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Deep Dive with Ali AbdaalThe Happiness Expert Making 1 Billion People Happier - Mo Gawdat
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Writing Solve for Happy and Gratitude After Losing a Son
Ali introduces Mo Gawdat and his mission after losing his son. Mo describes the emotional experience of recording the audiobook and how he came to see that his son Ali lived as well as died, which led him to appreciate life's blessings.
- •Mo wrote the book two and a half years before release and first read the paragraphs about his son when recording the audiobook
- •Grief over a lost child never fully disappears, though peace can be found
- •Mo says he'd take the pain ten times over to have had his son
- •Taking things for granted hides how blessed we are, even compared with people in war zones
Battling the Negativity Bias
Mo explains that the brain is a survival machine that defaults to looking for what's wrong, but can be instructed to look for what's right. He offers a simple exercise of finding nine other good things about any negative situation.
- •The brain's default is to detect threats, like a tiger
- •Mo claims, without scientific evidence, that 99.9% of life is fine
- •Negative events are dips from an okay baseline
- •Exercise: ask for nine other good things about any situation
- •The same event can be seen as wonderful or negative by choice
Is Happiness a Choice? The Victim Mindset and the 90-Second Rule
Ali raises that Mo calls happiness a choice and that this loses some listeners. Mo explains that being the victim carries a perceived utility, and cites neuroscientist Jill Bolte Taylor's finding that an emotional surge lasts 90 seconds unless we regenerate it.
- •Mo's beta readers dropped off by 8% at the page stating happiness is a choice
- •Being the victim removes responsibility, a pattern rooted in childhood
- •We can shelve an issue during a meeting, showing attention is controllable
- •Anger's physiological response lasts 90 seconds; we regenerate it
- •Ali links the gap between stimulus and response to the Stoics
Choosing to Be Happier After Trauma and Abuse
Ali asks whether saying happiness is a choice is fair to people with depression, abuse or PTSD. Mo says absolute happiness isn't a choice, but becoming incrementally less unhappy is, drawing on his own loss and on Matthieu Ricard.
- •Nobody is always happy; Matthieu Ricard says he's always pissed off
- •Choices are relative to one's baseline
- •After his son's death, Mo's baseline dropped sharply
- •The choice is to make things slightly better rather than stay at the low point
- •Ali summarizes it as 'happier is a choice'
Happiness vs Fun: Serotonin, Dopamine and Video Games
Mo defines genuine happiness as calm, peaceful contentment, distinct from the joy, pleasure and excitement the modern world sells. He ties contentment to serotonin and the parasympathetic system, and fun to dopamine. Ali shares his World of Warcraft experience.
- •Children are born happy; the modern world sells fun and ego
- •Calm contentment links to the parasympathetic state and serotonin
- •Dopamine is excitatory, leads to down-regulated receptors and addiction-like chasing
- •Mo says lockdown was hard partly because of dopamine deprivation
- •Fun used as a painkiller leaves you drained, but fun added to contentment works like a vitamin
The Happiness Equation and Unhappiness as a Survival Alarm
Mo describes how as an engineer he searched for a formula for happiness and arrived at events minus expectations. He says the key insight was defining unhappiness as a survival alert that we mishandle by regenerating it as drama instead of acting.
- •He listed 92 happy moments and found no link to any single event
- •The same event, like his daughter smiling, can bring happiness or unhappiness depending on expectations
- •Happiness is the perception of events minus expectations
- •Every negative emotion detects a perceived survival threat
- •We replay old threats as 'pain on demand' instead of checking if the threat exists now and acting
- 39:23 – 43:01
Do Lower Expectations Make Us Happier?
Ali asks whether the equation means we should keep expectations low. Mo says lower expectations yield happiness while high ambition drives success, and he advocates realistic expectations combined with high ambition and contentment.
