Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - How to Find Happiness, Peace & Purpose Even When Life Feels Hard with Mo Gawdat #596
Episode Date: November 19, 2025We all want to be happy. Yet the harder we chase it, the more elusive happiness it can seem. This week’s returning guest podcast believes the answer does not lie in changing our circumstances, but i...n changing how we see them. Mo Gawdat is the former Chief Business Officer of Google [X] and the author of multiple bestselling books, including Solve for Happy and That Little Voice in Your Head. Following the tragic death of his son Ali, Mo has made happiness his primary topic of research, diving deeply into literature and conversing on the topic with some of the wisest people in the world. Mo actually came on my podcast to talk about relationships and how he believes technology and AI can help us transform them, but when we started chatting our conversation went off in a completely different direction. We ended up having a wonderfully deep and thought provoking conversation that ended up being almost 3 hours - so, I have decided to split up the conversation into 2 different episodes. This week’s episode is the first half of our conversation, and the second half will come out next week. In this week’s episode, Mo shares what he’s learned about happiness, suffering and the true nature of life and death. We explore what it really means to say that “happiness is a choice,” and why that perspective can coexist with deep compassion for pain and loss. During our conversation, we discuss: ● Why happiness isn’t dependent on external circumstances – and how it’s possible to find peace even in difficult times. ● How reframing our thoughts and expectations can shift our emotional experience of life. ● What Mo learned about happiness growing up in Egypt, and how seeing suffering around him shaped his sense of gratitude. ● The powerful lessons he drew from losing his son, Ali, and how grief can open a path to love and meaning. ● Why suffering can be one of our greatest teachers, showing us what truly matters. ● How our thoughts can keep pain alive – and why letting go of the mental replay of past events is an act of wisdom. ● Mo’s belief that death is not the end, and how physics and spirituality can point to the same truth about consciousness. Mo helps us all to see that happiness isn’t fragile or fleeting; it’s a state of being we can nurture, even when life feels hard. His story is a testament to the strength of the human heart and our endless capacity to find meaning in love. I hope you enjoy listening. Support the podcast and enjoy Ad-Free episodes. Try FREE for 7 days on Apple Podcasts https://apple.co/feelbetterlivemore. For other podcast platforms go to https://fblm.supercast.com. Thanks to our sponsors: https://www.boncharge.com/livemore https://www.betterhelp.com/livemore https://airbnb.co.uk/host https://www.vivobarefoot.com/livemore Show notes https://drchatterjee.com/596 DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or qualified healthcare provider. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website.
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Holding on to a grudge only hurts you.
Never hurts the other person.
It's like drinking poison and hoping the other person would die.
It's not very clever when you really think about it.
Just forgive, accept that life comes with stories and benefits
and just enjoy that you've moved to another experience.
Hey guys, how you doing?
I hope you're having a good wheat so far.
My name is Dr. Rongan Chatterjee,
and this is my podcast, Feel Better, Live More.
We all want to be happy, yet the harder we chase it, the more elusive happiness can seem.
While this week's guest believes that happiness does not come from changing our circumstances, but in changing how we see them.
Mo Goudat is the former chief business officer of Google X and the author of multiple best-selling books, including Soul for Happy and That Little Voice in Your Head.
Following the tragic death of his son, Ali, Mo has made happiness his primary topic of research,
diving deeply into the literature and conversing on the topic with some of the wisest people in the world.
Now, I've actually decided to put my conversation with Mo out across two separate episodes.
Mo actually came onto my podcast to talk about relationships and how he believes technology and AI can help us transform.
transform them. But when we started chatting, our conversation went off in a completely different
direction. We ended up having a quite wonderful conversation that ended up lasting well over two
hours. And so I've decided to put out the first half of our conversation today and the second half
next week. In this week's episode, the first half of our deep dive conversation, we discuss
what it really means to say that happiness is a choice
and why that perspective can coexist
with deep compassion for pain and loss,
why happiness is not actually dependent
on external circumstances
and how it's possible to find peace
even when life feels difficult.
What more learnt about happiness
from growing up in Egypt,
the powerful lessons he drew from the death of his son,
why suffering can be one of our greatest teachers,
how our thoughts are what keep pain alive and most believe that death is not the end
and how physics and spirituality can point to the same truth about consciousness.
This is a moving, emotional and thought-provoking conversation
that helps us see that happiness is not fragile or fleeting.
It's a state of being that we can nurture even when life feels hard.
And Mo's story, I think, is a testament to the strength of the human heart
and our endless capacity to find meaning through love.
As I think about your work, as I read your books,
it seems to me that there are at least three things that you believe
that not everyone else in the world believes.
Is that true?
I'd like to be informed about those.
Okay, so I thought we'd start by going through those three things and getting your take on them.
So you passionately believe that happiness is a choice.
100%.
Not everyone shares that perspective.
Yeah.
Absolute happiness is not anyone's choice.
Suffering is part of life by definition.
But choosing to be happier is 100% within your grasp.
Everyone absolutely has the ability to learn.
skill or to reframe a thought or to surround themselves by what they need to find a little bit
of a happier life. That's absolutely no doubt. And so if you can change yourself from, say, minus
1 to minus 0.5 or from minus 1 to plus 0.5, then that by definition means you have a choice. And so
that choice is not absolute, but it's definitely there when it comes to a relative state of
happiness. The idea of absolute happiness versus becoming happier, I find really interesting. So
let's go to an extreme scenario. I think you've touched on it already, this idea that let's say
someone is living in incredible struggle. And there are lots of things going on in their life
outside of their control. The natural belief that many people take from that is if those external
circumstances changed, I would be happier.
Correct.
How does that sit alongside your perspective that happiness is a choice?
So that's not always, that belief is not true because, you know, many people who don't have
those circumstances are still unhappy and many people who have those circumstances are happy.
So you see, the idea is there is no inherent value of happiness in anything.
You know, the joke I always make is that, you know, rain doesn't make you happy or unhappy.
Honestly, rain depends on what you want from life.
If it's, you know, if it's your ex's wedding, you'd like rain.
Rain is a good idea, right?
