 I was 22 years old, and I was about to stand in front of a classroom full of college students and pretend like I knew what I was doing, and it didn't help that the day before I was waiting in line at the university bookstore, a man cut right in front of me and said, excuse me, I'm faculty. At first I was just annoyed, but then it hit me. He thought I was a student. Oh my God, I look like a student. So the next day I threw up, and the street before me stretched into this plank with shark infested waters below, and I had no choice but to keep walking, and my entire body felt heavy with the pressure to know all the answers, to have complete control of my classroom, to look 10 to 15 years older, a couple months later, that I really fell in love with teaching, and I learned a powerful lesson about surprise. So that day, as I was walking to my classroom, I was feeling a little bit anxious, a little bit insecure, but very much prepared. I had my hour-long lesson plan broken up into five-minute intervals, so I had everything under control, until my students surprised me. I opened the door to my room, and I stepped into darkness. For some reason, somebody had decided to turn off all the lights, and we had no windows, and in the darkness I heard myself say, okay, what can we talk about now that the lights are out? We shared our stories of fear, of shame, and of our hopes and our victories, and one by one, my students took out their cell phones, and they started casting lights on the ceiling, on the walls, on the floors, and for the first time we were all present, we were all connected, we were hanging on to everybody's words. Since that class, I've learned a lot more about surprise. The following year, I co-founded a company with the aim of increasing customer, employee, and student engagement through surprise. So when something unexpected happens, our brains initiate the surprise sequence. So first, we freeze. We probably look something like this. This is because all of our attention is hijacked by the surprise. We literally can't help but pay attention. But that lasts for just a fraction of a second, because then we transition into the fine phase. This is where our brain becomes wildly curious, and we try to make sense, find an explanation for what just happened. Next, shift. So surprise is a schema discrepancy. And sometimes in order to mend that discrepancy, what we have to do is shift our perspective. So let's say that I saw a cat bark. So first I might stare, then I'd investigate, but then I'd have to possibly shift my perspective and say, okay, some cats can bark. And finally, we share. Surprise intensifies our emotions, and it creates a cognitive burden in the brain. The way that we humans relieve that burden is by sharing that story of surprise with others. So why do you need surprise in your life? So you get this intense attention and curiosity. You get emotional connection, broadened perspectives, and the desire to share with others. Isn't that the very heart and bones of what being alive is all about? And I'm not talking about like having a pulse. I mean, really, truly coming alive, being present, being passionate, feeling connected. To me, that's what surprise is. It's not just something you add to your life, it's what life is. So how do you add more surprise to your life? How do you experience it more? I want to share with you three of my favorite strategies. Interrupt your patterns, stretch wonder, and create spaces where anything can happen. I have a friend who cured his depression with tofu. Every day he would experience the same things, feel the same draining emotions, until finally he decided to interrupt a pattern, and he decided to begin with food. So my dear friend, who ate pizza every single day, marched himself to the nearest Japanese restaurant and ordered his very first slice of tofu. Now this wasn't particularly delicious tofu, and he still very much prefers pizza, but it was something that his brain wasn't expecting, and so it triggered the surprise sequence. And this activated these small series of changes that eventually ended up having this profound effect on his psychological well-being. So we all have these patterns. We all have things that we do on a regular basis, people that we talk to, the kinds of conversations that we have. And patterns are efficient and they're comfortable, but if we're not careful, they can drain liveliness from our lives. It's really important to be careful with this, because we're drawn to patterns. We want patterns in our lives, but we can interrupt them. So next, stretch the wonder. Then we activate the surprise sequence. If you manage to activate it in your own life or in other people's minds, don't let go. When I first started teaching, this is what I thought my job was. I thought I was supposed to walk in there and give people all these answers. But when you land on an answer, the find phase ends, and with it, so does the wonder. In this age that we're in of information right at our fingertips, it's easy to become uncomfortable. We have less and less tolerance for the sensation of not knowing. We have less patience for the blank canvas. I think we start to confuse the sensation of wonder with the sensation of frustration. And so we cheat ourselves out of the growth and creativity that comes with stretching the wonder. We end up checking the weather forecast instead of just waiting to look up at the sky. We cling on to these strong opinions to avoid the sensation in our minds of, I'm not sure. And we Google. We Google if we're about to stay at a hotel and we want to see what it looks like instead of just relishing the anticipation. So my mission to you is next time you have this burning urge to Google something, don't, at least not right away, stretch the wonder in yourself and in others. And finally, create spaces where anything can happen. I used to think that the traffic in New York City was really crazy. It's actually relatively easy and effortless to complete your commute. But in Pune, you have cars, buses, other rigsaws, pedestrians, cyclists, unicorns, velociraptors all just popping out at you when you're least expecting them. This is really a space where anything can happen. And so the drivers have to be completely alert and aware at all times. So to create spaces where anything can happen, we have to let the rules bend. We have to let the schedules flex. We have to surprise others. But more importantly, we have to let surprise happen. This is important not just because it enriches our lives. But this has to do with our very future, the future of our society. This is what I believe. I think the world is changing faster than ever before. Our future is this one giant question mark, and it's racing straight at our feet. If we try to run from it, it'll eat us alive. This is something we can't control. We can't predict all of it. So we have to learn faster. We have to think more flexibly. We have to respond to the surprises that happen, but we also have to become producers of surprise. I think this is what our future will need, not the expected. But many of us aren't prepared to live in this way. If you look at our school system, we tell kids what to do and how to think. And then we're confused that they don't know quite what to make of the real world. And in our companies, we demand innovation, but the only thing that we really reward is predictability and conformity. And even in our personal lives, we plan and we predict and we control as many things as we can get our hands on. And then we complain because of our growing levels of anxiety. If we keep going in this way, if we keep living like this, we can't win. But if we let the surprise in, amazing things can happen. From your employees coming up with amazing revolutionary new ideas for your business to your students revealing their fears and their hopes in the darkness. This is what I think we need and this is what I think our future needs to let the surprise in. Thank you.