Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - #275 How To Become Happier Today (it's easier than you think) with Mo Gawdat

Episode Date: May 24, 2022

Happiness is a choice. It’s a bold statement, but it’s one I wholeheartedly support. Whether you agree with this statement, or whether the idea sits a little uncomfortably with you, I think you are going to get a lot out of this uplifting conversation. My guest is Mo Gawdat and he has been at both ends of the spectrum on which we might consider happiness lies. And he’s unlocked the key to true contentment, no matter what obstacles you may come across in life.    You might know Mo as the former Chief Business Officer of Google X – a role with status and riches that many might aspire to. You may also know him as the respected ‘happiness expert’, speaker and bestselling author of self-help books like Solve For Happy and his latest book, That Little Voice In Your Head.   We begin our conversation by talking about the concept of success and fulfilment and why his money only gave him joy when he gave it away. We also chat about how the sudden and tragic death of his son at the age of 21 set him on a path to make a billion people happier.   This is a wide-ranging, personal and heartfelt conversation. Listening to Mo’s account is incredibly emotional, yet he’s so full of love, truth and gratitude. I’m so grateful to him for sharing so honestly and authentically but I get the idea that Mo knows no other way. This man embodies the idea that happiness is a set of skills and beliefs that we can all practice. And you can choose to practice them, no matter what life puts in your way. When you listen to him speak, it’s hard not to agree.  Thanks to our sponsors: https://www.calm.com/livemore http://www.athleticgreens.com/livemore https://www.vivobarefoot.com/livemore Order Dr Chatterjee's new book Happy Mind, Happy Life: UK version: https://amzn.to/304opgJ, US & Canada version: https://amzn.to/3DRxjgp Show notes available at https://drchatterjee.com/275 Support the podcast and enjoy Ad-Free episodes. Try FREE for 7 days on Apple Podcasts https://apple.co/3oAKmxi. For other podcast platforms go to https://fblm.supercast.com. DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to constitute or be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or other qualified health care provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website.

By 29, I had everything. Like I had my 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. Hi, my name is Rangan Chastji. Welcome to Feel Better, Live More.

Happiness is a choice. It's a bold statement, but it's one that I and my guest in this week's podcast wholeheartedly support. Now whether you strongly agree with this statement, or whether this idea sits a little uncomfortably with you, I think you are going to get a lot out of today's uplifting conversation. My guest is Mo Gowdat. Now, you may have heard of Mo as the former chief business officer of Google X, a role with status and riches that many might aspire to. You may also have heard of him as the respected happiness expert, the speaker and best-selling author of self-help books like Soul for Happy and his latest book, That Little Voice in Your Head. You see, Mo has been at both ends of the spectrum on what we might consider happiness lies.

And he's unlocked the key to true contentment, no matter what obstacles you come across in life. We begin our conversation by talking about the concept of success and fulfillment, why his money only gave him joy when he gave it away, and how the sudden and tragic death of his son at the age of 21 set him on a path to make one billion people happier. This honestly is a wide-ranging, personal and heartfelt conversation, not least when Mo describes how his son Ali died suddenly when a routine operation went wrong. Mo gives a heartfelt account of how utterly painful this was and still is, but he explains how he was able to differentiate

the pain from his outlook on life. Rather than blame the surgeon or take legal action, Mo decided to honour Ali's life by teaching the world the skills and mindset needed to be happy. Listening to Mo's account is incredibly emotional, yet he's so full of love, truth and gratitude. I am really grateful to him for sharing so honestly and authentically. But I get the feeling that Mo knows no other way. This man embodies the idea that happiness is a set of skills and beliefs that we can all practice. And you can choose to practice them no matter what life puts in your way. When you listen to him speak, it's hard not to agree.

And now, my conversation with Mo Gowdat. Where I wanted to start was this idea that if happiness is our default state, as you think it is, as I think it is, why are so many people unhappy? Basically, we choose to, sadly. I don't know how to say it any other way. We choose to live a life that leads us in different directions, And we're very capable creatures. If I told you that your task today was to make a thousand coffees, you're going to 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, I believe there is no scientific proof of that, but I believe post-World War II and the Great Depression, 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, and yeah, and then when you're done with all of that, and then when you're 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 going to 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 money and being chased by paparazzis and clinically depressed. The truth is, 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. I mean, that's quite an interesting idea that humans are incredible. Like if we are given a set of priorities and goals, we will achieve them.

At least we'll get close to achieving them. We'll go, we'll move in the direction of achieving them. Yeah. 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, work harder, because then you can achieve more, earn more, do more with that money. Of course, unless you're very conscious about the way you choose to live your life, you're going to get swept up in that because that's the tide around you, right? And that really, for me, it speaks to something I've heard you say about before that at 25, you had nothing. At 29, you had everything. Can you speak about that a little bit?

Yeah. I mean, it's not an unusual story. It's just happened to a little bit? Yeah. I mean, it's not a, it's not an unusual story. It's just happened to me very, very early. I mean, I, I don't know how to say that. I think I had my middle age crisis when I was 29, you know, my definition, a 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. You know, is that what it's all about? And most people don't believe me when I say this, but I was born and raised in Egypt, public school, public university in Egypt. So I promise you, 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 could print money on demand. I was trading in the stock market really before the tools that we have today were available. So 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 school and you go like, okay, I'm going to work and make a hundred pounds a week and I'll be happy. What, what, what, what happens when you make a hundred pounds a week is you say, oh, I'm so sorry. I wanted 200, uh, you know, and then you make 200 and then what do you say? Oh, no, no, but I need a mortgage. I need to make a thousand. Right. And you keep, you keep running, you keep running and we never really stop. We never really notice the change of context. And this is where it goes really wrong. Because yes, of course, at a young age, when you're trying to establish yourself,

when you're trying to build what Stephen Bartlett calls your capital, your skill capital, you're supposed to work a little harder. You're supposed to engage a little more. You're supposed to try and find your place in life. But as that context changes, and for most of us, it changes when you've reached your basic needs, right? How do you then become more interested in living than in earning. Okay. And I think the big, big, big, big myth that people fail to notice is that you come to life a billionaire, right? That's how that's what you you know, if you live to be 80, let's say, you have, I don't know, say, 2 billion heartbeats to live. You start your life with a credit of 2 billion, okay? And then you spend it, say 60 beats per second, just as an average. So every second

that passes, you're spending from your 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 swiping on Instagram, or I could spend it hugging you and catching up and, you know, spending wonderful time with a friend, which of those is a better use of your assets. And so I spent my young years, you know, my heartbeats were going into exchanging my life, my minutes, my hours for money. And I had the most 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 like a scam. Yeah. I mean, that word deception, I think it's really powerful. Many people, I think, get to a point in their life where they do feel deceived. Man, 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, you're right. This is a recurring theme. I mean, I don't know, maybe five or six weeks ago, Johnny Wilkerson was

sitting in your chair. 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. He was playing for England and he scored the winning goal in the World Cup final to give England the World Cup. You don't do better than that. You don't do better than that. Yet, in that moment, he felt empty. The following morning, he can't get out of bed. He feels depressed.