And so basically, the externalization of my happiness is because of what the world is giving me
in an interesting way is a six-year-old behavior.
It's basically giving up on your...
autonomy on your agency and your own happiness by saying, you see, you know, life is giving me
lemons again. And the idea here is that, as I said, you know, again, to have the proper empathy,
there are people in the world where it actually is very difficult to be happy. It's, you know,
they've lost, you know, they've lost their family or they're in a war zone or they're, you know,
going through a very difficult breakup or, you know, there could be reasons.
you know, they have chronic pain or some kind of a chronic illness or, you know, you and I have
experienced working with people in those states in our work. And yeah, it becomes difficult to find
happiness. It even becomes difficult to find happier, you know, states at that time. But truth is,
most of the time, for those who choose to blame life for their unhappiness, whatever life would
give them, they'll find something to blame. You see, the idea is, as I always try to teach,
happiness is a difference, the difference between the events of your life's, you know,
the events of your life and your expectations of how life should be. And so, interestingly,
you go to some of the places where the best quality of life exists, you know, where the
subjective well-being is very high and you'll still see very high suicide rates, reason being, you know,
when your government gives you health care
and gives you unemployment,
you know, payments and they'll take care of your every need.
Somehow, somehow, in our always ambitious minds, let's call them,
your mind will go like, okay, so if the government can do all of this,
why is my girlfriend still annoying?
You know, like, where's my service level agreement?
I signed a service level agreement that the world is always,
going to give me everything I need to find happiness. And if the world fails, then I'll be unhappy.
And the question is, where's that agreement? Show it to me. I mean, I completely agree with your
perspective that happiness is a choice. It's a skill that we can cultivate. It's a skill, 100%.
Once we know how to do it. And I wonder how much your upbringing in Egypt influences your perspective here. And the reason I ask that is because
I was born and brought up in the UK, but my parents were immigrants from India.
And you can see the difference.
You can see the difference.
And every other summer, we would go for the entire school British summer holidays to Kolkata in India.
And I often reflect back to those days now and go, wow, I would repeatedly meet and see people
in what we would regard here in the West as poverty.
but their whole sense of being was light
there was a contentment
there was a happiness
as you said before and as I said before
there are so many millionaires
multi-millionaires
who are deeply unhappy
miserable
more often than not actually
exactly because often the drive
to go out there and achieve
and show the world that you were something
that came from a place of lack
yeah that was the story of my life
I mean, growing up in Egypt, happiest person ever.
I remember vividly, you know, I would, nothing would dent my happiness.
It's, you know, in those societies, you get two very beneficial happiness advantages.
One is that you see misery all around you, you see suffering all around you,
you see lack and need all around you.
So it reminds you of how blessed you are, right?
The reality is if your expectations are, I may not be able to eat today, you know,
if someone gives you a bowl of rice,
you're very, very happy.
And that, I think, is the reality of a place like India.
You know, people value what they get.
They don't, they don't feel disgruntled about what they didn't get
because they can easily see.
I know, in my first book, So for Happy,
I basically call this looking down.
And the idea is that, of course,
if you look up at, you know,
all of the, of the Ferraris in Mayfair,
you'd say that you'd think that life is unfair to you,
but if you look down to people,
in war zones or people who are starving,
suddenly you realize, holy, I mean, like,
I didn't contribute to that.
I could have been born there myself.
Yeah.
Right?
And somehow that reminder really creates a sense of realism in you.
Okay.
Then I, you know, I became very successful.
And I remember in my late 20s,
when I was so focused on collecting so much wealth
that I didn't need and, you know,
feeling frustrated when things,
things didn't go my way and, you know, feeling anxious when my daughter interrupted my time
when I was focused on a silly email or a stock chart, you know, these were created by me,
not by life, okay? And the misery was my work. It was, you know, life was giving me more and
more and more and more. And I was constantly disgruntled with, why is it not perfect? Again,
the service level agreement. But you see, the other interesting thing is,
And you deeply, deeply look at life.
You need your basic needs and love.
Okay.
And if you get your basic needs and love,
it's not difficult to work on your mind
to get into a state of happiness.
Okay?
If, you know, of course,
there are many people that have their basic needs and love,
but don't work on their mind.
And so they never find happiness.
But I'd ask everyone who has those two in their life,
to really think deeply about how blessed they are.
You know, whether it's feeling loved,
which in my view is a state of ego,
if you think about it, but most importantly,
is being able to love,
is being able to look at someone and go like,
I am, my divinity, that part of me,
is capable of feeling the connection to that other being.
And I think that in itself,
is sufficient, if you ask me.
Anthony DeMello writes in awareness
that if you're not feeling happy right now,
you're doing something to make yourself unhappy.
Exactly.
And I remember the first time I read that, I underlined it,
and I keep going back to it.
And I use it a lot because we're all human
and we can all fall into certain emotional traps
from time to time.
And if I'm ever feeling,
which is very rare now,
this state of discontentment, I ask myself,
what are you doing that's making you feel this way?
What perspective are you taking on life here?
What emotions are you ignoring?
And what I like about this approach,
which I totally agree with,
is that it's very empowering
because then if happiness is a choice,
that instead of us being a victim to the world
and events outside of our control,
we're suddenly the architects of our eyes.
was suddenly like, oh, actually, there is something I can do here.
Now, why you saying this has particular value for people who've never come across you before,
your son Ali died after a significant series of medical errors during a routine operation.
How old was he?
21.
It was 21 years old.
So I think when someone like you, having been through that, says happiness is a choice,
I think it lands differently.
Yeah, and I don't know how to say this, but a lot of people think that when you're a grieving father, you have no choice.
Because it seems that the only plausible choice is to just, you know, put your head down and wait to die, honestly.
I mean, in an interesting way, grief is quite a tricky one because you feel deceived by life.
You feel that life targeted you personally.
you feel that, you know, life is never going to be the same.
You lose the point, you know, of like, so what now?
So many feel that it's a bit of, believe it or not, of betraying the one they love
if they can actually find happiness after them.
And there are so many complexities that happen to us in grief.
Interestingly, though, we don't have one choice.
