The Most EYE OPENING Speech On Why You're NOT HAPPY In Life... | Mo Gawdat

Mo Gawdat 0:00 By 29, I had everything. Most beautiful woman on the planet agreed to marry me. I could print money on demand. I was trading in the stock market. I had the big villa, the swimming pool, and I was miserable. Miserable. Miserable. Completely clinically depressed.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 0:18 Mo, if happiness is our default state, as you think it is, as I think it is, why are so many people unhappy?

Mo Gawdat 0:29 Basically, we choose to, sadly. I don't know how to say it any other way. We choose to live a life, uh, that leads us in different directions, and we're very capable creatures. If I told you that your task today was to make 1,000 coffees, you're gonna find a way to make as many of them as you can. If I told you your task today is to spend time with your kids, you're going to find a way to make that happen. And I think our modern world has started ... Uh, I believe, there is no scientific proof of that, but I believe post-World War II and the Great Depression, uh, our great-grandparents started to feel that the most important thing to achieve in life is an insurance policy, to make sure that they're okay so that they never suffer again, that their kids are okay, their grandkids are okay, and so on. And so we had a message cascading down over generations that basically told you the day you were born that you were supposed to go through life working really hard, making money, trying to be successful, trying to be safe, interestingly. And, uh, and yeah, and then when you've done with all of that and you've achieved all that we want you to achieve, you're going to be then happy, right? Yeah, I mean, have you really investigated this assumption? The assumption of, yes, if you work really hard, you're gonna make a lot of money or be successful. That's true. But when you're successful, will that make you happy? I think people missed on the fact that there are so many of us who are rich and famous and swimming in, in, uh, i- in money, and being chased by paparazzis and clinically depressed.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:12 Yeah.

Mo Gawdat 2:13 The truth is, uh, uh, you know, hard work leads to success, but success does not always lead to happiness. We prioritized wrong, and we got what we prioritized for.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:23 I mean, that's quite an interesting idea, that humans are incredible. Like, if we are given a set of-

Mo Gawdat 2:31 Absolutely

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:31 ... priorities and goals, we will achieve them.

Mo Gawdat 2:33 We'll ... At least we'll get close to achieving them. We'll go- we'll move in the direction of achieving them.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:37 Yeah. A- and if we are surrounded by the idea, as we certainly are in the UK, as we certainly are in America, that you need to do better, you need to strive more-

Mo Gawdat 2:53 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:53 ... work harder, because then you can achieve more, earn more, do more with that money. Of course, w- unless you're very conscious about the way you choose to live your life, you're gonna get swept up in that, because that's-

Mo Gawdat 3:07 Totally

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 3:07 ... the tide around you, right? And, and that really, for me, it speaks to something I've heard you say a- about before, that at 25 you had nothing, at 29 you had everything.

Mo Gawdat 3:16 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 3:18 Can you speak about that a little bit?

Mo Gawdat 3:20 Yeah. I mean, uh, it's not a, it's not an unusual story. It's just happened to me very, very early. I mean, I [laughs] I don't know how to say that. I think I had my middle-age crisis when I was 29. You know, m- my definition of middle-age crisis is when you've achieved everything you've set your mind to achieve, and then you stop and you go like, "That's it?" That, you know ... "Is that what it w- what it's all about?" And m- most people don't believe me when I say this, but, uh, I, I, I was born and raised in Egypt. Uh, public school, public university in Egypt. So I promise you, I, uh, uh, you know, my biggest dream when I started my first job at IBM Egypt, my biggest dream was that in 17 years' time I'll be sales manager, right? And then life just took an incredible journey for me. By 29, I had everything. Like, I had ... My most beautiful woman on the planet agreed to marry me. Wise, kind, loving, gave me two wonderful kids. I had ... I could print money on demand. I was trading in the stock market really before the tools that we have today were available. So I, I developed my own code and had found areas that I could make money literally when I wanted to. I had the big villa, the swimming pool, and I was miserable. Miserable. Miserable. Completely clinically depressed. And I think that's not unusual. You graduate, uh, school, and you go like, "Okay, I am gonna work and make 100 pounds a week, and I'll be happy." What, what ha- what happens when you make 100 pounds a week is you say, "Oh, I'm so sorry. I wanted 200," uh, you know?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 4:47 Mm.

Mo Gawdat 4:47 And then you make 200, and then what do you say? "Oh, no, no, but I need a mortgage. I need to make 1,000," right? And you keep, you keep running. You keep running. And we never really stop. We never really i- notice the change of context Rangan. This is, this is where it goes really wrong. Because yes, of course, at the young age, mm, when you're trying to establish yourself, when, you know, you're trying to build what Steven Bartlett calls your, uh, your, your, your capital, your skill capital-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 5:14 Mm-hmm

Mo Gawdat 5:14 ... mm, you're, you're, you're, you're supposed to work a little harder. You're supposed to engage a little, uh, more. You're supposed to try and find your place in life. But as that context changes, mm, and for most of us it changes when you've reached your, your basic needs, right? W- how, how do you then become, uh, uh, more interested in living than in earning, okay?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 5:39 Mm-hmm.

Mo Gawdat 5:40 And, and I think the big, big, big, big myth that people m- fail to notice is that you come to life a billionaire, right? That's how ... That's what, what you ... You know, if you live to be 80, let's say, mm, you have, I don't know, say, uh, um, two billion heartbeats, uh, to live. You, you start your life with a credit of two billion. Okay? And then, and then you spend it. Mm? Say 60 beats per second, just at an average, so every second that passes, you're spending from your cr- credit, exchanging it for other things in life. So you know, in the morning today, I had an hour before we started recording. I could have spent that credit, mm, swiping on Instagram, or I could spend it hugging you and s- catching up and fi- you know, r- m- spending wonderful time with a friend.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 6:32 Mm-hmm.

Mo Gawdat 6:32 Mm-hmm. Which of those is a better use of your assets? Mm? And so I spent my young years, uh, you know, my heartbeats were going into exchanging my life, my minutes, my hours, for money. Mm-hmm. And I had the most, uh, beautiful wife, most beautiful kids, a comfortable life, but I wasn't actually exchanging those heartbeats for time with them. And so where do you end up? You end up feeling empty. You end up feeling deceived, almost, almost, you know, like you, you, a- a scam.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 7:07 Yeah. I mean, that word deception, I think it's really powerful. Many people, I think, get to a point in, in their life where they do feel deceived.

Mo Gawdat 7:16 Absolutely.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 7:16 "Man, I, I've, I've done what I was told to do. I've got the job. I've got the mortgage. I've got the car," or whatever it might be, yet there's something missing. I mean, y- you're right. We ... This is a recurring theme.

Mo Gawdat 7:31 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 7:31 I mean, I don't know, maybe five or six weeks ago, Jonny Wilkinson was sitting in your chair.

Mo Gawdat 7:36 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 7:36 And you know, like you, he had his crisis very early in life. You know, at the age of 24, he'd got all of his dreams.

Mo Gawdat 7:46 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 7:46 He play- was playing for England, and he scored the winning goal in the World Cup final to give England the World Cup.

Mo Gawdat 7:51 Don't g- do ... You don't do better than that.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 7:53 You don't do better than that.

Mo Gawdat 7:54 That's it.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 7:54 Yet-

Mo Gawdat 7:55 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 7:55 ... in that moment, he felt empty. The following morning, he can't get out of bed. He feels depressed. He feels anxious. He, he struggles with anxiety and just lowness and indifference on the back of achieving what you would think any child in the country would say, "God, if I could do that, I'd be happy." This is a common theme, Mo, right? So why is it, do you think, that many people, yourself, Jonny Wilkinson, myself, and many others, have to go through that process of reaching our dreams before we realize that our dreams haven't made us happy?

Mo Gawdat 8:37 Well, I th- I ... L- to start with, dreams will never make you happy. Right? Happiness is the absence of unhappiness. You're born happy. We both agree that. We chatted about that all the time, huh? You look at any child, uh, when they're, uh, uh, you know, safe and fed and loved and, you know, there's nothing wrong with their life, and they're happy. Right? Uh, you know, a nappy gets wet, n- they feel discomfort. They become unhappy. They cry. You change the nappy, they go back to happiness. Right?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 9:03 Mm-hmm.

Mo Gawdat 9:04 This is ... The, the reality of humanity is ... But happiness, by the way, n- not defined as going to a party and jumping up and down. That's excitement or elation or pleasure or fun. These are different emotions. Happiness is that calm, peaceful contentment. I'm okay with my life. Okay? I'm, I'm happy. I'm ... Basically, I'm peaceful with this. I want this moment to, to last, right? So, so that definition of happy is within you. Mm-hmm. You can only spoil it. It's, it's the opposite way. Mm. Y- you know, you can only add to it crap. You know, you can cover it with, with piles of stones and piles of loads and burdens and ... Right? And the more you cover it, the more you cannot access it anymore. It's the opposite that needs to happen, huh? You don't need to achieve anything to be happy. You just need to stop being unhappy. Right? Now, to get to where I got in life, to, to get to, you know, where anyone successful gets in life, you make sacrifices. So to become chief business officer of Google X, you travel. I traveled, during my professional career, four of every five weeks. Now, yeah, there is joy in traveling four of every five weeks at the surface. You know, that worldly lifestyle. In reality, I, I had a friend of mine, uh, a mathematician like myself, that came to me at a point in my life and said, you know, in a very geeky way, he said, "Uh, I just was doing the math, and I think you spent 62% of your life alone." Right? And he was right, Rangan. He was right. If you counted the number of nights I spent in hotels, the number of hours I spent on 16-hour flights, mm, the number of hours I spent in meetings where my relationship with the world was through a presentation and a s- and a spreadsheet, mm, what a waste of heartbeats. What a waste of heartbeats. Right? And, and the truth is, mm, interestingly ... And I, I urge people to do that exercise. Look at your memories. Look at your memories. Your memories are the register of the moments you actually lived. Look at them and find which of them didn't have a human connection in it. Find which of them didn't have love. Find e- which, which of them didn't have awe and a new experience. Mm. Most of what ... Have you ... Do you have any memory of a slide deck that you observed when you were 23?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 11:34 [laughs]

Mo Gawdat 11:34 You, you don't. You know? D- th- those things don't ... are not moments we live. Okay?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 11:40 Yeah.

Mo Gawdat 11:40 I, I don't know if you're a fan of Pink Floyd like I am, but ... Right?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 11:44 Yeah.

Mo Gawdat 11:44 And who, who isn't? Good man. Uh, you know-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 11:46 And, and if they're not, they probably just haven't heard enough. [laughs]

Mo Gawdat 11:48 [laughs] Yeah. Yeah. They're, they need to ... They need to listen to Pink Floyd. But you remember the song called Time, huh?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 11:54 Yeah.

Mo Gawdat 11:54 And in Time, Pink Floyd will say, "And then one day you find 10, 10 years have gone behind you. No one told you when to run. You missed the starting gun." Right? And, and I, I ... That's really stopped me think-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 12:06 Mm

Mo Gawdat 12:06 ... to, to think because you know That it's now almost mid-2022, mm? And you know in your mind that it doesn't feel like five or six months. You know why? Because you didn't live five or six months. You lived in the real world, in those real moments maybe a month, right, if you're very good at it. The rest, you're living inside your head thinking about the past, thinking about the future, chasing for some money, you know, th- think- dreaming of a car that you don't need or a taller, uh, girlfriend that you, you think is gonna make you happy. And then suddenly, mm, all of those moments, all of those heartbeats you wasted don't register. You haven't lived.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 12:49 Mm.

Mo Gawdat 12:50 Only the ones that you lived, and if you really take stock of them, they're beautiful-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 12:55 Yeah

Mo Gawdat 12:55 ... moments that are really, really simple.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 12:58 That analogy with heartbeats I think is very powerful. Um, 62% of your time you were spending alone, so you were taking those heartbeats by yourself. There's something in that, isn't there? Something quite beautiful that actually heart, heartbeats that you were, you were consuming individually, by yourself, stuck staring at your laptop in a hotel room trying to send a few emails, right? But heartbeats, hearts, heart-to-heart connection-

Mo Gawdat 13:30 Absolutely

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 13:30 ... it's kind of like, it, it's quite interesting that the heart is there to connect us with other people, right? So that means only 38% of your time were you using the heart-

Mo Gawdat 13:42 Absolutely

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 13:43 ... in the way the heart's meant to be used.

Mo Gawdat 13:44 Abso- you're so spot on. And by the way, it's not being alone that's the problem, huh? So, so, you know, one of my future books, one of the books I'm working on is called Half Monk, and I, I totally am fascinated by the idea of monkhood, you know? Spending part of your life in, uh, s- you know, in isolation really reflecting, connecting. But in that case, your heart is connecting to you.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 14:07 Mm.

Mo Gawdat 14:07 Your heart is connecting to the rest of being. Not physically. You don't have to be ... You know, I don't have to be sitting in front of you to say, "Hey, I miss my friend." I can have that feeling. It enriches my heart, right? B- b- but, but the problem is what you said. The problem is staring at the, at the computer screen and wasting heartbeats on that, you know? Uh, um, uh, um, um, um, sending emails that really don't require that much attention and spending time on that, mm?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 14:33 Yeah.

Mo Gawdat 14:34 That's where, that's where we lose what makes us human.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 14:39 Yeah.

Mo Gawdat 14:39 And, and that, a- again, if, if you don't mind me just quickly saying, we live in a hyper, hyper, hyper-masculine world, right? Sadly, we've created a world that depends entirely on our left brains, right? And so most of our activities in life have become dependent on doing, thinking, analyzing, and we've sort of almost demonized being, which is a moment of silence or a moment next to someone you love where you don't say much at all, mm?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 15:12 Yeah.

Mo Gawdat 15:12 Or, or, or a, or, or a moment of reflection or a moment of, uh, uh, gratitude, of admiration. Being, mm, is just to be. You don't do much, mm? Being is also that incredible feeling of absorbing all of life, huh?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 15:29 Mm-hmm.

Mo Gawdat 15:29 Sensing, feeling, mm, playing, flowing where life takes you.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 15:35 Yeah.

Mo Gawdat 15:35 And, and, and I think the challenge was this world we've created for ourselves which makes you end up being chief business officer and making a lot of money that you don't need, mm, that world is taxing you living, being. Because you're only alive when you be. When you're doing, the only way, by the way, you can become, uh, uh, uh, you know, alive when you do is to flow, and flow is a mix of being and doing.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 16:04 Yeah.