He feels anxious. 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. be happy this is a common theme mo right so why is it do you think that many people yourself johnny 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 well i think 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. You look at any child when they're, you know, safe and fed and loved and, you know, there's nothing wrong with their life and they're happy, right? You know, a nappy gets wet, they feel discomfort, they become unhappy, they cry. You change the nappy, they go back to happiness, right? The reality of humanity is happiness, by the way, is 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 happy. Basically, I'm peaceful with this. I want this moment to, to last. Right. So, so that definition of happy is within you. You can only spoil it. It's, it's the opposite way. 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, right? And the more you cover it, the more you cannot access it anymore.

It's the opposite that needs to happen. 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 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's worldly lifestyle.

four of every five weeks at the surface, you know, that's worldly lifestyle. In reality, I had a friend of mine, 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, 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, the number of hours I spent in meetings where my relationship with the world was through a presentation and a spreadsheet, what a waste of heartbeats. What a waste of heartbeats what a waste of heartbeats right and and the truth is

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 a human connection in it. Find which of them didn't have love. Find which of them didn't have awe and a new experience. Most of what have you, do you have any memory of a slide deck that you observed when you were 23? You don't, you know, those things don't are not moments we live. Okay. I don't know if you're a fan of Pink Floyd like I am, but right. And who isn't good man. And if they're not, they probably just haven't heard enough.

Yeah. They need to, they need to listen to Pink Floyd. But you remember the song called time, huh? Yeah. And in time, Pink Floyd will say, and then one day you find then 10 years have gone behind you. No one told you when to run. You missed the starting gun. Right. and then one day you find then 10 years have gone behind you. No one told you when to run. You missed the starting gun, right? And that really stopped me to think

because you know that it's now almost mid-2022 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 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 are living inside your head,

thinking about the past, thinking about the future, chasing for some money, you know, dreaming of a car that you don't need or a taller girlfriend that you think is gonna make you happy. And then suddenly, all of those moments, all of those heartbeats you wasted, don't register. You haven't lived. Only the ones that you lived.

And if you really take stock of them, they're beautiful moments that are really, really simple. That analogy with heartbeats, I think it's very powerful. 62% of the 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 consuming individually by yourself yourself stuck staring at your laptop in a hotel room trying to send a few emails right but heart beats hearts heart to heart connection it's kind of like it's quite interesting that the heart is there to connect us with other

people right so that means only 38 of your where you're using the heart and the way the heart's meant to be used. by the idea of monkhood, you know, spending part of your life in, you know, in isolation, really reflecting, connecting. But in that case, your heart is connecting to you. 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? But But the problem is what you said. The problem is staring at the computer screen and wasting heartbeats on that, you know, sending emails that really don't require that much attention and spending time on that. Yeah. That's where we lose what makes us human.

Yeah. lose what makes us human. And that, again, 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, or a moment of reflection or a moment of gratitude, of admiration. Being. It's just to be. You don't do much. Being is also that incredible feeling of absorbing all of life, sensing, feeling, playing, flowing where life takes you. 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. 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 alive when you do is to flow. And flow is a mix of being and doing yeah right it's not just doing the task it's really living with the task let's just break down that for people because we are taught and i see this first time with my children here at school, I have real concerns over education. I do too. 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 because it's about doing, it's about achieving, it's about grades.

And it's not just the kids. It's the kids, the parents, the teachers, everyone. Everyone's falling. Because we are swimming in the ocean where the tide is pushing everyone one way. 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. I'm inviting people to consider. It actually often requires people to swim upstream and swim against the kind of prevailing tide.

And that's hard. It's hard, but so is everything worthwhile. Yeah. 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 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 put everyone in a mold, right? So 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 geography, I would feel upset. I'd tell him, why Ali? Why didn't you just score a C? You don't like this thing. Don't waste a minute of your time. 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 that makes us have to learn everything or try everything. And that's the opposite of Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hour idea. The reason you and I write books and we enjoy it so much and they reach people and have impact is because we put in hours in writing. 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 become very good at it. 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 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 going to put 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 going to put in the hours, or you are going to put in the hours and then you're going to become a less and less good podcaster. And I think what's happening is that when I say you have to swim against the tide,

you really have to look at your kids, actually look at yourself as well, if you don't have kids, and tell yourself, what am I passionate about? What am I good at? Okay. And, and what, how much of my hour, how many of my hours are going behind that? 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? So that I live a life that is true to what I actually want to be. And that thinking, yeah, it may take you a day or two to figure out. It may take you a month or two 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. Yeah. Google X, right? Chief business officer. That will be one of the things that people will say,

man, if I could get there, life would be great. And this is the kind of big myth that I think we're both trying to bust. It's, I don't know, it's this kind of idea that, the way I articulate it in my last book was this idea that we think we want to 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 on stage in front of a thousand people, chief business officer at Google X, that's a cool job, right? So they think,

I want to be Mo, right? When I grow up, or I want to get promotions so I can get 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 their 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 want to be Mo, chief business officer of Google X, without everything, without the not seeing your children, without the not seeing your wife. You can't be Tiger Woods necessarily without the painkiller problems, the marital issues, all kinds of things that come along with that.

So we kind of have to choose our heroes with care. What are we looking for in life? Who are we choosing to model, right? 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 worked with such intelligent people. It humbles you. It really puts you in place. And the original vision was we're going to solve big problems that affect the life of a billion people or more.

And I promise you, if that dream was happening as it should, I would have dedicated my life to that, right? The challenge, interestingly, is several layers. Layer one is what you mentioned, which is what's the other component of those lives? In Solve for Happy, my first book, I call that the snapshot, right? You take a snapshot of someone on Instagram and, you know, even if it's not fake, if it's their true life, 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 don't know what's inside them during that frame. So I'm friends with lots of influential people, lots of billionaires, lots of people who are

incredibly effective in the world. And behind closed doors, when we're alone, you see the whole truth, okay? And the whole truth is nobody's living a perfect life. That's number one. whole truth is nobody's living a perfect life. That's number one. Take layer two. The idea of heroes in general is a marketing gimmick. It truly is. I mean, you can watch Spider-Man and say, I want to be Spider-Man. It's never going to happen. It's never going to happen. You can watch Tiger Woods and say, I want to be Tiger Woods. It's not going to happen. And more interestingly, you don't want it to happen. You want to be super Rangan. That's what you want to be, right?

I want to be super Mo. That's what I want to be. I don't want to be super someone else. And I think the most interesting part of us is because of the massive advertising, I call it advertising, even though it's maybe comes to you from Harvard Business Review or a magazine or a book or whatever, or a podcast that you listen to, we're constantly advertised to by what people believe we should become, right? So, you know, if you're 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 any one of us can wake up in the morning and justify putting in the hours unless they totally believed that what they're doing is the right thing to do.

Okay? And so accordingly, everyone, if you're, you know, looking for a committed relationship, 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 maybe try a different model than the traditional relationship model, you're going to go around and tell everyone, this is the right way to go.