You know, I could have, you know, hit my head.
against the wall in misery until the day I am on my deathbed.
Or I could choose to be a little happier every day.
Either way, Ali wouldn't come back.
You see, this is what most people don't recognize,
is that all of the misery in the world has no impact, zero impact,
whatsoever on the external world.
And it's really, it really is quite interesting
because when you were talking, you know,
about happiness being our,
own, unhappiness being our own doing if you want. I tend to say that the majority of unhappiness
happens in your brain, okay? That all of the other joyful emotions can happen all over you.
They can happen in your body. They can happen in your heart. They can happen in your spirit.
They can happen in your brain. But for you to feel unhappy, think about it.
Ali left us now more than 10 years ago. The pain of us, you know, the pain of us, you know,
of the moment when he was on his operating table leaving us,
is probably the biggest pain I ever felt.
The moment after they told us that he left
was the lowest moment of my life.
But think about this, Rangan.
Those moments happened in the past, okay?
When I walked into an in here and hugged you,
an old friend and we haven't met for a while
and we caught up, I didn't think of those moments.
And so, interestingly, they didn't exist.
So you see, the problem with us humans is that we grant unhappiness the right to exist within our minds.
We fuel those thoughts and then we let them torture us.
And they wouldn't bring Ali back.
Do you understand that?
Okay.
So where is the wisdom in this?
Where's the wisdom in me finding the most painful moment in my life?
then bringing it up, bringing it up in my head again
and saying, okay, let me play that scene again
and torture myself.
How smart is that, right?
The opposite is interestingly true.
Because, you know, people will say Ali died.
That's a true statement, okay?
But I also say Ali lived.
Equally true, as a matter of fact, more true.
Because Ali lived 21 years and left for 10, okay?
When you really, really think about it,
Ali lived is the same fabric of the thought.
To die, you have to live and to live, you have to die.
But it's interesting because Ali lived is such an empowering thought.
First of all, Ali was not planned.
We didn't plan to have Ali.
And then we get this gift.
Unbelievable blessing that comes into your life,
teaches you, shows you love.
We laughed so much together.
We played so much together.
You know, we learned so much together.
He, you know, he's one of the biggest gifts.
Alian Ayah, by definition, are my biggest gifts in life, my daughter, Ayah.
And then, and then, you know, the human mind would take all of that and say, no, I'm upset.
You know, why did he leave?
And I'm like, he left because he came.
Now, think of the, you know, of the scenario where God or the universe or whatever you want to believe in
decided to not bring him to your life in the first place.
You look at it now and you go like, hmm, you know,
you know, if it happened during life and you didn't notice it,
you would have never missed him.
It would have felt that life has never taken anything away from you, okay?
But the truth is, also life would have never given you the blessing at the same time.
Now, but you look at it now and you go like, oh my God, you know,
know, I would absolutely take the pain a thousand times more to take the blessing of having him
in my life for 21 years.
And if only we start to see those things, okay, if only we start to see that, you know,
I'll use simple examples, so it's not too dramatic, huh?
If only we start to see our annoying manager as an indication that I have a job, okay?
If only we start to see being stuck in traffic that I'm going somewhere and someone's waiting
for me. If only we see the flu that you suffer as an indication that you've been healthy
until you got the flu. And all of these, you know where they exist. They exist here. Yeah.
The outside event is exactly the same. Yeah. It's such an empowering message because we
actually have a huge amount of control over where we put our thoughts, how we frame every single
situation. And it's, I would say, one of the most important and one of the most beneficial
skills in life is to understand at a deep level that all, you can definitely say most situations
are at their core neutral. It's the perspective we take on that situation that really
determines its impact on us. I'd go even further, Rangan. I mean, I did an experiment, a thought
experiment I used to call the eraser test where I told people take the most painful memory in
your life. And I used to teach soft for happy to people in person. So I had probably up to maybe
20,000 students or so in, you know, over multiple years. And, and I would tell them, take that
situation, the most painful in your life, you know, bring it up into your mind. Now you feel it
again as if you're in it, even though it passed, right? Feel the pain, torture yourself.
make yourself feel miserable.
And of course, the minute I said that,
everyone was like, yeah, celebration,
let me torture myself.
And someone would think about that bully in school,
the other would think about that boyfriend
that cheated or whatever.
And some would think about very painful situations.
Then I tell them that we've invented a technology
that has the ability not to erase it from your memory,
but to erase that event from space time.
So completely remove it.
Okay?
And I would ask people, how many of you would choose to erase it?
Everyone would raise their hand.
Okay.
And then I would say, but the only problem is that if we erase it,
we will erase everything that happens as a result.
That friend that you met, that lesson that you learned, that whatever.
Anything that happened as a result of that event will be erased in the process.
Okay.
Who would still want to go through the experiment?
98% would put their hands down.
Okay. And the reason is very interestingly, any suffering that you went through in life is what made you the person that you are. Okay. And unless you really, really dislike the person that you are, okay? Then you're grateful for all the pain that you went through. And it's quite interesting because you always look back at those events and you go like it was very painful then, but it's actually wonderful now. Right? And then if you see this and you see it with clarity, you know what you should ask.
You should ask yourself, so why am I so upset about this event now?
You know, that one that's hurting me now is going to be wonderful then.
Yeah.
Right?
I just have to accept that the only way that we progress to enlightenment in life is to suffer.
I have to accept that.
And if I can accept that, okay, then suffering doesn't become suffering anymore.
Suffering becomes part of the video game.
Yeah, life school.
Yeah.
Yeah.
whatever you want to call it.
We did cover this concept of happiness being a choice in detail on our first conversation.
So I want to get to the next two things that I think you believe that everyone does.
Before we do, let me just tie a loop in something.
You said right at the start when you were explaining this idea that happiness as a choice,
you brought up the rain.
And I'm saying, rain is rain for Britain, but yes.
It's a relevant example here.
If it's your ex-girlfriend's wedding, you're happy.
Yeah.
And I think you were saying that to sort of illustrate the point that the rain is neutral.
It depends what it signifies and what perspective you're taking on it.
