an alignment, if you go to some links to get aligned inside yourself, your luck typically changes. So that's an inner move. But then I also suggest a lot of outer moves, very practical things you write down and things like that. So could you give us an example also of one of the inner kinds of things that feeds your work? Are there inner shifts that people need to make.

Stuart Lacey [00:18:59]:
Yeah. So I'll give two quick examples to help flesh it out. One comes from the world of failing forward, which is the chapter on action, which is how quickly we recover. And in that chapter, I worked with Barbara Corcoran, the famous gal from the shark tank, and she's the most spectacular failure of all time. She's failed more often than anyone, she says, and she's phenomenally fun and entertaining to work with. And her basically bottom line comment is the difference between success and failure are those people that recover quicker. I e. How long do you feel sorry for yourself after your failure? That's the biggest decider, she says, period.

Stuart Lacey [00:19:34]:
And so that choice of feeling sorry for yourself, that inward facing critic that I never should have done that, I knew better, that kind of that limiting belief, I can't do it again. The length at which you take, the way that which you process, that the longer it takes, the less quick you can respond, and more likely you're not going to be able to get back in your feet. So that's an example from the failed forward side of it. Another one I think is really empathy, and that's a different chapter and a different habit that we can form. And I think the way that I look at that is there's some phenomenal people to learn from in empathy. And one of the people I worked with, his closest friend is the Dali Lama. So he's probably well informed and works with the Dali very closely. But one of the things I think is more energistic, if I might, and maybe that speaks closer to your thought, Gay, which is, if you think about taking a tennis ball and throwing it at a wall, and the wall is 180 degrees, it's going to bounce right back to you.

Stuart Lacey [00:20:30]:
So a lot of people live their lives, like, if I put energy out, I expect an energy return. Right. That's a very, if you will, New Yorker style, like, hey, what's in it for me? What's in it for you? The transactional kind of stuff. Right. Which is very much a growth mindset approach, I believe, very differently. I believe that the walls out there are every degree but 180. They're 45 and everything. And when you throw that ball, it's going to go sideways.

Stuart Lacey [00:20:56]:
But that's good. Why? Because it's a pay it forward approach. I believe we should be investing our energy in the things that are meaningful and impactful and beautiful for other human beings experiences, irrespective of our immediate return. Because what I know, and I think this goes closer to where you're coming from, that energy being vested in the world echoes and it reframes. And when it comes back to you, it's kind of that return of energy, but not because you asked for it in return, but because of the net energy you're putting back into the world. Framing and nurturing and nourishing the people around you which ultimately through connection or serendipity other areas that I've explored that return feels like luck to a lot of people but it's a manifestation outcome of a certain set of behaviors.

Gay Hendricks [00:21:40]:
I agree very much with that. One of the things that we talk about a lot is getting back to the subject of alignment, finding every level of alignment you possibly can like are you aligned with your emotions? Is your speaking aligned with what's actually going on and are you aligned with your life purpose? Do you know what you're up to? Because it seems to me that early in my life when I wasn't manifesting very good luck during my twenty s I was still manifesting things. It was just I was manifesting things out of a negative set of beliefs. Like I was overweight, I smoked heavily and was in a crappy relationship. And all of those, now that I look back on it, were based on some very core beliefs about I didn't believe that I deserve to be here. I didn't believe that I deserve to be successful. And I thought I was just putting in my time here. And unfortunately, I had a big wake up event in my 20s where I saw how I was creating all that, and I decided to turn my power toward manifesting what I did want instead of what I didn't want.

Gay Hendricks [00:23:02]:
And we go through three stages in our training when we teach manifestation, the first level is we call the Newtonian level based on Isaac Newton's work about for every action, there's an equal opposite reaction. And so all the things that are like affirmations or visualizations, those would I think they're very important, but they're in an early stage we call Newtonian because they're all based on the idea that if I put out a certain something, a certain something is going to come back. And most people discover that that's a lot more harder than it looks when they read it in the book. Because of the wall problem that you mentioned that none of the walls are 180 degrees. But then we move into a second stage. We call that the Einsteinian stage, where you're actually manifesting things to you based on what you need to know or feel or be in order to move on to a new level. And so for example we tend to in the Einsteinian stage solve a lot of problems instead of by visualization or affirmation. We recommend people get good at loving things and accepting things just as they are instead of trying to ride over them and change them and coming to harmony with what's going on actually rather than trying to convince yourself or the universe otherwise.

