Welcome to nobody told me. I'm Laura Owens and I'm Jan Black. Would you like to be more successful? Can you define what success really means to you? And you have a plan to achieve it For some help with those questions, we talk with our guest, Warton professor G. Richard Schell, who's an award winning author and the creator of a very popular Wharton School course on the meaning of success. He's also developed a course on success for course era, the world's leading online learning platform. Professor, thank you so much for joining

us. My pleasure. Thank you for inviting

me. You wrote a very popular book called Springboard. Launching Your Personal Search for Success. Why has the search for success fascinated

you? Well, it's a great question myself, I think you know, are tryingto help people with questions that I ask in a very deep way, in a very persistent way earlier in my life, when I was in my twenties and early thirties. Of course, I'm still asking them, but it was more of a crisis back then, and the I think that Ah, lot of people experience, especially in the years sort of between college and marriage sort of odyssey years in the twenties and early thirties. Ah, kind of nagging thought that they have to get their lives right and that if they're not right, there's something wrong with them. And it tends to cause a fair amount of angst and,

um, sometimes even depression and a real sense of I am I in the right place? Who am I? What am I doing? And since I went through that myself, I really feel like it's an opportunity for me at this stage of the game a little further down the road to reach back and help people answer those questions. You know, most success books are by people who think they're successful, and then they say, do it the way I did it. My book is really, uh how do you define success? How would you achieve it with your unique capabilities and your unique perspectives on life? So it's more about way of helping people asking answer the question that it is a kind of telling him how to do

it. We'd love to hear more about your background because you have such an interesting and inspiring story.

Sure. Well, I was raised in a military family. So my dad was a general in the Marines. My grandfathers were both in the military. My sister married a military officer. I was destined to be a military career and really, the only question that I was asking when I was in high school Waas should I go the West Point or Naval Academy? But then, as I got a little closer to the college sort of decision, I began realizing that I might want to go to AA actual college, not ah academy. But they gave me a chance through a scholarship that the military has to go to college for free anywhere you want to go if you can pass this test. So I took the test, has to test. My parents said, Well,

okay, you know, it's same obligation, same military career area to scope to different place. So I got into college, still run on plan, But then, in the middle of college, I was in the Vietnam Generation and, um, the whole Vietnam War sort of confronted me with a whole different set of decisions than my parents had had to face their the World War Two generation and I suddenly realized that the path that I was on was aiming me at going into combat to kill Vietnamese people that I had no quarrel with whatsoever. And I became a ward sister. So from a general in the Marine Corps family and, ah, three generation military heritage and legacy, I became a pacifist.

Well, when you make that kind of break, it is incredibly disruptive on almost every level of your psyche. And so I I persisted. I graduate from college. I did alternative service as a as a pacifist, worked in a ghettos of washing DC as a social worker. Um, but I was really pretty lost when you when you cut off your past as I did. It's pretty hard to imagine the future. And so I ended up drifting a fair amount. I worked as a, uh I don't know, bricklayer. I was a waiter. I was a house painter,

and finally I just took off Ah and all my life savings and headed out to see if I could find who I was by traveling and ended up taking two years to go completely around the world. Um, weather back, back, living in his many places as I could that you could live for free. So I lived in Israel, on a kibbutz and in monasteries in India, chair Lanka in Korea and Buddhist monasteries. Um, and with that amount of time and and, uh, the grace of God, I was able to come to some peace of mind about myself. I went home. I moved into my parentsbasement. They had never stopped loving me,

So they just welcome me home. They were retired by the time I got home, and I spent a couple of years in Roberts County, Virginia, selling insulation door to door. When I was in my late twenties, on getting down my mom and dad I had left the United States, the son of a general and his wife and I came home and got to meet a mother and a father. Uh, so, uh, so then I know I needed to make a living. My parents got tired of me being in the basement, and so I went to law school on and became a lawyer for a little while. But there was a pretty strong sense that I acquired at law school that I knew I wanted to teach. And so I really made it my purpose after my first year in law school to do everything I could possibly do to get a teaching career in law.

And so that's what I did. And I ended up at the age of 37 with my first real career assistant professor at the Wharton School of Business. We have a legal studies department that I'm now the chair of, and I've been here ever since, and I've loved every

minute of it. And how has your definition of success changed over that journey?

Oh, uh, wow, that I would say one of the things that I learned while I was traveling, Um, and after, I sort of had my crisis. Waas. You have to define success for yourself where you are, and and wherever you are, you just need to know. Okay, what do I need to do next? In order to, you know, take a step on a path you may not know the destination, but,

um, but, you know, I think people often, you know, loser job, or they break up in a relationship where they have some crisis in life, and and, um, and they get down about it, and then they think I'm gonna fix it all. I gotta have this once, you know, magic. Oh, our book.

