How To Fail With Elizabeth Day - SPECIAL EPISODE! How to Fail: Mo Gawdat on how to cope with anxiety in a time of Coronavirus

Episode Date: March 23, 2020

Hello. I hope you're all doing ok out there. Bit of a strange time isn't it? It can feel overwhelming to be living through a global pandemic, but there are things all of us can do - small things that can have big impact. We can stay at home and save lives. We can distance socially and help the heroic health carers working on the frontline of this disease. We can spread a little positivity. We can refuse to panic buy toilet roll. And I, at least, can make podcasts so that you can listen to them and hopefully feel a little less alone.When I was thinking of who I most wanted to hear from about how to live through this unprecedented moment in our history, there was really only one answer. It was Mo Gawdat. I originally met Mo when I interviewed him in Season 4 of the podcast. You can listen to that episode here. He told me about how he had developed a seemingly simple algorithm that enables every single person to be happy, whatever the circumstances - you can read more about that in his book Solve For Happy. Meeting Mo had a huge impact on me. I know it also helped a great many of you - at every event I do now, at least one person will come up to me to say Mo has changed their life for the better.I am so, so grateful to Mo for agreeing to come back onto the podcast to discuss how to live with anxiety and isolation in a time of Coronavirus. We talk about how to handle negative thoughts, how to practise gratitude and the concept of 'committed acceptance' which focuses on a) accepting the situation and b) within that acceptance, working out what you can actively do to make life better. He shares with us his own daily routine for self-isolation, the difference between the inevitability of pain and the choice of suffering, the wondrous abilities of the brain to come up with narratives which sometimes do not serve us and the importance of understanding the impact exercising our own free will have on others. Along the way, we argue about whether Love Actually is the best romcom of all time.I hope you enjoy the episode and that it brings you some comfort as you go about your day. Sending love to you all.* How To Fail With Elizabeth Day is hosted by Elizabeth Day, produced by Naomi Mantin and recorded, edited and mixed by Chris Sharp. We love hearing from you! To contact us, email [e-mail]* Social Media:Elizabeth Day @elizabdayMo Gawdat @mgawdat   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by card, other conditions apply. Hello and welcome to How to Fail with Elizabeth Day, the podcast that celebrates the things that haven't gone right. This is a podcast about learning from our mistakes and understanding that why we fail ultimately makes us stronger, because learning how to fail in life actually means learning how to succeed better. I'm your host, author and journalist Elizabeth Day, and every week I'll be asking a new interviewee what they've learned

from failure. Hello, it's Elizabeth here. I just wanted to start by reaching out across the airwaves and giving each and every one of you a virtual hug for what you're going through right now. Whether it's because you've been personally affected by COVID-19 or a family member is ill or you're feeling rotten or sick or anxious or overwhelmed or alone or you're struggling with this new normal and wondering what on earth you're going to do with your kids for the next few weeks or how your relationship will survive, or how to tackle isolation when you're single or elderly or vulnerable. This podcast is here to help. This is a special episode recorded remotely with the express aim of providing some comfort. That means there's no sponsor trails, and we're not talking face to face and there aren't three failures to discuss. Rather we're talking about what feels like a global failure and the impact

it's having on us all. When I asked myself the question about what would be most helpful to you there was really only one answer and that was Mo Gowdat. Mo first came on How to Fail in season four. He is an inspirational speaker, an extraordinary man, and one of my most downloaded guests of all time. Many of you have told me how life-changing you found that episode and how you returned to it again and again in times of crisis. I know what you mean. It changed my life too. For those of you unfamiliar with Mo's story, here's a quick refresher. He is the former chief business officer at Google X, and before that was a stock trader and tech executive and a father of two. Yet at that time in his life, despite his wealth and

success, Mo realized he wasn't happy. So for 12 years, he applied his scientific research skills to developing an algorithm for happiness. More on that later. But theories are just theories until they collide with real life. This happened with shattering force in 2014, when Mo's beloved 21-year-old son Ali died during a routine operation. Mo turned to his equation to help sustain him after this tragic loss and wrote a book, Solve for Happy, about how he managed to carry on living. It became an international bestseller. Today, Mo travels the world. At least he will when the airlines and borders open again. He talks about his equation and spreads his mission to make