Mo Gawdat 16:05 Right? It's not just doing the task. It's really living with the task.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 16:10 Let's just break down that for people because we are taught, and I see this firsthand with my children who are at school ... I have real concerns over education these days.

Mo Gawdat 16:22 I do, too.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 16:23 I, I, I feel we are untraining them from the default natural state of happiness which they have as children, and I can even see it in my own kids. They're starting to lose it.

Mo Gawdat 16:36 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 16:36 Because it's about doing, it's about achieving-

Mo Gawdat 16:38 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 16:38 ... it's about grades.

Mo Gawdat 16:40 And it's not just the kids.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 16:41 Yeah.

Mo Gawdat 16:42 It's the kids, the parents, the teachers, the, the everyone.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 16:44 Everyone's following it, uh, b- because, because we are swimming in the ocean where the tide is pushing everyone one way.

Mo Gawdat 16:51 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 16:51 And I think this is fundamentally one of the big problems, Mo, is that to actually do some of the things that you are inviting people to consider, I'm inviting people to consider, it actually often requires people to swim upstream-

Mo Gawdat 17:07 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 17:07 ... and swim against the kind of prevailing tide, and that's hard.

Mo Gawdat 17:12 It's, it's hard, but so is everything worthwhile.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 17:15 Yeah.

Mo Gawdat 17:15 Okay? And I think the reality of the matter is, you know, we're not only depriving our kids of their happiness, we're also depriving them of their talents. And I, and I, I, and I think there are many, many things that can improve about our education systems everywhere in the world. I think the one thing that we've done wrong is we, because of the Industrial Revolution and capitalism, have learned or have desired to, um, to put everyone in a mold, right? So my, my late son was a math prodigy. He was really, really good at math. He loved biology. He loved, you know, certain sciences, but he hated geography, right? I promise you, when my son came back from school scoring a B in geo- in geography, I would feel upset. I'd tell him, "Why, Ali? Why, why didn't you just score a C?" You don't like this thing, don't waste a minute of your time. Hm? If I had a choice, by the way, I wouldn't have had him study geography at all. But the system molds us in a way-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 18:21 Mm-hmm

Mo Gawdat 18:21 ... that makes us have to learn everything or try everything, and that's the opposite of Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000-hour idea, right?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 18:30 Mm.

Mo Gawdat 18:30 The reason you and I write books, and we enjoy it so much, and, you know, they reach people and have impact is because we put in hours in writing.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 18:39 Mm-hmm.

Mo Gawdat 18:40 Hm? If you, if you and I were also told, I mean, we discussed this before, if you have to practice, for example, that takes parts of your hours, so you beco-become very good at it. Hm? If you are recording this podcast, it takes part of your hours. But if I also added to you that you need to become a good football player in the-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 18:57 Mm

Mo Gawdat 18:57 ... in the meanwhile, and you have to put in the hours, one of two things will happen. Either you'll fail at becoming a football player because you're not gonna put in the hours, or you are gonna put in the hours, and then you're gonna become a less and less good podcaster, right?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 19:10 Yeah.

Mo Gawdat 19:11 And I think what happening is that w-when, when I say you have to, to, oh, oh, you know, swim against the tide, you really have to look at your kids. Actually, look at yourself as well, if you don't have kids, huh, and tell yourself, "What am I passionate about? What am I good at?" Okay? And, and what ... w- how much of my hour, how many of my hours are going behind that?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 19:33 Mm.

Mo Gawdat 19:33 And then can I limit the remainder of that to the bare minimum so that I live a life that is true to what I actually want to be? Hm?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 19:41 Mm.

Mo Gawdat 19:41 And, and that thinking, yeah, it may take you a, a, a day or two to figure out. It may take you a month or two to, to decide and learn the skills of swimming against the tide, but once you do, you save yourself years of misery swimming with the tide in a very cold place and feeling empty.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 20:01 Yeah. Google X.

Mo Gawdat 20:05 Hm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 20:05 Right? Chief Business Officer.

Mo Gawdat 20:07 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 20:09 That would be one of the things that people will say, "Man, if I could get there, life, life would be great."

Mo Gawdat 20:16 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 20:17 And this is the kind of big myth that I think we're both trying to bust. Um, it's ... I don't know. It's this kind of idea that ... The way, the way I articulate it in my last book was this idea that we think we wanna be Tiger Woods, but we don't, right? What I mean by that is we just see one component of somebody's life. So people would see you-

Mo Gawdat 20:40 Absolutely

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 20:40 ... on stage in front of 1,000 people, Chief Business Officer at Google X. That's a cool job, right? So they, they think, "I want to be Mo," right? "When I grow up," or, "I wanna get promotion so I can Mo's job one day," right? Whatever. But they don't see the heartache inside. They don't see the fact that you spent 62% of your time alone in order to achieve that dream. So they bust a gut thinking that, "When I get there," or, "If I play golf 10 hours a day, and I become Tiger Woods," right? We think we want it, but what I think we've lost is we see one component of people's lives, not the entirety, and you can't wanna be Mo, Chief Business Officer at Google X-

Mo Gawdat 21:25 Without the-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 21:26 Without everything

Mo Gawdat 21:26 ... accessories, yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 21:27 ... without the not seeing your children, without the not seeing your wife. You can't be Tiger Woods necessarily without the painkiller problems, the, the marital issues, the, the, you know, w- all, all kinds of things that come along with that. So we kinda have to choose our heroes with care. You know, what, what are we looking for in life? Who are we choosing to model, right?

Mo Gawdat 21:53 It, it's probably the biggest secret to a happy life, if you ask me. I mean, to start with, working at Google X was amazing. It really, really was. I m- I worked with such intelligent people, okay? It humbles you. It really puts you in place. And the original vision was we're gonna solve big problems that affect the life of a billion people or more.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 22:15 Mm.

Mo Gawdat 22:15 Okay? And I promise you, if that dream was happening as it should, hm, uh, I would have dedicated my life to that, right? The challenge interestingly is se- several layers. Layer one is what you mentioned, which is what's the other component of those lives? In, in Solve for Happy, my first book, I call that the snapshot, right? You, you take a snapshot of someone on Instagram, and, you know, even if it's not fake, if it's their true, their true life, hm, they've ... in a, they're in a place you're dreaming of. You don't know the other parts of the frame that are cut, okay? And you don't know the path they had to take to get there, and you don't know what's going to happen after that frame, right? And, you know, you don't know what's inside them during that frame.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 23:02 Mm.

Mo Gawdat 23:02 So I, I'm friends with lots of influential people, lots of billionaires, lots of people who are inc- incredibly effective in the world, and behind closed doors when, when we're alone, hm, you see the whole truth.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 23:15 Mm.

Mo Gawdat 23:16 Okay? And the whole truth is nobody's living a perfect life. That's, that's number one, hm? Take layer two. The idea of heroes in general, hm, is a marketing gimmick. It truly is. Hm. I mean, uh, you can watch Spider-Man and say, "I wanna be Spider-Man." It's never gonna happen. Hm. It's never gonna happen. You, you, you can watch Tiger Woods and say, "I wanna be Tiger Woods." It, it's not gonna happen, and more interestingly, you don't want it to happen.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 23:46 Yeah.

Mo Gawdat 23:46 You want to be Super Rangan. That's what, that's what you want to be, right? I wanna be Super Mo. That's what I want to be.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 23:53 Mm.

Mo Gawdat 23:53 I don't wanna be super someone else. Hm? And, and, and I think the, the most interesting part of us is because of the massive advertising, I call it advertising, uh, even though it's maybe comes to you from Harvard Business Review or a magazine or a book or whatever, hm, or a podcast that you listen to. We're constantly advertised to by what people believe we should become Right? So, you know, if, if, uh, if you're E- Elon Musk, you will tell the world that you should be a tech entrepreneur, right? Because there is no way for any one of us, regardless of how successful or failing, big or small, there's no way, way any one of us can wake up in the morning and justify putting in the hours unless they f- totally believed that what they're doing is the right thing to do. Okay? And so accordingly, everyone, mm, if you're, uh, you know, looking for a, a committed relationship, mm, you go and tell all of your girlfriends or boyfriends, "You know, that's the right thing to do. We need committed relationships." If you're at a stage in your life where you want to experiment and experience and, and maybe m- try a different thra- model than the traditional relationship model, you're gonna go around and tell everyone, "This is the right way to go. You guys don't see. You know, you're missing this and th- and this and that." Right? Everyone is trying to justify to you to behave like them, not for you. It's for them. It's for their ego.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 25:20 Mm.

Mo Gawdat 25:20 Because if you behaved like them, you start to reassure them that what they're doing is they're not wasting your, th- their heartbeats, right?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 25:27 Mm-hmm.

Mo Gawdat 25:27 Now, because of that, your only task in life is to defi- yes, you need to be a superhero. But what hero? What, what am I? I, I spent my entire, uh, 30s, and I said that publicly. You could see it on the internet. When people asked me as a senior executive at Google, "What's your dream in life? What's your life purpose?" Which by the way is a big lie. There is no life purpose. Uh, but, you know, "What's your life purpose?" I would say my life's purpose is to help startups in y- in emerging markets of the world create technologies analogous to Google. Okay? And I spent, because that was my view of my life's purpose, I spent a disproportionate amount of my life doing it. Okay? Sitting with startups, you know, coaching, uh, uh, entrepreneurs. We're talking about investments, understanding the cycle of money. And yeah, I mean, some of them were trying to create things that will save the world and, or change our health profiles or whatever. Most of them were thinking of another photo sharing app. Okay?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 26:30 [laughs]

Mo Gawdat 26:30 And, and, and the truth is, again, context in that case is missing on many, many levels.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 26:36 Mm-hmm.

Mo Gawdat 26:36 The most important level is this is not me. The fact that I'm so good at it doesn't make it me.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 26:43 Yeah. The fact that I'm so good at it doesn't make it me. That, that I think ... That feeds, I think, into education as well, actually-

Mo Gawdat 26:53 Oh, yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 26:54 ... where there's a set amount of prioritized subjects, right? And I guess I could speak from, from experience of the medical profession. I, I've said this before, there are many, many doctors who I know who are not happy being doctors.

Mo Gawdat 27:11 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 27:11 They simply went into medicine because they were straight A students at the, you know, the worshiped subjects at school, and therefore because I can get A's in biology, chemistry, physics, whatever, oh, therefore there's these three or four jobs that I should probably do, right?

Mo Gawdat 27:30 Yeah, the highest paying jobs.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 27:32 Yeah. A- and so you get into this situation where, again, it's because what you're surrounded by ... I mean, guess what you're really talking about here is an intentional life.

Mo Gawdat 27:42 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 27:43 It's a life where you have decided or you have thought about actually what is it that makes me tick?

Mo Gawdat 27:48 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 27:49 You know? Or when I spoke, uh, you know, on your podcast recently about alignment, one of, you know, my three legs of this core happiness stool, this idea that are we aligned in how we're living? Because it sounds like when you were at Google X, as great as that job was, as great as the people were around you, it sounds as though you weren't aligned in terms of who you really are.

Mo Gawdat 28:09 I, I, I was good at it. I loved it. I made a difference. Okay? But is it really me? I, I hosted, uh, just a couple of weeks ago on my podcast, I hosted a lady called, uh, Eleanor, uh, Salmon, who, who basically was a very senior person in the UNESCO, and, uh, suddenly woke up one morning, decided to take, uh, 12 months off and go travel the world and learn a new dance every month. Okay? Ended up, of course, uh, uh, living basically a, a life she dreamt of, and so she continued and learned 18 dances to, to instructor level, if you want. And now her life is entirely around dance. Okay? Now, the society will say, "Are you mad?" Uh, I, I mean, you have a senior job in a senior organization, and theoretically you're making a difference to the world. Mm. And the question is, so what? Right? I mean, I was good at being chief business officer at Google X, but I can guarantee you, there are at least 100,000 people living in America alone, where I ... where, where Google X was, that would do that job better than me. Okay? But what I'm now doing ... By the way, it doesn't matter if I'm good at it or, or better at it than another person. It is me. It's, it's what I love to do. And by the way, it pays for my $4 T-shirts, so where's the issue? Why, why are we chasing, mm, what we don't need by paying with what we need and what ... and the only asset we have? How stupid is it to live your life to make another dollar, mm, when you don't need that dollar, by paying for a heart- b- for it with a heartbeat that you need because you put it and it never comes back. You, you, you spend it and it never comes back. And with your, with your stress, with your, uh, with your, uh, unhappiness, with your disconnection, with your loneliness. When is it that people s- will sit down and say, "Where's my dream?"

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 30:12 Mm-hmm.

Mo Gawdat 30:12 "What am I looking for?" And I, I do that, Rangan, at so many levels that shock you. Okay? You know, my, my definition of my relationship with my daughter, my definition of my romantic relationships, my definition with my, uh-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 30:26 Yeah

Mo Gawdat 30:26 ... you know, m- with my podcast, what I want to do with my podcast, with what I want to do with my books. It's all, it's all a moment of reflection Followed by a definition of a dream, a real dream, not an implanted dream in my head-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 30:39 Yeah

Mo Gawdat 30:39 ... and then an attempt to achieve it. That's life.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 30:43 Yeah. There, there's so much there, Mo. You- a moment of reflection. Reflection implies that you are considering your life, you're being intentional about your life, you're being conscious about the decisions you're making, which I think is very, very important. But this other idea i- is sort of niggling away in the back of my head here, which is this idea that this person you spoke to, this lady on your podcast, and she had this senior job, and you were saying in theory she's making a difference to the world. Now I've never explored this in my head yet, so bear with me as I try and articulate it. If you're doing a job that is actually helping people-

Mo Gawdat 31:22 Hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 31:22 ... let's say, let's say you're doing a job that's making a difference, yet it's not your true passion, it's not something you enjoy, right? It's not something that is truly aligned with who you are. Are you actually contributing to the wellbeing of yourself and the wider world? Because you're not aligned, yet you are on the surface helping people. And that's a really interesting idea because ultimately, and I wanna talk about your son Ali very shortly, but the things he said to you when he was 14, these, these ideas that all you can ever make is that change in yourself-

Mo Gawdat 31:59 Hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 31:59 ... and in your little world, and that little world might become bigger. It's kinda like if you're being disingenuous in terms of what you're doing, even if you think it's helping, in the totality of the human experience, is that potentially problematic?

