What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20

What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20 Plot Summary

Introduction

Life is filled with uncertainties, crossroads, and moments where the path forward isn't clearly marked. Many of us have been conditioned to fear these uncertainties, to see problems as roadblocks rather than doorways to new possibilities. What if we could transform our relationship with these challenges? What if the very uncertainties that make us uncomfortable are actually invitations to growth? The journey toward unlocking your full potential doesn't follow a straight line or a predictable trajectory. It requires embracing a mindset shift - one that allows you to question conventional wisdom, challenge assumptions, and view obstacles as stepping stones rather than barriers. Throughout these pages, we'll explore powerful principles that can help you navigate life's complexities with greater confidence, creativity, and purpose, turning what might seem like limitations into launchpads for extraordinary achievement and personal fulfillment.

Chapter 1: See Problems as Opportunities

At its core, seeing problems as opportunities requires a fundamental shift in perception. It's about developing an entrepreneurial mindset where challenges aren't avoided but actively sought out as gateways to innovation, growth, and value creation. This perspective transforms obstacles from sources of stress into potential breakthroughs waiting to be discovered. Jeff Hawkins, founder of Palm Computing and pioneer of handheld computing devices, exemplifies this approach perfectly. When Palm released its first product, the Zoomer, it failed miserably in the marketplace. Instead of accepting defeat, Hawkins and his team contacted every customer who had purchased their product and the competing Apple Newton (which had also flopped). What they discovered surprised them - customers weren't comparing these devices to computers but to paper calendars. This unexpected insight completely reframed their understanding of the market and directly informed the design of the wildly successful PalmPilot that followed. Even when everything seems to be going perfectly, Hawkins maintains a vigilant outlook for potential problems. During the launch of Handspring's Visor, despite shipping an impressive 100,000 units in the first few days, their billing and shipping systems collapsed. Some customers received nothing while others got three or four times what they ordered. Rather than hiding from this disaster, Hawkins and his entire team personally called every affected customer, determined what they had ordered and received, and fixed each situation immediately. This approach to problem-solving requires being observant, questioning traditional assumptions, and believing that solutions exist even for the most daunting challenges. A powerful technique is to actively scan your environment for issues that need addressing - whether at home, work, or in your community - and then ask yourself: "How might this problem actually be concealing an opportunity?" The Innovation Tournament at Stanford provides another compelling example. Students given rubber bands to create value produced "Do Bands," bracelets that incentivized people to complete tasks they typically procrastinated. This simple idea bridged the tiny gap between inaction and action, proving that sometimes the smallest catalyst can trigger meaningful change. Remember, the most valuable opportunities often hide in plain sight, disguised as annoying problems or frustrating situations. By developing your ability to reframe challenges and approach them with curiosity rather than dread, you position yourself to discover solutions others miss and create value where others see only obstacles.

Chapter 2: Question Assumptions and Break Rules

Questioning assumptions means deliberately examining the unspoken beliefs and "rules" that govern our thinking and behavior. These assumptions often operate below our conscious awareness, silently limiting our creativity and narrowing our perspective of what's possible. Breaking free from these mental constraints opens up entirely new vistas of opportunity. Consider the remarkable reinvention of the circus industry through Cirque du Soleil. In the 1980s, traditional circuses were struggling with declining attendance, predictable performances, and concerns about animal treatment. Guy Laliberté, a street performer from Canada, decided to launch a new type of circus by systematically challenging every assumption about what a circus should be. Instead of a big tent, animals, cheap tickets, and multiple simultaneous acts, Cirque du Soleil created sophisticated productions in fixed buildings with artistic music, higher ticket prices, and a single focal point. By turning the traditional circus model upside-down, Laliberté transformed a dying industry into a thrilling new art form. This same approach can be applied to any industry or personal situation. In a classroom exercise that teaches this concept, students first list all the assumptions of a traditional circus: big tent, animals, cheap tickets, barkers selling souvenirs, etc. Then they imagine the exact opposite of each assumption. Finally, they select elements from both lists to create something entirely new. This exercise reveals how many of our limitations are self-imposed rather than actual constraints. To apply this in your own life, identify an area where you feel stuck or limited. Make a detailed "before" list of all your assumptions about how things currently work or how you spend your time. Then create an "after" list with alternatives or opposites to those assumptions. By mixing and matching from both lists, you can craft entirely new scenarios and possibilities you hadn't previously considered. Breaking rules thoughtfully can also lead to breakthrough innovations. Companies like Lyft challenged the assumption that people wouldn't get into cars with strangers. Airbnb questioned whether people would rent rooms in their homes to strangers. Netflix defied the belief that a movie distributor couldn't create its own content. Each venture shook up its industry by challenging fundamental assumptions. The key is learning to distinguish between actual rules that protect safety and order versus mere suggestions or habits that have calcified into perceived limitations. As Linda Rottenberg of Endeavor puts it, it's better to know "the three things you should never do" while leaving everything else up to creative exploration. This approach to life unlocks boundless options for those willing to identify and challenge their assumptions.

