Make Room for The Magic

It was Christmas break, 1999, and I had flown back to the US to celebrate the holidays with my family.

Over the break I saw a friend and former colleague in San Francisco.

He wanted to have dinner, but we couldn’t find a day that worked before my return flight to Singapore.

“Change your flight” he said.

Was he worth changing an 18-hour flight for? I wondered.

I decided he was, but the magic didn’t happen during that dinner.

It happened on my rescheduled flight back.

I got an upgrade to business class and was seated next to a man about my age.

Very refined looking.

We got to talking.  

A month later, we were dating.

And then I met his friends. They were some of the most interesting people I had ever met.

From all over the world.

They were his classmates from Harvard.

We rented a villa in Bali with these classmates.

One was a negotiator between the government and the revolutionary forces in Sri Lanka.

Another was a VC in Eastern Europe.

Another was a professor at the National University of Singapore.

All of them had something interesting to say.

I was hooked.

“These are my people” I said.

I need to go to that school.

Two years and a lot of studying later, I was accepted into the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.

Best year of my life.

My closest friends to this day.

All because I said yes to dinner.

Sometimes - maybe usually - the most amazing and life-changing events are totally random.

They can’t be planned for, scheduled, or even foreseen.

Magic can pop up at any moment.

Just believing that

makes the journey so much more fun.

I hope that life brings random magic to you today.

When you’re ready, there are two ways I can help:

1) I highly recommend the same course ($150) I used to get started posting on LinkedIn (affiliate link): THE LINKEDIN OPERATING SYSTEM

2) 1:1 consulting sessions: GHEIM@GRAYSONHAYDEN.COM