Solve For Happy: Engineer Your Path to Joy by Mo Gawdat

Scary Smart: The Future of Artificial Intelligence and How You Can Save Our World by Mo Gawdat

CRAIG

Hello, and welcome to Desperately Seeking Wisdom, with me, Craig Oliver. This is a podcast for people who want to live a simpler, more fulfilled life, but aren’t sure how to get there. A little while back I hit the buffers, and I decided to look for a different, better way of living. So, for Desperately Seeking Wisdom, I’ve been talking to some wise people. People who’ve managed to change or have had change forced upon them. What was the wisdom that got them through it? What would they say that would help others, who like me, were struggling?

MO

You have to start realising that those thoughts in your head are just the biological product of a three-pound lump of meat, and you say to yourself, ‘I am those thoughts. I think, therefore I am’. What, what the hell? This is absolutely misled. ‘I am, therefore my brain thinks’. And once you create that separation, it is total liberation.

CRAIG

I’m joined today by Mo Gawdat, the former Chief Business Officer for Google X and the author of the international bestselling book ‘Solve for Happy’. For years, Mo studied happiness as if it was a Mathematical problem to be solved. He was a happiness guru and believed he had cracked the secret of being content. But when his 21 year old son, Ali, died suddenly during a routine operation, nothing made sense anymore. How could he even be alive, let alone happy, in a world where such a terrible thing could happen? Great to see you, Mo. How are you?

MO

I am very good, thank you very much. I have been, er, er, through, er, the most interesting couple of years ever and enjoyed the hell out of them. So, er, yeah, because there is a lot to enjoy and, er, yeah, so I'm doing great.

CRAIG

What made them more interesting than all the other years?

MO

Ah, confessions so early in our conversation. [LAUGHS] I, um, so I had, er, I, I do, I start every year of my life with a New Year's intention, not a resolution. I think resolutions are a little too restrictive. And, er, please don't blame me, I swear it wasn't me, but 2020 was my year of silence and space. So I started the year saying, you know, I wish for this year to give me a lot of space to have, you know, a lot of monk-like silence, you know, when you go on retreats, and look at what the world provided.

I finished two books. I really reflected on my life so far. You know, I have had an, an incredibly rich and ex- you know, extremely unusual life. I've been, done so many things, and I sort of, er, take- took out the stuff that may have not been working for me anymore. I reflected on my, you know, approach to relationships, I ref- reflected on my approach to self-love and self-care.

It was an incredible, insightful year. With all of the pain that came with it, there was a lot of insight. And then, er, for some reason 2021 I called ‘the year of flow’, er, where I was basically, er, telling myself to - as a, as a result of my reflection, that I need to empower a bit more my feminine side in terms of not having to insist on making life go my way, but rather flow with life, as life sways us left and right. And look at what the word provided. Probably the year where we need flow most.

CRAIG

For some reason you’re reminding me of the old saying, you know, If life gives you lemons, make lemonade. [Absolutely] Is that right?

MO

I love lemonade, and, and life, life is, is always gonna give you lemons. I mean, who - where do we live? You have to be blind to realise otherwise, right? You know, life is a, a video game. It comes with a few challenges, er, every now and then, which makes it entertaining. I mean, who wants to start a video game and just push the controller forward and wait 70 years until the game is over? It's boring, right? It has to come with a bit of challenge and fun.

CRAIG

We'll dig into that quite a bit as we go on, but I wanted to say anybody who's read your books, or listened to your podcasts, or just heard you talking, can quickly pick up that you're very gifted as a mathematician, as a scientist. You're a very empathetic coach in terms of helping people find happiness. I've learned huge amounts from you. [Oh, thank you] Let's go back to the earlier stages of your life and career. [Mm-hm] Despite all of those gifts, you know, particularly you know, your, your scientific gifts, it felt that you couldn't be happy. Why not?

MO

[LAUGHS] Yeah. It's un- it's not unusual. I think the more we chase the modern world, the further and further we become from our own innate state of happiness. I mean, my theory is very straightforward. Children are born happy. Yeah, of course children cry when a diaper gets wet, right, er, or when there is, you know, it's too cold, or when the parents are fighting. When there is a reason to be unhappy, a child will be unhappy.

But then otherwise, if you give them their basic needs for survival, they'll just, you know, lay on their back and watch the ceiling and, you know, that's, that's the truth of how we are. Er, the, the challenge is we start to, to chase things other than our nature. You have to understand that this modern world that we're living in, where you have to sit in front of a Zoom screen, or commute to work someday and compare yourself to other, every day and compare yourself to others, and chase money and want the latest iPhone and all of that, that's not the natural habitat that humanity is supposed to live in.

And, and so, the minute you start chasing those things, regardless of how much of them you actually get, is the minute when you start to lose that innate, inherent default setting of us, which is happiness. So, so make no mistake, I was born and raised in Egypt, educated in public school, went to public university. So honestly, very little opportunities in life, if you want. I, I’m almost uneducated, when you really think about it.

I mean, I'm very grateful for every teacher that taught me, but you know, the level of physics or mathematics or, er, you know, computer science I was learning was really not what would have set me, er, ready for life if you want, right? And, and, and yet, by age 29, I was already a successful director of a multinational. I had moved from barely making ends meet to having a huge villa with a swimming pool, a wonderful wife, er, wonderful woman who gave me two wonderful children, everything that a human being dreams of.

And yet my brain was constantly thinking about what is missing, not what is there. What it is that my friends had, that I didn't have. What it is that I, er, you know, should strive for, because this is never good enough. And of course, what does that make you? It makes you go out and, you know, work harder, spend less time with the people that you love, and eventually end up miserable.