Chapter 3: Turn Failure into Valuable Experience

Transforming failure into valuable experience begins with recognizing that failure is not simply acceptable but essential to meaningful growth and innovation. In environments where innovation thrives, failure is acknowledged as a natural part of the creative process—a source of data rather than a cause for shame or disappointment. The culture around failure varies dramatically worldwide. Silicon Valley is renowned for its unique approach—accepting failures as necessary stepping stones toward success. This mindset has been called the "secret sauce" of Silicon Valley. In contrast, some cultures associate profound shame with failure. In certain countries like Sweden, bankruptcy laws are designed so individuals can never escape their debts, creating enormous disincentives for risk-taking. The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor has documented how these cultural and legal attitudes toward failure directly impact entrepreneurial activity. Jeff Hawkins, whom we met earlier, offers valuable perspective: "You are not your company. You are not your product... Your company may fail, your product may fail, but you're not going to be a failure." This distinction between external results and personal identity is crucial for resilience. When we separate what we do from who we are, we can learn from setbacks without being devastated by them. Consider the story of the Wishing Tree team from the Innovation Tournament. Their project, which involved creating a tree where people could post wishes, completely flopped—especially compared to the neighboring "Web of Secrets" project that attracted hundreds of participants. Instead of hiding their failure, the team created a provocative video documenting what went wrong and what they learned about the "stickiness" of wishes versus secrets. This public celebration of failure transformed a disappointment into a learning opportunity. Interestingly, this same team went on to win the Stanford business plan competition later that year. To practice turning failures into valuable experiences, start keeping a "failure résumé" alongside your traditional résumé of successes. For each failure, document what you learned from that experience. This exercise helps you extract lessons from disappointments and recognize that failures often indicate you're taking appropriate risks and stretching your abilities. Remember that quitting intelligently is also a crucial skill. As venture capitalist Gil Penchina notes, "If you throw gasoline on a log, all you get is a wet log. But if you throw gasoline on a small flame, you get an inferno." Knowing when to persist and when to pivot requires honest self-assessment and the willingness to view each setback as valuable data in your ongoing experiments with life.

Chapter 4: Create Your Own Path Forward

Creating your own path forward means recognizing that you have the power to design your journey rather than waiting for others to chart your course. It requires taking ownership of your decisions, granting yourself permission to pursue opportunities, and crafting a narrative that aligns with your unique talents and aspirations. Tina Seelig's father, a successful corporate executive, was once perturbed when she showed him her business card that read "TINA L. SEELIG, PRESIDENT." In his experience, leadership positions were bestowed by others—you couldn't simply appoint yourself. Yet this moment illustrates a crucial distinction between those who wait for permission and those who grant it to themselves. When Seelig wanted to write her first book on the chemistry of cooking despite having no prior publishing experience, she simply decided she could do it, created a proposal, and secured a contract with Scientific American. This self-authorization approach extends to career development as well. Michael Dearing began at Disney, then landed at eBay where he was initially assigned to a job he disliked. Rather than merely fulfilling assigned duties, he used spare time to investigate neglected features and discovered that customers who added photos to their listings sold items faster and at higher prices. By promoting this underutilized feature, he increased its adoption from 10% to 60%, generating $300 million in additional annual revenue. Dearing understood that getting a job means receiving not just specific assignments but "the keys to the building"—it's up to you to determine where those keys might take you. To develop this mindset, practice looking for "problems in plain sight" that others overlook. The "wallet exercise" from Stanford's d.school perfectly illustrates this approach. Participants interview each other about their wallets—what they love, hate, and how they use them—then design improved wallets based on these insights. The exercise reveals that opportunities for improvement exist everywhere, even in objects we use daily, and that simple observation and empathy can uncover valuable problems waiting to be solved. For your own development, create a Professional Happiness Design (PHD) that examines your core values, strongest skills, priorities, short and long-term goals, and identifies knowledge or skills you need to develop. This process helps align your actions with your aspirations and provides direction while remaining flexible enough to accommodate unexpected opportunities. Remember Bonny Simi's story—at fourteen, she created a bold to-do list including going to a good college, competing in the Olympics, working as a TV reporter, and becoming a pilot. Despite growing up in a rural town with a single mother on public assistance, she accomplished every goal. Her secret? "You have to have a dream for that dream to come true." She set intentions early, found pathways forward, and made tiny improvements each day toward her aspirations.

