R. Eric Thomas

I’d like to talk about accidentally succeeding. Or failing the right way. Or, as Buzz Lightyear might call it, “falling with style.” The idea is cultivating readiness for the unexpected good, be it professional, personal or a mix of both. Using the tumultuous past year of my professional life, which started with a viral Facebook post and ended with me being published in the New York Times twice in the one week–with a layoff and a wedding thrown in the middle–I’ll detail the ways that serendipity, preparedness (or lack thereof) and abject terror have propelled me and ponder the degree to which we can control our own luck.