Mo Gawdat 32:17 I know exactly where your heart is coming from. You know our, our common friend, the wonderful Rupy, the Doctor's Kitchen-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 32:24 Yeah

Mo Gawdat 32:25 ... right? Uh, Rupy is a medical doctor working ... He, he, he worked in emergencies, I think.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 32:30 Yeah, yeah.

Mo Gawdat 32:30 Yeah. So, so, so he were, he was really saving lives, right? And he's good at it. And then he, like you I think with a lot of what you do, decides, no, I think preventing issues is much more interesting. His passion, I mean, he's an amazing cook, right?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 32:47 Mm-hmm.

Mo Gawdat 32:47 And his passion is to say there is so much health, there is so much wholesomeness, mm, in actually telling people to live differently so they don't have to end up in emergency.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 32:57 Hmm.

Mo Gawdat 32:58 Do, do you know what I mean?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 32:59 Yeah.

Mo Gawdat 32:59 I think, I think you're completely aligned because I know your, where, where your heart is, huh? What you're doing with this-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 33:05 Hmm

Mo Gawdat 33:06 ... hmm, what I'm doing with Slow Mo, hmm, and as we reach millions of people at, at the prevention point-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 33:15 Hmm

Mo Gawdat 33:15 ... not at the intervention point, okay? Is that ... D- define help. Define helping, because, because that's the, that's, this is the key. The key is we think that there are defined, uh, molds in which you would be making a difference to the world, like Google X or building new technology or build, you're, you know, you're, you're making a difference to the world. Yeah, but if it- it's not you, mm, and you are somewhere else, you'll experience a very interesting curve, huh?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 33:44 Hmm.

Mo Gawdat 33:44 You'll, you'll be going from here, this much difference to the world, to not really effective at all because you're building now your new profile, your new skill profile-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 33:53 Hmm

Mo Gawdat 33:53 ... your new, uh, experiences. And then if it's really you, you zoom back up higher than where you were and, and you have a much higher impact on the planet-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 34:02 Yeah

Mo Gawdat 34:02 ... on the people around you, because it's no longer ... You're no longer portraying a skill. You're s- you're now portraying your soul, okay? And, and when, wh- when you do what you do, I promise you, I know you're an amazing doctor, mm, but, but part of your soul, Rangan, which, which you and I feel when we have coffee, hmm, is you're a human. You're, you connect, you connect, you care, right?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 34:26 Hmm.

Mo Gawdat 34:26 And you're so good at communicating com- co- very complex problems. Yeah, there are many p- many doctors, hmm?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 34:32 Mm-hmm.

Mo Gawdat 34:32 But how many of them are like that? And if this is the truth of you, my feeling is that, by the way, even if you don't have as much impact, I think our highest purpose in life ... I said before there is no purpose, not in the definition of, uh, you know, a, a statement that you're trying to chase. Your highest purpose in life really is to live fully true to who you are. Because if you live fully true to who you are, you fit properly where you s- where you are in, as the gear in that big machine that we call life. When you fit properly in there, even if your movements are tiny, the big movements of the machine will change the world.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 35:12 Some people, Mo, might be thinking, "It's okay for you," hey?

Mo Gawdat 35:15 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 35:16 You must have earned pretty well when you were chief business officer at Google X. So you got there. You've now seen it doesn't make you happy, and you can do your passion and follow, you know, find your true value in life, right? They say, "Rangan, all right for you to talk about this stuff. You're a successful doctor, successful author, podcaster. Oh, yeah, cool. Great. Uh, you can now talk about these things." For that person who is struggling at the moment, for that person who's in a job that they don't particularly like, but it's their mechanism to feed themselves, feed their family, put a roof over their heads, how does finding your true passion and, and I guess purpose in life, h- how does that sit for them? What, what would you say to them?

Mo Gawdat 36:07 Well, to start with, I think the beauty of life and the universe, if you want, is that what applies at one scale applies at a different scale, right? So if you, if you take gravity, Newton's work, for example, uh, a- around the projectiles or whatever, you can, you can, you can apply it to, uh, this mug, or you can apply it to the moon. Right? Uh, you know, of course in physics specifically, quantum physics is different, but everything that applies on subatomic, uh, uh, level, uh, you know, um, basically applies to all subatomic levels. So, so life has that repetitiveness, rules of engagement to it. And part of those rules, believe it or not, which most people don't realize, is, uh, it doesn't get different when it comes to your happiness. It doesn't come, be- become different when it comes to your parenting. It doesn't become different if you're a billionaire, uh, or you're just a fresh graduate trying to find your way in life. Now, there was a professor in, uh, Harvard, um, Michael Norton, who did a study on, um, I think several thousand participants asking them, "How happy are you from a scale, uh, on a scale of one to 10? Um, um, you know, and what would you need to get to 10?" Okay? And with, for all of them, without exception, they said, "I need two to three times more money than I have to get to 10." Okay? That basically meant if they had 10 pounds in the bank, they needed 30 more, right? And if they had 10 billion pounds in the bank, they needed 30 more. It's really interesting.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 37:43 The human condition.

Mo Gawdat 37:44 Absolutely. It's the, it's that constant striving, mm, i- in, in, in That Little Voice In Your Head, um, my, my next book, I, I call it the all pervasive dissatisfaction.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 37:54 Yeah.

Mo Gawdat 37:55 That regardless of what you get, you have that all pervasive dissatisfaction saying, "It's not good enough." Now, I don't tell people, uh, uh, you know, believe me, because, uh, uh, you know, everyone will have to tread their own journey. Mm. But the truth is, I tell them, "Just remember me a little earlier than when your life has gone by." Okay? Now, a lot of people say, "But you have it all." Okay? And I did have it all. I had, I had so much money. I had no idea how much money I had, believe it or not. I gave it all away. Okay? And I say that, say that publicly in front of everyone. I, I have enough assets to generate enough money for my wonderful ex-wife and my wonderful daughter to feel safe. Mm. I, you and I, we know, you know, I work reasonably okay, I write a few books, I do a few talks, make enough money to live a reasonable life. I, as I say, I wear $4 T-shirts. That's a massive difference, by the way, huh? Because if you're dreaming of $4,000 T-shirts, your life is gonna be miserable chasing those T-shirts when you're actually not get- gonna feel any difference. Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 38:59 How much were your T-shirts and shirts-

Mo Gawdat 39:01 I tried everything

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 39:02 ... when you were 29 at the peak of-

Mo Gawdat 39:05 I tried everything. I mean, I, I, I say this sadly ashamed of myself, but it's okay to say that I've learned. I, I had 16 cars in my garage. 16 cars, right? And of those 16 cars, mm, at any moment in time, I could drive one. Do you understand? And the other 15 were always a burden, sitting there waiting to be driven so that they don't, uh, break down, mm, or actually breaking down or needing to be, uh, license renewed or whatever. And the funny bit is that one that I would pick and drive, I promise you this is true. The minute you sit inside behind the steering wheel, what are you looking at? The road.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 39:49 [laughs]

Mo Gawdat 39:50 Okay? And I promise you, I promise you, it was so shocking for me when I was actually ... Because I traveled so much, so I would arrive in Dubai and then pick a car and go out in, on a meeting, and midway to the meeting when I'm not looking at the car, I ask myself, "Which car is it?" I don't even remember.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 40:06 [laughs]

Mo Gawdat 40:07 Right? And, and you know what? The more expensive they become, the more annoying they are. Mm. That's the truth.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 40:13 Yeah.

Mo Gawdat 40:13 Now I Uber. Okay? I do have a car in Dubai, a 2004 model. Love it dearly. I have my son's car. I decided to never sell it, right? But, but that's the point. The point is, don't take my word for it. Take your micro life, mm-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 40:29 Yeah

Mo Gawdat 40:29 ... and ask yourself about your micro life. Ask yourself about that last thing that you saw on Amazon and you were crazy and you're like, "I really need to buy it," and you don't even remember where you put it.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 40:38 [laughs]

Mo Gawdat 40:39 Okay? Look at that other pair of shoes that you saw in the windows and you said, you know, "Okay, you know what? I know it's expensive. I really need it. I really, really need it," and then you buy those pair of shoes and you've never worn them.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 40:51 Yeah.

Mo Gawdat 40:51 Isn't that the truth of all of us? So, so that, that all pervasive dissatisfaction, mm, is not gonna be cured by plugging more things in it.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 41:01 Yeah. The-

Mo Gawdat 41:02 The only thing that cures it is to recognize it and say, "What's wrong with this? This is beautiful. I love it."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 41:08 Yeah.

Mo Gawdat 41:08 "It's soft, it's nice, and, you know, I wear it for a long time and it's wonderful."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 41:14 Yeah. And I couldn't agree more, honestly. There's so much in that. I mean, [laughs] I, I, I don't buy new clothes. These are like ... Literally I've had all of these for five, six, seven years. In every book shoot, I turn up to see people-

Mo Gawdat 41:29 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 41:29 ... if people watch 'cause they illustrate, but they're all the same clothes.

Mo Gawdat 41:32 Yeah, yeah. I, I bought ... I wear the same color.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 41:33 Same clothes that you saw five years ago. I, I-

Mo Gawdat 41:34 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 41:35 ... they're the same clothes pretty much. [laughs]

Mo Gawdat 41:36 Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 41:37 Um, and, and this thing about cars, I think, I think it's a really good one because I think it, I think we can unpick there. I don't ... Look, ju- just sort of full acknowledgment, I'm not a car person, right? I never have been, right? So, um, you know, you will see in my drive a 10 and a half year old Ford Focus C-Max that, uh-

Mo Gawdat 41:59 You, you're gonna, you're gonna lose some listeners right now because you said this.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 42:02 Yeah, but it's, uh-

Mo Gawdat 42:03 You're gonna win a few more.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 42:04 But it's also not the car that people would expect-

Mo Gawdat 42:06 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 42:06 ... someone who's successful to drive, right? But ... And you know, the wing mirror, the left wing mirror was, uh, my wife sort of bashed it somewhere about three years ago. Me and my son have got some tape on it.

Mo Gawdat 42:15 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 42:16 It's been there-

Mo Gawdat 42:16 Love you, man. Love you

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 42:17 ... it's been there for three years.

Mo Gawdat 42:18 Yeah. Working.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 42:19 And people are like, "When are you gonna fix it?" I'm like, "I don't even notice it."

Mo Gawdat 42:22 [laughs] It's working.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 42:23 I, I honestly don't care because for me, what car I drive has no value In terms of how I feel about myself. It's simply a way of me getting from A to B

Mo Gawdat 42:34 Hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 42:34 Now, I guess I'm very influenced by my mum and dad by this. Cars were never a big thing at home for us either. And I've been thinking a lot about cars because I don't think having the nice car, whatever that means to you, is the problem. It's your attachment to that car

Mo Gawdat 42:46 There you go. There you go

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 42:47 It's kind of if you feel that driving that car makes you someone and says something about who you are as a person, that's where I think you are in a very dangerous place

Mo Gawdat 42:58 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 42:59 Very vulnerable place. Because if you lose your job or you can't afford the down payment or whatever happens, or you get divorced or whatever, like what happens to your sense of self-worth? So I'd love you to comment on that. But I also wanna talk to you about in the new book, That Little Voice In Your Head, which is just brilliant, honestly

Mo Gawdat 43:17 Oh my God, thank you

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 43:17 It's, it's wonderful. And, and I love the section on giving at the end, but there's a line, "The more things you have, the more things have you."

Mo Gawdat 43:26 Uh, that's the whole-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 43:27 That's it, right?

Mo Gawdat 43:28 That is it.

Mo Gawdat 43:29 Look, I say this with a ton of respect, and of course, we all have our own journeys, right? But the, the interesting side about fancy cars, fancy fashion, and so on, is that you a- attach to them as long as you're not really capable of having them. So fancy cars, in my personal view, unless ... I mean, I'll, I'll say this openly. I'm an engineer. I built several cars with my own hands. I love that thing

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 43:57 Mm

Mo Gawdat 43:57 It's a piece of art for me. But to want to be seen in a, in a fancy car is a form of insecurity. It's a form of ego, right? It's basically saying, "I am not enough," or, "I feel I can be more if my car is fancy," right? And, and there's nothing wrong with ego, by the way, as long as you own it. The minute your ego owns you, that's when things become really dangerous, right? Because we live in an ever-changing world, huh? Your car will get scratched or your, you know, or, or it will ... You may lose it, as you rightly said, because of, uh, your job or whatever, losing your job or whatever. And, and here's the game, hmm? The game is if you define yourself with that car or that look or that body or that whatever, title, hmm? As long as you define yourself by that, you're never gonna be happy, for two reasons. Reason number one is you're trying to constantly convince people, hmm, that, uh, that you are something that you're not, right? And when you're trying to do that, there is a lot of effort and a lot of disappointment

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 45:05 [laughs]

Mo Gawdat 45:05 Okay? The more interesting challenge is if you actually manage to convince them, if you actually manage to convince them that you're rich and famous because you're driving a BMW when you're not, okay? That's gonna be more disappointment because the one they will like is not even you

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 45:21 Mm

Mo Gawdat 45:22 Okay? So deep inside, you feel empty because they like your car, but why are you ... why don't you like me, hmm?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 45:28 Mm-hmm

Mo Gawdat 45:28 And that attachment, hmm, we, we spoke about all pervasive dis- dissatisfaction. I, you know, I call them the three A's, huh? The reasons that our, our, uh, our, um, uh, logical brain makes us miserable is attachment, aversion, and all pervasive dissatisfaction, right? So the at- attachment issue is I need something to be within my life, hmm, to continue to feel complete, hmm. I need that boyfriend to not, uh, leave me. I need that, uh, um, you know, uh, car s- so that I can show up in. And, and that attachment-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 46:02 Hmm

Mo Gawdat 46:02 ... is a absolute recipe for disaster. Now, let's be realistic. We live in a, in a world where egos matter, sadly, huh? If you, if you have a vice president title on, uh, on, uh, LinkedIn, you're likely to get vice president jobs, okay? And so of course, for some reason, when I was in the corporate world, everyone was vice president, right?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 46:22 [laughs]

Mo Gawdat 46:23 So every CV ... Which actually is quite interesting because people would sit in front of me in an interview, and then minute and a half later I know, like, no, that's not true, right?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 46:31 [laughs]

Mo Gawdat 46:31 Uh, okay. Or at least maybe your title is vice president, but your skills are not there yet

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 46:36 Yeah

Mo Gawdat 46:36 Okay? Now, the ... there is a, there is a value, a utility to showing to the world that you are something. I'll, I'll give you a simple, uh, example, huh? My books are written in, in a highly engineered format, okay? I use, uh, very concise sentences, facts, science, data to discuss topics that are very, um, you know, m- maybe soft, hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 46:59 Mm.