CRAIG

And, er, no, exactly that. I mean, this podcast emerged from realising that I and millions of others felt pretty dissatisfied for life and that we’d done all the things that people told us were the things that you needed to do, but something was wrong. It's as if we believe that if we charge hard enough at life, we’ll end up being fulfilled, but in reality, we can often feel empty. That we think we can subcontract our happiness to others, but in reality, we have to make ourselves okay. So tell us about your experience of realising that, and how you broke out of it.

MO

I remember vividly, it must have been, er, a Saturday or something; a weekend, and, and I, er, you know, I'm this hard, you know, charging, pushing executive by then making money my top priority. By the way, I made it my top priority [NOISE] because I loved my kids. I, I really wanted to give my kids everything I could, huh? Nice, noble cause but, but then you just get lost in it.

And on a Saturday morning, while I'm still looking at my computer, responding to emails, my daughter jumps into the room and jumping up and down, and down, you know, Aya, my daughter is life itself. She's a lot of fun. And she's like, ‘Okay, you know, today we're gonna do this, we're gonna run there, and then we're gonna play with this. And you know, we should go and have lunch in this place and’ - amazingly happy and enjoying life, and I looked at her, bothered by the email I was reading and I said, ‘Can we please be serious for a minute? Okay?’

CRAIG

How old was she?

MO

Five. What, what's serious, Craig? Like, what are you talking about, you idiot, Mo, okay? And I can tell you, I could see with my own eyes, as my daughter's heart broke. Okay? And, you know, I'm a Middle Eastern, so, you know, men are manly. I literally locked myself in the bathroom and cried my head off and looked in the mirror and said, ‘I hate this person that I've become’. I wasn't like that just five years ago. Right?

And, and I started to change. I started to tell myself, if not for me, then for those that I love, okay? And I think that was the beginning of a journey, first of confusion, Okay, then of discovery, then of tremendous connection and love, that led me to realise certain things about happiness that I think because of my highly mathematical, highly engineered brain, are, are the same. Are the - happiness is a science that's, that's been around for centuries, you know.

Er, our ancestors taught us and our, you know, spiritual teachers taught us for many, many centuries, huh? But, but I just looked at it from an engineer’s logical point of view, in a way that really helped me understand it and then afterwards helped many others.

CRAIG

And just going back a little bit on that, It sounds as if you'd confused providing her with material things and security and money, when actually all she really wanted was you.

MO

And, and then isn't that the, the madness of the modern world, mm? With any target, huh? So, so you, you leave, er, you know, your education, and you go, like, ‘If I can find a job that gives me $1,000 a month, I'll be the happiest person alive’, right? And then eventually, after a while, you get that job and then you say, ‘Ah, but now with $1,000, maybe I can go to a bigger place, er, and then maybe I can find a mortgage. And then maybe I can, you know, er, er, buy that car, and maybe I can upgrade that car’ and, and we just chase stuff, huh?

And, and the same. I, you, you - I held my wonderful son Ali in my hands, and I was in the operating room, and I'll tell you openly, I'm not a children kind of guy. I never thought I would like children. Er, as a matter of fact, before my kids, I sort of disliked children. Er, again, an engineer’s minds, it’s like they're useless and consuming, er, resources, and you know, it's not the most efficient way to achieve in life.

I apologise for this, but that was how my, my brain was, huh? And, and then I’ll see that little, crumbly little prune of thing, and I totally fall in love and then I can remember vividly, huh? those four minutes before he was in the world and then as I see - I saw his face for the first time, ugly as you were, Ali, and I mean, he was the han- the most handsome man in his later years, but he was really ugly as a child, honestly [LAUGHS] and, and I fell in love.

I said, ‘I will never have that beautiful creature ever need anything that I cannot provide’. The thing is, Craig, you go through life, and then you don't know what that line is. You know, what, what is providing, mm? Is, is providing, er, giving them the opportunity to buy a Porsche when they graduate? Or is providing giving them a good education? Or is, is providing giving them the necessary needs for survival, along with love, along with care, along with connection, and so on and so forth?

CRAIG

It sounds from what you're saying, though, that, that even if that, that other saying, it's like if you start a journey one or two degrees off course, [Oh, yeah!] you end up thousands of miles off course in the end, [Yeah], so if in your head is, ‘I must provide, I must provide, I must provide’, that as the years pass, you end up further and further away from the thing, the, the place that you need to be.

MO

And you know, you know those moments of panic along the way, and when you go like, you've, you’ve been two degrees off, and so now you're not at the target that you thought in your head where you wanted to be, and so you panic, and what do you do instead of changing course? You run faster.

CRAIG

You double down.

MO

Yeah, you, you double down, you work harder, you spend less time with them. There was a time in my life where I travelled four of every five weeks. I had a friend of mine who was very close to me, also a very good mathematician, that came to me in a very rough mathematical way and said, ‘Hey, by the way, I calculated that you spend 62 percent of your life alone’. I was like, ‘What? Why are you saying - where did you get that from?’ and he actually provided the evidence, right? The number of hours that I spent in, in aeroplanes, in commute, in meetings that are meaningless, in hotel rooms on my own, what the F I was thinking!

CRAIG

And tell me you, as you, as you keep saying, you think like a mathematician and an engineer, you did eventually come up with an equation for happiness. Ex- explain that.

MO

Yeah. So that was my despair, huh, so I'm now, I'm now dec- I've now decided, as a very driven executive, that happiness is gonna be my state going forward. I start to read. I understand nothing. Like because of course, the mys- you know, so the mystical language in which happiness teachers - remember, this is, er, ‘90s, huh? So still the, the topic of happiness wasn't as widely discussed as it is

now on the Internet.