I read or, um, seminar take and that'll teach me the secret. And then once I have the secret, everything will work out. And that's just so wrong. There's no secret. There's just people. There's just life. There's this yourself. And I think early for me, it was, um, Wake up and plan a day so that I knew I would occupy myself in a productive way. And then when I came home, it was get to know my parents and we kindle the love I had for them and and develop that relationship with my parents while they were still living.

Um, And then then it was get a professional degree, make a living, and then which I kind of you the whole thing, Uh, as more like, ah river where there's lots of rocks in the river. I don't know if you've ever seen a river pass weathers, rapids and rocks that have sort of fallen from a mountainside and you can sell the jump from rock to rock. Um, so I've come to think of it more like that. So wherever you are, you you get to the rock that's dry. You you look ahead and see what you're available. Options are that will keep your feet dry and that you can jump to without getting wet. And then you make the jump and then you're in a new place.

You look around, things were different. You take your next evaluation and decide where to go next, so it's much more iterative. I think if you actually asked most people who you would define a successful in a kind of career sense or celebrities or whoever they are, if you really got him in a room and they told you the truth, it's supposed to write a book that makes it look like it was inevitable. I think they would tell you that it was about 80% luck. Luck in a special sense, not look like the lottery but look like they prepared themselves and they kept their eyes open and then good things happen. But they never really knew what the next good thing might be. But they were awake enough to see that it was a good thing and take that step and then you end up where you end up. I'm sure that Jan, you and Laura are doing what you're doing. And I'll bet if you look back on the last 10 years, you would probably not have predicted that you'd be doing exactly what you're doing. But you're doing it well. You're doing it with spirit and you're fulfilling yourselves by the fact that you've discovered

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Ah, well, I think there's some truth to that there. There's a fair amount of research that shows that achieving goals gives a kind of a strong dose of dopamine. You have kept brain chemistry effect when you achieve a goal. There's some satisfaction that comes from that. And so in some people experience goal achievement as a kind of happiness. It's temporary, you know. Anybody who's achieved a goal knows that after a little while it sort of wears off and you start looking for the next goal. But but I think especially achievement oriented people. People who get Ah lot of juice out of achieving goals are getting happiness from achievement. It's, uh, it's not the only kind of happiness is probably not the most lasting kind of happiness, but it is a form of it. And so I think there's some truth to that.

But success. You know, I teach a whole semester on course on this, and I also have discourse, air class and wrote a book, and whenever I get a group of people, we start talking about success. My first request is let's stop using the word success because what people really mean when they talk about that word is some combination of achievement and happiness, and everybody has a different mix, like a stew. And everybody's got a different sort of taste for how that balance should be. And the word success applies to the balance of the two things, not to one or the other. So I think people who get some satisfaction from achieving goals probably might also get a very deep form of happiness from having ah, committed relationship based on love. Well,

you really can't apply gold setting technology to falling in love. Uh, and so that's a different problem. And it really requires vulnerability and open this. And so, you know, I think someone who just says it's all about achievement is gonna miss ah, huge dimension of life. And we all know people who are successful in the sense that they have a lot of money or their famous or whatever they are and are deeply unhappy because they lack connection with other people or because they're, um, neurotic or self deceived in some way when they haven't paid attention to their own mental health or their physical health. So I don't think it's all about achievement. I don't think it's relevant achievement is important, but I don't think that that's the whole story.

You urge people to ask themselves the question, What do I do better than most? Why is that important?

Because I think I think people again, they overstate the problem in order. People tend to think well, if it weren't to achieve something, I have to be the best in the world and it, um and I'm not the best of the world and anything, so I might as well be about And um, I think that's that's very self limiting. So I posed the question, What do you do better than most not? Ah, one thing. I think it's important to recognize what's under that question is, what combination of capabilities do you have, which, when they act together, present the world with a talent that's better than most?

So the activity that you guys were engaged in, which is putting on a great podcast which requires preparation, planning, being articulate, having good report between you there, all these things going on underneath what you d'oh that are actually individual capabilities. But you found a way to combine them to create a successful enterprise, and that's what I mean, by what? Something to do better than most. What's the combination of your capabilities that when their package together do you do better than most? Because if you take, let's say someone's a good writer. Um, okay, they're good writers,

so that means you're in the top 20% for writers. But they're also good speaker. Not all the good writers of good speakers. So now they're in the top 20% for two things. Well, when you put those two things together, you're actually in the top 5% people who speaking right that when you do both very well. And then they had 1/3 thing, which is they happen to be knowledgeable about South African history. And now we're talking about someone. It's probably already in the top. 1% of people who will study or talk about or teach of African history because you're a great writer can speak well, and they know more than most people about this thing. That's the kind of combination that I think brings extraordinary success and also brings a lot of distinctions, fulfillment and joy.