Mo Gawdat 47:00 So, so the, the idea of telling people I'm an engineer, okay, or I'm a mathematician, or, or I was the chief business officer of Google X, there is ego in that. There is a definition. I'm defining me as an engineer when in reality I'm just Mo, right? I have studied engineering, but I'm not an engineer

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 47:19 Mm

Mo Gawdat 47:19 Okay? In terms of being. Now, there is a utility in that to signal to people, you know, I like Pink Floyd. There is ... You know, if I wear a Pink Floyd T-shirt, it signals to people, hey, if you're a Pink Floy- Floyd pan- fan too, let's come and talk about Pink Floyd. As long as I do that, hmm, and I don't care if people look at me and say, "But I hate Pink Floyd," like you're, you have such a horrible taste in music, hmm, and I don't care about that, then I, I own my ego. I own my, my, my identity, but my identity doesn't own me. If I start to become hyper protective and, and, and, and touchy around that identity, if people say, "You're not really an engineer. You're a civil engineer." Like, no, and we want real engineering, go to mechanical or electrical engineering. Uh, and then I get offended and go like, "No," and defend myself, then I'm in trouble

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 48:08 Mm

Mo Gawdat 48:08 Because if I, if my identity gets threatened, hmm, I get hurt by it. And here's the interesting thing, and I wanna leave people to think about this. You only try to buy fancy cars, and they take you over so much, when you cannot afford them, okay? The minute you can afford them, they become less attractive. It's really interesting, okay? So as long as you're dreaming of that Aston Martin, hmm, that means it's a bit of a stretch for you Right? Most people, unless you're really, really r- rich and famous, mm, cannot buy that. And so they dream of buying it. When you can buy it, you suddenly start to sit in it and go like, "Should I buy the Aston Martin or the Bentley or the Toyota?" They're all the same, right? And as long as my need to prove to the world that I've made it goes away because I have made it, okay? Suddenly I'm not interested in another object to prove to the world anything because I'm complete within myself.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 49:09 Mm-hmm.

Mo Gawdat 49:10 And, and suddenly you, you... I, I s- I said that when I was with, uh, Steven Bartlett on his podcast. I said, "Look, I mean, uh, if I go out on a date and she doesn't like my $4 T-shirt, then she's not the right person to me." Right? I'm, I'm looking for someone that will look beyond the T-shirt and say, "Hey, you know, there is a genuine good human in there." And by the way, if there was no genuine good human but still dressed in Armani, if she liked that, then again she's the wrong person for me.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 49:39 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 49:42 Right at the start of this conversation, when I asked you about the reason why so many people are struggling and unhappy, you mentioned that's because they choose to be.

Mo Gawdat 49:59 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 50:01 So the idea that happiness is a choice is very provocative-

Mo Gawdat 50:04 I know

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 50:05 ... for many people.

Mo Gawdat 50:06 It upsets so many people with me.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 50:07 Yeah. Now, and I actually do agree with you firmly, as you, as you well know, and I wanna go here because there's always pushback at this point about this idea that we can choose happiness.

Mo Gawdat 50:19 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 50:21 And for me, w- when I look at your story, Mo, and I think about your son Ali who died because of medical error, the way you responded to that and dealt with that is really quite incredible. And so I just wanna go through that story a little bit because you, for me, on the outside looking at your life, you were developing the skill of happiness. You were training at happiness for many years before Ali died. Therefore, it appears to me that because of the realizations you had already had and the learnings you had already had, you managed to deal with that situation in a particular way. In, in many ways you could say that you chose happiness-

Mo Gawdat 51:15 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 51:15 ... in potentially one of the most harrowing experiences it's possible to have. Now, I don't wanna put words in your mouth. Perhaps you could explain to us when did you first start realizing what happiness was, practicing the skill of happiness? Then maybe share with us what happened with Ali and, and how it all fits together.

Mo Gawdat 51:45 Yeah, I th- I'm, I'm, I'm grateful that you asked the second part of it before we go back to, to, uh, you know, the story of Ali because s- some people may think that, you know, Ali left our world and then I jumped and said, "Hey, let's celebrate. We're very happy." No, that's not the definition of happy, right? The definition of happy to me is described by a very simple mathematical equation really. I say happiness is your events minus your expectations, right? You look, you look at life, and events happen in your life, and you compare those to how life, how you want life to be. Mm. Uh, if the event meets or beats expectations, you're happy. If the ev- event misses the expectations, you're unhappy.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 52:25 Mm.

Mo Gawdat 52:25 And, and that's really very straightforward, huh? So you could literally, we were, m- you know, talking about Aston Martins. You can-- You could actually buy an Aston Martin, sit in it, and then suddenly you go like, "Uh, there is a problem on the stitching on the..." You know? And then feel unhappy. Uh, r- right? Everyone else will look at you and say, "Oh my God, that's amazing." But the events is there is a problem with the stitching and, and then you feel unhappy.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 52:47 But because what your expectation is that when I-

Mo Gawdat 52:49 Yeah, pay that much-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 52:50 ... step into an Aston Martin-

Mo Gawdat 52:51 ... it should be perfect.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 52:52 Yeah.

Mo Gawdat 52:52 Which by the way, with all love for Aston Martins, is never true. Okay? They, they break down all the time. Ferraris break down all the time. They break down more, way more than your Ford Focus. Okay? Now, the, the thing is, the thing is happiness in that case is being okay with life. I can bombard you with things, and if you're not okay with them, you're not gonna be happy. Okay? Uh, you know, I speak to lots... I have m- m- a, a very large number of friends. I speak to lots of them that will have a wonderful human being in their life, right? And they'll, they'll, that human being will be m- m- kind and loving and, you know, uh, so many upsides, but because of the world we live in, uh, you know, they may be a little shorter than w- w- what the dreams of that person are or people will, will go and say, "But I'm, I, you know, I want this and I don't want that." And as long as that's your s- your, your way of looking at life, you're never gonna be happy. Okay? Regardless, um, if I, if I get you together with the most attractive person on the planet, hmm, regardless you're still gonna be unhappy because we're human. There always go- is going to be something missing. Now, if the expectation is the person I'm going to be with is going to be human, okay? Uh, he's gonna be kind, he's gonna be this, he's gonna be that, but he's gotta be human, which means you'll finally find happiness. It's that calm and peaceful contentment of saying, "My partner is not perfect, but I love them as they are." This is why love is a question of acceptance. Now, take that and apply it to everything including the loss of a child. Mm. And I think that's where people really get shocked. Mm. So as I said, it... You, you know, you lose a child, it's the most difficult. I swear to you, I swear to you, I wouldn't wish it on my enemies. It is so painful. Even now, I mean, as I remember, I, I swear, Rangan, I have a pain right here It is physical. I feel that a part of my heart is missing. Okay? And it just surfaces every time I think about her. Mm? And it's ... And I'm proud of it, and I love it. Mm? But the thing is, it's pain, and I think this is where people miss the point. Happiness ... Uh, let, let, let's talk about the opposite side. There is, there is pain, and there is suffering. Okay? There is a difference between them. Pain comes from outside you. It comes because of the events of your life, and that's not a choice. Mm? That's unavoidable. The design of the video game of life is that it will have challenges. It will have harshness. These are the moments, like my son used to teach me, these are the moments where you become a better gamer. Okay? These are the moments when you actually strive and learn and stretch yourself and become better. And these are the moments that m- most often you look back at and you say, "Oh, my God, look at how far I've come because of that bully in school," or, "Look at how happy I am with my partner now because of that bad person I was with that taught me something." The harshness makes us better. So, so this does happen. The pain will happen, and we will all have our fair share of pain in life. Suffering is a choice. Suffering is to feel the pain and then replay it over and over and over in your head. We, we were the ... talk- the chatting over coffee about my dear friend, uh, uh, Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor. And, and Jill is an incredible neuroscientist, an amazing, amazing contributor to our world. And she did this research that will tell you that between the moment an event triggers a negative emotion in you, say anger, huh, between the moment a, a- anger is triggered in you, you get flooded with, uh, stress hormones. You react, and the hormones get flushed, or you don't, by the way, and, and the hormones gets flu- flushed out of your physiology. It's 90 seconds. 90 seconds. That's it. You can only be angry for external stimuli for 90 seconds. What happens then, uh, part of my next book, is that stress cycle is repeated. Okay? Repeated how? Your, your amygdala en- engaged and your, you know, your, your stress hormone c- uh, b- f- flooded your body and so on, all of that is phys- physiological. And then the next cycle is that your, uh, your rational brain starts to look at the situation and assess if there is an actual threat, if there is an actual reason to be angry and so on and so forth. And for most of us, what do we do? We reinforce the reason.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 57:16 Mm.

Mo Gawdat 57:16 So your partner says something hurtful on Friday at 4:00 PM. Saturday morning, you can wake up and say, "Oh, you remember that clip from 4:00 PM yesterday? Let's play it again."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 57:28 [laughs]

Mo Gawdat 57:29 Okay? It's like Net- I, I, I, I openly call it the Netflix of unhappiness. It's unhappiness on demand, right?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 57:34 [laughs]

Mo Gawdat 57:34 So, so you simp- you simply tell yourself, "Okay, I can make myself miserable again over and over by playing those thoughts in my head." Now, that is a choice. You know why? Because if you and I, uh, I know we're not, but, you know, if you had a reason to be angry right before we started this recording, and you sat down and you said, "Okay, I have now a, a guest I need to record the podcast. You know what, brain? Let's not think about the thing that made me, uh, unhappy. Let's focus on this conversation with Mo," you're capable of doing that.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 58:08 Mm-hmm.

Mo Gawdat 58:08 You know, you go to work, you know, for those who, who work in an office, and you're obsessing about what your partner told you on Friday, and then your boss says, "Hey, by the way, we have a very important meeting. We need to discuss A, B, and C," you'll tell your brain, "Okay, I'm gonna come back to obsessing and being unhappy at 11:00, but between now and 11, let's focus on the meeting." Okay? We all have that capability, and yet we choose not to exercise it.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 58:32 Consciously or unconsciously?

Mo Gawdat 58:35 Uh, uh, definitely unconsciously, and even when we become conscious about it, I promise you there will be people that will resist. Right? Why? Because just like I said, there is a, a utility to ego. There is also a, a utility to becoming a victim. Okay? There is a reason why we like to become victims, which stems from the days you were two years old, right? You, you were two years old. Your brother took something, and you cried, mm, and be- and became unhappy, so Mommy came and hugged you and say, and said, "Okay, baby, don't worry, I'll get you ice cream." Right? So we get programmed that the, that showing unhappiness or feeling unhappiness or feeling victimized, mm, gets you a tap on the back.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 59:18 Mm.

Mo Gawdat 59:19 So we want the tap on the back. But hey, you're not six anymore. Okay? And the reality, and I mo- and I tell m- a lot of people that. I say, "Honestly, one of the easiest shortcuts to u- to happiness is to realize you're not six anymore."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 59:33 Yeah. I mean, what, what you're, what you've just beautifully articulated there is actually for many people, I would say, a harsh, uncomfortable truth.

Mo Gawdat 59:51 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 59:51 Truth. It is a truth. We, we do have a choice in how we react, and once you become aware of that fact, uh, you know, I, I say you can practice it. You can practice choosing differently. You can practice to choose the happiness story in any situation. Most events actually, they're really neutral. It, it's this-

Mo Gawdat 1:00:14 Ah, that's pure wisdom

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:00:16 ... it, it's the story we attach to it-

Mo Gawdat 1:00:19 Pure wisdom

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:00:19 ... that determines the outcome. And so many of us ... And, and the truth is until about five or six years ago, I was conditioned to taking a disempowering narrative, and, "Oh, they ... I can't believe they acted like that. If they acted differently, life would be better." But I've woken up from that. I have, um, been jolted out of that, where I take radical responsibility now to go, "I own my emotions. I am choosing this story Right? So now that I, I know I have choice there, I'm gonna practice choosing the empowering story

Mo Gawdat 1:00:56 A different story

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:00:57 And, and I think this is, for me, Mo, this is arguably one of the most important skills to develop for anyone in life, is that understanding that we can choose

Mo Gawdat 1:01:06 To, it, it, this is pure wisdom, I promise you. Events are neutral. Are neu-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:01:13 Yeah

Mo Gawdat 1:01:13 ... they're neu- they're neutral. You can re- you can charge them negatively or positively, or, and more importantly, you can react to them, even if they're negative, you can react to them negatively or positively. Uh, um, uh, um, one guest I would suggest, I don't know if you had him here, uh, Arun Gandhi, the grandson of Gandhi, uh, was on my podcast, wrote a book called The Gift of Anger. Okay? And, and I, I said, in front of him, I said, "Arun, what are you talking about? Like, how can anger be a gift?" And he said, "Anger is pure energy." Right? You can use it to punch someone in the face, or you can use it to, um, you know, stand up and change the world, right? It's your cho- it's a choice. It's really interesting, huh? More, more interestingly, again a guest that I really recommend is Edith Eger, one of my favorite conversations in a lifetime, okay?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:02:02 Me too

Mo Gawdat 1:02:03 Yeah. You, you met, you hosted her.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:02:04 Yeah.

Mo Gawdat 1:02:04 I mean, ev- ev- look at that, huh? Someone that is in the ultimate harshness-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:02:10 Yeah

Mo Gawdat 1:02:10 ... of the world. 16-year-old beautiful ballet dancer, j- just, you know, drafted to Auschwitz. And Edith, I th- I, I, I asked her, I said, "So what did you think of the soldiers, uh, that, that did that to you?" And she said, "I love them. Poor, poor them." I was like, "What?"

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:02:27 Yeah. I-

Mo Gawdat 1:02:27 I cried. I swear I cried-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:02:29 Yeah

Mo Gawdat 1:02:29 ... in, on live. I said, I said, "What are you talking about?" And she said, "Well, Mo, if I was born in Germany and told that it's now Germany and then the world, I would have shouted the same slogans too."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:02:40 Yeah.