And I'm trying to understand what the gurus and the teachers and the yogis and, you know, the way they speak is not the way my brain works. I couldn't get anything. Like literally, I couldn't get anything. And so, er, one day, I was sitting in a café, listening to Supertramp. If you remember the song, The Logical Song. The Logical Song goes, ‘When I was young, I, er, it seemed that life was so wonderful, er, and all the birds on the trees were singing so happily’ and so on. And basically, it talks about that shift when we become logical and clinical and cynical, and you know, how all of that happiness as a child goes away.

And that lit my head with the idea that yes, I was actually happy until age 25. Nothing could dent my happiness. And, and so it seems that something took my happiness away, and as a mathematician, I - as a scientist, if you want, I started to say, ‘Maybe there is a way to do this, scientifically, like an experiment’. So I wrote down, er, what I remember at the time was 92 data points of times in my life where I felt happy.

And I basically said, ‘Let's plot those on a chart, okay, and let's try to find what is the trend line, you know, what is the best fitting line between all of those moments, what's common across moments like, I feel happy when I have a good cup of coffee, or I feel happy when my kids smile, or I feel happy when I learn something new. There must be some common thread across them’.

And yeah, there is. Er, interestingly, er, your happiness is equal to or greater than the difference between the events of your life and your expectation of how life should be. That's the equation. If you actually take any moment in your life where you ever felt happy, this was a moment that was not related to any specific event. Rain, you know, life might give you rain, and it would make you miserable because you're planning to be on the beach, or it might, might give you rain, and you'd be extremely happy because it's the end of a drought, right?

Rain in itself doesn't have, er, any inherent value of happiness in it. You, you might be with a wonderful partner that your friends think are the most amazing woman or man on the planet, and you would say, ‘No, I - this is not what I want’, and - or vice versa.

CRAIG

So help me understand that. So why would you not logically go round assuming the worst all the time?

MO

Good idea, [Therefore, I'll be OK] good idea. If, if you do that, if you do that -

CRAIG

Really? Why?

MO

- if you do that, I mean, think about it, and people in India or in Africa, who expect to not be fed today, if you give them a bowl of rice, they're the happiest people ever, right? When we, when we were in lockdown and you could just click twice on your phone and, and get whatever meal you want delivered to your h- doorstep, er, you - we were complaining and saying, ‘Ah, that shouldn't be the c- the case, I should be out there with my friends’ and, right? You, you know, your expectations are set, er, to a certain level and if you miss that, you become unhappy, right? But, but life is not just about happiness.

CRAIG

So it's when you impose false expectations or values on a situation, [Or-] you're gonna be disappointed.

MO

Er, look, any time, any time you can set your expectations lower, OK? Realistically lower, not pessimistically lower, er, you're going to be positively surprised by life. But life is not just about happiness. We have to understand that, huh? We, we wanna be happy, we wanna be successful so that we leave an impact on life.

So yes, lower your expectations and you will get, you'll feel happy, hm? Er, increase your expectations, and you will thrive in life. You'll, you'll make a difference. You increase - I wouldn't wanna call it expectations, increase your ambitions, okay, and you will actually thrive in life. So, so let me give you an example.

I, I started my, my happiness mission when I lost my wonderful son, Ali, and I said, ‘I wanna reach 10 million people’, and the universe conspired to make it happen, as Paulo Coelho will say, right? Er, the universe really jumped in. By eight weeks in, we had reached 87 million people. So as a small team, and, and so, yeah, wa- 10 million was a mega ambition for me, but it, it happened, so I increased it and the mission for the last four years now has been one billion happy.

Now, one billion is Jesus scale. I'm never gonna reach a billion people, right? It took, it took Jesus, you know, 2000 years to reach a billion people. So, so make no mistake, that's stupid. If I set that as my expectation, I'm bound to be disappointed, but I can set it as my ambition, so that when I wake up in the morning, I say, ‘We have something to live for, to aim for, to shoot for’, but if all that happens today is that you and I have this conversation and two people become happier, that's an amazing achievement. That's my expectation, and my expectation would be beaten that way.

Now, apply that to anything in life, huh? Apply that to, er, modern romance and the idea of how, er, dating apps and, you know, social media and all of those beautiful prospects out there, whether you're a man or a woman, you know, everyone is showing the best of them, and you're looking around and thinking, ‘Oh, my God, you know, I want this one. No, no, hold on. I want that one. No one - and I want that one, this one’ and everyone seems to be so perfect.

So you look at your own relationship and you say, er, you know, ‘Is she or he the right person for me? I mean, that other person on Instagram seems to be much more appropriate for me’. And the truth is, you're constantly setting false expectations because you know what? We're all humans. The person that's gonna be the partner of your life must score very high on things that matter for you, and it doesn't matter if they score high or not on other things, hm?

And if you set your expectations that you're gonna, er, you know, be the partner of God, the, the mighty, almighty, perfect, no mistakes, no, er, glitches, you know, never has one single hair in his ear, that means he's not grooming for you, good luck, right?

CRAIG

But there's something in that as well about the expectation of that other person, to be perfect for you and to fulfil you, and to make you happy, [Great] in a way that actually you need to be much more looking to yourself, [Absolutely] I suspect.

MO

Great, this is a great way of putting it. First of all, is anyone responsible to make you happy? Think about that statement [No] for a second, right? Er, and, and then, then the question is, what if you make that your expectation? What is going to be your state, mm? I mean, there is bound to be one day where they have a tough day at work and for that seven minutes, they're not gonna be able to make you happy. What's gonna happen to you? Right?