You guys don't see, you know, you're missing this 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. Because if you behaved like them, you start to reassure them that what they're doing is they're not wasting their heartbeats. Right? Now, because of that, your only task in life is to define, yes, you need to be a superhero. But what hero? What am I? I spent my entire 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. But, you know, what's your life purpose? I would say my life's purpose is to help startups in emerging markets of the world create technologies analogous to Google. And I spent, because that was my view of my life's purpose, I spent a disproportionate

amount of my life doing it. Sitting with startups, coaching entrepreneurs, 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. And the truth is, again, context in that case is missing on many, many levels.

The most important level is this is not me. The fact that I'm so good at it doesn't make it me. Yeah. The fact that I'm so good at it doesn't make it me 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 oh yeah where there's a set amount of prioritized subjects right and i guess i could speak from from experience of the medical profession i've said this before there are many many doctors who i know who are not happy being doctors they simply went into medicine because they were straight a students at the you know the worshipped 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? Yeah, the highest paying jobs. Yeah. 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. It's a life where you have decided or you have thought about, actually, what is it that makes me tick? Or when I spoke on your podcast recently about alignment, one of my three legs of this core happiness store, 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.

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Ended up, of course, living basically a life she dreamt of. And so she continued and learned 18 dances to instructor level, if you want. And now her life is entirely around dance. Now, the society will say, if you want. And now her life is entirely around dance. Okay. Now the society will say, are you mad? I mean, you have a senior job in a senior organization and theoretically you're making a difference to the world. 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 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 better at it than another person. It is me. It's what I love to do. And by the way, it pays for my $4 t-shirts. So where's the issue? Why are we chasing what we don't need by paying with what we need and the only asset we have? How stupid is it to live your life to make another dollar, when you don't need that dollar, by paying for it with a heartbeat that you need, because you put it and it never comes back, you spend it and it never comes

back. And with your stress, with your unhappiness, with your disconnection, with your loneliness, when is it that people will sit down and say, where's my dream? What am I looking for? And I do that, Rangan, at so many levels that shock you. Okay. You know, my definition of my relationship with my daughter, my definition of my romantic relationships, my definition with my, you know, with my podcast, what I want to do with my podcast, with what I want to do with my books. with my podcast, what I want to do with my podcast,

with what I want to do with my books. It's all a moment of reflection followed by a definition of a dream, a real dream, not an implanted dream in my head. And then an attempt to achieve it. That's life. Yeah, there's so much there, Mo. 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 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, 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 want to talk about your son, Ali, very shortly, but the things he said to you when he was 14, these ideas that all you can ever make is that change in yourself and in your little world, and that little world might become bigger. It's kind of 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? I know exactly where your heart is coming from.

You know, our common friend, the wonderful Rupi, the doctor's kitchen, right? Rupi is a medical doctor working. He worked in emergencies. Yeah, yeah. So 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? And his passion

is to say there is so much health, there is so much wholesomeness in actually telling people to live differently so they don't have to end up in emergency. Do you know what I mean? I think you're completely aligned because I know where your heart is. What you're doing with this, what I'm doing with slow-mo, and as we reach millions of people at the prevention point, not at the intervention point, okay, is that define help. Define helping. Because this is the key. There are defined molds in which you would be making a difference to the world, like Google X or building new technology. You're making a difference to the world. Yeah.

But if it's not you and you are somewhere else, you'll experience a very interesting curve. 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, your new experiences. And then if it's really you, you zoom back up higher than where you were. And you have a much higher impact on the planet, on the people around you, because it's no longer, you're no longer portraying a skill, you're now portraying your soul. Okay. And when you do what you do, I promise you, I know you're an amazing doctor, but part of your soul, Rangan, which you and I feel when we have coffee, is you're a human. You connect. You care.

Right? And you're so good at communicating very complex problems. Yeah, there are many, many doctors. 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, you know, 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 are 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. Some people, Mo, might be thinking, it's okay for you, hey? 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, wrong and all right for you to talk about this stuff. You're a successful doctor, successful author, podcaster. Oh yeah, cool. Great. 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 I guess purpose in life, how does that sit for them? What would you say to them? 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 take gravity, Newton's work, for example, around the projectiles or whatever, you can apply it to this mug or you can apply it to the moon, right? mug or you can apply it to the moon, right? You know, of course, in physics, specifically, quantum physics is different, but everything that applies on subatomic level, you know, basically applies to all subatomic levels. 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 it doesn't get different when it comes to your happiness. It doesn't become different when it comes to your parenting. It doesn't become different if you're a billionaire or you're just a fresh graduate trying to find your way in life. Now, there was a professor in Harvard, Michael Norton, who did a study on, I think, several thousand participants asking them,

how happy are you on a scale of one to 10? And what would you need to get to 10? And 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. The human condition. Absolutely. It's that constant striving. In that little voice in your head, my next book, I call it the all-pervasive dissatisfaction. That regardless of what you get, you have that all-pervasive dissatisfaction saying it's not good enough. Now, I don't tell people, believe me, because everyone will have

to tread their own journey. But the truth is, I tell them, just remember me a little earlier than when your life has gone by. Now, a lot of people say, but you have it all. And I did have it all. I had so much money. I had no idea how much money I had, believe it or not. I gave it all away. And I say that publicly in front of everyone. I have enough assets to generate enough money for my wonderful ex-wife and my wonderful daughter to feel safe. 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. As I say, I wear $4 t-shirts. That's a massive difference, by the way, because if you're dreaming of $4,000 t-shirts, your life is going to be miserable chasing those t-shirts when you're actually not going to feel any difference. How much were your t-shirts and shirts when you were 29 at the peak of... I tried everything. I mean, I say this sadly, ashamed of myself, but it's okay to say that I've learned. I had 16 cars in my garage, 16 cars, right? And of those 16 cars, 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 break down, or actually breaking down, or needing to be license so that they don't break down or actually breaking down or needing to be licensed, 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. 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 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.

Right? And you know what? The more expensive they become, the more annoying they are. That's the truth. Now I Uber. 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. But that's the point. The point is, don't take my word for it. Take your micro life and ask yourself about your micro life. 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. 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 yeah isn't that

the truth of all of us so so that that all-pervasive dissatisfaction is not going to be cured by plugging more things in it yeah the only thing that cures it is to recognize it and say what's wrong with this it's beautiful i love it yeah soft it's nice and you know i wear it for a long time and it's wonderful yeah but i couldn't agree more honestly there's so much in that i mean i i don't buy new clothes these are like literally i've had all of these for five six seven years and every book shoot i turn up to people if people watch because they illustrate but they're all the same clothes yeah yeah i wear the same clothes that you saw five years ago. They're the same clothes pretty much. And this thing about cars, I think it's a really good one because I think we can unpick there.

I don't, look, just sort of full acknowledgement, I'm not a car person. I never have been. So you will see in my drive a 10 and a half year old Ford Focus C-MAX. You're going to lose some listeners right now because you said this. You're going to win a few more. But it's also not the car that people would expect someone who's successful to drive. And the wing mirror, the left wing mirror, my wife sort of bashed it somewhere about three years ago. Me and my son have got some tape on it. It's been there for three years. And people are like, when are you going to fix it? I'm like, I didn't even notice it. I honestly don't care because for me, what car I drive has no value in terms of how I feel about myself. It is simply a way of me getting from A to B.