And then how do you teach these people? Thio have self confidence is that kind of just like you said, combining all of their skills and telling them, Hey, you know what? Your unique I know a lot of people do struggle with confidence issues, and they just don't feel like they're good enough.

Yeah, well, confidence is an independent variable. You can be. You know, there's there's, um You could read a lot of biographies of famous actors who are very insecure, but they're very good actors. Um And, um so I think confidence, actually, in my in my view, confidence comes, um, I think part of it is genetic. Um, you know,

you were endowed with a certain set of genes that bring you a kind of level of resilience. That is just an eight. You know, you're lucky you got the genes for resilience, but part of it also is surviving failure. And whatever failure is, I think failures really Your version, your addition of not meeting expectations set by somebody, uh, or falling short of the goal that you set. For some reason, that disappoints you greatly on. And I think the experience of going through downs, whether their psychological or professional and coming out the other side, where at the end of it, you can say,

Well, I learned something, and I'm stronger than I was for having gone through this. I think that's actually the seeds of confidence because once you know, Nietzsche said, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. And once you and a lot of people, I think, go through I had my own life crisis when I was in my twenties and came out of it, and that gave me a kind of fundamental confidence. Nothing I'm gonna do is gonna be worse then. Those years were when I was, you know, just wandering without a purpose and without ah family. And, you know,

just in the dumps and people who go into the military sometimes come out with a kind of since that they can survive whatever life's gonna throw it. Um, I love to say to my students, because I have some pretty high performing students, and a lot of them are deeply, um disturbed about whether they were gonna make it or not, even though they've already achieved something that most people don't which is getting into an Ivy League school. Um, and I say, look, go back in your life and honor the failures that you've experienced honor the conflicts that you've overcome, even if you don't think they rate on a scale of martyrdom or, you know, Gandhi like difficulties there yours and embrace them. And, um, and give yourself credit for getting through them. And that's where that's where you build confidence is go back at your own life and recognize what you've overcome to get there.

You talk about the four powers of the mind that can help us accomplish long term goals. You talk about passion, imagination, intuition and reason. Can you elaborate on those a little bit?

Sure. Um, you know, I think I think understanding how your human system works is pretty important. A CZ. You kind of feature what you're gonna learn and what you what you can learn from a given experience. I think passion is motivation. So you really want to look in there and see what is it that gets you up in the morning? And that powers the engine that's going to put you out there in the world either to be vulnerable and form relationships or two, Um, you know, accomplish something by getting a degree in school or by moving through a career ladder. Whatever is going on. So I think it's helpful to know what you're motivations are. I think passion is. That is a word that sometimes also gets Missy is People say, Follow your passion.

It's like there's only one. And if you don't find that your failure again and you're lost in this somewhere That passion, in my view, is you know, what are the things that motivate you? It could be. You're motivated to help others. It could be you're motivated. Thio bask in the attention of others and perform for people. Could be you're motivated by excellence. Aircraft, uh, sort of finishing things that are beautiful. But whatever they are used to know them because that's you want to be doing stuff that is the following wind of your passions. Air helping you on keep you going? Um,

intuition is a kind of subconscious part of the human system, and it's what's learning when you're not aware of it. You know, people say, I had an intuition about that person. I thought they probably were not what they appear to be, but what's really going on when they have that perception is their judgment seasoned over thousands of interactions with humans. Uh, and coming to certain conclusions based on experience about the way people present themselves subconsciously is sending a message, saying, You know, on balance, this person falls into a questionable category, and all you know is that you feel this sense of distrust, But actually, a lot of mental processing is happening under the surface.

And I think the more you expose yourself to any given set of experiences, the more your intuition will become articulate about that. Um and, um and you're turning over to your subconscious. Ah, lot of work, which takes a lot more time if you have to think about it. Um, so you know, So So what? You stand time honest. What, you're gonna have intuitions about that air trustworthy. In my view, you could have intuitions and aren't trustworthy. But that's just over confidence,

which is something you shouldn't pay that much attention to. So imagination, of course, is your ability to conceive the future and to put together things that are not riel. They exist first in your mind, and then you can maybe go about making them real. So I had a dream to become a professor. My intuitions told me that that would used my capabilities as I perceive them and combined a bunch of things. I've been a before I even travel. That was an improvisational actor, for example. Uh, and I love learning. Um And then my imagination produced dream to be a professor. So then I went about trying to figure out what the credentials were that would get me to that outcome. But it it occurred first as an imagined.

It is an imagination moment. I thought. I want to see if I can do that. So I think dream is important. And then reason is the problem solving engine. So you you encounter a difficulty, you it's relatively novel. Your intuitions are not gonna get you there. So now you have to think about it. And that is effort, Paul. It means you're going to be putting together different kinds of, uh, activities and learnings and ideas and reason to logic and order to craft the Hypo hypothesis about how to solve it and then drop back. Rethink, move forward.