What if, what if your expectation is that they're always gonna to be there to answer your text message within three seconds’ time as if there is a service level agreement, er, and you know, one day they are recording a podcast with Craig, right? And, and, you know, er, think about all of those things. It's, it's, it's not that setting expectations, er, um, is the reason for unhappiness, it’s setting unrealistic expectations. I have something I call the happiness flowchart, and the first question on this flowchart is, is this true? Is my expectation correct? Is the event as I perceive it, actually what happened?

CRAIG

So the equation for happiness, um, that you've talked about was really challenged when you lost your beloved son, Ali. Um, and look, for anybody who's not experienced that, it seems the cruellest thing. You know, and particularly, some of the details that you talk about in the book are just so heart-breaking, about a medical accident that feels so unnecessary, and it's clear at that moment that again, you questioned everything.

MO

Oh yeah. So this definitely… it's, um, it's seven years ago now and I will tell you, it almost hurts exactly the same. Er, I, I don't know. I, you know, I, I wish that for no one, but losing a child is just, I don't think it's something that we humans are actually made to deal with. Er, it just challenges you on every front and it, it challenges you on, did I do something wrong? So you get guilt.

Er, you know, it, it challenges your role as a parent, where you were supposed to protect them. It challenges your understanding of life itself, huh, and it challenges your understanding of mortality. It, er, it scares you because, you know, even if you're spiritual as I am, er, you, you still don't know exactly where he is right now, or what is he doing right now? Will I ever see him again? If I see him again, will it be in that, you know, beautiful, handsome state that I got so used to, er, hugging and you know.

And I feel that there is a physical pain in my body, and I, I speak about this openly, and, and many of my friends who are very, you know, advanced as psychologists or, or happiness, er, gurus and so on, will tell you, yeah, you know, s-stress has a si- physical signature, and I, and I feel that the bottom right hand-hand corner of my heart is missing. I totally feel it that way.

But let's just take the logic. By the way, I think it's important to, to define what happiness is for a minute, but, but let's take the logic of applying that to losing a child, er, you know. Er, the happiness equation says, events minus expectations, so the event here is I lost my son, okay? The expectation has been oh, um, you know, he should have outlived me. Right?

And, and I'm not saying this was the analysis that happened in my mind, but let's just challenge that for a minute, huh? Er, if you look at the, at the statistics of how many people lose a child, that's number one, hm? Er, it's not, it's not an unusual event. It's not like Ali was the only one that left. If you, you know, I remember vividly when we laid him to his grave, er, you know, in Dubai, where he died, er, the, the workers will predictably, er, dig four or five graves a day, and it's just almost mechanical.

Which basically means they don't know exactly who's coming, but someone is coming, so death is upon us all the time, hm. And it was, it was actually very clear, you, you go and visit Ali, the first day he’s the last grave. You go, you go and visit him the next day, there are four neighbours, and if you go and visit him two weeks later, there are two more rows of graves, and, and it just keeps going. It's, it’s so, er, humbling, really, when you realise it's just upon us.

But, but then I also, you know, challenge things like, er, um, medical malpractice. So I, I call my brother, my brother is the Chief of Surgery in, in the largest university in Egypt, and I, and I said, ‘Khalid, is that even doable? I mean, it's just a simple surgical operation’. He was, had, he had, er, an appendix inflammation, and, you know, it's like a four minutes’ operation. And he said, ‘Yeah, it happens, unfortunately, tens of millions of times’.

Er, and yeah, of those tens of millions of times, believe it or not, I think medical malpractice is like the second or third reason, er, for, for death, er, in the United States, okay? And so it's not - you, you - first of all the expectation that Ali would have outlived me, and all of those expectations are not right, but the most eye opening moment for me, er, was you know how you go through those, er, five stages of grief and, and, and you know, you take time to get to acceptance, hm?

And, er, because at the time I was the Chief Business Officer of Google X, I was very, very, very well known in the circles of the, you know, high society and government, and executives and in Dubai where, er, where I partially lived at the time, when Ali died I received a call from a, a top, er, government, er, official who said, ‘I'm so sorry, Mo. I, you know, I don't know what to say. My condolences, but we're gonna get to the bottom of this, this is not gonna go unpunished’.

And he said, ‘Would you mind if we perform an autopsy on Ali's body?’ So I looked at his mother, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, amazing, wise woman sitting next to me, and I said, ‘Nibal, would you mind if they perform an autopsy on Ali's body?’ And she said, she, you know, raised her head with two tears in her eyes and said, ‘Would it bring Ali back?’ Okay?

With that statement, Craig, I, I promise, you my life changed, because with that one statement, you realise the truth. And the truth is, death is final. If I had hit my head against the wall for the following 27 years, er, Ali would still not be here. And, and when you start to see this, when you start to internalise this, you realise that all of the unhappiness in the world is unnecessary.

Yeah, of course I feel the pain. I feel the pain of losing him. But unhappiness is self-generated. unhappiness is to say, ‘The doctor has killed him, I need to find a way to get revenge’. Unhappiness is to say, you know, ‘It was my mistake’. Unhappiness is to say, er, ‘I'm never gonna see him’ and there are, there are so many things you can generate in your brain that brings that unhappiness, that are unnecessary. The pain is there, and it's enough.

CRAIG

You describe yourself, really understandably, as being crazy with grief, but then you describe almost having conversations with Ali as, as if he was there, where he's constantly asking you this question, ‘Is that true?’ Er, which I - is the basis of Byron Katie's teaching. Can you just explain how that worked for you, and why it was such a good question, ‘Is that true?’?