Gay Hendricks [00:24:36]:
Ultimately we call the third stage literally the third way and it's when you've gone beyond both of those and then things just seem to happen organically and spontaneously that just kind of support what you want to do. You're not asking for it, you're not needing to do any inner work, just things start kind of supporting you. And to me, that's really worth putting in the work to get to that stage, because then what you're doing in the third way is simply working on enhancing your ability to receive. Receiving love, receiving luck, receiving good information, receiving good people into your life. So it makes life much simpler in a way. It's like we have to go through some levels of complexity in order to get to a place where things can be very simple.

Stuart Lacey [00:25:36]:
Yeah, I couldn't agree with you more. And funny enough, Mike, you and I recently chatted a little bit about this, but we did a lot of work when we were writing the book on the neuroscience of luck, in that we studied flow states, which is a super current idea of, like, how do some people gay in the morning stub their toe? And from that moment, the whole day is a cascade of terrible things or other people start off and there's a bluebird outside and it sets their day off. What creates that compounding up or the compounding down? What's most interesting is if you look at from a neuroscience perspective, which we map a little bit into our Positivity chapter, we are really good at establishing and carrying that energy from a prior state. So, for example, the tank in the car has got half the amount of gas in it that it can. If you're in a negative flow state, you feel like you're running out of gas. If you're in positive flow state, you're thankful you have a half tank. You can look at almost anything based on a decision framework. But the actual circumstance isn't different.

Stuart Lacey [00:26:38]:
It's just how you're looking at it. And we actually mapped it to dream work, interestingly enough. And people that can wake up from dreams have the ability to actually reset from something they're not enjoying, to actually say, no, that dream is not working, I'm going to wake myself up. And those people are much more successful at getting positive flow states because they're able to intervene with the negative flow state that they might be in and reset the energy. And so I think you're absolutely right that when you look at it from an energistic or even a neuroscience perspective and I'm not a doctor, psychiatry like yourself, but the people we worked with, a lot of them collaborated to try and identify what can we actually control, right? And I think that's where my book is more of a manual to help people get meaningful steps. That's a way that I want. I want to be very accessible. Like flip to a chapter anytime you want.

Stuart Lacey [00:27:32]:
And in the neuroscience, we're helping people understand that there's more under your control than you believe. But part of it is exactly what you discussed is setting yourself up for that level of success, getting your radar band out further so you can be aware of the good stuff, because some people are too much caught up, they're not able to see the opportunity. And that's where that question of luck equals opportunity and action. I think it's way more complicated because some people are too closed off gay. To be able to actually bear witness to what's happening and then act on.

Mike Koenigs [00:28:07]:
Yes, I've got a little oh, go ahead, Gay.

Gay Hendricks [00:28:09]:
Well, one of the sayings we use around here comes from a musician friend of ours named Ray Wiley Hubbard. He says, on the days when my gratitude is higher than my expectations, I have really good days. And it speaks to an Einsteinian point about being grateful for what you have as a launch pad to manifesting what you want, because the energy that goes into not liking where you are instead of accepting and appreciating, is the energy that you will need to actually go to the next level.

Stuart Lacey [00:28:47]:
Yeah, Mike, I know you have a question. I just want to double click on that for a second, if I can. I think what the listener really needs, in my view, and I would think Gay would probably agree, is to understand the difference between the use cases. For example, if you stop at a gas station and you buy a scratchy, which is like for lottery and there's rows of ten by ten, there's a one in 100 chance to scratch something. In my opinion, no matter how hard in that moment you think about it and try and manifest it, if you scratch one, it's a one in 100 chance. Like, I don't see that and I don't guide people that that's a good use of their manifestation energy. I worry that they're going to misunderstand. However, if your plane is diverted and you're at an airport and you're in line and there's 150 people trying to get ten seats, and you choose how you want to show up with that poor lady behind or man behind the desk that had the worst day, that trying to help everyone.

