See More Possibilities, Feel Less Fear

This educational talk explores how noticing serendipity and unexpected positive events can help retrain your brain to move beyond negativity bias and anxiety. Through engaging real-life stories and insights from psychology, you will learn how becoming more aware of life's hidden opportunities can foster hope, resilience, and a greater sense of trust when facing uncertainty. This session supports stress relief, emotional well-being, mindfulness, positive psychology, and anxiety management while offering practical strategies for shifting your attention from constant threat to possibility, growth, and everyday moments of unexpected good. Please note: This session is for educational purposes and is not a replacement for professional mental health care.

Transcript

Hey everybody, We're going to talk about serendipities today. What are serendipities? This is a term that is used by Scott Peck. He's a psychologist that wrote a famous book called The Road Less Traveled. Carl Jung also talks about this phenomenon. When really unlikely events or conjunctions of events in time. Happen together with beneficial consequences for somebody. So it might be life-saving consequences or life-enhancing or growth-producing consequences. Peck observes that these types of events, Conjunctions of events, Occur more often, More frequently than they would if it were just left up to chance. So he calls these serendipities and I'm going to talk to you today about why it would be important for you to notice serendipities in your own life. Because it has consequences for your anxiety. But first, Let me tell you about a few serendipities so that you understand a little bit more. What it is that I'm talking about. So the first one I'm going to tell you about isn't mine actually. It was one that happened to my advisor for my master's degree. He was very attentive. He taught me a lot about different research techniques to help me to write my master's thesis. He talked to me about a lot of traditional techniques, But then he told me about an additional technique. That he wanted me to be aware of, And he told me about it through a story. He said, When he was working on his doctoral degree, There was a point when he reached an impasse and he couldn't go forward. He didn't have the sources that he needed. He didn't have the books or the research that he needed, And he didn't actually know where to find it. And so he told me that soon after this, He was out walking around in downtown Rio, And he walked by a little corner. Bookstore and there was a book out on the stand that caught his eye. And he bought it and he took it home and he found that it was exactly the book that he needed to be able to finish his dissertation. It was exactly what he needed. And so he told me this story to tell me to, You know, In addition to all the traditional methods of doing research, Make sure that you are open to unlikely events converging for the things that you need finding you. All right, So I'm going to tell you now about a few serendipities from my life. Here's a little one, Maybe doesn't seem super dramatic, But it was important to me. So about six months after I finished my dissertation and I'm starting my podcast. And I am. I woke up one morning and I had this idea. That I should write an email thanking this particular researcher had contributed, Who had published a lot of research that I cited in my dissertation and that helped me in my podcast, And I felt like I should thank him. So I wrote him an email and I said, Thank you for your research. And I also asked him another question. Well, A couple days later, I looked at that email that I had sent for some reason. I don't remember why, But I noticed that I had made some error in it. I think I had forgotten to attach something that I had referred to in the email, And so I attached it and I sent it again. And so this professor soon after that wrote back to me and he said, Oh, It's such a good thing you sent that twice because I didn't get the first one. The first one bounced. It happens a lot with my university email, But I got the second one and I'm so glad that you wrote to me. I'm glad that my research has been helpful to you. So funny because somebody just approached me from this journal and asked me to contribute an article on music performance anxiety, But I am not a musician. And maybe we could collaborate because you just did a dissertation on this and maybe we could do this together. And so it worked out. We ended up writing a. . . An article together with the help of some of his research assistants as well that is about to be published in the Journal of Frontiers in Psychology. So there's a few serendipities here because if I hadn't happened to. . . Go back and resend that email, He wouldn't have gotten it. There was no way that I could have known that the first one would bounce, But I had made a mistake on the first one and so I ended up sending it twice. So it was a good thing I sent it twice and then if he hadn't just been contacted by this journal and asked to contribute, Then he wouldn't have had it in mind that he should be on the lookout for somebody he could collaborate with. Anyway, A couple of synchronous things that turned out for my benefit. It was a good experience. Here's another, Maybe a little bit more dramatic serendipity that happened. So this was in about 2016. We were going to go home and visit family. And we live in Brazil, Right? And we were going to fly home to Utah to visit our extended family there. To make a long story short, We weren't going together. I was going to go first and take most of the kids and my husband was going to go a few days later and take one remaining kid with him. So my husband drops me off at the airport on the day that I'm supposed to fly with the kids. I say goodbye. We go up to the desk, The check-in desk, And it turns out that the check-in agent will not let us will not give us our boarding passes because. . . At this moment I found out about a law in Brazil that I wasn't aware of. That any time a child under 18 is going to travel out of the country, You have to have a notarized form from both parents. So I couldn't take my own children out of the country because there wasn't a notarized form from my husband saying it was OK. So they weren't going to let us get on. So. . . It wasn't that simple to be able to get a hold of my husband because We didn't have cell phones at this point. This was back in 2016. We were pretty slow to get cell phones, So I couldn't get a hold of him. Until he would reach home. But by the time he reached home, It would be too late. There wouldn't be time for me to still get on the flight. So what am I going to do? I jumped in a taxi and I took off in the direction that he had gone, Just hoping that somehow I might catch him on the road. So we're tearing down the road in this taxi and up a little ways in front of us, It turns out there is a snarling traffic jam. The traffic's been rerouted toward a detour and around the block and back again and right in front of us. Is our car and my husband is in the car. On a bridge that's going over where we are. So I jump out of the taxi. I run up to where my husband is. I get in the car, Explain the situation. We happen to be right by a turnoff so that he can get out of this snarling traffic jam and go back to the airport. And there happened to be a notary right in between where we were and the airport right on the way. We ran in there. There was nobody in line in front of us. We got this form notarized. We ran back to the airport and we were able to check into the flight one