But if we just go back to that for a minute, if you're happy that it's raining on your ex-girlfriend's wedding day...
You need to do some work.
You need to do some work.
You're being tied in your mind to the past.
You have no idea how many times I said that example.
You're the first one that picks that up.
Absolutely.
It's, you know what?
You're holding on to something.
You've been in time that you haven't moved on.
You haven't let go.
And you know who's suffering.
Yeah.
You're not her.
She doesn't even know that you're suffering.
You know.
The fact of you're even checking the weather forecast on her wedding day.
That's a problem.
Exactly.
It's quite interesting that, you know, holding on to a grudge only hurts you.
Yeah.
Never hurts the other person.
I don't remember.
Was it Nelson Mandela or, I don't remember.
Or Gandhi, one of the two, who basically said it's like drinking poison and hoping they
other person would die. Yeah. This is not very, it's not very clever when you really think about it.
Just forgive, accept that life comes with stories and benefits and, and just enjoy that you've
moved to another experience. The second concept I think you talk about, which I think there's a lot
more people who believe this now than even 10 years ago. But I would say the vast majority of
people that I come across at least, I don't think believe this, is that death is not.
the end. Yeah, for sure. So I'd love you to expand what you think about that, you know,
why you believe death is not the end. And why is it, do you think that a lot of the world does
not share the same perspective issue? Oh, wow. Okay.
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The reason the world doesn't believe is because the propaganda
the machine has been working against spirituality for a very long time.
Okay.
There is a lot of the of the goodness of our older world.
If you if you miss it in today's world,
it's because it's not beneficial for capitalism or politics.
It's simple as that.
And spirituality or, you know, spirituality has been hijacked
originally by religion and then religion attempted to,
hijack politics. And so in the process, especially in this country, as a matter of fact,
the separation from, you know, between the church and the state and the whole idea of
sort of making it look ridiculous if you believe in something bigger than you is very systemic.
Okay. It's very systemic because it doesn't help those.
in power control you if I can, if I'm allowed to say that.
And I don't mean that, you know, deliberately as if the British government is attempting
to control you by taking you away from spirituality or any other government for that fact.
But from the rules of power in history where, by the way, governments are not the power in
this world.
The powers in this world are much bigger where governments report to them really.
you know the religion is only useful if you can frame it in a way that gives the those in power something
but otherwise it's to be removed from the common man's heart if you want common man's and
common woman's heart the the reason i believe this is not religious scriptures or spiritual
scriptures at all. I'm a very boring mathematician, a physicist, and I look at the world from
that perspective. And if you understand, I'll try to simplify, but if you look at, if you take
the simplest thing, like an object-subject relationship, for example, basically, if you are
inside this studio, you cannot describe the building from outside, to be able to describe the
building from outside, you have to exist outside the studio to be able to witness it.
That's an object-subject relationship.
And if you take that within yourself, our experience of space and time, especially the passage
of time or the arrow of time, as we call it in physics, is not possible if you existed within
the arrow of time.
So if we are, you know, the description of the arrow of time is that, you know, we're moving
from frame to frame along the space time continuum.
all of us, you know, all of us and the whole universe
would just move from frame to frame.
It's actually not the time that is moving.
We are moving through time, right?
That's our understanding in physics.
But if you need to experience that arrow of time,
you have to exist outside it, okay?
And if you exist outside it,
that basically means that you are not part of space time,
and so accordingly time doesn't apply to you at all.
Okay?
And that basically means that your physical form is, you know, is subjected to time and to space, you know, to this physical reality.
But the real, you know, if you want, entity that's holding the controller that manages your physical avatar experiences all of this because it's not part of it.
So that's number one.
The only way to experience space time, like the only way to experience this building is to be outside it.
the only way to experience space time is to be outside it.
So this is one side.
The other side is from a physics point of view.
You know, if you understand the only commonly agreed explanation of the small mass that was condensed enough to explode into the Big Bang, you know, 9 billion years of nothingness, then, you know, the planets and the galaxies start to form.
And then within them, you know, planet Earth forms 4.3 billion years.
years ago and then and so on and so on and so on until a few million years ago life starts
to exist on planet earth. You know, that view of existence is temporal. So it follows the arrow
of time. It's within space time. But the other view of it is the view of quantum physics,
the Heisenberg interpretation of the uncertainty principle, if you want, which basically says
that nothing exists until observed by a form of life, right?
And so who observed the original mass,
who observed the nine billion years of gas,
who observed planet Earth before life became part of it,
you have to understand then that the observer
has never been part of that system.
The observer, life itself existed outside space and outside time.
And I can give you a million other proofs,
but the reality is whatever it is that animates us,
call it life, call it spirit, call it consciousness, whatever it is.
Whatever animates this avatar is not within this avatar.
That's very simple to prove.
Now, if that is the case, then death is not the opposite of life.
Life has existed since the Big Bang happened, okay,
in forms that we are unable to comprehend
because we live within the illusion
of this 76 years life expectancy, right?
but the truth is that the that life has always been there you know it's life is not the opposite
of death basically death is the opposite of birth right you come to this form this physical form
through a portal called birth and you leave it through a portal called death and then life exists
during before and after okay life's always been there my you know my my son ali if you understand
any, any little bit of the theory of relativity, okay, where basically Einstein teaches us and
we can prove this with absolute observation. It's not just theory, you know, that there is a
slice of time if I was approaching planet Earth at, you know, at speed, at a very high speed
at an angle. There is a slice of time where my reality would see my birth in the U.S.
For example, in the U.S. time zone, my son's birth in Dubai time zone
and my son's death in Japan's time zone, all as one slice of time.
That would actually become my reality, right?
Which basically what Einstein shows us, the relativity of time, is that time doesn't
exist at all, okay?