Stuart Lacey [00:29:40]:
And you show up. You can choose in that moment how you show up. You can choose to be kind, empathetic, supportive, you can be understanding, or you can choose to be angry and vindictive and throw your gold pass at them. All those things are within your control and where you can really see massive change in your outcomes when you can apply yourself in areas where your decisions actually have significant change in the other side of the equation. And I want people to understand that that's where the force multiplier, I've always found, comes from rather than from trying to beat the ODS, which is a tough thing to do.

Gay Hendricks [00:30:17]:
Exactly. And yes. Go ahead, Mike.

Mike Koenigs [00:30:20]:
OK, well, I'm going to pivot this just a little bit, which is the approach to luck. So I'm going to tell you what I've done. To some degree, as long as. I can remember. But it changed to be conscious because I found that framing other people and giving them a process to get into a luck mindset is super important. So, Gay, I've told you bits about this before, but I'm going to give you a formula that I've used, and I'd like you each to comment on your formula, your approach. So I'm going to just share this, which is like, for me, I very consciously manifest luck, so I get clear on how I want to feel. So I really find when this happens, what emotion do I want to feel? And if I were going to describe it as a word or a phrase, what would that be? And then I live in it.

Mike Koenigs [00:31:23]:
And oftentimes luck for me involves what will happen with other people. So it's not just about me, it's what will happen as a collective. So I imagine what kind of people might need to be around me for that to happen to me. It sort of multiplies the chances of something occurring. It's sort of like sometimes you're a phone call away from making something magnificent happen, and all you need is that connection. So I just think that your brain just creates opportunities for something to happen. When you're conscious of what those happen to be, they're multipliers. So anyway, the other thing I do is I always did this with stage presentations and performances because to me, those are dream multipliers.

Mike Koenigs [00:32:11]:
Because if you declare something, they happen. So here's a real life case study. I was speaking at Peter Diamandis's on AI. And Vivian and I decided we're going to go to Spain. And there is a very famous Spanish chef. His name will pop into my head in a moment, but he owns these restaurants all over Spain. And I saw this. He has a TV show and we watched this television show.

Mike Koenigs [00:32:45]:
And again, I'm going to find the name of the guy. It's going to drive me nuts. But Jose andres. That's what it is.

Gay Hendricks [00:32:52]:
Jose Andres world kitchen.

Mike Koenigs [00:32:54]:
Yeah, that's the guy. So there was this TV series, and what I did is I created a whole plan of all of his restaurants that are from the show. And I made a list of it and then I'm like, oh yeah, well, let's make reservations there. And I thought, that's going to take weeks just to get all their contact info. So I used AI to build the whole itinerary. I was speaking at Peter's and I said, hey, I used AI to create a dream vacation. So I showed this thing on screen and during a break, a guy walked up to me and he said, jose Andres is my business partner. I'm partners in almost all of his Michelin star rated restaurants.

Mike Koenigs [00:33:35]:
And if you'll come to Spain as my guest, I will make sure you get into all of them. And the whole point is, it was like this little magical moment and we ended up building this beautiful friendship. And I didn't know it at the time, but this guy's a multibillionaire on top of one of very wealthy families. So we had way beyond the velvet rope experience. Now, I'm saying that because I dreamed it, it involved a person. Because I think luck can be a lonely place if you go about it alone. And I noticed that when I started practicing this, I started being able to fly in my dreams. Like in a lot of my dreams I fly intentionally.