Chapter 5: Amplify Your Luck Through Action

Luck isn't a random force that strikes like lightning—it's more like wind that constantly blows around us, requiring us to build sails to capture its energy. Understanding the physics of luck reveals how much control we actually have over the opportunities that come our way and our ability to capitalize on them. It's important to distinguish between fortune (what happens to you), chance (requiring you to take action like buying a lottery ticket), and luck (finding and creating opportunities through behavior). People often attribute events to randomness when they actually have significant influence over outcomes through countless small choices that accumulate over time. Richard Wiseman's research at the University of Hertfordshire found that "lucky people" share specific traits. They pay attention to their surroundings instead of operating on autopilot, making them more likely to notice opportunities. They're open to novel experiences outside their comfort zones. They maintain optimistic attitudes, expecting good things to happen, and make more eye contact and smile more frequently—behaviors that lead to positive interactions and open new doors. Consider this simple story: At a local grocery store, a man with a young daughter approached Tina Seelig asking how to prepare frozen lemonade. She explained, then curiously asked where he was from. Learning he was from Chile and visiting to learn about entrepreneurship, she offered to introduce him to people in her network. Two years later when Seelig was visiting Santiago, this casual connection resulted in her being treated to a private helicopter tour of the city. The initial interaction wasn't calculated—it was simply being observant, helpful, and open to connection. To amplify your own luck, position yourself in the upper right quadrant of the possibility matrix: seeing possibilities (being observant) and seizing them (taking action). Those who neither see nor seize opportunities remain clueless, watching others get ahead. Those who see but don't seize opportunities become bitter, saying "I could have done that." Those who seize without seeing act blindly without understanding what they're pursuing. The truly "lucky" both see and seize the possibilities around them. Perry Klebahn's story further illustrates this principle. After breaking his ankle, he discovered an old pair of wooden snowshoes but found they worked poorly. Instead of simply waiting for his ankle to heal, he used his product design skills to create a better snowshoe. When sporting goods stores didn't understand his innovation, Perry personally took salespeople to the mountains each weekend to experience snowshoeing. He then convinced ski resorts to create dedicated snowshoe trails. Through observation, action, and persistence, he grew the snowshoe market from nothing to $50 million. The world is full of doors leading to opportunities—your job is to be willing to open them, engage with what's on the other side, and make connections between seemingly unrelated experiences. By practicing being observant, outgoing, adventurous, and optimistic, you create your own luck rather than waiting for it to find you.