1 billion people happy. Mo, welcome back and thank you for being here. Oh my God, Elizabeth, thank you so much for the opportunity. You and I happen to overlap at very, very interesting times. I really appreciate what you're doing here. I think a lot of people need to hear this. Well, I so appreciate you making the time for us. And I just wanted to start by asking a very simple question, which is, how are you and how are you doing in this extraordinary time? How am I doing? I could answer and say fine, but I think that would be a quick, shallow answer. I'm between how your beautiful introduction went. I feel for all those who are suffering and anxious and worried, those who have a loved one that might be affected or who have a parent or an elderly person that they love that they need to take care of. about what will happen with their job or their company,

about the future of things. I definitely feel for those who got infected and even those who we lost. And so on one side, definitely unprecedented and I'd say quite challenge-filled times. But on the other hand, I'll tell you openly, I'm actually quite okay. I don't know how to say this, but I'm really having a very, very interesting and

eye-opening experience. I have a lot more time to reflect, to connect with myself. I have a lot more time to connect with people I love around the world. I have a lot more time to do podcasts like this, to write, to organize my thinking. I am back to my video game practice. I do 45 minutes a day. I'm going through, you know, with my work as much as best as I can. I'm grateful for the gifts that we have, such as the ability to record this online. And to be quite honest, I'm really grateful for the ability to sit down and reflect on how fragile our life really is and how lucky we might be, some of us who are able to sit and listen to this podcast. The one thing I'm not though is I'm not concerned. I'm not crazy scared that the world will end, that the economy will

collapse. I'm not scared that this is it and we will never go back to a normal, healthy, wonderful life. I'm not concerned that we will not find our way back. And I'm quite optimistic, actually, that this is just a very eye-opening phase of humanity's life. So I want to come back to why you're not concerned, but I do think it's very interesting that you say that this time, as much as you wish it were otherwise, and as much as we feel enormous compassion for people who are currently ill or struggling, there is a way in which I know that I was living my life at an unsustainable pace in terms of the amount of time I was trying to fit into one day, which

only after all has 24 hours, and I was always sort of trying to cram in at least 36. We were living unsustainably in that way, but also unsustainably in the sense of using up Earth's precious natural resources and taking long-haul flights without really thinking it through. So do you think there's a way in which people listening could tune into that idea that we have this thing that has been given to us. And although we wish it weren't happening, maybe there is some positive stuff that we can take from it in terms of changing our lives long term.

Oh, absolutely. I mean, there is positive in everything. If you look for it, there is positive in everything. And in the truth of this, my expectation is there will be more positive than negative. It's just, you know, we're suffering from two illusions here. One is the illusion of control, and think that this is all of our life. We forget how grateful we should be for the magnificence we've had in our life before. And we forget that every harshness we've gone through before has passed. And so time, which we normally, as we rush through our fast-paced life, ignore completely, and we're constantly thinking about the past and the future. ignore completely, and we're constantly thinking about the past and the future. When crises happen, when challenges take over our life, what we do is we suddenly do what we should have always done, which is to focus completely on the present moment. But now the present moment is worrying, it's scary, it's challenging. And, you know, it's almost like

when a tiger shows up and suddenly you forget everything else. You don't hear the birds. You don't think about your ex-relationship. You're just focused on the threat in front of you. This is what's happening now. And so people are completely focused in the present moment, but focused about it negatively. And I think the truth is to understand how to navigate moments like this, we need a very, very deep understanding of what I call the illusion of control. And I think one of the biggest illusions that our modern world has given us is the idea that we can actually control everything. And humanity became more and more arrogant as we invented technology and fast cars and

aeroplanes and so on and so forth, to believe that we can always control everything. And the moment at which we get out of control is a moment where I call for something I call committed acceptance. And committed acceptance truly is an idea that sometimes there will be things we cannot fully steer in the direction we want them to steer, at least not immediately. And for that moment, can we accept the reality and do the responsible thing to make our life as best as it can be, responsible thing to make our life as best as it can be, despite the presence of that reality. So I wish I was an incredible scientist or an absolute genius that had AI helping me to find the cure for corona right away. I'm almost certain our scientists will find it very soon. But until then, what can I do, Mo, one person, one human, what can I do to make my life better today?

Now, think about what it is that you are supposed to do to help others. Think about what you're supposed to do to self-isolate, to make sure that others are safe, to make sure that you are yourself safe. Think about all of the things that you can do to connect to those that you love. That's one side of committed acceptance. It's the commitment side of acceptance. It's to say, this is here, okay? Now, I need to do things because it is here.

And once you realize that, one step of the change starts, which is suddenly you no longer complain about the government asking us to isolate or, you know, about where this came from and how horrible this is for everything. You suddenly start to focus on what you can do and what you can affect. I think that's such a profound point because the great liberation of the future is also it's great anxiety and that it hasn't happened yet and all you can do is take action in the present and I think that a lot of people having gone from very very hectic exhausting jobs to working from home and suddenly having this kind of empty sea of time that they have to fill, they worry that then they're doing nothing. And I think that what you've just pointed

out is that the act of staying at home and choosing to distance socially is actually committed acceptance and you're saving other people's lives by doing that. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think this is the responsible call. The responsible call is if you don't want to do it for yourself, do it for others because you don't actually know what state you are in. You could have been in contact with someone and touched the virus and just put it on a shelf somewhere and that affected someone's life. And I think that level of responsibility to make sure that we follow the hygienic guidelines, to make sure that we try to distance ourselves from people,