Mike Koenigs [00:34:20]:
Like I taught myself how to fly in them. And I know what that feels like even in my present moment. So I really think that luck is matching and connecting your dreams with your conscious life and letting them blend and feeling the just make it so. So it's not wishing. There's a difference between dreaming and wishing. I wish this would happen. I don't think that's very intentional at all. It doesn't multiply the luck.

Mike Koenigs [00:34:46]:
But I just gave you my formula and I teach this when I do some of my work. I say, what's the feeling, what's the emotion you want to feel when this is true? But what's your formula for manifesting? What's your formula for creating? Or do you have a completely different approach?

Gay Hendricks [00:35:07]:
Well, a formula that we use here is fact. And F stands for facing, a stands for accepting, c stands for choosing and T stands for taking action. And the reason people when they say, I wish I had a new Ferrari it's based on a deep belief that they don't deserve that or don't have the capacity to receive that in some way. And so what we try to do is get underneath and help the person come to terms with whatever they need to face that they have not yet faced and to accept and love that. Then they can choose and take action on top of kind of a clear space rather than a space that's directed by old fears or ego needs or things like that.

Mike Koenigs [00:36:07]:
Dort well.

Stuart Lacey [00:36:10]:
My book is called The Formula for Luxo. There are ten things divided into three areas. The first set are our behaviors. Right? The behaviors are curiosity, passion, connectivity, positivity and empathy. Why they're behaviors is they're infinite. Meaning we can work them like muscles and develop all those infinitely. But they're not levers. There are three behaviors and behaviors are systemic.

Stuart Lacey [00:36:39]:
Think about that. That there's action and reaction. You can't always work on them because they're not always present in the system. When then they are, you act in them. But their power is exponential. And those are adaptability, situational awareness and serendipity. So those three are the big levers with which you recognize and work with them. You can have massive benefit or if you get them wrong, significant disbenefit.

Stuart Lacey [00:37:00]:
And then the two actions choice and fail forward. And the reason I answer that is I think whilst you could spend a lot of time learning and reading and being curious. You could spend a lot of time becoming passionate and aligned with what you care about and distributing that energy into the world. You can connect well with people, meaning that you're working with social proofs and superconnectors and getting yourself on stages where you can amplify that energy. To your point, Mike, you can be positive, which means that your ability to rally and your general outlook and all the positivity and what happens neurogenically and from your hormones and glands you can be empathetic, which is how you show up, how you care, how you receive all of those. And we have practices of how to do those. Well, I think the bigger three adaptability. Situation awareness and Serendipity are the big three.

Stuart Lacey [00:37:50]:
Those are the big ones. And Serendipity being something from the story of the Three Princes of Serendipity, which is actually where luck originally came from. And that's a story about applying sagacious wisdom and curiosity. And what that means is effectively we tend to spend our lives thinking that stuff happens and we go, oh, that's Serendipitous, and it's actually not. There's actually a way to unpack how serendipity happens. And there are people that can lean in and push through and there are people that bail quickly and there are people that follow their gut and there are actual tactics and techniques you can follow to significantly amplify to get on the right side of each of these things. For example, in Adaptability, a lot of people get pot committed. I interviewed David Bershiers who summited Everest six times, including with the IMAX camera, and he was up there when that tremendous loss of life occurred on the peak of Everest that John Crackow wrote Into Thin Air about.

Stuart Lacey [00:38:43]:
And two professional climbing teams continued to summit from summit camp. When he turned round, he turned round because the storm was coming and it was going to be a bad outcome. But the other two teams had paid attendees with a guide that were so committed to only summiting that one time they couldn't turn back. And it resulted in the largest single loss of life on Everest because they were part committed, a gambling analogy of having too much at stake to be able to then back away. And so I think those three fundamentally are the big levers in my formula. But then absolutely and echoing what Gay said, choice and fail forward, you have to act right? The failure to act is equal to a zero. And so those are actually binary. And so if anyone knows math, there's actually a formula in the formula for luck.