MO

Look, your, your brain tries to hijack you when things go wrong, not, not because your brain hates you, but because your brain is supposed to keep you safe. So if something departs from what life should be, your brain starts to give you all of the different an- possible analysis points. So, so it will tell you something like, you know, ‘I, I failed him, I took him to the wrong hospital, I should have protected him. I failed my role as a father’.

Yeah, clear thoughts that I had in my head, and I will tell you openly, no I didn't. My son was in agony, he was in pain. Er, I took him to a big hospital. The surgeon that, that did this operation did tens, maybe hundreds of this same exact operations before. He was in his 50, he was a respected surgeon, er, you know, and, and, um, I just needed to save my son the pain, huh? Er, that's the truth. Your brain will tell you otherwise and if you ask yourself, ‘Is it true? Did you fail him?’ No, I didn't.

I was trying to do the absolute best I can to save him. Who, you know, is it true, brain? Who wakes up in the morning as a surgeon, who has a career and a good life, huh, and, and says, ‘I'm gonna kill the first patient that comes in today’? You know, ‘This is my intention’. No. Mistakes happen. That's the truth. Sadly, when I make a mistake as a businessman, I lose a deal. When a surgeon makes a mistake, they lose a patient, but, you know, is it, is it the sign of ill intention? I don't think it was, hm?

CRAIG

And it seems to me that a lot of wise people like Byron Katie and you, come to the conclusion it's about not being in conflict with reality, not being in conflict [Yeah] with the way things [Yeah] are, and accepting that, that the world is a certain way, and that when we feel in pain, is when we tell ourselves that it's not the way that it actually is, and we should really try and learn to accept the way that world is.

MO

That’s, that’s the whole thing. Again, happiness flowchart, question number one is, is it true? Question number two is really the key, huh? If it is true, huh, er, you know, what are you gonna do about it? My, my brain constantly - I think it was the one thought that just constantly kept hitting me, was you should have driven him to another hospital. Should have driven him to another hospital. Should have driven him to another hospital.

And I, I basically, I, I, I deal with my brain as a th- as a third party. I call my brain Becky, and I deal with Becky as an independent, er, entity that is giving me thoughts to consider, right? And so I said, ‘Becky, w- yeah, I wish I could drive him to another hospital. I can't any more. Can you please give me a useful thought?’ My, my brain disappeared for four days, occasionally saying, ‘We should have driven him to another hospital’ and then eventually came back and said, ‘Well, okay, it's clear that we're not gonna have him back, but would you want to write down what you learned about happiness with him? Share it with the world, so that you can basically have his essence, you know, live on, and if you manage to, to share what he taught you with 10 million people, then through six degrees of separation in 100 years, he's gonna be part of everyone on the planet’.

CRAIG

And I, I think what is so powerful about the story as well is that you say you were able to shift your perspective from grief to gratitude that he was here [Oh my God] at all, and that, that you got to experience - and it seems to me that that is the key in so many [Yes, absolutely] other parts of life. If we could just get to a place where we realise that it's amazing that I'm here and yes, there are difficulties and humps I have to get over, and some things that feel tragic.

But the sheer fact that I'm here, or you - you got to experience Ali, and the love and the happiness that [Of course] he brought, that if you can shift from that sense of it's a problem to gratitude, that is [It’s, it’s-] a lot of the battle.

MO

- it’s so shocking the entitlement we have as humans, Craig, it really shocks me, huh? So I, er, Nibal and I, his mother and I, were so in love. She, she was my college sweetheart. We’re, we’re still, we still love each other um- dearly, even though we separated several years ago, but - and we were making love and we didn't plan to have Ali, and then this thing s- pop, this thing pops up in the world, right?

Never had an expectation to have him. As a matter of fact, in my mind, we were not ready to have children yet. And look at what happens. I get this incredibly wise, incredibly, er, er, er, generous and kind, and loving and, and, er, you know, giving human being that spends 21 and a half years in my life, teaches me everything I know about my a-about happiness.

Now think about it, huh? Ali was so wise that when he was 16, I promise you, I dropped every other mentor I have, okay? I started to slowly go to Ali to ask questions, even up - and he had that unusual, amazing way of just sitting there, saying nothing. When he spoke, you had to listen because he was so wise. And I was given that wonderful gift of love, of wisdom, of, of, of generosity, of pride.

I was so proud of him as a father, hm? He spent 21 and a half wonderful years with me. Should I be grateful for those years? Or should I be disgruntled that he left? I mean, if you really think about it, none of them, none of the, the two events was expected, Okay? And, and wise people stop thinking about what they're missing; they think about what they've been given, because in all honesty, if anyone listening to us now has an hour to spare so that they can actually listen to a podcast, has the device and the Internet connection, has a roof on top of their heads so they're probably safe because if there is a tiger attacking them right now, there wouldn't be time for, for podcasts. Then think about your blessings. Yeah, of course, your boyfriend might be annoying. Boyfriends are annoying. Yeah, that's how it is, right? But think about the blessings.

CRAIG

So an enormous blessing that, that Ali was in your life. What would you say to somebody who would say that, that, ‘OK, I, I get that, that you were blessed by that, and I get that you've been able to shift perspective, but he died. What was the point of that, for him?’

MO

For him? [LAUGHS] [Yeah] Oh, man! [LAUGHS] Don't we all die, Craig? Doesn't ev-

CRAIG

We do, but not at the age of 21.

MO

What difference does it make, if I may ask you?

CRAIG

Most people would say -

MO

Does it, is it, is it the number of years, or is it the, is it the impact you brought to life? Is it the love that you received and give, and gave? This - is it the -?