Mo Gawdat 1:02:41 Look at that. Look at the choice-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:02:43 Yeah

Mo Gawdat 1:02:43 ... of how she looks at the story. And now she's changing our world.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:02:47 Yeah, she ... You know, I'm in the middle of my, uh, book tour at the moment, and as we were talking about over coffee before, I've taken a very different approach. I have nothing set-

Mo Gawdat 1:03:00 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:03:01 ... I wanna get across. I'm, I'm genuinely feeling zero stress because I haven't created an idea in my head of what-

Mo Gawdat 1:03:08 Exactly

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:03:08 ... this talk needs to be.

Mo Gawdat 1:03:09 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:03:09 Because I've realized this is just self-generated. If I think it has to be a certain way, and I have to cover a certain amount of things, then I'm creating a stress in my head. And, and again, it's this narrative, you know, public speaking is stressful. Well, hold on a minute. Let's just question everything. Who says? Like, when did that become a truth? Like, the, a few nights ago I was in Bristol, and one of my best mates lives there, Jeremy, and we were hanging in the afternoon. I did my soundcheck. And it, you know, he said, "You need time to get ready." I'm like, "No, no, let's just hang out. I haven't seen you in ages." We went for dinner, we brought it back to the dressing room, and then it was like, "I'll make almost stage in five minutes."

Mo Gawdat 1:03:49 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:03:49 "Do you wanna..." You know, he went to take a seat, and I just went on, and then I just spoke from my heart.

Mo Gawdat 1:03:53 That's it.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:03:54 And it's gone incredibly well. People are really recognizing. I feel it's less performative than ever before. It's more authentic. But the, the point I wanted to bring up was every night is different because I'm different every night.

Mo Gawdat 1:04:08 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:04:08 My state of mind, my state of being is different, so therefore how I connect is going to be different. But one story that comes up every single night is Edith Eger.

Mo Gawdat 1:04:16 Oh my God.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:04:16 And what I say to everyone is, I was not the same person after that conversation as I was before. I can't un-know what I know. I can't unlearn what I've learnt from her.

Mo Gawdat 1:04:29 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:04:29 And, you know, l- like the things you're sharing, one of the things that I think about every day is this idea that she said that, "Rangan, I've lived in Auschwitz, and I can tell you the greatest prison you will ever live inside is the prison you create inside your minds."

Mo Gawdat 1:04:44 Yep.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:04:44 And that's what we're talking about, isn't it? Really at its core, it's, it's like what prison are we constructing in our own mind? What disempowering story are we holding on to so tightly that's, that's sending us down a certain pathway in life such that we then say, "Mo, you know, you don't understand. You say happiness is a choice. You don't understand my life."

Mo Gawdat 1:05:07 So many of us, we live in stories, mm, that we stay stuck in. And those stories can be changed. They can be re-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:05:15 Mm

Mo Gawdat 1:05:16 ... stated.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:05:17 You're not saying suddenly that the situation is not harrowing or there's no pain generated by it. It's, there's always a way to subtly reframe something so it's better than it was. Let's, let's take it away from that to you, because you have had your own harrowing experience, right? You've, you've had an experience that, um, most people would say is about as harrowing as it gets, right? A, a lot of people would say, let's say, right? So your beloved son Ali died because of medical error.

Mo Gawdat 1:05:53 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:05:54 Right. So nobody would blame you if you w- wha- when was that, if you don't mind sharing?

Mo Gawdat 1:06:01 Uh, 2014.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:06:02 2014. So eight years ago-ish, right? No one in society would blame you at all if you were still devastated by that. I'm not saying you're not. Uh, okay, you, if you were, um, you gave up everything. You just stayed inside all day. You just watched box sets. You drank whatever. Like, you were numbing your pain.

Mo Gawdat 1:06:29 Justified.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:06:30 It w- it's completely justified.

Mo Gawdat 1:06:31 Absolutely.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:06:32 Perhaps you could explain what happened and then how you reacted to that, because I think there's, there's a lot of wisdom in there that I think will help people.

Mo Gawdat 1:06:43 Look, I mean, if, if there is anything to be taken from you that would hurt, it would be to take your son, right? And Ali, Ali was, um- Ali left our world because of a preventable, very prevent-- I mean, he had an appendix inflammation. That is the simplest surgery known to humankind. You know?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:07:01 I-

Mo Gawdat 1:07:01 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:07:01 I have my appendix scar here, yeah

Mo Gawdat 1:07:03 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:07:03 I had it when I was seven-

Mo Gawdat 1:07:04 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:07:04 ... in India

Mo Gawdat 1:07:04 I mean, it's, it's a few, it's a, it's not a long or a complex-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:07:07 Yeah

Mo Gawdat 1:07:07 ... but there w- m- mistakes happened, five to be specific, and, uh, and Ali left our world. I mean, preventable, uh, reversible, fixable, m- but they, you know, so many mistakes happened in a row, and they were not fixed properly, and four hours later, Ali was internally bleeding, and his organs were failing, and he left us, right? Now, again, it's, it's that pain. It's that, it's that outside world saying, "You know what? Your beautiful life as it was," hugged him right before he went into the operating room, most beautiful, handsome, wise, loving man. He used to call me Fat Hobbit, okay?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:07:44 [laughs]

Mo Gawdat 1:07:45 I loved, I loved it so much. He was much taller than I. This is what you want for your kids to be bigger and smarter and, and, you know, m- m- he was amazing. And he hugged me and said, "Okay, I'll see you in a bit, Fat Hobbit." Okay? And then he go- he went, he left. Hmm. Now, you take the surprise, you take the disappointment, you take the anger, hmm. And I looked at the surgeon, and I'll tell you very openly, huh, I looked at the surgeon, and my brother is a surgeon, and I s- saw the panic in his eyes. I promise you, that surgeon ... Uh, Ali went to the operating room at 10:00 PM. Uh, at around 11, the surgeon came out and said that something went wrong, but we're working on it. Okay? And I could see the panic in his eyes. He literally ... I know that he's a father of children as well, and he literally tried his best to save Ali. Okay? But you and I know, you know, mistakes happen. Humans make mistakes. The question then becomes, what choice do I have? Because a lot of people will look at the situation and say, "That's it. You know, the only choice I have is to grieve for the rest of my life. There's no point living." And I, as you rightly said, we shouldn't blame them, okay? But is that the only choice? Is it the only choice? Because there are other choices, hmm, maybe not as appealing or as, uh, uh, you know, uh, seemingly logical, but there are other choices, hmm. One other choice was what I did. I, I said to myself, "Look, I can never bring Ali back," and there is a finality to death that sadly just, you know, forces your hand. You, there's nothing you can do, hmm. But I can keep him alive by sharing what he taught me with the world, right? And it's a very strange idea because I, I didn't, I didn't think that way before, but Ali taught me everything I knew about happiness, okay? And in a very interesting way, I could actually keep a tiny bit of his essence, hmm, l- living in our world so that I believe that Ali is still in our world somehow. Selfish, by the way, hmm. But I wrote Solve for Happy simply for my son. Okay? I had the mission that was called 10 Million Happy, and, and 10 Million Happy may appear, uh, if you ask me, as a mission that is trying to, to help 10 million people. No, it was a very selfish, very selfish objective of I wanted 10 million people to learn what my son taught me, okay? And in doing that, I wanted to spread part of his essence to 10 million people. One Billion Happy, the current mission, is about a billion people, huh? But at the time, the grieving parent was basically saying, "I want, I want s- I want a part of him to stay." Now, that choice is not the logical choice, but it is a choice nonetheless. It's a choice to wake up 17 days after Ali's death and sit down and write what he taught me, okay? And it was a frantic choice because I wanted to remember what he taught me before it disappeared from my being, okay? It's, it, it's also a choice, by the way, to do too ma- so many things in life that might not be as extreme, hmm. One w- you know, a, a simple thing i- when you're, when you're, uh, grieving is to, is to choose to, to, to reflect on the positive. Can you believe there is a positive side to losing a child? There is, which is to have the child in the first place. So I had Ali for 21 years, okay? We didn't plan for Ali, hmm. We didn't expect Ali. And he became the biggest gift I have ever been ex- given, the biggest gift ever, hmm. And now my brain suddenly takes that for granted and says, "Hey, he shouldn't die." No, he shouldn't have come in the first place if you really want life to be harsh. If life really wanted to kill me, it would have taken away my son before he even came. Now, when he comes, you take it for granted, and you have that attachment, hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:11:38 Hmm.

Mo Gawdat 1:11:38 I need my son. I need him to be here all the time because I don't know, hmm, uh, if I will ever see him again because I don't know where he i- where he is right now. And there is a lot of spiritual work that needs to happen for someone to accept death.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:11:53 Yeah.

Mo Gawdat 1:11:53 But you don't have to be spiritual to accept death because, by the way, you're gonna accept it sooner or later. It's gonna happen to every single one of us, hmm, and there is no way you can reject it, sadly, hmm. But you might as well tell yourself mathematically that I have absolute certainty that I will be where my son is, hmm, sometime in the future. I have 100% certainty, more certainty than, you know, that I, than I, that I will walk out of here alive. Okay? That's the truth. Death is the truth of life. If you, if you're alive, then it's gonna end up in death. Now, take all of that and say, "Okay, so this is too logical, Mo. You know, where are your feelings?" I cried like a baby. I still cry like a baby every day, but that's pain. That's pain. That's the pain of missing him, hmm. That's the pain of wanting to hug him. That's the pain of wishing to have spent more time with him, okay? But I choose to be okay with the fact that he's no longer in our life in his physical form because he's now in my life in so many other ways

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:13:02 First of all, Mo, thank you for sharing that. Um, you describe yourself as a happy person

Mo Gawdat 1:13:10 Happiest I've ever been

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:13:13 Help people understand, in your view, because I think this may be confusing for people, this idea that you can still have pain that your son isn't here, yet you still describe yourself as the happiest you've ever been.

Mo Gawdat 1:13:31 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:13:31 Right? That, that may seem like a contradiction to some people.

Mo Gawdat 1:13:36 Yeah. Li- life is all contradictions, huh? You may love someone and wanna rip their head off when you're upset at them-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:13:44 [laughs]

Mo Gawdat 1:13:44 ... right? Okay? That's a contradiction. Mm? You may, uh, love what you do, but feel tired doing it.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:13:52 Mm-hmm.

Mo Gawdat 1:13:52 Okay? You, you know, you may wanna be in Manchester, but also wanna be in London. Mm? And life is full of those. Life is full of those. As a matter of fact, that's the only thing, way that life is. Mm? Interestingly, if you define happiness accurately, it is that calm and peaceful contentment when you're okay with life as it is. Events minus expectations. Doesn't matter what life is, if you're okay with it, you're peaceful with it, mm, you feel that calm, and that calm is how I describe happiness. Okay? You often go to the gym, mm, and your muscles are sore and they hurt, but you're okay with it. As a matter of fact, you love it. You understand?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:14:37 Mm-hmm.

Mo Gawdat 1:14:37 It's pain, but at the same time, you're okay, you're peaceful, you're happy that you have that pain. Now, Ali's departure wasn't easy. Okay? There was a point in my life after Ali left and Solve For Happy published, So- Solve For Happy published in 32 languages. It became an international bestseller in, I think, 20-some of them. Uh, you know, it really, really reached millions of people.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:15:01 Mm-hmm. Wow.

Mo Gawdat 1:15:02 No? And, uh, not in, in the book format, but you and I know that books are not the only format, right? But, but I sat down, 2018, and I questioned this with my daughter. I said, "Aya, I know this will make you very upset, but I really..." You're my f- she's my best friend, so I, I, I asked her, I said, "I hon- I need to ask you something. If I had told you, if I had told Ali, mm, that if he died, 10, 20, 30 million people are gonna be happy as a result, what do you think he, he would have chosen?" And she, without hesitation, said, "He would say, 'Kill me right now.'" Okay? That was the essence of Ali. Ali just wanted to give himself to the world. Mm? And perhaps that's what happened, that he, he, uh, if, if I ... If I show you my Instagram feed and you see the number of people that send me messages that say they love Ali, okay? If you wanted your son to be successful in the world, what more success than thousands of people say, "I love Ali. I wish I could meet hi- meet him"? Now, of course, w- would it be nicer if that happened and he was right here next to me and we were having this conversation? Of course. Of course. But life doesn't work that way. Mm? Life doesn't-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:16:28 Mm-hmm

Mo Gawdat 1:16:29 ... doesn't give you the paradox of being in Manchester and London at the same time. You have to make a choice.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:16:33 Yeah.

Mo Gawdat 1:16:34 Okay? And if you're forced to be in London, you have to live fully in London. Do, do you understand?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:16:40 Yeah.

Mo Gawdat 1:16:40 And, and so there is, you know, in many, many of the, of the, of the spiritual faith, and I think specifically in Hinduism and Islam it's actually most prominent, is the idea of surrender.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:16:53 Mm-hmm.

Mo Gawdat 1:16:54 Not as a form of, uh, weakness, okay? But it's the ultimate form of strength.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:17:02 Yeah.

Mo Gawdat 1:17:02 Mm? Is to tell yourself, "Look, if a train, mm, uh, is coming on the track, and if it hits me, it's gonna kill me, mm, it's absolutely stupid to tell yourself, 'But I'm gonna stand on the track anyway.'" Right? S- uh, the idea of surrendering to the nature of life, that the train is more powerful than you, mm-hmm, th- th- that's the wise way-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:17:24 Yeah

Mo Gawdat 1:17:24 ... to go through life. And, and you have to surrender to the idea that, yeah, it's very painful that Ali left, but he did. Okay? And what good is it to obsess about it and live through the pain of it over and over and over for the next 50 years?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:17:46 The happiness equation that you've come up with, right, that happiness sits in that space between events and our perception, right? I think it's a wonderful way that we can look at a lot of things. So, I don't know, to make it super trivial and day to day, um, you know, if you have to drive to work each day through traffic, well, if your expectation is that you're not gonna get traffic, and you're gonna have a smooth route to work each day-

Mo Gawdat 1:18:18 Good luck

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:18:19 ... you're gonna get pissed off every day.

Mo Gawdat 1:18:20 Good luck. Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:18:21 Right? [laughs]

Mo Gawdat 1:18:22 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:18:22 Whereas if you go into it go, "Hey, I know that most of these journeys, there's gonna be someone pulling out in front of me. Um, I'm gonna be late sometimes. There's gonna be traffic," then actually when that comes about, you're like, "Yeah, I knew it was gonna happen. Like, I'm cool with it."