And so accordingly, my son Ali was not born after me and died before me, okay?
my son's avatar
was existed on a slice of space time
that came after the slice where I existed
and he decayed on a slice
before the slice where I decayed
but Ali himself was always there
during before and after Ali is not younger than me
he's not older than me
as spirits as souls as consciousness
were the same we've always been there
we've always I jokingly because I love that image
we've always me and him been sitting on that red sofa as souls holding the controllers of our avatars
as we went through this physical life and it's interesting because I can talk about this for hours
but I don't want to overcomplicate the physics but it's interesting because most people who have
faith would have doubt in their heart around you know those non-measurable realities if you want
those people who believe in science will say anything after life is not measurable, so it's not the
concern of science. But if you really look at science with a bit of spirituality, it's undeniable
that we're just here experiencing the physical world. Yeah. I mean, thank you for sort of going
through that. And I would love at some point a two-hour deep dive on that. I'm very much of that
belief as well. And what you said there about science is really interesting. I think these
days people misunderstand science in a massive way. And the simplest way I can put it is that
science is our best attempt to understand reality. But it's not reality. Reality is reality. And what
we're trying to do with our limited methods is trying to study what's actually going to
going on in reality. But we think science is reality. So people, especially in my profession
and in the healthcare world, get obsessed. And they are literally disciples of what is in the
publication that was peer-reviewed without realizing that these are all limited measuring tools.
They're only there for a certain subset of populations. They may not be relevant to you.
And they're fighting about it as if that's truth. Even though we know is,
As I learned in, you know, week one in medical school, 50% of what you learn here
is going to change.
It's going to be found out to be untrue and wrong.
The only problem is we can't tell you which 50%.
100%.
So if you take that approach, which really has humility at the heart of it,
you go, actually, we don't know.
There's a lot we don't know.
We're just trying to make the best sense of what we do know.
And this is not the best example, but last week's episode was with,
Bryce Applebaum, who's this wonderful board-certified optometrist in the United States.
And he's doing some really interesting work where he's talking about the difference between vision and eyesight.
But one of the things he managed to do with me is over five days, three hours training a day on eye exercises and brain exercises,
my eyesight got six-fold better in five days.
Wow.
same room, same lighting, same time of day, everything, right?
No part of this is exaggerated.
And of course, most people love the episode,
but there's a few people who are like, that's nonsense.
And it's usually people from the optometry world, right?
So if you look at this objective and you stand back,
you have to go, there are tens of thousands of adults around the world
who are reporting improvements in their myopia
in adulthood in a variety of different ways, right?
Some are doing it from just spending a ton of time outside
and no longer looking at near things.
Some are doing exercises, some are using red light therapy.
You know, you'd have to be willfully ignorant
to go, that's not happening.
I don't understand why some of my colleagues don't go,
wow, that's not what I was taught.
Isn't that interesting?
But a lot of people don't do that.
They go, that's rubbish.
That's BS.
Can I tell you why?
Please do.
Because science is the religion of the modern world.
Yeah.
It totally was, again, deliberate to replace spirituality with science.
Now, science is not only a religion where people are blinded by what they believe, right?
It's interestingly very egocentric.
Because the scientific statement, and I'm a scientist, so don't get me wrong, I adore.
There's nothing wrong with science.
Once you know it's limitations.
Exactly.
I adore science.
But science tells you this.
Scientists tell you that if we can't observe it and measure it repeatedly, right, then it doesn't exist.
That's the absolute wrong statement.
If you can't observe it and measure it repeatedly, then it's not the concern of science, right?
Love exists.
You can't measure it and observe it repeatedly, right?
But we all know it exists, right?
And, you know, germs existed before we created microscopes.
And the interesting bit of this is if you have that humbleness to accept that these things exist,
but as a scientist, they're not part of my domain, then whose domain is it?
Spirituality and philosophy.
Okay.
And spirituality and philosophy come in and say, I can't measure it, but I feel it and I understand it.
And I want to give you 14 explanations.
none of them I can prove with science,
but maybe choose one that comes close to you, right?
And interestingly, that didn't help the separation
of the church and the state, okay?
And so we, again, live in a world
where we are told to believe certain things.
And if you're dumb, you just believe whatever you're told.
If you're smart enough,
you start to become fanatic
about what you believe, which you were told.
but if you're really smart
you start to question everything
anything that you and I
will say in this episode
I invite everyone to question it
100%. We may be wrong
I'm certain that something I will say is wrong
and that's okay
100% and that's okay
I think what really matters
is that you genuinely try to say your truth
but that you humbly try to say
and I don't know
I mean one of the topics I cover extensively
is artificial intelligence right
and you know I say it
almost every time I remember to say it,
that anyone that tells you anything about the future is arrogant or wrong,
because the future is in flux and it's moving so fast
and the technology is changing every day
and, you know, people are using it for so many things that I don't know.
I can only tell you the sum of what I crunched together
so that you can make up your mind.
But in this world today, it is so interesting
how people now take 60-second clips of anything
and either take an absolute position for or against it,
which, you know, remember, you know,
when I was growing up, we used to call it common sense.
It's a very interesting skill.
I don't know if we remember any of it.
But basically, someone tells you something,
you go and look for what else is being said about this
and you make up your own mind.
Do we remember that?
Make up your own mind.
It's your truth.
The way modern science has been interpreted by so many people
is to give us the illusion of certainty.
Yeah.
And I think people like certainty, right?
People like to feel that, oh, I know what's happening.
I can control this.
But actually, that's a very limiting viewpoint.
It's a very fragile place to live
because there is so much out there that is uncertain.
But also remember, science is a cult.
It's not just a religion, okay?
It's a cult.
And you and I know, if you've been in the scientific community,
that there are taboos, okay?
There are things you cannot touch, right?
I had a guest on my podcast when I was podcasting, Dr. Stephen Seymeyer.
Incredible.
He wrote Darwin's Doubt, one of his books, okay?
And he basically took Darwin's research,
which had a disclaimer at the end that said,
here are some of the things that I don't know enough about
and you guys need to research after me.
One of them was the Cambrian explosion,
which was an era in history,
you were an endless number of species appeared in a time, you know, in a sort of a period that
does not correspond to evolution at all. And he said, you know, someone needs to study that.
