Happily for those of us who have never traveled abroad, this creativity boost can even happen to people who live in unusual frames of mind, rather than in exotic locales. Rodica Damian, a psychology professor at the University of Houston, and her colleagues had college students engage in a virtual reality exercise in which the laws of physics didn’t apply. In this virtual world, things fell upward, instead of down.240 When compared to another group who performed an exercise in which the laws of physics functioned normally, those who had the physics-warping experience were able to come up with more creative answers to the question “What makes sound?” Damian found the unusual experience helped boost cognitive flexibility, or the ability to come up with lots of different kinds of solutions to problems.

Damian has a theory241 she is currently researching that suggests all kinds of unusual experiences—be they trippy virtual-reality adventures, Chay Yew’s biculturalism, or even the adversity I experienced in the lead-up to my USC interview—can enhance creativity. Even people who have had unpredictable, difficult childhood experiences, such as illnesses or parental deaths, seem to attain higher levels of creative achievement. These experiences might trigger the need for new perspectives on one’s problems, as well as the capacity to come up with unconventional solutions to those problems.

Importantly, having a medium level of these weird experiences—but not a very high or low level—is what appears to be associated with increased out-of-the-box thinking. “The idea behind this is that once you’ve experienced things that violate norms and rules and expectations, you’re more open to more things like that,” Damian told me. “You experienced that the world doesn’t have to work by your rules, so you can break the rules.”

Damian gave me an example from her childhood in Romania, where traditional dishes don’t typically mix sweet and savory flavors together. “It never occurred to me while I lived in Romania that you could put sugar in a savory food, or you can add mandarins in your salad,” she said. But after she moved to the U.S., the land of honey-glazed hams, she developed a love of combining different flavors and making spice mixes from scratch. “Maybe next time I’ll think, what about spicy and sugary?” she said. One weird thing can lead to another.

However, more weirdness is not necessarily always better. If something too jarring or traumatizing happens to you, just coping with it might use up all your mental capacity. Someone whose house was destroyed by a tornado is not, understandably, going to be basking in their newfound creativity. They’re going to be calling their insurance company.