Mo Gawdat 1:18:36 No, even, even, even better, you take a good podcast with you or a good music with you, and you enjoy it.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:18:40 Exactly. You, you, you change your expectation, and therefore, it, it, suddenly everything becomes easier.

Mo Gawdat 1:18:49 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:18:49 Right? Um, you know, I see this... It- it's funny, I was talking about this equation with my kids last night over dinner. I always talk to them about my podcast guests, and I say, you know, "Hey, this, what do you think of this equation?" Kids love it, by the way. They got it straight away.

Mo Gawdat 1:19:02 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:19:02 And my daughter, well, both the kids, but she has, she's only nine, but- The wisdom in her

Mo Gawdat 1:19:09 Oh, yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:19:10 ... I'm like, "Man, she teaches me stuff."

Mo Gawdat 1:19:13 Absolutely.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:19:14 And my son, to be fair-

Mo Gawdat 1:19:15 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:19:15 ... that says there is innate wisdom in, [laughs] in a lot of our children-

Mo Gawdat 1:19:19 Absolutely, yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:19:19 ... if we wanna hear it. And we were just talking about this idea that many people get disappointed on their birthdays.

Mo Gawdat 1:19:26 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:19:26 Right? And w- there's a few experiences in the family and friends and stuff where that's happened. And if you p- look at it through the lens of your equation, kinda it says if you have an idea that on my birthday things are gonna go like this and people are gonna do this to me or we're gonna do that, you are literally setting yourself up for an unhappy birthday.

Mo Gawdat 1:19:46 100%.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:19:46 And this has happened. You see this happening where people fall out or they didn't do that, they didn't... You know, you know, because you've, you've created that by this expectation that you've created, right? So, so I think the model is very practical and very useful in those situations. How would you apply that model to your son dying? H- how does happiness work there? Or, or does it not quite fit?

Mo Gawdat 1:20:12 So there, there are no- there are two ways you look at it, huh? One, one, w- one way is to say, w- what's the expectation of someone dying, right? The expectation is 100%. What's the expectation... So everyone will die, right? What's the expectation of some parent losing a child? Or what's the expectation of an appendix, uh, you know, um, appendectomy going wrong? And I'll tell you openly, I spoke to my brother. I, I say ... I told you he was a surgeon. And I said, "Khaled, uh, this happened. Is it even possible?" When, when he, when he called me a- after he heard that Ali left, and I said, "Is this even possible?" And he cried and he said, "I'm sorry to tell you this, but surgeons are humans, too." Okay? When you make a mistake in your business, you lose a deal. When we make a, a mistake, we lose a patient, right? And of course, like every, you know, everything that has life in it-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:21:05 Mm

Mo Gawdat 1:21:05 ... we try and try and try and try and try and try to make it, uh, uh, you know, uh, not go for mistakes. Like the F- you know, the FAA will, will have all of th- those regulations for no airplanes to have accidents, but because of the frequency of those things happening, there is still a margin of error. And s- I was surprised, the l- the, the... I think the second-largest reason for death in the US is medical malpractice.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:21:30 Mm.

Mo Gawdat 1:21:30 So, so, so, uh, for, for... if you want to be hyper-logical, and I only can say that now, yeah, losing a person in an operation, like, is to be expected. Okay? Now, but that's not, that's not how the equation works. The equation basically the ... When, when you lose a ch- a, a loved one, the struggles you have with, mm, are about your future, not your past. Okay? They're more about, "I'm gonna spend the rest of my life without him." Okay? And if your expectation is, "This is not fair. I want him in my life," you're f- standing in front of the train. You know? The train is too ... Life, with its all its mighty wheels, is not gonna bring him back. And so the expectation, to set your expectation appropriately is to say, "He's not coming back. Deal with it." Right? He's not coming back. That's it. Okay? And it could have happened in so many ways, by the way. It could have happened if I upset him and he never wanted to talk to me again, and it would be a much, much, much worse torture.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:22:32 Yeah.

Mo Gawdat 1:22:33 Okay? It could have happened, uh, you know, uh, uh, when he was in Boston instead of in Dubai next to us, and it would have hurt even more, right? And when you really start to think about it in, you know, in, in, in, in an interesting way, setting a realistic expectation as you compare anything that you desire from life is step number one. Also, you can look at this expectation by saying ... So one of the m- most torturing questions I had, mm, is we have the ego of a father, right? You and I, we are fathers. We love our children, so the ego, the, the, the, the persona of a father is supposed to protect their children. Okay? And I drove Ali to that hospital. Mm. And I will tell you, the first four days of my torture were, "How could you do that? You should have driven him to another hospital." Okay? And that basically sets the expectation of the father is the superhero that will protect all the time in a place that's is not realistic. The real- the reality is I drove my, my child to the closest, quite significant size, well-known hospital. Okay? He was in agony. Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:23:45 Yeah.

Mo Gawdat 1:23:45 And what ... The, the, the reality is as a father, I tried to take him, uh, to the nearest place, to the right place to take away his pain. That surgeon that did this operation before I think did it several hundred times in his life. Okay? So I, I verified that, and yes, he did.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:24:03 Yeah.

Mo Gawdat 1:24:03 Mm. Now, you set your expectations every time you feel, mm, that you're unhappy or sad or, uh, or angry or any negative emotion. You look at those two sides, events and expectations. Is my perception of the event real, and is my expectation realistic? Right? And yeah, uh, you know, when my ... When I looked at that feeling of, "You should have driven him to another hospital," is that realistic? Okay?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:24:29 Yeah.

Mo Gawdat 1:24:29 Uh, I mean, a, a father with his son in agony and the hospital around the corner and the surgeon has done it several hundred times before.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:24:37 Yeah.

Mo Gawdat 1:24:37 Right? What more do you expect from me? I'm not a psychic. I'm not an oracle.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:24:41 Yeah, yeah.

Mo Gawdat 1:24:41 Right? And so my brain is torturing me, but the expectation should be sent, set right. I tried the best I could, and sometimes we try the best we can-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:24:51 Yeah

Mo Gawdat 1:24:51 ... and life decides differently.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:24:55 You know, over the last few minutes as you've been describing this, a thought popped into my head, Mo, which is there may be a, there may be a childless couple or a childless-

Mo Gawdat 1:25:09 There you go. That's much-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:25:10 ... person Listening-

Mo Gawdat 1:25:12 Yes

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:25:12 ... and who desperately wants to have children

Mo Gawdat 1:25:16 So many would dream of having a wonderful child in their life. I sat down to reflect at a point in time, and I said, "Okay. With the amount of pain I have in my heart for losing him, would I have ever chosen not to have him?" No, I'll take the pain 10 times-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:25:32 Yeah

Mo Gawdat 1:25:32 ... for the gift of having him.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:25:35 Did you sue the doctor?

Mo Gawdat 1:25:37 No. No. Again, expectations, because which surgeon wakes up in the morning and t- and says, "I'm gonna kill someone today and destroy my career"?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:25:48 I, I get that. The, the, the, the thing is I feel a lot of people, that initial thing would be, "Well, I'm gonna sue the doctor. I'm gonna-

Mo Gawdat 1:25:53 Absolutely

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:25:53 ... I am gonna, I'm gonna spend the next-

Mo Gawdat 1:25:54 Vengeance

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:25:55 ... two years on legal fees. I'm gonna get this. I'm gonna, I'm gonna get justice."

Mo Gawdat 1:25:59 I got justice.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:26:00 Okay. So l- let's-

Mo Gawdat 1:26:00 Okay. No, I didn't, I ... So, so what mattered to me is, was that no other father, or at least a fewer other fathers, go through the same pain. Okay? So, yes, we took the right steps to investigate the mistakes that happened so that they don't happen again. You know, I, I was very, very senior at Google at the time. I lived between California and Dubai, and so I knew very senior people in the Dubai government, got calls that basically said, "We're gonna come into this right away. We'll find out what's happening." But, but, but the, but the, and the idea here was not to destroy the doctors', uh, uh-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:26:31 How, how did you not have that emotion? Because I think a lot of humans would have had that emotion. Is that because you f- I, I, as I say, you, you, you talk about this, um, when you realized early on, you know, when you had everything, the money, the cars, the clothes, you know, uh, uh, anything that anyone could possibly want to buy, you had. And you, you said you were clinically depressed, so you learnt, and I know Ali taught you a lot about what happiness truly is. Is, is it ... F- for me, it feels as though you had been in the arena of learning happiness, and then you get, you get put into this-

Mo Gawdat 1:27:11 Into the ring

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:27:11 ... harrowing situation-

Mo Gawdat 1:27:12 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:27:12 ... this real-life scenario, and you were able to apply a lot of what you'd learnt maybe more quickly than many other people because of that. Is, is that a fair reflection?

Mo Gawdat 1:27:27 It, it, it, it is. It's ... You never really learn f- or everything, but you get closer and closer, right?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:27:32 Yeah.

Mo Gawdat 1:27:32 And, and I, you know, I write in a very unusual way. I write the f- last sentence of every book first.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:27:37 Yeah.

Mo Gawdat 1:27:38 And the last sentence of Solve for Happy, hmm, was, "Happiness is found in the truth." It really is that simple. Okay? And that takes a lot of explanation. You have to read the full book to understand this.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:27:49 Yeah.

Mo Gawdat 1:27:50 But, but if you want to, uh, to live in your fantasy, uh, story that you g- that you told yourself and expect that life will com- will conform, hmm, you're never gonna find happiness, ever. Okay? Happiness is found when you acknowledge the story that is actually happening and deal with it, right? So the, the, the, the truth, hmm, uh, is that doctor, and I know that for certain, was trying to alleviate the pain of my son.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:28:23 Mm.

Mo Gawdat 1:28:23 He didn't walk into that operating room with the intention of, "I'm going to kill that child." He, he didn't. Okay?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:28:32 Yeah.

Mo Gawdat 1:28:32 Now, interestingly though, there are mistakes that happen, and the mistakes need to be corrected. And I said, you know, we d- we took the right measures so that nobody has to suffer this again, hmm? But interestingly, and I don't know how many of our listeners will agree with me on this, but there is a definition of death, hmm, that I think is the core of the issue. Right? The core of the issue is if this surgeon ended my son's life, yeah, that would be a major, major issue. That surgeon ended my son's journey into this physical form for this life. Okay? And if you have a, a, a, a real under- and I don't talk about this from a spiritual point of view, by the way. Chapters 13 and 14 in, in Solve for Happy and, and I, I also touch on it in, in That Little Voice in Your Head, are trying to address that metaphysical part of, of us, which is r- very frequently ignored in the world we live in, the highly material world we live in. But the truth is there are many, many, many things, hmm, that ... Le- le- let me say it this way. The scientific method that is so ingrained in our approach to life in the modern world says if something cannot be seen and observed and measured, it doesn't exist.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:29:46 Yeah.

Mo Gawdat 1:29:46 Okay? But that statement gave us the civilization that we're in, but, but at the same time, that statement is wrong. Okay? That statement should be, if something cannot be seen and observed and measured, then it's not the concern of the scientific method. But it can exist.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:30:01 Yeah.

Mo Gawdat 1:30:02 Right? I mean, I cannot measure love, but I know I felt it, right? I cannot m- you know, uh, uh, m- I cannot tell you exactly what disconnected from my son's body when he died, but that body that was left behind was not Ali. The essence of Ali was something not physical.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:30:19 Yeah.

Mo Gawdat 1:30:19 Now, I took that in Solve for Happy, and I spoke about it from a very scientific point of view. Okay? And the problem with science is that it's so complex, that it's multi-dis- disciplined, and unless you bring the disciplines together, you don't see the full truth.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:30:33 Yeah.

Mo Gawdat 1:30:33 And nobody's capable of bringing the disciplines together. But, but let me give you two very simple examples. Now if you, if you understand the theory of relativity and the idea of s- the space-time continuum and that the fact that all of space and time has already happened, you realize that for us to be able to perceive the arrow of time, to be a- to be able to perceive the, uh, the advancement of time, we have to reside outside time. You cannot perceive this studio when you're inside it.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:31:04 Mm.

Mo Gawdat 1:31:04 For us to perceive this studio, you have to stand outside and look at it. Okay? For a, for, for a human to perceive planet Earth- ... they need to become an astronaut and go outside and look back at planet Earth. You can't perceive something when you're within it. Okay? Now, that object-subject relationship, hm, re- uh, also applies to time. The only way you can perceive the arrow of time is to exist outside the arrow of time. Okay? And that basically means that the part of you that is aware is nonphysical. It's not within, it's not contained within the physical world. Now, call that li- that part of you that is aware life. Let's not call it soul, let's call it spirit, not, uh, n- let's just call it life. Okay? That life, hm, seems to be in a science that is not related to physics or chemistry or any of the sciences other than in one intersection point in the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics. And in the Copenhagen interprena- interpretation of quantum physics, to simplify it, we basically say that, that nothing really exists in material format until observed by a form of life. If it's not observed, it remains to be a probability of occurrence. When it's observed, it collapses, we call it the probability wave function collapses, and it becomes real. Okay? This is why, for example, the, the saying of if a, if a tree falls in a forest and no one was there to observe it, would it make a sound? Would it actually fall at all? Would there be a tree if it wasn't observed? And quantum physics will say no, there wouldn't be. There would be the probability of a tree until it's observed. Take that and look at the Big Bang and, uh, uh, and, and, and, and, and quantum physics together, and you would realize that this life, form of life that is us, that makes us, animates us, hm, actually is what creates the physical. It's not the other way around. So basically, if for the Big- the Big Bang is one big mass that gets condensed and then explodes, right? If it explodes, hm, uh, uh, you know, to form planet Earth, you know, 4.3 billion years ago, to, to form life, you know, uh, f- maybe two, three million years ago, and so on and so forth, it needed to be observed through those years, hm-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:33:20 Mm

Mo Gawdat 1:33:20 ... to exist. If, if there was no life to observe the universe collapsing, you know, the, the, the matter collapsing and expanding, exploding 13.7 billion years ago, there wouldn't be that expansion at all, right? So, so the, the game is life existed before the physical. Life is always outside the physical. So, so the, the... If you really look at the... I hope it's, this wasn't too complex. But if you really look at the big picture, you would realize that life is not the opposite of death. Death is the opposite of birth, okay? Life exists during, before, or after. Um, let me say this again. You, you realize that death is not the opposite of life. Death is the oppota- opposite of birth. You come, you come to this world through a portal called birth. You leave this physical world through a portal called death, okay? And life exists all through, before, during, and after. B- you, you know, if life exists outside spacetime, then who was born first? Who lived first? Was it me or Ali? Right? No. M- m- both me and Ali lived eternally in another format. Ali's physical form was born after me, and Ali's physical form decayed before me, okay? But the reality is the essence of Ali, the consciousness of Ali, the life of Ali, you wanna call it soul, spirit, whatever it is, exists th- r- despite, regardless-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:34:38 Yeah

Mo Gawdat 1:34:38 ... of the physical. Now, with that understanding, suddenly something very different happens, okay? Suddenly you realize that, you know what? My essence is right there next to my son right now.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:34:52 Yeah.