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. There you go. 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, 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 sort of comment on that. But I also want to talk to you about in the new book that little voice in your head which is just brilliant honestly it's wonderful and I'd love the section on giving at the end but there's a line the more things you have the more things have you that's the whole that's it it, right? That is it. Look, I say this with a ton of respect. And of course, we all have our own journeys, right? But the interesting side about fancy cars, fancy fashion, and so on,

is that you 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 say this openly, I'm an engineer. I built several cars with my own hands. I love that thing. It's a piece of art for me. But to want to be seen 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 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.

Your car will get scratched, or you may lose it, as you rightly said, because of your job or whatever, losing your job or whatever. And here's the game. The game is if you define yourself with that car or that look or that body or that whatever title, as long as you define yourself by that, you're never going to be happy for two reasons. Reason number one is you're trying to constantly convince people 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. 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 going to be more disappointment because the one they will like is not even you. Okay. So deep inside you feel empty because they like your car. But why don't you like me? And that attachment. We spoke about all pervasive dissatisfaction. I,

you know, I call them the three A's. The reasons that our logical brain makes us miserable is attachment, aversion, and all pervasive dissatisfaction, right? So the attachment issue is I need something to be within my life to continue to feel complete. I need that boyfriend to not leave me. I need that, you know, a car that I can show up in. And that attachment is an absolute recipe for disaster. Now, let's be realistic. We live in a world where egos matter, sadly.

Let's be realistic. We live in a world where egos matter, sadly. If you have a vice president title on LinkedIn, you're likely to get vice president jobs. And so, of course, for some reason, when I was in the corporate world, everyone was vice president. Every CV, which actually is quite interesting because people would sit in front of me in an interview and then a minute and a half later, I know like, no, that's not true, right? Okay, or at least maybe your title is vice president, but your skills are not there yet. Okay, now, there is a value, a utility to showing to the world that you are something. I'll give you a simple example. My books are written in a highly engineered format. Okay. I use very concise sentences, facts, science data to discuss topics that are very, you know, maybe soft. So the idea of telling people, I'm an engineer, okay, or I'm a mathematician, 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, 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 Floyd fan too, let's come and talk about Pink Floyd. As long as I do that, and I don't care if people look at me and say, but I hate Pink Floyd, like you have such a horrible taste in music, and I don't care about that, then I own my ego. I own my identity, but my identity doesn't own me. If I start to become hyper protective and, and touchy around that identity, if people say, you're not really an engineer, you're a civil engineer, like, no, I want real engineering, go to mechanical or electrical engineering. And then I get offended and go like, no, and defend myself, then I'm in trouble. Because if my identity gets threatened, I get hurt by it. And here's the interesting thing, and I want to 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. So as long as you're dreaming of that Aston Martin, that means it's a bit of a stretch for you. Most people, unless you're really, really rich and famous, 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. to the world anything because I'm complete within myself. And suddenly you, I said that when I was with Stephen Bartlett on his podcast, I said, look, I mean, 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 looking for someone that will

look beyond the t-shirt and say, Hey, you know 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 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. So the idea that happiness is a choice is very provocative for many people. It upsets so many people with me. Now, I actually do agree with you firmly, as you well know. So many people with me.

Yeah. Now, I actually do agree with you firmly, as you well know. And I want to go here because there's always pushback at this point about this idea that we can choose happiness. And for me, 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. So I just want to 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 many ways, you could say that you chose happiness in potentially one of the most harrowing experiences it's

possible to have. Now, I don't want to 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 how it all fits together. You asked the second part of it before we go back to, you know, the story of Ali. Because 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? equation, really, I say happiness is your events minus your expectations, right? You look at life and events happen in your life and you compare those to how you want life to be. If the event meets or beats expectations, you're happy. If the event misses the expectations,

you're unhappy. And that's really very straightforward. So you could literally, we were talking about Aston Martins you can you could actually buy an Aston Martin sit in it and then suddenly go like there is a problem on the stitching on the you know and then feel unhappy 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 because what your expectation is that when I pay that much Aston Martin. I should be perfect. Yeah. Which by the way, with all love for Aston Martins is never true.

Okay. 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 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 going to be happy.

Okay. You know, I speak to lots. I have a very large number of friends. I speak to lots of them that will have a wonderful human being in their life. Right. And that human being will be kind and loving and, you know, so many upsides. But because of the world we live in, you know, there may be a little shorter than what the dreams of that person are, or people will go and say, but I want this and I don't want that. And as long as that's your

way of looking at life, you're never going to be happy. Okay. Regardless, if I get you together with the most attractive person on the planet, regardless, you're still going to be unhappy because we're human. There always 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, he's going to be kind, he's going to be this, he's going to be that, but he's going to 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. And I think that's where people really

get shocked. So as I said, 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 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 it. And I'm proud of it and I love it. But the thing is, it's pain. And I think this is where people miss the point. Happiness, let's talk about the opposite side. There is pain and there is suffering.

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. 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 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 that 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 were chatting over coffee about my dear friend, Dr. Jill Balty-Taylor. 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, between the moment anger is triggered in you, you get flooded with stress hormones, you react, and the hormones get flushed, or you don't, by the way, and the hormones get flushed out of your physiology is 90 seconds. 90 seconds, that's it. You can only be angry for external stimuli for 90 seconds. What happens then, part of my next book is that stress cycle is repeated. Okay? Repeated how your amygdala engaged and your stress hormone flooded your body and so on.

All of that is physiological. And then the next cycle is that 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. So your partner says something hurtful on Friday at 4pm. Saturday morning, you can wake up and say, Oh, you remember that clip from 4pm yesterday? Let's play it again. Okay, It's like, I openly call it the Netflix of unhappiness. It's unhappiness on demand, right? So 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, 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 guest, I need to record the podcast.

You know what brain? Let's not think about the thing that made me unhappy. Let's focus on this conversation with Mo. You're capable of doing that. You know, you go to work, you know, for those 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 going to come back to obsessing and being unhappy at 11 o'clock, 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. Consciously or unconsciously? Definitely unconsciously. And even when we become conscious about it, I promise you there will be people that will resist. Why? Because just like I said, there is a utility to ego. There is also a utility to becoming a victim. to ego, there is also 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 were two

years old, your brother took something and you cried and became unhappy. So mommy came and hugged you and said, okay, baby, don't worry, I'll get you ice cream, right? So we get programmed that showing unhappiness or feeling unhappiness or feeling victimized gets you a tap on the back. So we want the tap on the back. But hey, you're not six anymore, okay? And the reality, and I tell a lot of people that, I say, honestly, one of the easiest shortcuts to happiness

is to realize you're not six anymore. I mean, what you've just beautifully articulated there is actually, for many people, I would say, a harsh, uncomfortable truth. Truth. It is a truth. We do have a choice in how we react. And once you become aware of that fact, you know, 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's the story we attach to it that determines the outcome. And so many of us, 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 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 know I have choice there, I'm going to practice choosing the empowering story. 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. Before we get back to this week's episode, I just wanted to let you know that I am doing my very first national UK theatre tour. I am planning a really special evening where I share how you can break free from the habits that are holding you back and make meaningful changes in your life that truly last. It is called the Thrive

Tour. Be the architect of your health and happiness. So many people tell me that health feels really complicated, but it really doesn't need to be. In my live event, I'm going to simplify health and together we're going to learn the skill of happiness, the secrets to optimal health, how to break free from the habits that are holding you back in your life, and I'm going to teach you how to make changes that actually last. Sound good? All you have to do is go to drchatterjee.com forward slash tour, and I can't wait to see you there. This episode is also brought to you by the Three Question Journal, the journal that I designed and created in partnership with Intelligent Change.