Stuart Lacey [00:39:31]:
And if you multiply any formula by zero, what do you get? Zero. So the failure to act is effectively applying the rest of the formula. Multiplying by zero because nothing happens. The ability to fail forward is the ability to regenerate and try the formula again, multiplying it more often by one each time, if you think of it that way. And what's really interesting about that is it gives a lot of domain power to be able to actually change your outcomes and a lot of prescriptive ways in which to do it, which I really love about how the formula is constructed. So the ability to lean into behaviors and sorry, the habits and build them like muscles and grow them your entire life, the three things you really got to look out for that are massive levers to change positively and negatively, and the importance of acting and continuing to try. And the only thing I would say on top of that, and one superpower and you have it, Mike, and we talk about it is choice is not just acting, but it's asking or asking. And so many incredible stories of people that just had the gumption or the chutzpah, whatever the word is, to just ask and they get it.

Stuart Lacey [00:40:38]:
And it's an incredible enabler in so many stories that people don't actually aren't that comfortable. Like the girl across the high school dance floor, the prettiest girl, more often not. She's there alone because too many people are shy to even ask her, right? And you could have multiple, multiple examples where people like, I remember being at a ski destination at Deer Valley, and there wasn't a single parking spot in the valley that just snowed. Alton snowbird were closed. It was not a parking spot anywhere, and everyone was self defeated. We can't ski. And I said, you know what? I'm going to drive to the ritziest, most high end resort on the hill. I pulled into their main foyer, I went right to the manager, and I introduced myself, and I said, sir, my name's Stuart Lacey.

Stuart Lacey [00:41:19]:
Really sorry to bother you, but I'm here from Bermuda. There's not a parking lot in the valley, and I don't want to pirate your parking lot. Would you mind if I just parked for the day so I could ski with my friends? He said, you know what? We have people park in this all day long. We tow every one of them. You're the first person into your sets. He said, not only can you park there, but our members have lunch on us and enjoy your day skiing. And that was just for asking, right? Which is an amazing lucky outcome, but not more than feeling comfortable asking. So those are a couple of things that I try to prescriptively help guide people towards.

Mike Koenigs [00:41:55]:
That's really good. So, Gay, I know you've got a comment, and then I've got kind of a trigger amplifier plus here that I want to ask about. Go for it. Yeah.

Gay Hendricks [00:42:07]:
Well, a lot of the things that Stuart was just saying reminded me of one of our key principles, which we've learned from a lot of great executives, which is we call it openness to learning. See, a lot of people, when they're presented with a situation get defensive defending something down in there that they think needs defending, and they lose the opportunity to learn something in the moment. And so I've found an incredible amount of luck follows greater openness to learning, being able to say, what's the message here? Rather than why is the universe doing this to me?

Mike Koenigs [00:42:52]:
Well, this is a perfect bridge, because in Wayne Dyer's book, manifest Your Destiny, and I always loved Wayne. I found him to be one of the most compelling, interesting, uh and he didn't precisely say it in this way, but my big takeaway from that book was, who do I need to become right now to become attractive to that which I desire? And the root of desire is a Latin word which means to long for or to wish for. And when I really felt into that, I realized when gay, you were talking about a lot of people feel as though they don't deserve it. And the best way to feel like you deserve someone is to really work on yourself to become attractive to that which you desire. It's not the opposite. It's not, how can I get something? How can I wish it into existence? It's sort of like, how do I become a magnet for it? And I know there's another Ariel Fordism when she talks about manifesting your soulmate, that's a huge part of the exercise because it's really an act of honesty. Luck and honesty are very closely related. So comment?

Gay Hendricks [00:44:15]:
Yes, well, that's what I was talking about, about alignment, when you become aligned with the truth in yourself. There was a time in my life, early on in my life, where I just didn't answer truthfully. If somebody said, how are you feeling? I would make a joke about it or turn it aside. And I just didn't have enough self knowledge in myself to even be able to answer that question honestly. But so there's a lot of life that gets better the moment you get into alignment with just knowing how you feel and honoring your feelings. In fact, a lot of people talk about the decade of the 30s as being the decade where you kind of learn to tune into and take responsibility for your feelings rather than projecting them onto other people, like a lot of times we do in our teens. You can't make me do that. That teenage stance we take.

