With the risk of sounding all hippy and metaphysical, I wanted to share two stories that got me thinking about synchronicity. The well known Swiss psychologist Carl Jung was the first to touch on the idea of synchronicity… two or more events being meaningfully but not causally related. Those ‘hairs standing up on the back of your neck’ kind of moments.
Just recently, a friend of a close friend was at a nice romantic dinner at a restaurant on the Gold Coast with his partner. They saw an older gentleman dining on his own and decided to ask this stranger to join them, which he did. As the evening went on, the couple insisted on paying for his dinner. The older gentleman was extremely grateful. He declared that there’d been just two times in his life when he’d received such random acts of kindness. He retold a story from long ago when he was in Sydney and struggling to find somewhere to live. A friend mentioned he knew someone who was looking for a house sitter while he was overseas. Without even meeting in person, he was offered a North shore mansion to caretake for a couple of months. He couldn’t believe that somebody would put this level of trust in a complete stranger. The young fellow asked, “Do you remember his name?” After a few moments, he remembered. The young fellow looked back in amazement and said “You’re talking about my father.”
Around about the same time, I was discussing random acts of kindness and synchronicity with my office manager when she showed me a photo blog by a now-famous New York photographer, Brandon Stanton. As a young man, he would create websites with his buddy and place them on geocities.com – always hoping to generate a popular website, but without success. Nearly 20 years later, his ‘Humans of New York’ photography project has succeeded to attract global attention and more than a million likes on Facebook. Brandon takes photos every day of random passersby and tells their story to portray the human side of New York City. This month, after photographing a man sitting alone in a plaza, he asked, “What was the happiest moment of your life?” He answered, “Probably when my company had its IPO. I founded a company called Geocities.com.”
So what does this all mean from a business perspective? For me, being more relaxed and open to ideas seems to attract the right answers. What is right for business, what is right for clients, what is right for candidates. When we have these in balance, success seems to flow and those “aha” moments pop up along the way.
– Martin
TURN IT UP 
Aha! Had these types of moments! Thanks for the great read Martin
Hey I really enjoyed your article – great examples of synchronicity. I guess it begs the question are these random connections, or is there something behind the scenes pulling the strings?
They say that there is only 6 degrees of separation between us all. I’m a great believer in synchronicity. People cross in and out of our lives for different reasons, sometimes only once, sometimes for a specific purpose. Synchronicity is the validation that we are all connected at some point. How many times have you thought of someone that you haven’t seen or spoken to for a long while, only to have them call you the next day or to randomly meet someone who also knows them. Life really is wonderful in its mysteries and magic.