Now, journaling is something that I've been recommending to my patients for years. It can help improve sleep, lead to better decision-making, and reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression. It's also been shown to decrease emotional stress, make it easier to turn new behaviours into long-term habits and improve our relationships. There are of course many different ways to journal and as with most things it's important that you find the method that works best for you. One method that you may want to consider is the one that I outline in the three question journal.

In it, you will find a really simple and structured way of answering the three most impactful questions I believe that we can all ask ourselves every morning and every evening. Answering these questions will take you less than five minutes, but the practice of answering them regularly will be transformative. Since the journal was published in January, I have received hundreds of messages from people telling me how much it has helped them and how much more in control of their lives they now feel. Now, if you already have a journal or you don't actually want to buy a journal,

that is completely fine. I go through in detail all of the questions within the three-question journal, that is completely fine. I go through in detail all of the questions within the three question journal completely free on episode 413 of this podcast. But if you are keen to check it out, all you have to do is go to drchatterjee.com forward slash journal or click on the link in your podcast app. This is pure wisdom, I promise you. Events are neutral. They're neutral. You can charge them negatively or positively.

Oh, and more importantly, you can react to them. Even if they're negative, you can react to them negatively or positively. One guest I would suggest, I don't know if you had him here, Arun Gandhi, the grandson of Gandhi, was on my podcast, wrote a book called The Gift of Anger. And I sat 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. And you can use it to, you know, stand up and change the world, right? It's a choice.

It's really interesting. More interestingly, again, a guest that I really recommend is Edith Eger, one of my favorite conversations in a lifetime. Okay. Me too. Yeah. You hosted her. Yeah.. Yeah, you hosted her. Yeah. I mean, look at that.

Someone that is in the ultimate harshness of the world, 16-year-old, beautiful ballet dancer, you know, drafted to Auschwitz. And Edith, I asked her, I said, so what did you think of the soldiers that did that to you? And she said, I love them. Poor, poor them. I was like, what? I cried.

I swear I cried. In life, 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. Look at that. Look at the choice of how she looks at the story. And now she's changing our world. I'm in the middle of my 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. I want to get across. I'm genuinely feeling zero stress because I haven't created an idea in my head of what this talk needs to be. 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 again, it's this narrative that public speaking is stressful. Well, hold on a minute. Let's just question everything. Who says? Like, when did that become a truth?

Like 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 sound check and, 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, oh, mate, I'm on stage in five minutes. Do you want to?

Yeah, he went to take a seat. And I just went on. And then I just spoke from my heart. That's it. And it's gone incredibly well. People are really resonating. I feel it's less performative than ever before. It's more authentic.

But the point I wanted to bring up was every night is different because I'm different every night. 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. And what I say to everyone is, I was not the same person after that conversation as I was before. I can't unknow what I know. I can't unlearn what I've learnt from her. And, you know, like the things you're sharing, one of the things that I think about every day is this idea that she said that, Prongen, 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 mind

yep 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, you know, you don't understand. You say happiness is a choice. You don't understand my life. So many of us, we live in stories that we stay stuck in. And those stories can be changed. They can be restated.

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

Right. So, nobody would blame you if you were... When was that, if you don't mind sharing? 2014. blame you if you when was that if you don't mind sharing at 2014 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 okay you if you were, you gave up everything, you just stayed inside all day, you just watched box sets, you drank, whatever, like you were numbing your pain. It's completely justified. Absolutely. Perhaps you could explain what happened and then how you reacted to that, because I think there's a lot of wisdom in there that I think will help people 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 this is simplest surgery known to humankind i have my append appendix scar here. Yeah, I had it when I was seven in India. It's a few, it's not a long or a complex, but mistakes happened, five to be specific. And Ali left our world. I mean, preventable, reversible, fixable. 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. I loved it so much. He was much taller. This is what you want for your kids to be bigger and smarter. And, you know, he was amazing. And he hugged me and said, okay, I'll see you in a bit, Fat Hobbit. Okay.

And then he went. He left. Now, you take the surprise, you take the disappointment, you take the anger. And I looked at the surgeon and I'll tell you very openly, I looked at the surgeon and my brother is a surgeon and I saw the panic in his eyes. I promise you that surgeon, Ali went to the operating room at 10 PM at around 11, the surgeon came out and said, something went wrong, but we're working on it. And I could see the panic in his eyes. Literally, I know that he's a father of children

as well, and he literally tried his best to save Ali. But you and I know, mistakes happen. Humans make mistakes. The question then becomes, what choice do I have? Because a lot of people will look at this 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 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. Maybe not as appealing or as, you know, seemingly logical, but there are other choices. One other choice was what I did. 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. there's nothing you can do. 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 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, in our world so that I believe that Ali is still in

our world somehow. Selfish, by the way. But I wrote Solve for Happy simply for my son. I had a mission that was called 10 Million Happy and 10 Million Happy may appear, if you ask me, as a mission that is trying 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. But at the time, the grieving parent was basically saying, 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. And it was a frantic choice because I wanted to remember what he taught me before it disappeared from my being. It's also a choice, by the way, to do so many things in life that might not be as extreme. A simple thing when you're grieving is to choose 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 we didn't expect ali and he became the biggest gift i have ever been given the biggest gift ever 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. I need my son. I need him to be here all the time because I don't know if I will ever see him again

because I don't know where he where he is right now and there is a lot of spiritual work that needs to happen for someone to accept death but you don't have to be spiritual to accept death because by the way you're going to accept it sooner or later it's going to happen to every single one of us and there is no way you can reject it, sadly. But you might as well tell yourself mathematically that I have absolute certainty that I will be where my son is sometime in the future. I have 100% certainty, more certainty than, you know, that I will walk out of here alive. Okay? That's the truth. Death is the truth of life. If you're alive, then it's going to 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 pain. That's the pain of missing him.

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. First of all, thank you for sharing that. You describe yourself as a happy person. Happiest I've ever been. 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 right that that may seem like a contradiction to some people yeah life is all contradictions huh you may love someone and want to rip their head off when you're upset at them, right? Okay. That's a contradiction. You may love what you do, but feel tired doing it. Okay. You, you know, you may want to be in Manchester, but also want to be in London. 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. 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. It doesn't matter what life is. If you're okay with it,

you're peaceful with it, you feel that calm and that calm is how I describe happiness. Okay? You often go to the gym, and your muscles are sore, and they hurt, but you're okay with it, as a matter of fact, you love it. You understand? It's pain, but at the same time, you're okay, you're peaceful, you're happy that you have that pain.