Gay Hendricks [00:45:12]:
And I think that also the act of really digging down and finding what you're doing here, why are you here? What is your chosen life purpose? The moment I locked in on that and realized my life purpose is to expand every day in love and creativity and abundance as I inspire other people to do that also. So once I got clear on that, it made my life so much easier because then I could say no to everything that wasn't in my life purpose. Because the act of saying no is often one of the most powerful things you can do to manifest things. If you get in the habit of saying no to things that are not in your genius zone, lo and behold, you start getting offered more things that are in your genius zone. That's one of my big principles that we teach here, is this act of really coming into alignment and the deeper you can go and knowing your life purpose, the easier things manifest.

Stuart Lacey [00:46:24]:
Yeah, no, I love that, Gay, and thank you for sharing that. And I completely know on my end, if I could add to that, maybe Mike, rather than repeat some of that, because I fully agree is I think too often many of the people that we work with are still caught up in the stories they're telling themselves about their life. The things that they think they need, the things they think they want. To your point earlier, Gay, they haven't practiced self acceptance yet. They haven't figured that kind of out yet. And I think a lot of that drives to know mike. We've worked with chip conley, and he talks a lot about community and blue zones and how you show up and how you accept and how the people that you surround yourself with and the choices you make put you in a different stage to be able to receive and be open. And I think about that a lot, whether that's good exercise of sleep or a bunch of stuff, and I talk about that in the book kind of these Healthy Habits.

Stuart Lacey [00:47:16]:
But there's a chapter also an understanding that with meditation and gratitude, we also release compounds into our body that change how we show up, change how we're open, change how we accept. We're not built in this fight or flight moment. We're actually shunting out of that fight or flight into an area that's much more open and receptive. And when you're receptive, your radar bands are out and you're aware. And if you're aware, you could be open for opportunity where you otherwise were not. And I think too many people self hijack, if you that word. They self corrupt their bodies through whether it's not nourishing them or not practicing things, journaling, gratitude, meditation, mindfulness, good sleep, healthy eating, all the stuff that we know. But when you do that and you can create some clarity, it's unbelievable how much more stuff shows up, maybe for the sheer value that you've actually now open to it rather than closed to it, if that makes sense.

Stuart Lacey [00:48:17]:
And I think there's a lot that.

Gay Hendricks [00:48:22]:
Well, I know we've only got your fine consciousness on rental for a short time today, Stuart, so we're coming up against when we all need to go do something else. So do you have a final word or two you could say that kind of summarizes what you're up to with.

Stuart Lacey [00:48:40]:
Your, you know, thank you for you know, one of the things I've loved more than anything is traveling and doing a master class in luck and teaching that. I love working with large groups. But I think what's really interesting now is we're seeing so much more demand in the world for corporate and teams to use. It one of the things we built, which is a big part of our practice management, and if you know Peter Drucker from Silicon Valley, if you can't measure it, you can't improve it. So we actually built a luck assessment, and I partnered with Slim Ishmael from Openexo in Singularity. We can now measure luck individually, corporately and even, believe it or not, at country level right now, some of the countries working with that provides an incredible framework to actually be able to measure progress towards the goals that informs the masterclass and the teaching. The challenge I have, Gay, is that I have more demand than I can currently supply into. So I've just decided and starting this year to build out a group of trained trainers I can deliver.

Stuart Lacey [00:49:35]:
And so I'm actually now building out an entire wider business with formalized people that can get certified in how to lead other groups and facilitators or coaches because we're finding so much more interest, especially at the corporate level. How can I get my team to think this way? How can we gel together? I have a global leadership institute as well, Mike. You'll know that. And through that, we know that this isn't just a personal application. That what this means for culture and engagement and productivity is incredible from a business level. And so for me and thank you for asking, Gay, I think that's going to be what 2024 is going to look like, is how do we get this out much more widely. The book's done very well, but I think now we need more people to make it accessible and actually coach people in it. So that's what Feature looks like right now.