Mo Gawdat 1:34:52 And, and I, I, you, I don't know if people will, will understand this, but I, I speak to him very frequently-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:34:59 Yeah

Mo Gawdat 1:34:59 ... in very, very, very predictable ways, okay? With messages that are... I mean, uh, um, let me not go, go into that because it might a- appear to be woo and a sci- and I am a scientist, right? But, but no, there is a connection between us and the rest of being. Betw- there is a connection between-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:35:16 Yeah

Mo Gawdat 1:35:16 ... my true essence and his essence and your essence.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:35:18 Yeah.

Mo Gawdat 1:35:19 Okay? At so many levels that our, uh, hyper-focus on the physical world as humans has lost us-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:35:25 Yeah

Mo Gawdat 1:35:25 ... the ability to connect

Mo Gawdat 1:35:26 to.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:35:27 Sorry to interrupt. If you are enjoying this content, there's loads more just like it on my channel, so please do take a moment to press Subscribe, hit the notification bell, and now back to the conversation. Yeah. Uh, I was... I mean, there's so much there. Um, this allows you to continue to have a relationship with Ali. It's just that he's no longer here-

Mo Gawdat 1:35:49 Not in a physical form

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:35:50 ... in a physical form. And this is a realization I've had in the last couple years with my own dad who, who died just over nine years ago. Certainly not the same thing [laughs] , uh, your parent dying as, as a son dying. I, I absolutely recognize and acknowledge that. But I realize, oh, my dad's still here. I can still communicate with Dad. I can still have a relationship with Dad. He's just not in the physical form with which I experienced him for, I don't know, 30, 35 years or so. But, you know, literally there's a picture of my dad just behind you on the wall. Um, I think about Dad and his ideas and his life, and it infuses what I do. You know, it's, it's a different way of looking at, at things. It's like life is there-

Mo Gawdat 1:36:36 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:36:36 ... before and after. I, I, I really love that.

Mo Gawdat 1:36:38 I, I, I think if you have a deep understanding of physics, which I think is not easy for a lot of people, physics specifically, you would realize that the definition of here is quite elusive. The definition of now is quite elusive.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:36:52 Yeah.

Mo Gawdat 1:36:52 Right? Because in reality, that concept of spacetime basically allows us as beings, not as humans, hm, not in this physical form, but in our true essence, like my son dreamed before he died, to be everywhere and part of everyone. That's the truth. You-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:37:08 That was what? Two weeks before he died, I think I read.

Mo Gawdat 1:37:10 Yeah, two, two weeks before he died he had that dream that he was everywhere and part of everyone. And, and it, and in an interesting way, that's in many spiritual teachings the The definition of death i- it's to, it's to, it's to r- be relieved of this physical burden-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:37:27 Yeah

Mo Gawdat 1:37:27 ... and basically return to the source, if you want

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:37:34 The, the way we've been brought up, the way society has taught us what we see around us, clearly, it clearly defines and, and shapes how we view the world. And once you start to question that, you can go down a deep rabbit hole, right? [laughs]

Mo Gawdat 1:37:50 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:37:51 I see you can-

Mo Gawdat 1:37:52 Endless, endless, endless

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:37:53 ... endless to go, well, what if that isn't true in the first place? And I guess something quite tangible that I've been reading about recently is this African tribe who have nine senses. Right? They, they consider they have nine senses. We consider ourselves to have five senses, right?

Mo Gawdat 1:38:08 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:38:08 So, you know, whatever, touch, taste, sight, sound, smell, you know. And so we see the world through the lens of those five senses. But to this tribe, not one of those nine senses is the same as our five.

Mo Gawdat 1:38:22 Interesting.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:38:23 Right? Like, one of their senses, for example, is balance.

Mo Gawdat 1:38:26 Hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:38:26 Right? Balance in body, balance in mind, balance in spirit. And it really... I, I love things like this 'cause they question everything you thought you knew. Like, well, who says there are only five senses? Who says that these are the right five senses? There, there's a, there's a section in the book, I think it's in the new one-

Mo Gawdat 1:38:45 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:38:45 ... where you... Or maybe it's in Solve For Happy, where you write about words-

Mo Gawdat 1:38:48 Illusion of knowledge. Yeah, yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:38:49 ... and how limiting words are-

Mo Gawdat 1:38:51 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:38:51 ... because we can only describe our experience through the words that we have.

Mo Gawdat 1:38:57 Absolutely.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:38:57 And if-

Mo Gawdat 1:38:57 And they're so limiting

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:38:58 They're so limiting. And, you know, o- one of the things you were talking about before w- is one of my big frustrations with much of the way we practice medicine these days, is it's all come down to what we can measure. If we can't measure it, it's not real. But there is so much-

Mo Gawdat 1:39:13 [laughs] Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:39:14 ... in someone's life and their experience that we can't measure, that really truly matters.

Mo Gawdat 1:39:19 Absolutely.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:39:20 And the science... I, I think, I think science has actually become a cult in many places, where if science can't explain it, it doesn't exist. It's like, no, no, no, no, no. Science, for me at least, is helpful to, um, improve my understanding, enhance my understanding. But science is not all-encompassing, that it can, as of yet-

Mo Gawdat 1:39:44 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:39:44 ... explain everything.

Mo Gawdat 1:39:45 You're spot on. I mean-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:39:47 Yeah

Mo Gawdat 1:39:47 ... I, I say openly, science is a religion.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:39:50 Yeah.

Mo Gawdat 1:39:50 It is a faith. It, it is a, a form of faith.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:39:53 It is or has become.

Mo Gawdat 1:39:54 It has become.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:39:55 Yeah.

Mo Gawdat 1:39:55 Right? And, and no, it is the scientific method. It's one of the methods.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:40:00 Yeah.

Mo Gawdat 1:40:01 Okay? By the way, spirituality is another method. Okay? And you cannot exist without all of them to be, to, to, to, to see a full perspective, huh? You need a bit of science, a bit of philosophy, a bit of, you know, uh, uh, um, um, mathematics, a bit of spirituality, a bit of biology-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:40:18 Yeah

Mo Gawdat 1:40:18 ... to understand this very, very complex, very complex world that we live in. And by the way, you're never gonna fully understand it. There's no way.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:40:27 Yeah. [laughs] That's-

Mo Gawdat 1:40:27 Right? And, and I think the most interesting part of this is how we attach to those concepts so much-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:40:34 Yeah

Mo Gawdat 1:40:34 ... and believe them to be true. One of my favorite books of all time, uh, is Freakonomics. If, if you've, uh, ever-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:40:40 I've not read it, actually

Mo Gawdat 1:40:41 Oh my God, it is so eye-opening. Okay? And Freakonomics is basically using economics. I love economics. So it uses economics to tell you the truth is not what you see at all. Mm-hmm. That your real estate agent is not actually interested in getting you a, uh, the best deal. They're just interested in getting c- their commission. Okay? And if you do the mathematics, their commissions are higher if they don't get you the best deal. Their, their only target is to convince you, right? If they can convince you with a bad deal, great. Right? And so this is why, you know, in terms of pricing between the seller and the buyer or the renter, you know, the landlord and the, and the, and the one leasing and so on, there are so many interesting dynamics. Right? And you know, when, when you really think about it, how many doctors, uh, go to work every day b- because they wanna save lives, or how many are there because they wanna make money, right? And, and it's quite interesting. And, and we take it for granted that the government is there to serve us. Not at all. The government is doing most of what it's doing for votes. Right? The, the real driver, the real objective is they need to be reelected perhaps to, to be able to serve us. Hmm. But if they cannot be elected, they can't serve us. And, and I think that idea of questioning, a- again, in That Little Voice In Your Head, uh, chapter, uh, two, I speak about, uh, context. Okay?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:41:56 Mm-hmm.

Mo Gawdat 1:41:56 And context is so interesting. So one of the benefits of growing up learning the Arabic language is Arabic is so complex because every word has multiple meanings, and every meaning has multiple words. So, you know, there is a Wikipedia page, for example, with 500 words on it that mean the word lion. Okay? And, and it could be from, uh, from, uh... You know, it's so wide-ranging because n- the word asad is also the, the name of a, uh, uh, of a, of a, uh, you know, of a person. Okay? The word ghadamfar is also, it also means a man that's very good in bed. Uh, and the word, uh, um, hanafis is actually the beetles. But it, they can also be used as lion, right? Uh, and, and so interestingly, you start to use that in a language, and suddenly the language becomes extremely contextual.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:42:46 Hmm. Yeah.

Mo Gawdat 1:42:47 You have to look at the context. And most of us don't revisit contexts of things-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:42:51 Yeah

Mo Gawdat 1:42:51 ... that we were told to actually live a life that is true-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:42:55 Yeah

Mo Gawdat 1:42:55 ... because we're so badly marketed it too.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:42:58 Yeah. I mean, there's so many things there. Um, you know, my parents are from Calcutta in India.

Mo Gawdat 1:43:05 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:43:06 And Bengali is or was the spoken language at home when I grew up. And there's no real... You know, there, no one really uses the word thank you-

Mo Gawdat 1:43:17 Hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:43:17 ... in Bengali.

Mo Gawdat 1:43:18 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:43:19 And you know, I grew up in- Um, you know, in England, I was born and brought up in England, so, you know, you learn it's important you say please and thank you.

Mo Gawdat 1:43:26 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:43:27 Um, but actually, that doesn't really exist in the Bengali language, at least not the way it's commonly spoken.

Mo Gawdat 1:43:34 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:43:34 And it's inferred with the way you say it.

Mo Gawdat 1:43:38 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:43:38 The way you say something infers the thanks, and then just broadening this out to kind of perception and the stories we create, it's easy, therefore, for someone to s- think, "Oh, they're rude. They didn't say thank you."

Mo Gawdat 1:43:49 So interesting. I love that. Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:43:51 And it's like, well, wait a minute, but through the lens that they speak, actually that, that isn't part of it.

Mo Gawdat 1:43:57 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:43:57 And it's so- it's something you have to, oh, in English, oh, you say please and thank you. That's ... It's ... And I, and I think that perspective, that context, it, it really, it goes back to even Edith Eger and this idea that we create these prisons inside our minds.

Mo Gawdat 1:44:12 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:44:12 We have these perceptions of how people should act. Expectation, right? And therefore, when the event doesn't meet that expectation, we create this unhappiness. It's-

Mo Gawdat 1:44:22 A- absolutely. Y- you know-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:44:23 It-

Mo Gawdat 1:44:23 ... the, the interesting opposite side of that is that the British culture in general, being so formal sometimes, is actually considered rude in other places, right? So, so, so, you know, you, the, the British culture will say it's very rude not to say thank you, but being so formal and reserved sometimes in those other cultures is like, "Okay, does they, do they think they're better than me?"

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:44:43 Yeah.

Mo Gawdat 1:44:43 Right? And it's so interesting. It-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:44:44 I- I've experienced that where you-

Mo Gawdat 1:44:45 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:44:45 ... you come into things, or it's like, "No, I don't want to be of trouble to you. I don't want to," you know.

Mo Gawdat 1:44:50 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:44:50 "Oh, no, I don't wanna put you out." And it's almost insulting some- No, no, I've invited you in.

Mo Gawdat 1:44:54 Right. [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:44:54 I've invited you in for a meal, you know.

Mo Gawdat 1:44:55 Absolutely. Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:44:56 Well, what's all this noise around it?

Mo Gawdat 1:44:57 Exactly. [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:44:58 It's kind of like-

Mo Gawdat 1:44:58 Exactly

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:44:58 ... "What have I done wrong?" It's-

Mo Gawdat 1:44:59 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:45:00 ... and, and, and I think we'd be a, we'd have a happier, more compassionate world if we could all understand that not everyone sees events, not everyone sees the world through the same lens.

Mo Gawdat 1:45:10 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:45:10 Um-

Mo Gawdat 1:45:11 I, I, I once was given a, a, um, a translation, a dictionary of, uh, the British m- uh, words and meanings, and, you know, if you're not British, you don't realize it, but when you're, when you say something like it's not too bad, uh, we think that it means it's good, right? But it's actually in, in the ... [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:45:29 Right. [laughs]

Mo Gawdat 1:45:30 It's, it doesn't, right? It's not what you mean. It's like, you know, there were so many of them. It's so eye-opening. But you mean something, and we think of it very differently.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:45:38 Yeah.

Mo Gawdat 1:45:38 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:45:39 Mo, just to finish off, um, th- this quite wonderful conversation, you know, the broad theme has been happiness, and relationships are-

Mo Gawdat 1:45:53 Ah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:45:53 ... clearly one of the most important ingredients for us to live a happy and contented life. Relationships with other people-

Mo Gawdat 1:46:00 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:46:00 ... relationships with ourselves, relationship with the world around us. I think there's a lot of emotional immaturity in relationships. I think a lot of the time, and I've been very guilty of this myself-

Mo Gawdat 1:46:14 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:46:14 ... um, I think in the early years of my marriage, I think I was very immature about what a marriage really is.

Mo Gawdat 1:46:22 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:46:23 There is a perception of what love is that typically comes to us from Hollywoods and-

Mo Gawdat 1:46:28 Yeah, romance basically.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:46:30 Yeah.

Mo Gawdat 1:46:30 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:46:30 And I know you've got some interesting thoughts on this. I wonder if you could just share, um, where does love and relationships fit into happiness? What does that mean? What are the different types of love? And I know on Stephen's podcast, you mentioned that with the mother of your children, you think that you've had six different relationships.

Mo Gawdat 1:46:54 Yes. [laughs] I fell in, I fall in love six times. I fell in love six times, for sure.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:46:57 Yeah, and I think there's something really interesting here for people to learn about, so I wonder if you could share some of your thoughts.