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? But there was a point in my life after Ali left and Solve for Happy published. Solve for Happy published in 32 languages. It became an international bestseller in, I think, 20-some of them. You know, it really, really reached millions of people. Wow. 20 some of them, you know, it really, really reached millions of people. And not in the book format, but you and I know that books are not the only format, right?

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, she's my best friend. So I asked her, I said, I need to ask you something. She's my best friend. So I asked her, I said, I need to ask you something. If I had told you, if I had told Ali that if he died, 10, 20, 30 million people are going to be happy as a result, what do you think 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. And perhaps that's what happened. That he, 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, 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 him. Now, of course, 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. Life doesn't give you the paradox of being in Manchester and London at the same time. You have to make a choice. And if you're forced to be in London, you have to live fully in London. Do you understand? fully in London. Do you understand? And so there is, you know, in many, many of the spiritual faith, and I think specifically in Hinduism and Islam, it's actually most prominent, is the idea of surrender, not as a form of weakness, okay? But it's the ultimate form of strength is to tell yourself, look, if a train is coming on the track and if it hits me, it's going to kill me. It's absolutely stupid to tell

yourself, but I'm going to stand on the track anyway. Right. The idea of surrendering to the nature of life, that the train is more powerful than you. That's the wise way to go through life. And you have to surrender to the idea that, yeah, it's very painful that Ali left. But he did. 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. The happiness equation that you've come up with, 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, you know, if you have to drive to work each day through traffic, well, if your expectation is that you're not going to get traffic and you're going to have a smooth route to work each day, you're going to get pissed off every day. Good luck, yeah. Right? Whereas if you go into it and go, hey, I know that most of these journeys, route to work each day, you're going to get pissed off every day. Good luck, yeah. Right?

Whereas if you go into it, go, hey, I know that most of these journeys, there's going to be someone pulling out in front of me. I'm going to be late sometimes. There's going to be traffic. Then actually when that comes about, you're like, yeah, I knew it was going to happen. I'm cool with it. Even better, you take a good podcast with you or a good music with you and you enjoy it.

Exactly. You change your expectation and therefore suddenly everything becomes easier, right? You know, I see this, 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, what do you think of this equation? Kids love it, by the way, they got it straight away. And my daughter, well, both the kids, but she has, she's only nine, but the wisdom in her, I'm like, man, she teaches me stuff. And my son, to be fair, that says there is innate wisdom in a lot of our children, if we want to hear it. And we were talking about this idea that many people get disappointed on their birthdays, right? And there's a few experiences in the family

and friends and stuff where that's happened. And if you look at it through the lens of your equation, kind of it says, if you have an idea that on my birthday, things are going to go like this and people are going to do this to me and we're going to do that, you are literally setting yourself up for an unhappy birthday 100 and this has happened you see this happening or 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 very useful in situations, how would you apply that model to your son dying? How does happiness work there? Or does it not quite fit? So there are two ways you look at it. One way is to say, what's the expectation of someone dying? The expectation is 100%. 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, you know, appendectomy going wrong? And I'll tell you openly, I spoke to my brother. I said, I told you he was a surgeon. And I said, Khaled, this happened. Is it even possible? When he called me 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 mistake, we lose a patient. And of course, like everything that has life in it, we try and try and try and try and

try and try to make it not go for mistakes. Like the FAA will have all of those regulations for no aeroplanes to have accidents. But because of the frequency of those things happening, there is still a margin of error. And I was surprised. I think the second largest reason for death in the US is medical malpractice. So if you want to be hyperlogical, and I only can say that now,

yeah, losing a person in an operation is to be expected. But that's not how the equation works. Yeah, losing a person in an operation is to be expected. Okay? Now, but that's not how the equation works. The equation, basically, when you lose a loved one, the struggles you have with are about your future, not your past. Okay? They're more about, I'm going to 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 standing in front of the train. You know, the train is to life with all its mighty wheels. It's not going to 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. Yeah. Okay. It could have happened, you know, 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 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 most torturing questions I had is, we have the ego of a father, right? You and I, we are fathers. We love our children. So the ego, the persona of a father is supposed to protect their children. Okay. And I drove Ali to that hospital. 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 not realistic.

The reality is I drove my child to the closest, quite significant size, well-known hospital. Okay. He was in agony. And what the reality is as a father, I tried to take him 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 verified that and And yes, he did. Now, you set your expectations every time you feel that you're unhappy or sad 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, you know, when I looked at that feeling of you should have driven him to another hospital,

is that realistic, okay? Yeah. I mean, a father with his son in agony and the hospital around the corner and the surgeon has done it several hundred times before, right? What more do you expect from me? I'm not a psychic.

I'm not an oracle, right? And so my brain is torturing me, but the expectation should be set right. I tried the best I could. And sometimes we try the best we can and life decides differently. You know, over the last few minutes, as you've been describing this,

a thought pops into my head, Mo, which is there may be a childless couple or a childless person listening and who desperately wants to have children. 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 for the gift of having him. Did you sue the doctor? No, no. Again, expectations. Because which surgeon wakes up in the morning and says, I'm going to kill someone today and destroy my career?

I get that. The thing is, I feel a lot of people, their initial thing would be, well, I'm going to sue the doctor. I'm going to spend the next two years on legal fees. I'm going to get this. I'm going to get justice. I got justice.

Okay. So what mattered to me was that no other father, or at least 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 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 going to come into this right away. We'll find out what's happening. But the idea here was not to destroy the doctors. How did you not have that emotion? Because I think a lot of humans would have had that emotion. As I say, you talk about this when you realized early on, you know, when you had everything, the money, the cars, the clothes, you know, anything that anyone could possibly want to buy, you had. And you said you were clinically depressed. So you learned, and I know Ali taught you a lot about what happiness truly is.

happiness truly is. For me, it feels as though you had been in the arena of learning happiness, and then you get put into this harrowing situation, this real-life scenario, and you were able to apply a lot of what you'd learned maybe more quickly than many other people because of that. Is that a fair reflection? It is. You never really learn everything, but you get closer and closer, right? And I write in a very unusual way. I write the last sentence of every book first. And the last sentence of Solve for Happy 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. But if you want to live in your fantasy story that you told yourself and expect that life will conform, you're never going to find happiness, ever. Happiness is found when you acknowledge the story that is actually happening and deal with it. So the truth is that doctor, and I know that for certain, was trying to alleviate the pain of my son. for certain was trying to alleviate the pain of my son. He didn't walk into that operating room with the intention of, I'm going to kill that child. He didn't. Okay. Now, interestingly though, there are mistakes that happen and the mistakes need to be corrected. And I said, you know, we took the right measures so that nobody has to suffer this again. But interestingly,

the right measures so that nobody has to suffer this again. 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 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 real understanding, I don't talk about this from a spiritual point of view, by the way, chapters 13 and 14 in Solve for Happy, and I also touched on it in that little voice in your head, are trying to address that metaphysical part of us, which is 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 that, 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. But that statement gave us the civilization that we're in, but at the same time, that statement is wrong. 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.