So Stephen studies that and he has an incredible, you know, debate around the possibilities
of how that happened and so on and so forth. Completely gets banned from science because that's
taboo. Don't discuss, you know, it's, you don't discuss Darwin. Darwin is like God, right? But if
we don't discuss Darwin, how do we find out if part of what he's saying, not all of what
he's saying, I actually believe evolution is a method of design, right? But, but, you know,
if you don't question that, how do you find out the 50% that you're wrong about? Yeah,
whenever you can't question something, you've got an inherent problem.
100%. You've got an arrogance within you that actually says that I know this to be true. There
is no possible way that this can't be true.
Yeah.
And the only time when that happens, Rangan, is when there is someone in power that's telling
you not to question it.
Yeah.
Okay.
Look at this nation at this time, okay?
And how many things are you're not supposed to say in public.
Yeah.
Okay?
And once you realize that, you realize that if you say it in public or you discuss it or
you debate it or you ask your friends about it, you may actually find out something
other than what you're being told.
Yeah.
And to bring it back to an individual.
If you're someone who, I would say,
if someone's listening to this or watching this
and finds themselves getting very defensive or triggered
when they see something online
or someone in their network says something
that they don't naturally agree with
and you're having this disproportionate emotional reaction,
I think you should put a mirror up and go,
why on earth does someone having a different perspective
from me, trigger me so much.
Okay, 100%.
And that's a much more, it's like happiness being a choice.
We can choose our mindset in every situation.
If you're getting triggered by something,
if you don't take that empowering perspective,
you're a victim to the world.
You're walking around and getting triggered all over by everyone.
Anyone who doesn't subscribe to your belief system
and the way you see the world actually is problematic,
people don't realize there is such a massive dose of arrogance
within that.
But there is also a massive dose of unfairness to oneself.
Think about it, right?
Because if what you want the most is to be right,
then the best way to get there eventually at the end of your life
is to be told you're wrong when you are.
Do you understand the logic of this?
It's like if I really, really, and I genuinely, I love knowledge.
I know you do too because we have our conversations around things
that we're working on internally, right?
I love knowledge,
but the only way I can continue to know, to learn,
is to remove part of what's filling my glass
and replace it with something that now makes more sense.
And the whole idea of evolving as humans
is all about continuous development,
continuous debate with everything that you've believed.
Yeah.
Well, we could go down a deep heart.
That's a two hours there right there.
Let's just because I want to make sure we get to AI and why you believe I think that it can save relationships, we'll come to that.
I just want to get to the third one.
So I've covered two, Savar, things that you believe that a lot of people don't believe.
Happiness is a choice.
We've covered that.
Death is not the end.
We've certainly covered that.
And I want to talk more about that.
I'm having to restrain myself there.
The third one, which I kind of feel relates to the last two, actually, as I hear you talk about them,
is this idea that solitude is an essential ingredient for a meaningful and purposeful life.
Oh, my God, yes.
Not everyone shares that perspective.
I certainly do, but why are you so certain, given what we just said,
that solitude is an essential ingredient?
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Every sage, every prophet, if you believe in prophets, every saint, every monk, every
everyone that wanted to understand the non-physical went on 40-day retreats. It's shocking
When you think about it, Moses walks up the mountain or, you know, Muhammad stays in the cave or
Buddha sits under the tree and you get countless stories of that, perhaps other than Jesus
who might not have needed it.
But, you know, the idea is that if you believe that there is a point in your life where, you know,
eating less or fasting is healthy for the body, consuming less and engaging less is very
healthy for the mind. It's just as simple as that. It's the, it's the idea that that constant
stimulation that comes into our minds, the constant demand to analyze, to solve, to, to, you know,
engage, does not allow you to reflect, does not allow the dust to settle. So one thing I do
almost twice a week now is I would, you know, extend my intermittent fast for a long time.
you know, stop eating at 4 p.m. and then not eat again until maybe 5 p.m. the next day or something
like that. And you have no idea how much relief my body gets out of that. And it's quite interesting.
If you think about, yeah, some people will say it's healthy or not healthy. I do it not for the
autophagy of it, as they say. I do it because it actually really gives my digestive system a break.
right and so the interesting side of it is your mind when you give it a break of silence gets to
settle all of the stuff that has been suspended in constant analysis okay and silence i so i do
40 days i unfortunately this year failed uh because of the projects i'm working on uh but but generally
you do with 40 days silence retreats i do 40 days a year yeah and are you going somewhere for this
Yeah, so the interesting thing is I always acknowledge to myself what I'm very bad at.
So I don't go to a monastery because if a monk wakes me up at 4 a.m. in the morning to meditate,
my day and his day are going to be horrible, okay?
So that's not good behavior.
I'll be very honest about that.
But what I do is I go somewhere in nature where I stop using words.
you know, I can write, I can listen to music that doesn't have lyrics in it.
And I allow myself every other day, a 10 minute check on my phone just in case there is an emergency.
But I don't respond.
I just look at the messages quickly because, unfortunately, I'm not a monk, I'm half monk only.
And so when you really do that, you get a lot of walks in nature.
I allow myself, again, which is not the typical of a person.
I allow myself paper and pen and I write my thoughts and so on.
And it is breathtaking.
You know, the first few days are very unfamiliar.
You're constant in constant formo.
You're constantly reaching out to your phone.
You're wondering what to do after 7 p.m.
If there is no YouTube or, you know, whatever you're used to in the evenings.
I normally eat very light.
So I completely change my diet and basically walk and exercise and so on.
By day seven, you settle.
You settle in that, you know, now you're busy.
You're really busy.
You're processing a lot of thoughts.
You're taking notes down.
You're, you know, you're feeling stronger physically.
You know, it's a beautiful time.
By day 21, you start to get mad.
Massive, massive downloads of clarity.
You sleep better, by the way, your body relaxes a lot more.
By day 32, 33, you start to cry because you don't want to go back.
And I believe it or not, it is probably the highlight of my year.
Now, what normally happens is I write in a very unusual way
because I don't start writing a book until it's completely formed in my head.
And so normally by day 17, I can sit down and like write four and a half, five chapters in the next two weeks, right?
Things like that are not the property of analysis.
They're not the property of deep, you know, work or whatever.
They are the property of a brain that has a massive amount of noise in it.