Chapter 6: Commit to Excellence in Everything

Committing to excellence means approaching every task, relationship, and opportunity with your full effort and attention. It's about refusing to merely satisfy minimum requirements and instead pushing beyond perceived limitations to discover your true potential. In Tina Seelig's classroom at Stanford, she projects a slide on the first day with a final point that reads: "Never miss an opportunity to be fabulous." This simple phrase has remarkable staying power because it gives students permission to excel beyond expectations. One student even had the phrase engraved on her iPod Nano because she wanted to remember it every day. This message resonates because most educational and professional environments subtly encourage "satisficing"—doing just enough to meet requirements—rather than striving for excellence. Consider Ashwini Doshi's inspiring story. Born in Mumbai with a condition that limited her growth to three and a half feet tall, she faced extraordinary challenges. Rather than being limited by her differences, Ashwini viewed herself as "a normal person living an extraordinary life." She traveled alone to California for graduate school, found ingenious solutions to physical obstacles, and consistently delivered more than was expected of her. When asked about regrets, she mentioned only wishing she had taken even more risks when younger. Her attitude exemplifies the principle that life isn't a dress rehearsal—we get just one chance to give our best. The compound effect of excellence is profound. Steve Garrity explains this to his team through a simple mathematical illustration: If you do just your assigned job (defined as a value of 1.0) every day for a year, your cumulative impact remains at 1.0. But if you improve just 1% daily, by year's end your impact reaches 37.78. Conversely, performing 1% worse daily results in a cumulative value of just 0.02. The difference between small daily improvements and small daily declines compounds to nearly 2,000 times over a year! To apply this principle, begin by eliminating excuses. As Stanford professor Bernie Roth demonstrates in his famous water bottle exercise, there's a profound difference between trying to do something and actually doing it. When asked to "try" to take a bottle from his hand, students invariably fail. When instructed to "take" the bottle, they succeed. Excuses may sound reasonable, but they're ultimately irrelevant to achievement. Excellence also extends to how we treat others. At Nordstrom, the famous retailer, employees aren't given specific rules for customer service but are empowered to use their best judgment to solve problems. Their organizational structure is visualized as an upside-down pyramid with customers at the top and management at the bottom. This commitment to exceptional service results in remarkable stories, like the salesperson who had tailors switch collars between blue and white shirts to create exactly what a customer needed. Excellence isn't about perfection—it's about removing self-imposed limitations and consistently giving your best effort. It requires focusing your intention fully on what matters most, eliminating excuses, and recognizing that small improvements compound dramatically over time. As Kevin Weil, an ultramarathon runner and former head of product at Instagram notes, you rarely see improvement in a single week of training, but after a year, the progress becomes undeniable.

Summary

Throughout this journey of unlocking potential and embracing uncertainty, we've explored transformative mindsets that can fundamentally alter how we navigate life's challenges. From seeing problems as hidden opportunities to questioning assumptions, from learning through failure to creating our own paths, from amplifying our luck to committing to excellence—these principles offer a roadmap for living with greater purpose, creativity, and fulfillment. As Alan Alda wisely noted, "Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while or the light won't come in." This perfectly captures the essence of what it means to unlock your potential—it requires clearing away the limitations that block your view and being willing to see possibilities where others see only obstacles. Today, choose one area of your life where you've been playing it safe or following prescribed paths, and deliberately challenge the assumptions underlying your approach. Ask yourself what opportunities might be hiding in plain sight, waiting for you to simply grant yourself permission to pursue them. The uncertainty ahead isn't something to fear—it's the canvas on which you'll paint your most extraordinary life.

About Author

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Tina Seelig

Tina Seelig is the executive director for the Stanford Technology Ventures Program (STVP), the entrepreneurship center at Stanford University's School of Engineering. STVP is dedicated to accelerating high-technology entrepreneurship education and creating scholarly research on technology-based firms. STVP provides students from all majors with the entrepreneurial skills needed to use innovations to solve major world problems.Seelig teaches courses on creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship in the department of Management Science and Engineering, and within the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford. Tina was recently awarded the 2009 Gordon Prize from the National Academy of Engineering, recognizing her as a national leader in engineering educational. She also received the 2008 National Olympus Innovation Award, and the 2005 Stanford Tau Beta Pi Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching. In 2004, STVP was named the NASDAQ Entrepreneurship Center of the Year.Seelig earned her PhD in 1985 from Stanford University Medical School, where she studied neuroscience. She has worked as a management consultant for Booz, Allen, and Hamilton, as a multimedia producer at Compaq Computer Corporation, and was the founder a multimedia company called BookBrowser.Seelig has also written 15 popular science books and educational games. Her books include The Epicurean Laboratory and Incredible Edible Science, published by Scientific American; and a series of 12 games called Games for Your Brain, published by Chronicle Books. Her newest book is titled What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20.

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