you know, I don't understand the arrogance that would say, let's not do that. You know, and it's not only because I want to protect me for myself and my loved ones, but it's because I want to protect everyone else around me. I think on the other hand, Elizabeth, what most people don't understand is that we often look back at our lives and realize that sometimes disasters that came into our lives were interesting wake-up calls that made us change, made us go in a direction that was better for us in the long term. And from the same point of view, I understand that for many people who were used to wake up every morning at 6 a.m. and then do this and then do that and rush around to do this and answer email and so on and so forth, it's very, very difficult to sit at home and do

nothing. But the assumption that you can do nothing at home is a tremendously wrong assumption. It's just an assumption of habit. Now, with all of the blessings we have, I'm having this conversation with you over the internet. I have access to tremendous amounts of knowledge and entertainment, and I can video conference with my daughter to check in on her. I can call my wonderful ex back in Dubai and see that she's okay. I can get in touch with my loved ones everywhere in the world. Now, if we really start to think about the truth of what we are being exposed to, it can be so much worse. It can be so much worse. And one of my cherished concepts is a concept that comes a lot

from Eastern cultures, which is the idea of looking down instead of looking up. So most of the time in the Western advanced societies, we always compare our current state to what it could have been. I'm driving this car, I should be driving that car. I mean, I have this place, but look at my neighbor's place. You know, I scored a B plus in my exams, I should have scored an A plus, right? And all of that comes from a very, very strong conditioning of that drive that makes us advanced in the Western world. Now everything is about timing and there is a time when that drive is not allowing you to do what you actually need to do and what you actually need to do is to connect

differently, to reflect and look downward at how much worse things could be. I mean think about how many people got affected and you haven't. Think about how many people may have lost loved ones. If you haven't, then you're in a very blessed place. Think of the fact that you have a place to self-isolate. If you don't have that, like if being homeless, think about how that would be. Think about how you have access to technology and food, for example.

There might be people out there who don't have that. If you're an elderly person and unable to get out, think about all of the blessings that you have rather than what you missed out on. And I think that makes a massive difference. Talking about the idea of linear time being an illusion, which I know is something that you go into in a very insightful way in your books for happy. But I think that one of the things that is stressing us all out is that there is no certain end point in a traditionally linear sense. If someone said to us, okay, it's going to be like this, definitely for eight weeks, and then it's going to be fine again. I think that we could commit to that and

be at peace with it. But I think that people are struggling with the uncertainty. So what advice would you have for them? Oh, I have endless advice. Since when did you ever have uncertainty? Since when did you ever believe that life was certain? Where did that come from? Are you now afraid of the coronavirus? Why were you not afraid of a crazy biker hitting you a couple of days ago? It's exactly the same probability. It's exactly the same number of deaths. Now, the idea is quite interesting. Let's just start from a scientific truth. 60 to 70 percent of the thoughts in an adult brain are negative. 60 to 70 percent. Which by all means is not a reflection of the truth. The reason why we think

negative thoughts is because they're more useful for our survival. So we tend to look at the truth that is presented to us which is normally much more positive than negative, as evident by the fact that this, for all of us, without exception, this is actually the first epidemic we've lived through. Which means that for the last 50, 60, 70 years that you've lived, or 20 or 15 if you're younger, for all of those, this situation was not evident in our life. 15 years of not having this and a few weeks of having it. Now that's the truth. The truth is that life is mostly positive. Now look back at history, either the far history where we didn't

have all of the technology that we had, and epidemics still ended. Look at SARS in the near past and see that that too has ended. Look at the Chinese improvement in their situation now. After a few weeks of isolation, they're going back to work. They're doing things reasonably again because the numbers of infections are declining. And tell your brain, when our brains tell us, it's the end of the world, this is Armageddon, this is doomsday, this is the apocalypse,

you know, we're ending life as we know it, ask yourself the truth. Is this true brain? Where do you bring that from? Where do we get those from? I can promise you, I'm not underestimating the impact of the situation we're in, but I can promise you we have scientists around the world working day and night to find how this works. We have evidence from certain practices around the world that there is a way to contain it. We have history that tells us

that nothing ever lasts. Everything is just temporary. Everything is just a phase that we go through. Now, with all of this, the question to ask yourself is, what good is this worry bringing me instead of dedicating my energy to the stuff that I can actually affect? And the stuff that you can actually affect does not require a degree in rocket science. It's simply stay away from the possibilities of getting infected. How difficult is that?

Exactly. The thing is, at the moment, we can't control, and we've never been able to control outside forces, but we can control our responses, which is something that you taught me. Peyton, it's happening. We're finally being recognized for being very online. We'll see you next time. and a lover of pop culture second. Then join me, Hunter Harris. And me, Peyton Dix, the host of Wondery's newest podcast, Let Me Say This. As beacons of truth and connoisseurs of mess, we are scouring the depths of the internet

so you don't have to. We're obviously talking about the biggest gossip and celebrity news. Like, it's not a question of if Drake got his body done, but when. You are so messy for that, but we will be giving you the B-sides. Don't you worry.