CRAIG

I think - I think what it is, is the- I think what people would say, um, it's interesting, you know, during COVID a lot of people felt that COVID took people before their time, [What?] and it was a cruelty and I think that people have a - people have a sense, er, I’m - this actually isn't my view, but I've had this conversation with many people - that they feel that if, if you go before your allotted time, there's a tragedy to that because there's so much more love that you could share and give, and experience and that kind of thing, and they - and people will do find a tragedy that you know, a young person died.

MO

Well, when is your time? [For that, that young person] When is your time? I, I apologise. Events minus expectations. Mammals - er, we live around, or most mammals, huh, all mammals, we, we live around three billion heartbeats. That's what's allocated to a mammal, okay? If you're a big mammal like an elephant, you live longer. If you're a tiny mammal like a, a, er, a mouse, you, your heart beats faster. Okay?

Three billion heartbeats for a human is 40 years of age. 37, 38 and s- to 40 years of age. Er, that's your allotted time. Sorry to tell you. Average age of humans for centuries, for millennias, mm? was around mid-30s, and now we live into our 70s and 80s, and then we lose one of us to COVID, mm, at 82 and we go like, ‘Oh, malicious virus. Er, you know, it took my, my grandma 82. You know, she had seven more good years to live’.

Or 700, I don't know what we're expecting anymore. Now, the truth is this, huh. Ali lived 21 and a half glorious years, okay? I lived now almost double, I - no, more than double, I lived 54. The real question is, are my 54 any better than his 21? Okay? And the real question is, er, does it actually make any difference, and I say that with love and respect for anyone, huh? Er, I may live, mm? Life [CLICKS FINGERS] is not about time, it's not about the number of ticks of the clock. It's around the love, the experience, the joy that you - the, the impact, the giving, mm? The, the gratitude.

CRAIG

But I suppose people would say that, that that love has been curtailed [Ha!] and so, so if you'd had, had another seven years of Ali's love, and you, you would want that, right?

MO

And, and have I ever lost Ali’s love? Er, what, what - is love a physical thing? If, if you, if that's what you believe, then I think you're missing the point. There are a few things about our life that define us so strongly, that are nonphysical. They’re in the metaphysics that is not measured. It’s not, er, er, is not quantifiable, and that always exist.

So, so when, when I wrote ‘Solve for Happy’, I had, er, waited for the readers who could actually stomach the complexity of, of the topic. I simplified it [Mm-hm] extremely, but if, but if you remember correctly, the last three chapters were love, death and design, and those were very, very complex chapters. Love wasn't, but, but, but the idea of understanding that love is probably the only thing that we have ever experienced as humans that does not have an equation, but it is so pervasive, it's probably the only joi- or common thing that all humans strive for and seek, OK?

Er, yeah, some people, some humans are - rarely ever get angry and other humans, er, you know, rare- rarely ever get, er, er, jealous or whatever, but love is probably something that all of us somehow strive for. Even psychopaths are struggling from that lack of love. Now, when, when you really think about the truth of death, and I think this is what, in my mind, um, maybe differentiates me from others when I think about losing Ali, I don't think I lost Ali at all, okay?

And I don't talk about death in ‘Solve for Happy’ from the point of view of fables in religion, or, you know, spiritual stories, or energy, as some people will talk about it. I, I basically start the chapter by explaining to you the Big Bang Theory, quantum physics and theory of relativity, OK?

CRAIG

But sorry to, sorry to interrupt. [No, no] Then is there a gap between the Mo Gawdat who was crazy with grief, and clearly did feel the loss of Ali and that love [That’s my physical form] and the one that learned - yes, and the one that has learned and developed and grown and understood since then?

MO

Oh, yeah! I mean, I'm a totally different person today. Totally different person. Er, you know, thanks to the wakeup call, I've worked on myself even further for seven more years, so much, much, much better, hm? But, but there is also a difference between Mo the physical form that feels the pain, that wants the physical hug with, with his son, that wants to know that his son has graduated and made money and met a wonderful woman and, and, and, and.

And there is the spiritual Mo that has never lost his son. Okay? Now, now, you know, spirituality is the philosophy if you want, if the scientific method deals with everything that is physical, spirituality is what teaches you to deal with the nonphysical. If you understand enough about physics, it's not about, er, biology or fables, or whatever, mm?

If you understand enough about, er, about quantum theory, combined with the Big Bang Theory, you would understand that the only way for the Earth to form, so that we can be part of it, is for life to witness Earth, okay? Quantum ph- the, the uncertainty principle of quantum physics will tell you simply that nothing is obs- er, exists until it's observed by a form of consciousness, a form of life.

Life has, has existed before our physical forms existed, okay? If you understand Theory of Relativity at any level of, er, of understanding, you would understand that Ali couldn't have been before me, because before and after is just a, er, a property of time. It's just a property of, of spacetime.

It's just the property of the physical. Er, for, for us to be able to observe the physical, that means that our pure essence exists outside the physical. The only way you can observe the passage of time is if you, if there, if the observer exists outside spacetime. Exactly like the only way you can observe planet Earth is to send the rockets outside it so that you can look at it.

If, if you're within it, you can see it. And so accordingly, the real essence of you and I, is not so - is not subject to time. Time is just a restrain, er, you know, that we, we have in the physical world. That arrow of time doesn't exist for your essence. And so was Ali born before me, er, or after me? Or did he die before me or after me? Yeah, his physical form was born after me and his physical form died before me, but his pure, amazing essence existed before, during and after. Life is not the opposite of death. Birth is the opposite of death.