Then you let it settle, which is all of us, all of us have a mind that's completely.
confused and then you let it settle
and then suddenly you see
with clarity with you know like
a tranquil
lake you can easily see everything
that you need to see it's heaven
it's like you're doing less
and
in some ways producing
more. Right. It's way more
yeah it's kind of interesting is it that like
so many people will say
they don't have time
will say that oh yeah I have this great idea for a
but I never get time to write it.
And because the way a lot of us think these days
is we think we have to add more things in,
you know, yeah, I need to do something else.
I need to watch a new video.
I need to download that course
and learn more productivity techniques
or whatever it might be.
But actually what you're saying is,
it's actually way simpler than that.
Actually, if you can, now, of course,
some people will say that they can't be 40 days.
I'm 100%.
But just that concept
that actually if you can have some more silence
in your life,
it is amazing what will come up from within you
that you have buried.
I mean, this is absolutely not the same thing.
Every summer, I go off social media
for about four to six weeks
and I also take the time away from this podcast,
which consumes a lot of my time
and my wife's time week to week.
and I go and see the world with my wife and kids for a few weeks, okay?
Beautiful.
And yes, of course, being on holiday is nice.
Being together with your wife and children when you're not distracted is lovely.
And I'm very fortunate to be able to do that.
And being off social media, I frankly just hardly go online in that time.
You just don't realize, people do not realize how much their thoughts are influenced by the inputs they
keep putting in each day.
Yeah.
I realize every summer, I start to tune in with myself again.
Yeah.
I go, oh, wow, this is what I think.
And you're less, you're less confused by the world around you, by the thoughts of others.
You have more conviction in who you are and what you're doing because you've allowed
yourself to spend time with yourself.
And I also, the days before I go back on, I don't want to go on.
I know.
I know.
And, of course, I don't want a pity party.
No one makes me go on, right?
choose to go on and I choose to share hopefully helpful information on my channels, right?
So I'm not asking for pity. It's just an interesting, like, you've found your version of
something that works for you in your life. You know, I found a version and it's definitely nowhere
near as it intents as what you do. But when you have a wife and kids, it becomes very difficult
to do this. Exactly. So I think at the moment that works for me. But you also mentioned fasting there.
And I think this links back to what we were just saying about science, right?
A lot of people ask, is fasting good or bad?
Right?
Which I would say is the wrong question, because it depends for who and in what context.
Yeah, exactly.
Now, a lot of people also looking to science to tell them if they should be fasting.
Correct.
But here's the problem with that, right?
I'm not saying don't do that.
I'm not saying, you know, I'm very familiar with the science of the literature on fasting.
But that's only looking at fasting through one lens.
What is it doing to your autophagy?
What is it doing to your insulin?
What is it doing to your lean muscle mass?
That's a fraction of the potential benefits that fasting can give you.
What about the mental benefits?
What about the psychological benefits?
What about you start to get in touch with yourself and your cravings and realize,
wait a minute, half the time that I think I'm hungry, I ain't hungry, right?
But because we're not measuring that, fasting becomes this really divisive topic online where it's like, no, you shouldn't be promoting fasting.
The world seems to have gone mad.
It's like, listen, an individual is more than capable if they're tune into themselves of deciding, is fasting good for me?
Do you know what I mean?
And when is it good for me?
And when?
You see, the challenge we have is we've come to a world where someone has to tell us what to do.
Yeah.
Why don't you just tune into your body and say,
I've been eating a little too much,
I think I'll, you know, I'll skip dinner.
Don't call it fasting.
Just say, I'm going to skip, right?
And if you skip dinner, by definition, you've done 12 hours.
It's as simple as that, you know, maybe even more.
And so it's really interesting that if you tune into those things,
one of the biggest challenges for me is because I travel so much,
it's actually almost certain that I will eat crap, right?
And recently in my older years, as I, you know, try to be more and more healthy,
I just realized that actually eating crap is worse for me than not eating anything at all.
Yeah, okay?
And so when I'm in an airport, and, you know, because of my Islamic background,
we fast 30 days a year in Ramadan.
And so, you know, I'm very used to that feeling of being hungry,
but deciding I'm not going to eat until 6 p.m.
Right?
And it's a wonderful feeling if you tune into it.
actually really, really, you know, somehow, you know how your sore muscles after a gym workout
actually feel good because you know they're good for you? I actually love that feeling of I'm hungry
but I'm not going to eat. Yeah, it's very, again, it's the theme of empowerment. It's, I don't have
to be a slave to my cravings and my feelings and my emotions. I have personal power to go,
actually, yeah, I know I'm feeling that, but I don't need to engage with it. Yeah, to submit to it.
Now, at the same time, I also very much acknowledge that for some people, fasting is not
the best thing. But sort of bringing solitude back to those first two points, I'm a huge fan of
solitude. Like you, I think it is essential. I don't think you'll ever know yourself without
solitudes. And if we think about that first theme, happiness is a choice. Well, I would argue
that it's in solitude where you'll realize,
oh, I keep making disempowering decisions.
I keep making myself a victim to what this person said
or that person said.
It's in solitude where you'll realize,
oh, I can actually change that.
And then even the second point of death not being the end,
in solitude you may find that you tune into...
You bring the best questions.
Yeah, absolutely.
Do you know what I mean?
So one of my favorite...
Let me keep...
The audience waiting for this for a second.
If people don't want to do 40 days, what I really normally recommend is a mini silent retreat
every other Sunday.
You set your alarm clock to 3pm and you just disconnect from the world until your alarm clock,
you know, goes off.
So you wake up when you wake up.
You don't interact with knowledge.
You don't interact with your phone.
You don't speak.
You don't, you know, look at time.
And then you give yourself what could be seven to eight hours.
So from Sunday morning, until three hours.
p.m., you're having this mini silence.
Silence. Every other week is, I think, a reasonable rate.
I love this. Tell me more.
So, Saturday evening, before you go to bed, you set your alarm to three, not to wake you up,
but to not engage with knowledge until three, okay?
Not engage with knowledge. That means no books?
No, I'd rather, because it's a mini retreat, I'd rather you do nothing but a paper and pen.