The deep cuts, the niche, the obscure. Like that one photo of Nicole Kidman after she finalized her divorce from Tom Cruise. Mother. A mother to many. Follow Let Me Say This on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Watch new episodes on YouTube or listen to Let Me Say This ad-free by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.

Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest? This is a time of great foreboding. These words supposedly uttered by a king over 800 years ago. These words supposedly uttered by a king over 800 years ago. These words, supposedly uttered by a king over 800 years ago, set in motion a chain of gruesome events and sparked cult-like devotion across the world. I'm Matt Lewis. Join us as we unwrap the enigma and get to the heart of what really happened to Thomas Beckett by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit. But tell me more about the brain because I quote you endlessly, Mo. I don't know if you know this

at all, but about brain producing thoughts as biological matter in the same way that your heart pumps blood around your body as biological matter. So you should not make the mistake of thinking that you are defined by that anxious, incessant chatter in your brain. And that actually as difficult as it is, you're in control of that. and that actually as difficult as it is, you're in control of that. But tell me more about that thinking. We have been given in this little heads of ours the biggest gift ever, a machine that's capable of perceiving sensory information and turning it into concepts for which we can reason,

you know, with which we can reason, with which we can make sense, with which we can invent and innovate and make a difference to the world, right? It is, however, a very, very complicated machine, and it goes irrationally in weird directions because it is frantic about your survival, okay? So this is a simple processing machine that can have you play video games as long as there is nothing that threatens your life. The minute there is something that threatens your life, this machine just goes haywire and it starts to focus entirely on the threat. Now, as it focuses on the threat, there doesn't seem to be a mute button. It just blabbers ideas in your head. This doesn't seem to be a mute button.

It just blabbers ideas in your head. Okay? Oh my God, we're all going to die. Oh my God, my partner's going to leave me. I'm going to lose my job. All of it is just the brain's way of saying, let me list down all the possible scenarios on this game board. Okay? A rational person needs to start saying,

great, I'm not ignoring those brain. Let's verify their validity. Let's start with the very important question of, is this true? Is this true? I've lived through six economic crises, many of which we believed were doomsday, many of which we believed were the Great Depression all over again. We always came back. Anyone in my age has seen the AIDS epidemic.

It hasn't been eradicated, but for sure, we've learned to be more careful, we've learned to live with its presence, and we've learned to even improve on our treatments and keep our patients in a reasonable state. We've seen those. And when my brain tells me that this is going to eradicate humanity, I don't believe that.

When my brain tells me this is going to take forever, I go like, when was the last time anything took forever? Where do we get those scenarios from? Now, I will give you one certainty and one certainty only, because you said if we knew that this was going to be over in eight weeks, everything will be easy for us. I will give you one certainty. This will not be over in the next two weeks.

Can you focus on the next two weeks, please? Yes. Think about what we're going to do for the next two weeks. Think about how you're going to use the time productively. Think about how you're going to help others time productively. Think about how you're going to help others. And that's the only certainty we have. In two weeks time, let's talk again. Okay. And I'll give you another certainty, which is it's going to last for two more weeks, or it might actually not last for two more weeks.

Oh, I just feel so much karma just talking to you. I really do. I'll tell you openly, Elizabeth, I'm quite worried about this conversation because I hope I'm not misunderstood. I hope that I'm not seen as someone who doesn't realize the gravity of the situation. But remember when I told you about my son's tattoo, he had a tattoo on his back. It read, the gravity of the battle means nothing to those at peace. Now, the truth of our life is that life is a battlefield in an interesting way. Interesting battles pop up here and there, a relationship issue, a work issue, you know, you get stuck in traffic one day, or some days you get a global epidemic of the size that we're facing. Believe it or not,

they're all from the same fabric, and the fabric is, let's sand you down a little so that you can develop and grow. Life is trying to put you through learning opportunities so that you can meet yourself and develop your own skills. Now, there will always be battles. And I will promise you, I'll tell you something shocking. People in every walk of life, as we go through the current situation, from homeless people who are struggling to even survive, to millionaires who managed to get a nice villa in Portugal somewhere, isolated from the whole world, each of them believes that this is the biggest battle they've ever met in their life. Each of them is concerned about something. Now, interestingly, not because their battles are the same, their battles are actually very, very different.

It's because their state of peace is different too. If you're at peace it doesn't matter what battle you're going through. If you're at peace you behave like a true video gamer. I always say that a true video gamer just reacts to the battle as it comes their way to make the best out of it. It doesn't really matter how difficult it is. It is there and it's upon you. So let's do something to make it as best as you can within the resources that you have. You said something very beautiful to me the first time that we spoke about Ali, your beloved son, and how he compared life to a computer game. So will you explain that to us a bit?