Mo Gawdat 1:47:03 Yeah. So, so let- let's begin by saying relationships, uh, um, are a lot more than just romantic relationships, and I think love is way too grand to be fit within the word romance. To, to, to, to begin, I think that's really the most important understanding we need to have. The narrative we've been given around love is a narrative that is more, um, a legal contract, i- if, if you don't mind me saying this, which is not true at all, you know? It's a, it's almost like an engineered process followed by a legal contract. So, so it's basically we're gonna go out, and then I'm gonna check those things, and then I'm gonna like you, and then we're gonna kiss, and then we're gonna do this, and then ... Right? That process in, in- interestingly, uh, you know, is sort of like if it doesn't happen that way, then it's basically maybe not the right story or something like that. Um, and there are s- you know, some journeys that are favorable. You know, it's like, oh, if, if we meet, uh, you know, serendipitously, and then this happens, and I can tell that, that story to our kids, uh, you know, it's gonna be more wonderful. While you and I know in m- you know, in, in, in parts of the world where arranged marriage, Mo, for example, used to be quite big for a very long time, uh, that, that there are other stories and other narratives that are actually much more successful. There has, you know, there, there was a very good book, uh, 10 years ago called The Paradox of Choice, which basically statistically measured the success of arranged marriages versus the success of falling in love marriages. Uh, and it was like 4X, um, more, you know, more, um, more successful of in terms of longe- longevity and so on. Now, so here's the issue. The issue is we tell ourself that there is a story, and that story is love, okay? If that is your expectation, then sadly, events will consistently miss expectations for the simple reason that we constantly change. So the m- the woman I met, uh, as my college sweet- sweetheart when she was 18 was not the woman I married. The minute we got married, there was a difference in everything that we did, both of us, right? Uh, when she, when we had our kids, uh, she moved from being a woman to being a mother, and that's actually, in my view, a very different kind of being where her priorities change, her psychology changes, her, you know, her actions change, her attention changes, and the pressures she gets in her life ... are so different. If I expected her to be in my life like the college sweetheart that wanted to go out and have fun and so on, that wouldn't happen. And, and that continues to happen. Changes happen on my side, too, as I become successful in my career, as I make more money, as I get hit on quite frequently, and so on and so forth. Now, you take those, and you suddenly realize that a relationship is a timeline. Okay? And the, the, that ... A- a- and I, you know, I, I hate to say this, but it's just ... it's important to understand the facts so that we can actually set the right expectations. Every relationships follows a chart that looks like this. It goes roop, up, okay? Butterflies and excitement and honeymoon likes, uh, you know, experiences, and then it declines. Hm? And like the product adoption curve, if you remember, it's just that S curve, hm, you need to ignite it again or end it. Okay? Or, or, or live the rest of your life as a vegetable, basically. You know, no excitement, no fun, no, no life, and so on. And to ex- to, to ... For us, uh, for me and Nibel, basically every time we changed, both of us changed, I was like, "Where is, where is my college sweetheart?" Okay? And then looked at the new one and said, "Oh my God, but this one is so cute." Okay? It was literally like falling in love with another woman, right? It was literally like breaking up and finding a different one, but the different one was still her. Different version of her for a different version of me, right? Now, i- i- if, if, if, if this is acceptable by people, then I think the reality of love and relationships, the expectation that should be set about love and relationship is this: love is different than relationship. Okay? Love is different than romance. That's, that's rule number one. Rule number two, which I think is really important, is relationship and romance will decline, but love will last. So me and Nibel are no longer together. I love, I love her dearly in slightly different ways every time, but I love her dearly. She's a prominent part of my heart, right? My son is no longer alive, but I love him dearly, okay? And I love you. I love everyone that's listening to me unless they give me a very good reason why not to like them, and by the way, even then, I will love them. I will just try to avoid them. Okay?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:51:38 Yeah.

Mo Gawdat 1:51:39 But, you know, so, so l- let's keep love out of the equation. This, this, uh, is a highly glorified way to sell romance. Love is there all the time. Now, romance itself, as I said, will decline, and as it declines, you can deal with that as the truth. You can either choose ... And, and I think this is what's happening in our modern world today. You and I come from a generation that's very different than Gen Z, for example, who define relationships very differently. Okay? You and I came from a re- a generation that's was so stupid that they didn't accept same-sex relationships and, and, and, and romance as, you know, as, uh, as, as the world finally wa- have woken up to accept that everyone's free to do what they want, right? Now, when you start to see it that way, you start to say perhaps there are different models of relationship, hm, one of which is that traditional story that Hollywood sold to us. But there, there, there is an infinite number of other models. Infinite. I, I promise you.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:52:37 Mm.

Mo Gawdat 1:52:37 So I'm working on this. As you know, it's gonna be my, my book for, for April 2023, I hope. It's called Finding Love, and one of the most important chapters of Finding Love is all the different models. All the different models of, you know, when it comes to the scale of hookup to commitment, where do you stand? When it, when it comes from o- on the scale of, uh, freedom to, to confinement, where do you, where do you stand when it ... You know? And there are so many scales.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:53:05 Yeah.

Mo Gawdat 1:53:05 Hm? If you define that, it goes back to our original conversation. If you define that, hm, and know where you are in life, hm, suddenly your choices might be so different than the choices you're actually making. Okay? You know, I, I, I had an experience once with a wonderful, wonderful, uh, uh, person. I, I travel all the time. Hm? And, uh, you know, I, I lived in the Dominican Republic for around six months. Okay? And at the beginning, we really got v- very, very attracted to each other, and I said, "But that's wrong. You know, I'm not gonna be here for long. I'm here for a few months, and it's gonna end after that, and it's gonna be painful for the both of us." And then eventually we ended, we ended up in a place where she said, "But wouldn't it be wonderful to, to be with each other for the few months?" Right? Very different model-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:53:55 Mm

Mo Gawdat 1:53:56 ... than the original model that will say, "Hm, uh, uh, no, it has to be this way or it doesn't work."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:54:01 Yeah. [laughs]

Mo Gawdat 1:54:02 Okay? So start with knowing yourself. Second, start with loving yourself. Loving yourself is, is, is, is probably the most, the biggest missing thing in the world today.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:54:14 Yeah, I agree.

Mo Gawdat 1:54:15 Hm? Because if you don't value that self-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:54:17 Yeah

Mo Gawdat 1:54:17 ... of yours, hm, you, you don't ... you accept the wrong person. Hm?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:54:20 Yeah.

Mo Gawdat 1:54:21 And the most interesting thing, by the way, is whatever it is that you are, tall, short, you know, uh, curvy, skinny, whatever, hm, there is someone that's crazy about this.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:54:30 [laughs]

Mo Gawdat 1:54:30 Right? Absolutely, huh? So if, if you manage to say, "I love me as I am, and I'm gonna advertise me as I am." Hm? Advertise me as I am meaning this is who I am. By the way, if you don't like this, go f- find what you like. Okay?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:54:47 Yeah.

Mo Gawdat 1:54:47 I'm just waiting for someone that, that likes this. Hm?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:54:50 Yeah.

Mo Gawdat 1:54:50 Now, and the third, and I, and I, and I'll, I'll, I'll, I, I ... This is where most people get upset with me, is understand the economics of love and relationships, and, and this is a very co- a very interesting thing, huh? There must be 100,000 models of cars that have been, you know, created in the world. Okay? And there must be billions and billions of people that look at cars every day. If you're a, I don't know, um, a, a, a Shelby, uh, Cobra from 1960-some, okay? Uh, and you market yourself among all of the Toyotas and Hyundais and Fords out there, you're one in a billion, okay? And there is no value for you for most people who are not interested in the Shelby Cobra Right? But there are a few people that will think of that car as the most amazing car that ever existed. Okay? If you're with those people, you're likely to find someone that wants to buy it. Okay? And you're likely to find that this someone will want to keep it forever. And I think this is the problem we have in our world today. The wor- the problem we have in our world today is when we go through relationships, mm, we try to market to everyone. Okay? So we try to be available for every possible mate, mm, and as a result our value becomes diminished. I tell everyone, man or woman, mm, gay or straight, mm, wh- wh- whatever model of relationship they're looking for, if you're true to who you are, and you ensure that who you are is advertised as who you are, so you don't pretend to be anything else, 99% of the 14,000 people who, who you're going through on the app will completely say, "Ah, that's not what I want." Right? But around 1,000 people will go like, "Oh, my God. That's my dream."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:56:39 Yeah.

Mo Gawdat 1:56:39 "She exists," or, "He exists." And for them, your value will go through the roof.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:56:44 So embrace that. Don't-

Mo Gawdat 1:56:46 Absolutely

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:56:46 ... embrace that.

Mo Gawdat 1:56:47 So to find love, love yourself and do what you love.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:56:50 Yeah.

Mo Gawdat 1:56:50 It's as simple as that.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:56:52 Mo, this next book sounds fascinating. You have an open invitation to come back on the show-

Mo Gawdat 1:56:56 Thank you

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:56:56 ... anytime you want to talk about-

Mo Gawdat 1:56:58 Oh, my God

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:56:58 ... anything you want. That's-

Mo Gawdat 1:56:59 As you, you make coffee, I come. [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:57:01 Yeah. Well, we'll do that. We'll definitely go deeper on relationships next time for that next book. Um, Mo, look, I, I've really enjoyed speaking to you.

Mo Gawdat 1:57:08 Thank you. Thank you.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:57:08 Uh, I still feel we haven't even scratched the surface of the things we could talk about. Um, I think your words have been incredibly powerful, poignant, provocative for some people at times, but in a good way. This podcast is called Feel Better, Live More. When we feel better in ourselves, we're gonna get more out of life. I wonder if, right at the end here, Mo, you could share some final thoughts of wisdom. You know, there's people at the moment in the world who are really struggling. They don't feel happy. They feel challenged with this idea that happiness is a choice. For people who want a little bit more out of their life than they currently have, what would you say to them?

Mo Gawdat 1:57:57 I'd say, uh, invest in that happiness approach. So invest in that happiness approach rather than investing cycles about complaining about what's wrong in life or investing cycles about, in success. Okay? Wh- wh- by, by that I mean, um, if I told you that if you do something for seven days, uh, you're more likely to get the next job, wouldn't you do it? If I told you that if you go to the gym, uh, you know, four times a week, uh, uh, you know, you'll, you'll have a, a, a m- more, uh, attractive, f- you know, physical form, would you do it? Okay? If that's what w- what you wanted. And, and I think the question is, can I tell people that if you actually went to the happiness gym several times a week, you will actually have a happier life, right? And the happiness gym is very straightforward. It's a set of skills, mm, that you need to practice. So-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:58:50 Yeah

Mo Gawdat 1:58:50 ... right? It's a set of gr- uh, it's a group of people around you that encourage you to work out on your happiness a little harder. Okay? It's a set of beliefs, mm, that you need to learn if you wanted to actually, if you wanted to accept a life of happiness. Mm. And so I tell people openly, just if you wanna live a, a happier life, go to the gym four times a week. Right?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:59:13 Yeah.

Mo Gawdat 1:59:13 Spend an hour a day listening to a podcast or, you know, reading a book, uh, uh, or watching a movie, a documentary or something like that. Surround yourself by people who understand happiness are, and are happy all the time or most, most of the time.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:59:25 Yeah.

Mo Gawdat 1:59:25 S- switch off your, your news feed that is killing you and scaring you about the w- uh, about the world. Choose to feel differently about things. I, I posted on Instagram, um, very successful post a coup- of a couple of, uh, days ago about Ukraine, and I, I basically said, "Look, I am, I'm angry. I feel angry that I don't, I don't approve of the violence. Mm. I don't approve of the, of the injustice." But I can also ... I mean, the question is, what good is angry doing for, for Ukraine? Is it changing anything? Is it making them, their life better, huh? And, and my, my, my question is, can I choose to be compassionate? Can I choose to be loving? Can I choose to be kind? Can I choose to be generous? Can I take the same event and trigger a different feeling? Okay? Because if I can choose to be kind, then I can actually make a difference. I can send a donation. I can do something.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:00:15 Yeah.

Mo Gawdat 2:00:15 You know? And I think those choices, those choices are the exact point of the happiness gym.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:00:21 Yeah.

Mo Gawdat 2:00:21 Is to make a choice that says, this might not deliver my success. It might not deliver my relationship. It might not deliver this or that, but it will make me happier. And I think when we do that, we start to go on that-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:00:32 Yeah

Mo Gawdat 2:00:32 ... track, and we get there.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:00:34 Yeah, really powerful, really empowering. Um, I'd encourage everyone to pick up y- your books. They're, they're wonderful. You know, Solve For Happy, of course, one from a few years back, but the new one, That Little Voice In Your Head, uh, just the code that runs your brain, uh, so much wisdom in there. Mo, just final question from me, for this conversation at least. I feel that I have an idea of who Ali is-

Mo Gawdat 2:01:07 Oh, baby

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:01:08 ... through the words in your book, through the words that have come out of your mouth today and other times I've seen you speak. It feels that Ali is here in many ways. Uh, hi- his voice, his, his essence is being shared with the world through what you do. If Ali was sitting here in a physical form right now, what would you think he'd say to you?

Mo Gawdat 2:01:37 "Well done, Fat Hobbit." [laughs] Ali didn't speak much at all. It was really, really, really unbelievable. He ... You know, like a wise sage, Ali would listen for hours and hours and hours, and then say four words. Four words. Uh, before he died, uh, he told me four ... you know, eight words really, and, and they changed my life. Mm. He said, "I never want you to stop working, but I want you to count on your heart a little more often." Okay? And I promise you, that flipped my life upside down. If, if he was sitting here, he would have said, "You got it, Fat Hobbit." Because in reality, I put endless hours of my life building technologies that nobody needed. Okay? In reality, I put countless hours of my life making money that I don't need. Okay? That only gave me joy when I gave it away. Mm. And I think the reality is that for each and every one of us, the choice that we started with of where do you put your heartbeats? And I don't have many of them left. Where do you put them? So-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:02:51 Good

Mo Gawdat 2:02:51 ... I love him. He was amazing. He was the best in everything, and I'm grateful that he, by leaving us, gave me the chance to get to know you and to speak to, to others.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:03:03 Thank you, Mo.

Mo Gawdat 2:03:04 Thank you.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:03:05 If you enjoyed that conversation on happiness, I think you are really going to enjoy this one on why so many people feel lost and unmotivated. It's not as hard as you think to make a change. I know that you feel lost from time to time, and you struggle with motivation, but these practices will really make a difference.