- •If the target is happiness, lower expectations work, as with his kitesurfing friends
- •If the target is success and impact, ambition is needed
- •The One Billion Happy mission is an ambitious target
- •Modern upbringing tells us success leads to happiness, which Mo says is not always true
- •The middle path is realistic expectations, high ambition and contentment when expectations are missed
The Infinite Game and Questioning Ambitious Goals
Ali describes his dilemma about setting a bestseller goal for his book. Mo frames life as an infinite game, shares how he writes for the joy of it, and suggests asking why behind goals to reveal ego-driven secondary targets.
- •Finite games have winners; infinite games like Pac-Man are about playing
- •Mo writes more than he publishes and enjoys the process
- •Targeting an outcome can ruin the quality of the work
- •Asking 'why' reveals secondary motives like money and fame
- •Check whether achieving the goal would deliver what you expect
Capitalism, Money and Ego
Ali asks how Mo's one-billion goal fits with this. Mo says capitalism's problem is its target of dollar signs, describes giving most of his money away, owning his life rather than being owned by it, and says the happiest rich people make money to do good.
- •Capitalism works as a system, but the target is dollar signs
- •Mo gives most of his money away and wears $4 T-shirts
- •With 16 cars, he once forgot which one he was driving
- •The difference between a £5 and a £500 meal is ego
- •Self-focused targets are ego-driven; others-focused targets are driven by compassion
You Are Born a Millionaire: Minutes, Suffering and Giving
Mo says each person is born with about 30 million minutes and should decide how to spend them. He recommends simulating suffering, as with fasting in Ramadan, to appreciate what we have, and says the only rewarding minutes are connection and giving.
- •500,000 hours of life equals about 30 million minutes
- •Ask what return each exchange of minutes gives
- •Simulating suffering, as Stoics and religious practices teach, builds gratitude
- •Rewarding minutes are connection and giving
- •Research suggests giving raises happiness, and Mo feels life supports those who give
Is Solving for Happy a Privilege? Looking Down and Life's Tests
Ali asks whether happiness advice is the domain of the privileged, citing a commenter in Yemen. Mo says billions are unhappy despite privilege, recommends gratitude and looking down, and describes life's challenges as tailored tests meant to teach or redirect us.
- •Mo says 7,700 million people are unhappy while privileged
- •Viktor Frankl points out someone is always less privileged
- •Look down rather than up to see blessings
- •Life's tests are slightly more stretching than our capabilities, to learn or to change direction
- •Mo says only losing his son could have redirected him from business
Dating, Context and Communication in Relationships
Ali asks about Mo's dating life. Mo explains that life is a question of context, that he currently prioritizes his mission over a traditional relationship, and that the key to lasting relationships is hiding nothing, illustrated with a story about a text exchange.
- •Mo was married for 27 years and separated seven years ago
- •There are many relationship models beyond the traditional one
- •Matthieu Ricard's reasoning about monastic choices influenced Mo's view
- •Long-term success requires nothing hidden between partners
- •Waiting rather than reacting resolved a misunderstanding
Feminine and Masculine Qualities and Freedom from Labels
Mo explains masculine and feminine as qualities present in everyone, not tied to gender, with differences creating attraction and tension. He argues the modern world demonizes the feminine, that integration is best, and ends on his wish to live free of labels.
- •Masculine and feminine are qualities like linear vs intuitive thinking, not body parts
- •Every problem needs both; the masculine is doing, the feminine is being
- •Mo cites Gandhi and Steve Jobs as examples of feminine strengths
- •Overdoing any quality becomes harmful, such as strength turning into aggression
- •Ali defers to his girlfriend's intuition; Mo ends with his 'Mo-tarian' view that nobody should need to be boxed into categories
Publisher timestamps
- 0:00Intro
- 2:16Writing a book about happiness after losing your son
- 7:37Battling the negativity bias instinct
- 10:42Is happiness a choice?
- 19:59The difference between happiness and fun
- 31:07Understanding the happiness equation and unhappiness
- 43:01How should we manage ambitions?
- 57:00You are born a millionaire
- 1:01:31Is solve for happy the domain of the privileged?
- 1:09:00Relationships: life is a question of context
- 1:15:22Feminine vs masculine energy