Yeah, Ali was much more than my son. He was truly an unmatched teacher. I've never had a teacher like him. And he taught me in very unusual ways. And I remember vividly one day when we were playing on Xbox, we played a game called Halo. And I'm a serious player, actually, as a matter of fact, I'm quite a Olympic champion level player now. So I dare every one of the listeners because now I have time. I used to play very differently before Ali taught me. I used to start the game and then turn to the right and run like mad. And Ali would say, Papa, where are you going? And I would say, the end of the level is here. We need to go here. And he goes like, he literally would put his

controller down and say, Papa, who wants to get to the end of the level? We're playing. We're playing. We don't want to end the level. When you end the level, you don't play anymore. We want to live this moment that we're living in. And he would run to the places of the game where there are explosions and smoke, which to me was quite, you know, being that driven, results-oriented person, I was like, why are you doing this? And he would say, Papa, this is where you develop and grow. This is where you become a better gamer. And at the end of that game, we put the controller down

and he started to tell me what I believe has changed my life forever, which was basically, you know, think about life just like you think about this game. You get to the end of the level, you die. You don't want this at all, okay? But life without the explosions and smoke is a very boring game. Who wants to start the game,

push the controller forward, and then wait 70 years and then die? How fun is that, right? The fun starts to happen when the game becomes a little more challenging. Now, of course, video games don't come at the cost of suffering, right? If your avatar is shot on the screen that's fine you're still

alive but you know life has a lot of suffering on it. No, life has suffering in it if you choose to suffer. Life has suffering in it if you choose to believe that life will make you suffer. Reality is, as much as difficult as the current times are, I will promise you most of our listeners are sitting somewhere safe with all of their basic needs met and nothing wrong with their current moment. And if we forget to see that, we realize that we're focusing on a possibility of an enemy happening in the video game 600 steps down the line that hasn't happened and that we have no

way of impacting with what we are doing right now. So when you think about life as a game, your target becomes very, very different. Your target doesn't become something that you want to do in three weeks' time. Your target becomes, I want to be the best version of me today. As Ali always used to teach me, your life purpose is to become the absolute best gamer you have the potential to become. Now, take the current situation and ask yourself, what is the best gamer? How would the best gamer react to this situation?

They would sit down calmly. They would verify what the truth is. They would do the responsible actions they're supposed to do. And they will understand that sooner or later, the game will ease up. And if it doesn't, they'll have the time of their life enjoying the fun. And I know that sounds really weird. Okay. But I'll give you my current view of everything. My wonderful daughter, Aya, wise as my son, when social distancing and quarantine started to pop up everywhere in the world, she called me and she said, Papa, I need to tell you how I feel about this. And I said,

yes, baby, what do you feel? And she said, I feel that God or the universe, whichever you choose to believe in, has gone like, you know what? I'm fed up with all of you. You're grounded. Go back to your rooms, spend two weeks there and think about what you've been doing. Okay. And believe me, this is so true. It's like we've suddenly been given a few weeks to sit down and think about what we've been doing. And if we're true, true to our intentions of becoming the best we can be, this is the time to use for it. You know me, I have very strict approach to my rituals. I have routines in my day where I do things that allow me this reflection time, that allow me to go through a long list of things that my fast-paced life did not allow me to go through.

You know, what am I going to do about my relationships? What am I going to do about work? What am I going to do about my next book? You know, my health, my ledger time. What am I going to do about all of those things that became reactive in my life, in my fast-paced life? Now suddenly I have the time. I'm grounded. I love it. And can I ask you what your routine is?

I have a very specific intention to meet myself very often, which I think a lot of people are afraid of because somehow we either don't have enough self-love to understand that when we see something about ourselves that can be improved or changed it's just an opportunity not a shameful thing in any way because we normally want to be distracted from the suffering that our brains sometimes bring to our life through our thoughts because we don't have the time maybe because we don't make it a priority maybe so I built a routine every day about three things. One is meeting myself. The other is about being productive.

And the third is about finding happiness and joy. My routine about meeting myself starts with the first hour of the morning. So in the first hour of the morning, I basically wake up, stretch, take my time to get out of bed in a healthy way. I take time to make my cup of coffee, not because coffee takes time to make, but because actually taking time, you know, engaged in doing something simple and achieving a state of flow gets your brain to be completely focused and active. And then I sit down and I do an exercise, which is, I call it, listen to Becky.

Basically, I set my... Becky! Becky is back! Becky, my Becky. So you guys are listening here to Mo and Becky, Mo and his brain. For those of you who haven't listened to the first episode, which you really should go and do, Mo and his brain. For those of you who haven't listened to the first episode, which you really should go and do,

Mo calls his brain Becky after the idea of a very pessimistic girl at school who's always pointing out the things that will go wrong rather than the things that will go right. Exactly. So my Becky now is actually quite friendly and wonderful over the years of training, but still needs to be listened to.