So I think when you combine all four of these capabilities in one activity passion, the tuition imagination. Reason. And I think I get a chance to do that and what I do as a professor. And I'll bet you guys dio as cancer.

Yeah, yeah, definitely.

Then you're hitting it. Then you're hitting it. You get up in the morning. It's not work,

right? Right, Exactly. And that's the goal. I've always been fascinated by why some people achieve success over others. When say to people start a startup and they both have the same education. They both worked really hard. They both come from good families. Why is one more successful than the other?

Look, honestly, I mean, actually, my my last semester I taught my success course. That final paper was, What is luck and what does it have to do? A success? And, you know, it's fascinating when people write about success, it always is a story that has a beginning, middle and end. And of course, people who are successful write the story, and so it all looks like it fits together. People who don't achieve the stuff they set out to don't write books,

but but but But it's just the same for them. They did the same things. They were as passionate about it. But in the middle of it, the global economic crisis happened. Or there was a tsunami someplace that you know, that killed the interest rates in Japan or whatever the random events are. Maybe they got sick. Maybe their money sources drogue dried up for some reason. Uh, you know, maybe they had a bad marketing advisor who came over the wrong slogan. So, you know, I think that old saying is, you know,

success is when preparation meets opportunity. Luck is when preparation meets opportunity, and so the best you can do is repair and persist. And then after that, you have to turn it over to some power greater than you and take what you get a CZ long as you're doing what you can do, then the world's gonna send you an echo. And if it doesn't work out, then you back up and try again.

Tell us about the success course you developed for coursera. How can people find out more information about it? How can they take it?

Sure, the success course on Caserta is essentially an output. After both the course at the Wharton School and the book, and what I realized was in order to reach a larger audience and give other people a chance to think about these concepts on their own, I could create this course Airey experience, and, um and then it would be self self governed stuff. You know, you could self paced learning. And there was a moment when I created it that it all came together, and I'm very proud of it. Um, I walked into my office and I we were looking for a place to film it, and I said, We're gonna film it here. And I sat down. They put the cameras in my office and I realized that when I'm in my office and I was talking to the crew I was talking about,

I was talking to my students. It was office hours in my office. And so the whole experience of this course is me talking to each individual who takes it in my office as if they were sitting right there with me. And there are some exercises that I took from the book some puzzles and and sort of mind, uh, tweaks. You know, some mind puzzles that you can do to think about success that I took from the book and the course and um and then they have to write a final s a very short on what they think success means and how they intend to achieve it. And it's been very satisfying. I read all of the essays there, thousands of them now, but I read them all. I reply to a fair number. They're very inspiring people from all over the world who's gone through this and have been able to either be reassured that there, on the right path, having done the course or discovered a new past,

a new goal, a new way of thinking about this word. A lot of people who take the Corsair class come to this realization that they've been single mindedly pursuing achievement without the happiness side. And that's a major insight when you really get it for yourself, because it makes the whole journey to success much, much more interesting and more nuance than they had, and probably a lot more likely to achieve satisfaction. So so it's it's on the course, their platform. It's part of a suite of four courses that we designed called achieving Personal and professional success. It's the 1st 1 in the set of four, and I really encourage anybody who wants to investigate this at their, you know, at their leisure and in their own time at home. Whatever. It's just 18 hours with me in my office. Essentially.

Hey, that sounds awesome. I I would like to sign. Oh, that's great. And as you know, our show is called. Nobody told me. So at the end of each show, we ask our guests, what is your Nobody told me lesson. And you've done so much work with success over the years and had your own great story. And I'm wondering what the one thing is that nobody told you about success that after all these years, you wish that they had

Wow, um, I would say nobody told me that it was about trial and error. Uh, I had the impression that it was, ah, search for a diamond Underhill. And so you just had to go find it, and you didn't find it. You know, you weren't successful, and it was very hard to find, and it was very difficult. And what I've learned is that actually the searches inside yourself not outside yourself, and it's about trial in there. It's about learning about yourself by exposing yourself to new experiences, challenges, learning, growing and then continuing.

And how can people connect with you on social media and the Internet?

They can't.

I

don't have Facebook. I don't do instagram. I wouldn't know what to do with it if someone hit me over the head with it so they can buy my books. They can take my course on course era. They can find me on the Web. I'm easily identified on the warden website, and I have a personal website of G. Richard Schell dot com that talks about my books. But as far as social media is concerned, I I'm very happy to say I spend my time doing other things.

Good for you. I can't say the same about myself. Are thanks to Professor G. Richard Schell, and you can find out more about his course on success at core Sarah. That c o u r s e r a dot or ge slash specializations slash Warton dash success. And again, Professor Shells website is G. Richard Schell dot com. I'm Laura Owens, and I'm Jan Black and you're listening to Nobody told me.