CRAIG

So I think the metaphysics of it all is fascinating and, I’m, I'm not dismissing that at all, it is fascinating. But I suppose I still want to grip hold of that thing, which is basically, I think what we're hearing, particularly in terms of how you came to terms with Ali's death, is an example of what you call committed acceptance. And it feels to me that what you're talking about is, whether we like it or not, we live in a world that is part of the universe that has the reality that some things die earlier than others.

There are things like disease, there is things like risk and chance, and some people, you don't get what you always want, that is just the reality, and if you fight that, and if you act like that shouldn't be that way, [Yeah] then you are going to feel discomfort, and it seems to me that what you and a lot of very wise people have managed to do is, is find a way to accept the, the way things are.

MO

Will, will it bring Ali back? You know, that is the question. Anything that you do will not bring him back, and the only truth, the only truth is that sooner or later, I will be where Ali is. That's the only certainty I have, okay? And so, what would you do, if, if you can't bring him back, hm, do you wanna resist this for the rest of your life? 27 years later, on your deathbed, he’s not gonna be back, so what are you gonna do about it, hm?

The only wise thing to do is to say, mm, ‘Life has forced my hand. Yes, sad, I agree, but it has forced my hand’. What can I do about that? Can I accept the new baseline of my life? So before Ali went into the, the operating room, you know, it was the high, high point of my life, and then it dropped, you know, 10 storeys to, to the, to the lowest point of my life. Do I wanna stay there, or can I accept that Ali left, and then start to do something today that doesn't bring him back, but just makes life a little better, despite his absence?

I'm reading now a wonderful book called ‘My Big Toe’ that is, you know, [Right] trying to explain reality beyond, er, just physics, if you want. And, er, and we know so little. [LAUGHS] It's just shocking how humans can be arrogant about knowing anything, when we know nothing at all, huh? Er, and I know nothing, but I know for certain, hm? that I can have a choice of resigning from life when I lose a child and just, you know, grieving for, forever, and it won't change a thing.

CRAIG

So I'm not challenging you that you - because I agree a hundred percent with what you're saying, I'm just trying to help some people who may be listening to this, who go, ‘You know, these terrible things did happen to me. I can't - I know that I should be able to get over it, but I really struggle and when I try and look at how other people explain it to me, they sort of talk about neural pathways that are set in a certain direction and [Oh yeah] I have a limited EQ, IQ, genetics, hormones, it's all screwing me up. It's all over the place. So when you tell me I can choose to be happy, I just don't even know where to start’.

MO

Well, it depends on what is wrong, okay, so, so I, I get, so if you remember, ‘Solve for Happy’ is sort of a comprehensive hand, you know, manual of the topic, right, so it's, it follows a model that's called the 675, which basically is, you know, er, 18 different things that you need to focus on, that can be causing your happiness or unhappiness.

And the trick is, for me, for example, the illusion of control was the top one, hm? And if you define that, you need to start working on that. You can't work on everything at the same time. You need to find that one thing that makes you unhappy, and the question is, I absolutely agree, I absolutely agree that, you know, our, our neuroplasticity makes our brain wired differently and our, er, hormones change and, you know, I'm very, you know, if you get to that stage, it's very difficult to get out of it.

And there is only one change, er, that would start you on a different cycle where neuroplasticity would work in your favour and the hormones would start to work in your favour. And so the question simply is, what is that one mindset change? I always ask my s- my brain openly, okay? For every negative thought, to give me a positive one. By the way, 60 to 70 percent of the thoughts in an adult brain are negative. Can you, can you even fathom the idea that 60 to 70 percent of your life is wrong? Hm?

CRAIG

And a very common thing is people also saying that I have this- the, the voice in their head which is very negative and, you know, patterns going round and round, or self-critical, or, you know, making things difficult all the time. And you and other very wise people, I think, make the point that the common mistake is to assume that that voice in your head [Absolutely] is actually you. [Yeah, yeah] Can you explain that a bit more?

MO

Yeah, yeah, of course. I mean, th- think about it, huh? So, so if the, if the voice in your head was you talking to you, why would it need to talk? I mean, you would implicitly understand. You would implicitly know, er, what you want to know. The, the reason it's talking to you is because it's a third party, and this, this is not spiritual talk. This is since, er, a Russian Nobel, er, Prize winner that used to, that, er, that basically observed that we actually sort of move our voice boxes ever so slightly when we are, er, you know, thinking. Er, he called it the internal dialogue.

When you're thinking inside your head, it's - there are associated movements that are actually the same thing that you do when you speak. And, you know, basically, the idea is that - er, at least his theory was that you, when you, when you're a child, you narrate everything that you see out loud. You know, ‘Oh, this is a car, this is an aeroplane’, right?

And then after a while, it becomes awkward so you internalise the dialogue, and because the only building blocks of knowledge we have since we start to speak is words, we start to tell ourselves, ‘Oh, this is Craig. I'm on a podcast. He has a fancy microphone’. I have to say those things in my head, right?

And, and from then onwards, that voice in your head is telling you things using words. In, in MIT in 2007, they ran an experiment where they put people in MRI machines, and, er, and basically give them word puzzles, and so the, the brain would light up in the areas that are associated with problem solving for as long as the - as it is needed, based on the complexity of the problem.

And then your brain will literally light up in the verbal association area of your brain, er, for up to eight seconds before the participant actually would know the answer. So the problem solving area finds the answer, and then it sends it to the verbal communication area, that, the same part of your brain you use when I speak to you out loud, which lights up for eight seconds until it tells you the answer in your brain.

Your brain is literally talking to you. You have to start realising that those thoughts in your head are just the biological product of a three pound lump of meat, okay? Er, you know, you wake up in the morning, and sorry for, for the analogy, you go to the bathroom, hm? and you, you know, produce some stuff that is the biological product of your kidneys, or the biological product of your intestines, and you don't call yourself those things and yet the biological product of your brain is thoughts. That's what your brain is supposed to do, hm?