So I basically set my phone alarm to 25 minutes. I put the phone face down. I keep a piece of paper and a pen with me, just in case important thoughts come up. And I just listen. I listen to what my brain says. And my brain starts with weird ideas like, oh, the world is going to end. And I go like, okay, yeah, thank you. Thank you, brain. You believe that it's going to end. I'm not sure that's true. What else? Okay. And then my brain goes like, oh, we need to buy oat milk. Great. Yeah, we need to buy oat milk. I take a little note. What else? And I keep listening to the thoughts as they come in my brain. okay? As the thoughts continue, something amazing happens. Somehow my Becky realizes, oh my God, he's listening.

I might as well say something smart. And because of that, my brain literally, visibly slows down. So, you know, all of those noises that are constantly happening in your head, they slow down to a trickle. Your brain starts to give you thoughts that are actually thought through. And it starts to stream them as drops so that you can have the chance to listen to them. And if you continue to do that for a while, first, you're going to get enormous insights about what's going on inside you. And second, something amazing happens, because I have one rule in that conversation,

Becky cannot say the same thing twice. So after normally, in my case, 12 to 13 minutes, Becky goes like, we need to buy oat milk. And I go like, yeah, you said that before, what else? And it goes, that's it, silence. I promise you, and most people don't realize that, most people think that our left brains are our only brains. There is so much going on in us that is connected to intuition and connected to abilities to comprehend and grasp things in ways that are not analytical and not in words at all on the feminine side of our brain, for example. And those start to pop up. And the second 12 to 13 minutes are absolute bliss and massive insights, massive insights. Traditionally, I set my alarm to 25 minutes.

And usually the minute it goes off, I repeat and have another 25 minute blissful experience of being in that place. Now believe me if you manage to sit with you for 25 minutes and just objectively understand what's going on inside you, you will have my second ritual which is a very analytical approach to topics. So I take that one topic that my brain second ritual which is a very analytical approach to topics okay so I take that one topic that my brain started with which is we're all gonna die and I sit down for an hour and I say let's debate like they taught us in school if we're actually all going to die or if we're not go ahead brain

you know have a blast and tell me every pessimistic thought that you have. And I write them down. And then I ask myself to do a very simple, very simple exercise. For every negative thought, I need a positive one. One to one. They don't have to be of the same magnitude, but I believe that life is 50-50, if not better. I mean, if it was 50-50, we would not be safe most of the time. We would be safe only 50% of the time. But let's just make an assumption that it's 50-50. So for every fearful,

critical, negative thought, I ask my brain to bring me a positive thought about the same situation. And once you do that, you start to come up with the insights that I started my conversation with. Oh, I can use this time for my video game practice. I can use this time alone to connect with loved ones. I can use this time alone to catch up on topics I wanted to learn about. I can even binge watch. I don't, of course, but I can even binge watch Netflix something if that's how you like to spend your time. There are so many things you can do with time alone and it doesn't have to be alone you can be with people and connect it through the Internet. That exercise doesn't just pop up because the tendency of our brain is to find what's negative. It pops up when

you start to say okay you wrote 12 negative ones down give me 12 positive ones. Any 12 positive ones. I still have water in the tap is a positive one. So is this still part of your day, which is meeting yourself? Okay. What time do you get up though? Do you have to get up very early? I don't actually.

So I basically stopped using alarms a very long time ago. Again, part of self-love. We use alarms because we sleep late. The answer to sleeping well and waking up early is to sleep early. So I go to bed around 10. Some days I sleep seven hours. Some days I sleep eight hours. Some days I go to bed at 11.

I don't force myself to be rigid with anything. I don't want to be my parents I don't force myself to be, you know, rigid with anything. I don't want to be my parents anymore, okay? I force myself to be reasonable. And if you go to bed and have a bed, by the way, sleep is also a ritual. You can't be jumping up and down and partying until 1 a.m. and expect to sleep at 1 or 1. So my day has a shape to it. At the beginning of the day, it's very active and very

engaged and very intellectual. And I think about things and I am productive. And at the end of the day, I start to chill and slow down and get into that mode of like, hey, we're approaching that beautiful experience called sleep. It's not a horrible thing to sleep. As I slow down and I get there, some days I wake up at five, other days I wake up at nine. It doesn't matter. And you don't judge or beat yourself up about it. I think that's so important, especially for me. I love sleep. And actually, that's one of the things that I've been taking advantage of during this weird time is that I can get up later should I feel like it because there's no appointment I need to rush into town for.

Yeah, and believe it or not, I can get up later even if I have an appointment to rush into town for, seriously, by sleeping earlier. So if I know I have a 10 a.m. or a 9 a.m. and I sleep at 10 p.m., I have 12 hours. Who sleeps 12 hours? You were kind enough earlier to talk about Ali. And I hope you don't mind my asking this because I can't fathom the loss that you experienced when you lost Ali.