Yeah. Right? I mean, I cannot measure love, but I know I felt it, right? I cannot, you know, 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. Yeah. Now, I took that and solved for happy, and I spoke about it from a very scientific point of view. And the problem with science is that it's so complex that it's

multi-disciplined. And unless you bring the disciplines together, you don't see the full truth. And nobody's capable of bringing the disciplines together. But let me give you two very simple examples. If you understand the theory of relativity, and the idea of the space-time continuum, and 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 able to perceive the advancement of time, we have to reside outside time. You cannot perceive this studio when you're inside it. For us to perceive this studio, you have to stand outside and look at it. Okay. 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 also applies to time. The only way you can perceive the arrow of time is to exist outside the arrow of time. And that basically means that the part of you that is aware is non-physical. It's not within. It's not contained within the physical world. Now, call that part of you that is aware life. Let's not call it soul. Let's call it spirit.

Let's just call it soul, let's call it spirit, let's just call it life. That life 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 interpretation of quantum physics, to simplify it, we basically say 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 saying of 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 quantum physics together and you would realize that this life, form of life that is us, that makes us, animates us, actually is what creates the physical, it's not the other way around. So basically if for the Big Bang is one big mass that gets condensed and then explodes right if it explodes you know to form planet earth you know 4.3 billion years ago to to form life you know two three million years ago and so on and so forth it needed to be observed through those years to exist if if there was no life to observe the universe collapsing, you know, the matter collapsing and expanding,

exploding 13.7 billion years ago, there wouldn't be that expansion at all, right? So the game is life existed before the physical. Life is always outside the physical. So if you really look at the, I hope 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. I mean, let me say this again.

You realize that death is not the opposite of life. Death is the opposite of birth. You come to this world through a portal called birth. You leave this 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. If life exists outside space-time, then who was born first? Who lived first? Was it me or Ali? Right? No. 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 want to call it soul, spirit, whatever it is, exists despite, regardless 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. And I,

I don't know if people will, will understand this, but I, I speak to him very frequently in very, very, very predictable ways. Okay. With messages that are, I mean, let me not go into that because it might appear to be woo and I am a scientist, right? But no, there is a connection between us and the rest of being. There is a connection between my true essence and his essence and your essence, okay? At so many levels that our hyper focus on the physical world as humans has lost us the ability to connect to. Yeah. I mean, there's so much there.

This allows you to continue to have a relationship with Ali. It's just that he's no longer here. Not in a physical form. In a physical form. And this is a realization I've had in the last couple of years with my own dad who died just over nine years ago. Certainly not the same thing. Your parent dying as a son dying. 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. I think about dad and his ideas and his life and it infuses what I do. You know, it's a different way of looking at things. It's like life is there before and after. I really love that.

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, right? Because in reality, that concept of space-time basically allows us as beings, not as humans, 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. That was what, two weeks before he died, I think. Yeah, two weeks before he died, he had that dream that he was everywhere and part of everyone. Two weeks before he died, he had that dream that he was everywhere and part of everyone.

And in an interesting way, that's in many spiritual teachings, the definition of death is to be relieved of this physical burden and basically return to the source, if you want. The way we've been brought up, the way society has taught us, what we see around us, clearly, it clearly defines and shapes how we view the world. And once you start to question that, you can go down a deep rabbit hole, right? Endless, endless, endless. 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 consider, they have nine senses. We consider ourselves to have five senses, right? So, 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.

Right? Like one of their senses, for example, is balance, right? Balance in body, balance in mind, balance in spirits. And it really, I love things like this because 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's a section in the book, I think it's in the new one, where you, or maybe it's in Solve a Happy, where you write about words and how limiting words are, because we can only describe our experience through the words that we have absolutely and if and they're so limiting they're so limiting and you know what one of the things you were talking about before 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 in someone's life and their experience that we can't measure that really truly matters. Absolutely. And science, 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. Science, for me at least, is helpful to improve my understanding, enhance my understanding. But science is not all-encompassing that it can, as of yet, explain everything. You're spot on. I mean, I say openly science is a religion.

Yeah. It is a fate. It is a form of faith. It is or has become. It has become. Yeah. Right? And no, It is or has become. It has become. Yeah. Right? And no, it is the scientific method.

It's one of the methods. Yeah. Okay. By the way, spirituality is another method. Okay. And you cannot exist without all of them to see a full perspective. You need a bit of science, a bit of philosophy, a bit of mathematics, a bit of spirituality, a bit of biology to understand this very, very complex, very complex world that we live in. And by the way, you're never going to fully understand it.

There's no way. Right? And I think the most interesting part of this is how we attach to those concepts so much and believe them to be true. One of my favorite books of all time is Freakonomics. I've not read it actually. Oh my God, it is so eye-opening. 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. That your real estate agent is not actually interested in getting you the best deal, they're just interested in getting their commission, okay? And if you do the mathematics,

their commissions are higher if they don't get you the best deal. 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 one leasing and so on, there are so many interesting dynamics, right? And, you know, in terms of pricing between the seller and the buyer or the renter, you know, the landlord and the one leasing and so on. There are so many interesting dynamics, right? And, you know, when you really think about it, how many doctors go to work every day because they want to save lives or how many are there because they want to make money, right? And it's quite interesting. 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? Then the real driver, the real objective is they need to be reelected, perhaps to be able to serve us. But if they cannot be elected,

they can't serve us. And I think that idea of questioning, again, in that little voice in your head, chapter two, I speak about context. 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 there is a Wikipedia page, for example, with 500 words on it that mean the word lion. Wikipedia page, for example, with 500 words on it that mean the word lion. Okay. And it could be from, you know, it's so wide ranging, because the word Assad is also the name of a, you know, of a person. Okay. The word Ghadamfar is also, it also means a man that's very good in bed. And the word Hanafis is actually the beetles, but 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. You have to look at the context and most of us don't revisit contexts of things that we were told to actually live a life that is true because we're so badly marketed it to yeah i mean there's so many things there um you know my parents from calcutta and india and bengali is or was the spoken language at home when i grew up And there's no real, you know, no one really uses the word thank you in Bengali. And, you know, I grew up in, 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. But actually, that doesn't really exist in the Bengali language, at least not the way it's commonly spoken. And it's inferred with

the way you say it, the way you say something infers the thanks and then just broadening out to kind of perception and the stories we create. It's easy, therefore, for someone to think, oh, they're rude. They didn't say thank you. So interesting. I love that. And it's like, well, wait a minute. But through the lens that they speak, actually, that isn't part of it. And it's something you have to, oh, in English, oh, you say please and thank you. That's it's, and I think that perspective, that context, it really, it goes back to even Edith Eager in this idea that we create these prisons inside

our minds. 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. Absolutely. You know, 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, you know, 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, like, okay, does they, do they think they're better than me? And it's so interesting. I've experienced that where 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, oh no, I don't want to put you out. And it's almost insulting something. No, no, I've invited you in. I've invited you in for a meal. You know, what's all this noise around it? It's kind of like, what have I done wrong? And I think 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. I once was given a translation,

a dictionary of the British words and meanings and you know if you're not British you don't realize it but when you say something like it's not too bad we think that it means it's good right but it's actually in the right 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 yeah well just to finish off um this quite wonderful conversation you know the broad theme has been happiness and relationships are clearly one of the most important ingredients for us to live a happy and contented life. Relationships with other people, 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, I think in the early years of my marriage, I think I was very immature about what a marriage really is.