minute before it closed. So there are a lot of serendipities in this story, Right? If there hadn't been a traffic jam exactly in that place, He wouldn't have been there for me to find him. If he hadn't been right by a turnoff, He wouldn't have been able to get out of that traffic jam. If there hadn't been a notary in between the traffic jam and the airport, We might not have had time. If there had been other people in front of us in line, It might not have worked out. All kinds of things that might have prevented me from getting to that flight on time. I had missed it. Then we simply would not have been able to go home to visit our extended family because We couldn't afford to buy all of these flights again. It wasn't just one flight that we would have had to purchase. My flight plus several kids, And so we would have just not been able to go on this trip. But all of these serendipities happened, And I was able to board the plane just in time. Okay, Last serendipity. This one happened on a bike. It's my husband again. He's riding. To a meeting in a different part of the city, Kind of far away. He likes to ride his bike. He likes to ride his bike fast. He was riding it pretty fast on this day. He was on a shoulder of the road, But the cars were kind of all stopped. There was kind of a big traffic jam. As you can see, Traffic is a recurring theme in my city. Anyway, He's riding fast on the shoulder of this road next to a line of stopped cars who are in a traffic jam. There is a car coming the other direction in the opposite lane that wants to turn left through this stopped traffic. And so the cars kind of open up and make a way for this truck to be able to turn left. The truck turns left and instead of looking to make sure that everything's clear, He just guns it. And goes really quick left. And as he is cutting through this line of traffic and crossing the shoulder. That's right when my husband is coming through on his bike really fast and they collide. My husband did see the truck, But only very shortly before he hit and there wasn't time to stop. He slowed down as much as he could, But he hit the truck. And he ended up. . . Being thrown into the air. He had his toe clips on, On his bike, And so his bike went with him. And he did a big somersault over the top of the truck and mashed up the hood of the truck and broke the windshield of the truck with his helmet as he's somersaulting over, Continues going over, And ends up over the truck and on the ground again, But he doesn't land on his head or on his side, He lands upright. With his feet still in the toe clips on his bike. Totally unharmed and even his bike wasn't very harmed. The truck, However, Was in a really bad way. The hood was all mashed up and the windshield was broken. So there are a lot of serendipities in this story, Obviously, A lot of reasons why this accident could have gone differently. And my husband could have been the one all broken up instead of the truck. So why am I telling you about serendipities today? Well, Scott Pett talks about how. . . Serendipities can be beneficial for us. If we can take full advantage of them. But that we often fail to recognize. Them in our lives. We often consider these events unremarkable and so we just don't notice them and we don't take full advantage of them. Well, Why in the world would we not notice these serendipitous events? Why would we find them unremarkable? Well, It has to do with our negativity bias. The human brain is wired to pay more attention to stimuli that might endanger us or harm us or be threatening in some way. We pay more attention to that stimuli than we do to things that are safe and beautiful and pleasant. And so when something happens where We're benefited in some way. We don't pay as much attention to it as we do when something that comes up that harms us, Right? And I really experienced this negativity bias. Probably in a much greater degree than a normal person during the time of my life when I was ultra anxious, Which was most of my life up until a few years ago. And I think the anxious people have this in common with me, That we tend to be even more attuned to threat. So for example, I'd be walking on the beach or in some other beautiful natural setting and I wasn't able to enjoy the beauties around me. A single moment of it because my mind was always consumed in searching for different dangers. When I'd have a problem in my life that I'm trying to solve, I'm looking for a solution. When something would happen that would resolve that problem, I didn't rest and find relief and enjoyment in the fact that I had a solution. My brain, My anxious brain would put that in the unimportant pile. Something that I didn't need to pay attention to anymore because it wasn't threatening to me anymore, My brain would go instead toward watching for the next threat. So this is how the anxious brain can often work, And even if you don't have an anxious brain, Apparently, This is normal for humans to have a negativity bias and we just don't. Notice. Serendipities a lot of the time. But if we want to get to the point where we're not anxious, As much of the time. We need to train our brains to start to notice these things that our brains don't notice naturally. Our brains are wired to notice things that tended to maximize our chances for survival back in hunter-gatherer times. So those people who were always watching for the next threat They were a little bit more likely to survive, I guess, Because they were more aware of the snake or the tiger or the poison berry or whatever. But nowadays we are not in the same situation and we end up anxious a lot more of the time than is really adaptive, Right? If we want to get away from being anxious so much of the time and really having this negativity bias color the way that we experience life, Then a good way to train our brain away from that is to notice this phenomenon, To notice serendipities in our lives. Because when we start to notice that really unlikely events can converge and happen, For our benefit. And that they do happen. They happen in our lives and they happen in the lives of people around us. When we start to notice these things, Then they will penetrate our awareness. And then when our brain looks at a given situation, We won't automatically always appraise it as a threat. We won't always see just the threatening stimuli. And the threatening evidence, But we will be able to also perceive resources, And reasons why this might work out. Reasons why we might be able to do this. So instead of seeing everything as a catastrophe, Right? And that we're always ready to be crushed by demands that are looming and never ending. We can end up feeling like there is likelihood that this situation can work out and it could maybe even be life enhancing or growth producing. So keeping this possibility in our awareness allows us to take advantage of these serendipities that are already there, That happen in our lives, But that we don't always notice. And then instead of feeling like life is out to get us, Then we can feel like it is out to help us. If we can be aware of serendipities and be more conscious of their existence and their place in our lives and how they happen and how they happen in other people's lives. Then they can help us to more often respond to the different threats in our lives and see them as challenges rather than threats. And help us to have that challenge response that can help us to take advantage of really unlikely events converging that can work in our benefit. So that's what I want to suggest to you today. Thanks for listening today, And we'll see you next time.