For many of us, we will be confronting death and we will lose loved ones or we'll know someone who's going to have to handle grief. And I wonder if you could speak to us from the position of someone who has had to deal with unimaginable trauma, how you got through it. No, Elizabeth, no, no, I don't think we should speak about that. I think we should speak about being optimistic, about the fact that we will not, about being optimistic, about the fact that we will not, about the fact that we will all be safe, that we will all be fine. So I will tell you openly, in the worst of all cases, a country of 60 million people lost thousands of people. We lost thousands of people in Italy,

right? Italy is 60 million people. We lose more people in Italy to car accidents than what we lost to coronavirus. And we never speak about them. We never anticipate that they will happen. In the US, orders of magnitude more people die of the flu every year than what has happened so far to the coronavirus. Let's not give the coronavirus the energy it needs to manifest and spread. Okay? We will be fine. We will do what we need to do, and it will be over. If it starts to become something incredibly uncontrollable, we have another episode that talks about grief.

For now, I actually don't think we will get there. I don't. I think we're going to be absolutely fine. If we're responsible and we take charge, I think we're going to absolutely be okay. Tell us about your algorithm for happiness, because I mentioned it briefly in the introduction, but it is about resetting expectations and recalibrating. So explain to us how we can adapt that for this particular moment. Happiness is very straightforward. Every moment in your life you ever felt happy is a moment where events of life met your expectations and wishes of how life should

be. Every moment in your life you felt unhappy, it was because life gave you something that wasn't what you wanted life to give you. It's very straightforward. You put that in an equation, it's happiness is equal to or greater than the difference between the events of your life and your expectations of how life should be. And a lot of the reasons for unhappiness are not about what life has given us. It's either about our perception of what life has given us, which is blurred and not true. It's about our unrealistic expectations as compared to what our life has actually given us. And it is about what we anticipate life will give us in the future, which it hasn't given us yet. Or it's about feeling sad about what life has given us in the past or how we reacted

to what life given us in the past and being ashamed or guilty or sad about it. The truth is so interesting and simple. If you have enough brain cycles in your head to think about past and future, to think about all of those possible scenarios happening outside your current life circumstances, then you're okay right now. If you had a tiger in front of you right now, you wouldn't be thinking about anything else. You would be just thinking about the tiger. If there is a threat, we focus on the threat. The fact that we're thinking about the future and about the past and about the government and about the, you know, did that come from China? Is it conspiracy? All of that, right? If the fact that you're thinking about all of those is evidence that you are okay right now and if you're okay

right now I say think about right now. Now think about events and expectations realistically. The events of our life today are unprecedented but they could have been much worse. Our expectation that this would not happen is unrealistic. As a matter of fact, it happened in our own recent history with many other possibilities of SARS and what have you. Influenza is all over the place. So those are unrealistic. And the game of happiness is a constant debate with Becky about the truth of the event and the realistic view of expectations. If you match events to the reality of what they are, most of the time they're not that horrible.

And if you set your expectations for the reality of what it should be, most of the time events meet it. And in times like this, you start to tell yourself, what is the correct expectation, not for the norm of life, but what is the correct expectation for a situation where humanity is going through what it's going through? Is the correct expectation that I should be given certainty about the future? Is that a correct expectation? Is the correct expectation that I should be out dining and meeting friends? Is that a correct expectation? Is that correct expectation that I should be out dining and meeting friends? Is that the correct expectation? And if we manage to go through those and say, hey, hold on, as much as I wouldn't want that to be the case, it is the case. And my expectations should match. I think we'll find happiness a lot more often. Why do you think people are panic buying toilet roll?

Is that just... Is that like the incessant chatter of Becky Brain? It's so weird, isn't it? I don't know. It just is a statement for where our brain is. It's like, seriously, what happened to showers? I don't understand. But no, panic buying, I actually have to admit to you, is interesting.

Panic buying is not only a mistrust in the situation. Unfortunately, I think it's a mistrust in others. Unfortunately, it is all about, I should go buy those things before the others go and buy them. I should go buy those things before the others go and buy them. And nobody stops to think about, but I don't need so many of those things, and others might actually need them. Which takes me to my top, top recommendation for the current situation, which is compassion.

Somehow, in times of threat, what we do in our instinctive animalistic response to life is to want to run faster than the other guy so that the threat catches the other guy. You know that joke of the bear shows up for two people and one of them says we have to run, to outrun the bear, and the other one says, no, no, I just have to outrun you. And that is such a horrible joke, but it's human, animalistic, almost instinctive nature is to say, if I am at threat, if I'm being threatened, I don't mind if the others are harmed as long as I'm safe. And that's a very narrow and very unrealistic view of the truth, because anyone who has a brain understands that we survive better together, that we are not a species that

could have advanced with one of us only. The reason we've advanced is we could manage to connect and communicate and create tribes and create social networks and social connections that allowed us to operate as one, to help each other out. Every primal tribe, primitive tribe anywhere in the world will tell you that it's never around one of us. It's always around all of us. will tell you that it's never around one of us. It's always around all of us. Now, if we start to panic buy because we need things, I would say absolutely go for it. I stocked up on a few things myself, right?