There is a perception of what love is that typically comes to us from Hollywood. Yeah, romance, basically. Yeah. And I know you've got some interesting thoughts on this. I wonder if you could just share, 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. I fell in love six times. I fall in love six times.

I fell in love six times for sure. 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. Yeah, so let's begin by saying relationships are a lot more than just romantic relationships. And I think love is way too grand to be fit within the word romance. 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 a legal contract, if you don't mind me saying this, which is not true at all. It's almost like an engineered process followed by a legal contract. So it's basically, we're going to go out and then I'm going to check those things and then I'm going to like you and then we're going to kiss and then we're going to do this and then all right. That process, interestingly, is sort of like, if it doesn't happen that way, then it's basically maybe not the right story or something like that. And there are, you know, some journeys that are favorable, you know, it's like, oh, if we meet, you know, serendipitously, and then this happens,

and I can tell that that story to our kids, you know, it's going to be more wonderful. While you and I know in, you know, in, in parts of the world where arranged marriage, for example, used to be quite big for a very long time, that there are other stories and other narratives that are actually much more successful. There was a very good book 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. And it was like 4x more, you know, more, more successful in terms of 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 woman I met as my college 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? When we had our kids, 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 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 I hate to say this you know, 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 up, okay. Butterflies and excitement and honeymoon likes, you know, experiences, and then it declines. And like the product adoption curve, if you remember it, just that S curve, you need to ignite it again or end it, okay? Or live the rest of your life as a vegetable, basically, you know, no excitement, no fun, no life, and so on. And for us, for me and Nibel, basically every time

we changed, both of us changed, I was like, 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, 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 will decline, love will last. So me and Nibel are no longer together. 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. So let's keep love out of the equation. This 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 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 generation that was so stupid that they didn't accept same-sex relationships and romance as, you know, as the world finally 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.

One of which is that traditional story that Hollywood sold to us, but there is an infinite number of other models, infinite. I promise you. So I'm working on this, as you know, it's going to be my book 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 comes from on the scale of freedom to confinement, where do you stand?

And there are so many scales. If you define that, it goes back to our original conversation. If you define that and know where you are in life, suddenly your choices might be so different than the choices you're actually making. Okay. You know, I had an experience once with a wonderful, wonderful person. I travel all the time. And, you know, I lived in the Dominican Republic for around six months. Okay. And at the beginning, we really got

very, very attracted to each other. And I said, but that's wrong. You know, I'm not going to be here for long. I'm here for a few months and it's going to end after that. And it's going to be painful for the both of us. And then eventually we ended up in a place where she said, but wouldn't it be wonderful to be with each other for the few months, right? Very different model than the original model that will say, no, it has to be this way or it doesn't work. Okay. So start with knowing yourself. Second, start with loving yourself. Loving yourself is probably the biggest missing thing in the world today.

Yeah, I agree. Because if you don't value that self of yours, you accept the wrong person. And the most interesting thing, by the way, is whatever it is that you are, tall, short, curvy, skinny, whatever, there is someone that's crazy about this. Right? Absolutely.

So if you manage to say, I love me as I am, and I'm going to advertise me as I am. Advertise me as I am, meaning this is who I am. By the way, if you don't like'll, this is what most people get upset with me, is understand the economics of love and relationships. And this is a very, very interesting thing. 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, a Shelby Cobra from 1960 some, okay, 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 problem we have in our world today is when we go through relationships, we try to market to everyone. Okay? So we try to be available for every possible mate. And as a result, our value becomes diminished.

I tell everyone, man or woman, gay or straight, 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 you're going through on the app will completely say, oh, that's not what I want. Right. But around a thousand people will go like, oh my God, that's my dream. She exists or he exists.

And for them, your value will go through the roof. So embrace that. Don't- Absolutely. Embrace that. So to find love, love yourself and do what you love. It's as simple as that. Oh, this next one sounds fascinating.

You have an open invitation to come back on the show anytime you want to talk about anything you want. You make coffee, I come. Yeah, well, we'll do that. We'll definitely go deep on relationships next time for that next book. Mo, look, I've really enjoyed speaking to you. I still feel we haven't even scratched the surface of the things we could talk about. 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 going to 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? a little bit more out of their life than they currently have, what would you say to them?

I'd say 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 in success. Okay. By that, I mean, if I told you that if you do something for seven days, 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, you know, four times a week, you know, you'll have a more attractive, you know, physical form, would you do it? Okay, if that's what you wanted. 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 that you need to practice. So, right, it's a set of group, it's a group of

people around you that encourage you to work out on your happiness a little harder. OK, it's a set of beliefs that you need to learn if you want it to actually if you want it to accept a life of happiness. And so I tell people openly, just if you want to live a happier life, go to the gym four times a week. happier life, go to the gym four times a week, right? Spend an hour a day listening to a podcast, you know, reading a book, watching a movie, a documentary or something like that. Surround yourself by people who understand happiness and are happy all the time or most of the time. Switch off your news feed that is killing you and scaring you about the world. Choose to feel differently about things. I posted on Instagram, a very successful post a couple of days ago about Ukraine. And I basically said, look, I'm angry.

I feel angry that I don't approve of the violence. I don't approve of the injustice. But I can also, I mean, the question is, what good is angry doing for Ukraine? Is it changing anything? Is it making their life better? And 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, you know. And I think those choices, those choices are the exact point of the happiness gem. 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 track and we get there. Yeah, really powerful, really empowering. I'd encourage everyone to pick up your books. They're wonderful. You know, Soul for Happy, of course, one from a few years back. But the new one, That Little Voice in Your Head, Adjust the Code That Runs Your Brain. 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 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.

His voice, 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? Well done, fat hobbit. Ali didn't speak much at all. It was really, really, really unbelievable. You know, like a wise sage, Ali would listen for hours and hours and hours and then say four words, hours and then say four words, four words. Before he died, he told me four, you know, eight words really, and they changed my life. 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 he was sitting here, he would have said, you got it, fat hobbit. Because in reality, he 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. that I don't need, okay? That only gave me joy when I gave it away. 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, 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 thank you ma thank you really hope you enjoyed that conversation now as always have a think about one thing that you can

take away from this episode of the podcast and start applying into your own life. And if you can, why not share that one thing with someone in your network, a friend or a family member or even a work colleague. Thank you so much for listening. Have a wonderful week. Always remember, you are the architects of your own health. Making lifestyle changes always worth it. Because when you feel better, you live more.