Good Vibrations and Changing Personal Realties
plus the science of serendipity, education system reform, and ChatGPT detection
Hi, How Are You Vibrating Today?
Our standard daily greeting the world over - How are you? ¿Cómo estás? Comment allez-vous? Kayf halika? to enquire about our state of being, doing, or feeling, usually answered with a cursory ‘I’m good, thanks,’ ‘( Nae Bad if you’re Scottish😉) before carrying on as busy humans getting on with being and feeling our way through life.
However, have you ever been asked, ‘How are you vibrating?’ Well, my guest this week, Barbara Daoust, an LA-based Success Coach, describes us as vibrational beings emitting energy through our thoughts, feelings, and actions that all contribute to our personal realities.
“We are all energy. We are all vibrational beings. We all have frequencies that are vibrating all the time. Our brain waves are measured, our heart waves are measured, and yes, now they can measure the electromagnetic energy field of our entire bodies. Every cell, atom, and subatomic particle that exists within us is part of one whole vibrating mechanism.”
— True Love True Self: A Journey To Self Love by Barbara Daoust
I’m sure everyone will have experienced feelings of being energized and equally drained of energy. And know the impact that can have on others.
Barbara argues that we can all change our personal realities (personality) by being more intentional with our spiritual, intellectual, and physical states, taking control of our thoughts, and thinking; the environments we occupy, the people we spend time with, what we breathe, and the food we consume. When these states are in harmony, we emit good energy, or as the Beach Boys sang Good Vibrations.
Makes sense. I just need to stop that wee voice in my head telling me what I don’t want to hear and cut down on the pizzas and wine 🍷 🍕
Suggested Action: Take some to slow down and reflect on how you feel and what you could change in your personal reality to improve your energy or vibrations.
Increase the Surface Area for Serendipity
I have talked a lot about engineering serendipity and how our mindset matters; being curious, listening to your gut, being comfortable with ambiguity, persevering, and being prepared to make mistakes.
A previous guest Dr. Christian Busch, author of the Serendipity Mindset, has recently published a review in the Journal of Management Studies, that validates my thoughts.
Christian’s systematic review of the relevant work on serendipity helps us understand what truly defines serendipity, what makes it different from other concepts, and how it can be cultivated by individuals and organizations.
As Christian points out, our actions or agency matters:
‘There are three necessary conditions of serendipity: surprise (there’s a somewhat unexpected situation); agency (you must act on this unexpected situation); and value (some sort of value emerges, even if it’s ephemeral). These three elements help differentiate serendipity from “blind luck” (which tends to be surprising and valuable but there’s no agency) and targeted innovation (there’s agency and value but no surprise). This leads to a grounded definition of serendipity as “surprising discovery that results from unplanned moments in which our decisions and actions lead to valuable outcomes”. In a way, it’s “active luck”, which is very different from the “blind luck” that creates lots of societal inequality (e.g., due to the “birth lottery”).’
It also affirms that our mindset matters.
On the level of individuals, there are factors that catalyze serendipity. Those are detection qualities such as alertness, curiosity, and intuition; and linking qualities such as sagacity, analogous thinking, improvisation, and creativity. However, individuals often hold themselves back from experiencing more serendipity as they might exhibit inhibiting qualities such as self-censoring. Imagine having a great unexpected idea in a meeting – but not bringing it up because you don’t feel “ready” or the idea is not “perfect” enough. On the flip-side, enabling qualities such as cognitive flexibility, perseverance, and social skill can enable serendipity.
Suggested Action: Take some time to read Christian’s work and explore ways to engage your children or teams in serendipity experiments.
Could AI be Good News for Education System Reform?
The education system appears to be a slow-moving tanker, seemingly unable to change direction in the face of the sudden tidal wave of AI technology threatening to overwhelm the decks and wreak havoc on the systems that rely on exam-based testing.
Perhaps Generative AI could lead us to embrace this wave and uses its power to redirect education to focus on helping our children develop the skills they will need as we approach an AI world of General Intelligence. Take, for example, the 5 C’s of critical thinking, creativity, communication, collaboration, and character.
Helping children acquire critical thinking and problem-solving skills, developing resiliency from seeing through creative challenges, and learning the value of communication and collaboration while working in teams on art and science team tasks all lead to a growth mindset and character.
Innovators like Julia Black and her Lights On Program lead the way in the UK, but if anyone knows of groundbreaking programs, please reach out. I would love to connect.
Meanwhile, many schools and universities are trying to hold back the tides by making students write exam essays using pen and paper without the use of any Internet-connected electronic devices. While we wait for the change at scale, one professor at UCLA School of Law is embracing ChatGPT:
Rather than banning students from using labor-saving and time-saving AI writing tools, we should teach students to use them ethically and productively. I am helping my students to prepare for a future in which AI is simply another technology tool as opposed to a novelty. I am also telling them that they are solely and fully responsible for the writing they turn in bearing their name. If it’s factually inaccurate, that’s on them. If it’s badly organized, that’s on them. If it’s stylistically or logically inconsistent, that’s on them. If it’s partially plagiarized, that means that they have committed plagiarism.
Useful Tool
If you want to check whether your children or team are ChatGPT, try GPTZERO the first AI detector with over 1m users already.
Link To Get You Thinking
Prof Jon Haidt from NYU Sterm on the damage of Social Media - this is an important and worthwhile read that examines the complexity of the individual and societal damage.
Social Media is a Major Cause of the Mental Illness Epidemic in Teen Girls. Here’s the Evidence.
I like the ‘how are you vibrating today?’ question as an alternative to ‘how are you.’ I think that question will undoubtedly lead to better engagement and connection with others as we go about our day to day.
I also enjoyed understanding more about serendipity - and how crucial personal agency is.