So you're not consuming anything from the outside. It's all kind of internal, basically.
not including time pieces, you're not in consuming time.
If you can not consume music or at least, you know, just instrumental music,
and you tell your children, you tell your wife, I'm on a silent retreat,
and basically just give yourself those seven to eight hours.
It's incredibly, it's even more empowering, believe it or not,
because of repetition than doing 40 days.
Not to belittle this in any way because I want to do it,
but I was just had a thought that I think my wife would love it.
if I did this.
But genuinely, I think she thinks I talk too much.
I think she would be so happy if on a Sunday I didn't talk till 3 p.m.
She's wonderful, so I'll take a possible next time.
But in all seriousness, I think this could be a super valuable practice.
Yeah, it is really. It really is.
And so we were talking about how silence relates to death.
So one of my favorite, favorite spiritual practices is the, is the, is the,
the Sufi approach to enlightenment, okay?
So the Sufis believe that the way to find enlightenment is to die before you die, okay?
And it's quite an interesting definition.
Death is defined as a detachment from everything physical, right?
And dying before you die is to be fully alive, fully healthy, fully engaged,
fully in love, fully reflecting, but you're not attached to the physical world.
and silent retreats and fasting, believe it or not,
or a combination between the two is the closest you get to that.
Because suddenly you're basically putting a distance between you
and everything that distracts you.
And, you know, in a grieving heart, believe it or not,
one of the most empowering things that I, that held me when Ali was leaving
was that idea that we're all already dead.
if you think about the idea that we're all eventually going to leave.
So it's a zero-sum game.
You come to this world with nothing.
You leave this world with nothing.
So why are you attaching?
Why are you holding on to all of those things?
Right.
And if, you know, in my mind, you know, pilgrimages,
you don't have to be pilgriming to any place,
but to just walk slowly to another place,
silence and fasting are some of the top.
practices that can get you to to that state of disconnecting from life if you want to
be fully alive but dying before you die it's so powerful I've been meditating
a lot over the past few months and I recently had Henry Shuchman in the studio
he's a Zen master he founded the Way app which is amazing and we spoke for the
first time on this podcast about non-duality
And he shared this experience where, I think he was 19, he was backpacking around South America,
and he was just looking at a sunset over the ocean.
And suddenly everything changed where he realized that he wasn't separate from anything.
He realized that the end of, the boundaries of his body almost weren't there.
He was part of everything.
And I know in our first conversation, you very evocatively described how Ali,
I think he said, didn't he before?
He wanted, or you said he's now...
Everywhere and part of everyone.
Everywhere and part of everyone.
Yeah.
But if you take this more non-tural perspective on life, so are all of us.
That's it.
I think we can end this podcast and every other podcast here.
This is it.
Okay.
The illusion of this physical world is incredibly powerful.
Okay. So if you want to experience that, go to a movie theater, right? You sit in the movie theater. There is this annoying guy next to you with popcorn. There are those people that are talking. There is the red exit sign. You know, the carpet is not really clean. And then they switch off the light and they play the movie. And you completely get absorbed into that reality. Okay. You completely forget everything else, right? You're like in the movie. Time passes differently. You don't feel the passage of time.
end you know two hours and you were like wow that was amazing right and that truly is what life is
right you you you get sucked into that physical experience this avatar and you believe that this
is everything you believe that this is your entire existence okay when in reality without the
avatar your your existence is so much more expensive yeah okay and if you really understand
understand the passage of time,
this 76 years is a blip.
Yeah.
It really is insignificant.
Remember, we are an insignificant drop
on an insignificant planet
in an insignificant galaxy
in a massively endless universe.
Okay?
Even the known universe,
not even the parts that we don't know,
is endless, okay?
And you're living on it for 76 years.
And yet you tell yourself that this is it.
I can guarantee you this is not it.
This is just one, literally, you want to picture it?
This is you going home in an afternoon waiting for dinner
and deciding to play one level of a video game on a console.
Yeah.
Okay?
You have a full life, full life.
And this is just one game on a console.
Yeah.
Bringing it back to why Solitude is so powerful.
What Henry said to me is that,
you don't meditate in order to get those experiences.
But the more you meditate, the more likely it is
that those experiences are going to be felt,
you know, or some version of that,
which sort of speaks to solitude,
the more time you spend by yourself,
we're not talking about loneliness here,
we're talking about intentional solitude,
the more you start to tune into things,
the more you start to feel things,
the more you actually start to realize
that actually there are multiple perspectives one can take
on the things that you see online,
the way you perceive your life, everything.
But you kind of need the time away
because when you're constantly consuming
and sucking in knowledge of everyone around you,
it's very hard to get that.
So I love the idea of mini-sanes retreats.
Moe, listen, I am literally having to restrain myself
from going deep.
I know you want to go to a different topic.
I advise everyone to watch the TED Talk of Jill Boltey Taylor.
How do you saw that?
Jill.
Jill, J-I-L-L-L-L-L-E.
Yeah, Baltie Taylor, B-A-B-O-L-T-E and Taylor, basically.
And Jill had a, she's one of my favorite neuroscientist in the world,
and she had a stroke, you know, where her left side of her brain was basically paralyzed, if you want.
And she describes that exact experience in the TED talk of the boundaries between her and everything would disappear.
It is our mind that's creating that boundary between you and me.
To navigate the physical universe, you need to believe in individualism, in that I am an entity and that table is not me, okay, that you are different than me, that my safety can be benefiting or threat.
by your existence and so on and so forth.
And if you really, you know, if you, meditation, silence, long reflections, breathwork,
basically enable you to switch that dominance of that mind that is creating the illusion of the,
of the movie theater, right?
So you suddenly realize, I'm not in a theater at all.
I'm not in that movie.
And you see the world very differently.
Yeah.
Okay.
we're going to put a pin in those things because I know you're here to talk about AI
and you're here to talk about, I don't even know how to describe Emma.
I mean, who is Emma?
Really hope you enjoyed that conversation.
Do think about one thing that you can take away and apply into your own life.
And also have a think about one thing from this conversation that you can teach to somebody else.
Remember when you teach someone, it not only helps them.
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