Gay Hendricks [00:50:28]:
Sounds good. That's basically what we've done here. And it's very satisfying then to see people out in the world carrying the work forward. All right, my man. Well, good being with you, Stuart. It's really great to see what you're doing and hear from you directly, and we wish you a lot of good luck with it.

Stuart Lacey [00:50:47]:
Yeah, well, thank you. And just to echo, know the opportunity to spend time with you today, a fellow friend who's also scientifically and curiously minded, trying to figure this out. Thank you for the work you've done, Mike, to you. I know your energy level and I know how focused you are on how we can help people think differently and take those noticeable, significant steps. And it's just been a real privilege of mine to be able to support you and work with some of your audience members today. So thank you for the opportunity.

Mike Koenigs [00:51:18]:
Oh, totally. No, it's totally my pleasure. What I'll do is make sure I've got links back to you in the show notes and you can go to Litleadership.com. Is that the main site I should send people to, or where I'll just.

Stuart Lacey [00:51:35]:
Go straight to theformulaforluck.com okay, great.

Mike Koenigs [00:51:39]:
There you go, the formulaforluck.com. And then I'll wrap up this episode by saying, as usual, if you've enjoyed this, share it with someone you know. The best way for podcasts to grow is through the shares. Also like this, if you're watching it on YouTube. And then if you provide five stars and a review on itunes, that's awesome, too. So until we meet you in our next episode, thanks so much for watching. Thanks so much for listening. This is Gay Hendricks, Stuart Lacey.

Mike Koenigs [00:52:08]:
And I'mike Koenigs. All right. And I'll do five claps, and let's do a quick round robin intro. Do you want to start it up, Gay? You can go ahead.

Stuart Lacey [00:52:20]:
That's how we do it, Gay.

Mike Koenigs [00:52:21]:
Yeah, light her up.

Gay Hendricks [00:52:24]:
I am so excited about this episode. Gay Hendricks here. And in this episode, we talk about a subject that's very dear to my heart, which is, how do we get luckier? You've probably seen my book Conscious Luck about that subject, but we have a new author, an author with a new book, Stuart Lacey, who has a whole different way of looking at it, but some ways that we really cross track and synergize with each other about this subject.

Mike Koenigs [00:52:55]:
And one of the things that I love about this. So, first of all, Stuart's book is called The Formula for Luck. Leave Nothing to Chance. Ten Powerful Principles for Building a Luck Mindset. Now, of course, gaze is conscious. Luck Eight Secrets to Intentionally Change your fortune. What I loved about this particular show is each of them have a point of view. For the most part, they're 100% aligned, but their approaches are different.

Mike Koenigs [00:53:20]:
What I can tell you, this is a great multiplier episode. So if you want to learn how they actually intentionally create luck in their lives, that's one of the things. And I also share my approach, what I've been using to manifest using dreams and also emotions and words. So, Stuart, how about, you know, I.

Stuart Lacey [00:53:41]:
Couldn'T be happier about what this episode allowed us to be able to share with the listener, really. For me, I think we key into not just the more tactical ways that you can really make change in your life, but also some of the choices you can make about how you live your life, how you open yourself up and what that means in a forced, multiplier way, about how you can actually manifest the outcomes you want. I think it's important to understand that this is accessible. And making stuff accessible is what the big leap is all about, is how do I actually grab hold of something and apply it in such a way that I can make my life better? And this episode is clear that there are both ways that Gay frames and iframe that actually compound and support each other and kind of riff off each other in such a way that the outcomes could be significantly valuable for anyone who's going to take the time. So fabulous episode.

Gay Hendricks [00:54:33]:
All right?

Mike Koenigs [00:54:34]:
And one of the best things is you're going to walk away. There is one word that will determine whether or not you are or aren't lucky, and it's I blank it. And if you know that word, it'll make you luckier. So make sure you dive in, and I promise you will enjoy this episode. Thanks for being here. There.