And you say to yourself, ‘I am those thoughts. I think therefore I am’. What, what the hell? This is absolutely misled. ‘I am therefore my brain thinks’. And once you create that separated separation, it is total liberation. Total liberation.

CRAIG

But it looks like the, that whole basis of, um, Western thinking is, ‘I think [Oh yeah, of course] therefore I am’, and that, that, the the rational is, is everything. Um, so but [Yes] you're basically saying we've got that backwards.

MO

Totally. I mean, with all due respect of - so, so, I mean, I'm Eastern origin and Western educated, so I respect both cultures, but oh my God, the West has got so many things wrong, okay? And the biggest of them all is how we glorified thinking so much, mm, that it became associated with who we are, okay?

And I'm sorry to say, huh, if, er, if you're, if you if you think a bad thought, does that make you a bad person? Of course not, hm? We all - our brains work almost like a game theorist, hm? They go through all possible scenarios. It's like, ‘Okay, my boss is annoying. What if I punch them in the face’, right? You get that thought. If you don't punch them in the face, you're a good person, okay?

But you get the thought, hm?. Does that mean you're a bad person? Are you the thoughts in your brain? And more importantly, if your brain is not you, total liberation comes in. You no longer have to listen. Do you understand that? Can you imagine the liberation?

CRAIG

Exactly, but this is the next big question. So if you're not your thoughts, then who are you?

MO

Oh, that's a major question. Does it make any difference?

CRAIG

Well, no, no, I think it - um, no, no I d- I don't, but I think it helps people understand because so many people are so used to the idea that the thoughts bubbling around in your head are actually your character and that kind of thing, where in reality, I think it took me quite a long time to actually learn to pause and stop, and think that there is a sort of core of me that is not necessarily the - my cerebral cortex, which is behaving in a certain way.

MO

Yeah, it's, it’s, er, again, it's almost like saying you’re your kidneys, okay? Are you your kidneys? That's a, that's a mega downgrade. It’s a mega downgrade if you, er, if you consider that your kidneys, okay? it's a major downgrade if you think that you are that three p- pound lump of meat. You are so much more than that. And if - by the way, if you stop thinking for a while, does that mean you cease to exist?

I mean, in those wonderful moments, where you know, you're just waking up in the morning before that machine kicks in, or on, in that wonderful moment of meditation where you actually rise above thoughts, okay? Do you cease to exist? Is that it? Do, do you vanish? You don't. You're not your thoughts, hm? The trick is, who are you?

If we are, if we have any respect of our ignorance, hm, you don't have the instrument to measure certain things, and anything that is nonphysical, we're unable to measure, okay? So when my wonderful happy Ali, when, when my, when my wonderful Ali left us, I don't know how we got, er, those moments of courage -courage but myself and, and his mother, er, we went inside and, and you know, sat next to him. She kissed him on the forehead. I hugged him, mm, or I hugged his body, if you want.

And I can totally tell you, hm, that the incredibly wise, handsome, animated, er, er, l- force of life that was Ali, hm? he still looked the same, but it wasn't him anymore, okay? Something disconnected with that physical form and that something, hm, was, was his pure essence. You know, when you and I meet for the first time, Craig, and I go, like, ‘I like this person’. You haven't, you haven't even spoken a word yet, okay? Hm?

You haven't spoken a word. I don't even know what you're gonna say. You may end up to be a lunatic, mm? But somehow you get that essence. You, you know, I was interviewing on my podcast yesterday an amazing woman, er, Katie Hess, who is, er, um, a flower alchemist, and she talks about the energy of every flower that when - you know, forget the beauty, which actually was proven by science that the, the bees are not attracted to the scent or the colours. The bees is attracted to the energy of the flower, okay?

And, and, and all of those essences that we refuse to associate with because we've been so associated with the physical, you forget who you really are. Who you really are is that form of being, that consciousness, that love that makes you, okay? That is not physical. By the way, everything that you do - that defines you, that truly defines you, is not physical.

CRAIG

And so much of this feels as well, about losing your ego and the [Absolutely] voice inside your head, creating an ego with expectations, and demands and criticisms and that kind of thing, which leads you, I think, to - and others to talk about learning to die before you die. That [I love that] sounds like it's really saying about learning to make sure that your ego is put properly in check [Yeah] so that you can experience life in a better way.

MO

You, would you believe that this is my single, single target in life. That's it. You know, I’m, I'm living the rest of my life in an attempt to die before I die. This is a - for those who may not be, er, fully aware, it's a Sufi concept, er, about the i- it's called to die before you die, but when you really think about what it means, it means to detach, to detach yourself from everything physical, er, as if you died while you're still alive, okay?

And I can promise you, this is the joy of all joys, hm? It's the joy of all joys to be able to, you know, make money or lose money, but not care about money, hm? To, to be, er, out dating, hoping to find the, the most amazing woman ever on the planet, but not find the m- most amazing woman on the planet and be indifferent either way, okay?

To be able to, er, er, like me, l- l- you know, have money in the bank but live using, er, you know, wearing a four dollar t-shirt. And how we are constantly blocked from enjoying the journey of life because of our preconceived concepts.

CRAIG

Thanks to Mo Gawdat for joining us. Please like and subscribe to this podcast and tell people about it. You can also visit our website: desperatelyseekingwisdom.com. Our next guest is Lord Michael Hastings. He has dedicated his life to helping the poor, and believes so many of our issues with life could be solved if we found ways to help others. I’m Craig Oliver and this is a Creators Inc Production.