But I stocked up for a week of supplies because I actually know that if I obey and comply and walk out for 15 minutes today to go to a supermarket, get some stuff and come back, it's okay. It's possible. And there is no need to panic. I may not find my exact type of vegan burger, but that's fine. I can then eat tomatoes. I'm not going to starve to death. Now, with that in mind, I promise you that the best way to go through the current situation is to turn your energy outwards and help others. And you can do that in so many ways. So many ways.

You can send a kind message to someone saying, I care about you and I need to know that you're free or that you're safe and I hope that you're feeling okay. Send a message to someone and say, I'm thinking of're free or that you're safe and I hope that you're feeling okay. Send a message to someone and say, I'm thinking of you. I hope you're okay. Send a message to someone and say, tell me how you're feeling. Is there anything I can help with? Now, this is one side. The other side is start spreading positive energy in the world. Honestly, what good is all of the negativity? How is that helping anyone?

Start researching. Don't be naive. Don't underestimate the threat of what we have or the gravity of the situation, as my son taught me to understand. Also spread some positive messages. Spread the fact that Asia is coming out, that the trend is reversing. Spread the fact that, you know, we are actually doing okay. Spread the fact that it's spring. It's no longer cold. We're probably less likely to catch a flu for now. We don't know

if that's going to help us, you know, more with corona or not. It doesn't matter. But there is a positivity to some of the things that we're going through. And compassion is to actually try and spread joy and happiness. And by the way, if there is nothing, absolutely nothing you can do to spread your compassion, at least feel for the other person. At least feel that others are suffering, and so that feeling, send them happy wishes and replenishing, enriching energy. And if you cannot do any of this, just be grateful for where you are. Compassion is to understand not only that others are suffering, not only that you can do something to help with the suffering of others, but at least that your place within everything is so privileged sometimes and we

forget about it. I don't know why people forget this. I don't know why, even though we're sitting in our own little rooms, wishing that someone would call us and ask about us, we don't pick up the phone and call someone to ask about. Do you think that people who are feeling particularly anxious should limit their news intake? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. So there is a dilemma here. And the dilemma is that you need to be informed. You definitely need to, because this is a fast moving situation. And the dilemma is that you need to be informed. You definitely need to, because this is a fast-moving situation, and there are instructions that we need to receive and be aware of. But you get that in the headlines. And I say that with love and respect. I'm a Middle Eastern. I grew up in the Middle East, and the BBC world was one of the most credible sources of information

that I got over there. So I appreciate all of the efforts that they're doing. But they have to fill 24 hours of programming. So what do they fill it with? Stories after stories after stories and negativity and opinions and debates. And this person thinks this and that person thinks that. I want the headline. And the headline is, the numbers are moving in that direction. The action that you should take is this. And that's it. And that's all I need. And

I can get that on the internet. I can get that in the news summary. I can get that by asking my Google assistant. Okay? And by doing that, I'm not constantly torturing myself with negativity that sadly has no certainty to it. No one knows really what's going on. It's just a matter of debate and opinions. I've limited a lot of negativity in my life over the last 11 and a half years. I don't watch horror movies. I don't watch violent movies. I don't watch violent news. I don't even watch debates that are aggressive or angry. I don't want negativity in my life. Life can bring enough challenges on its own. Why do I add all of that sensitized negativity? So it's a choice. I'm really grateful that you brought this point up. The choice should

be, be informed, but don't submerge yourself in so much negativity. It's not good for you or for anyone. Well, I think it goes back to what we were talking about at the beginning, that there is a difference between pain and suffering. So there is a difference between imbibing the initial information, which might feel scary but is necessary because we need to prepare, and then keeping on reading stuff that, as you say, to prepare and then keeping on reading stuff that as you say is generated by opinion formers who get headlines by writing very extreme or very hysterical like that's that's what you need to be able to differentiate and I think that's very wise advice can I ask you now for specific advice

for specific groups of people so So my first group of people, and I know that a lot of them listen to this podcast, are people who are single or living alone. What advice would you give them to get through this particular time? I'm currently single and living alone. So I'm part of that group. I spend a good part of my time actually thinking about my relationships and my approach and how I'm, what I may have done differently in the past and what I should be doing now and what I'm looking for to introduce into my life. It's a very, very interesting exercise, right?

So this is my self-reflection part. You know, remember we said about, I schedule my day around three things. One is meeting myself. The other is about learning and developing. And the third is about enjoying my life and having a good time. So I enjoy my life and have a good time by connecting with people on the Internet sometimes, by playing video games, by catching up on in the mood for romantic comedies nowadays. Very, very interestingly uplifting.

So I watch one every day. Wonderful. What's your favorite romantic comedy Moe everybody everybody knows when Harry met Sally no it's love actually for sure oh my gosh that's hilarious that's the same as Justin my boyfriend he has the same favorite romantic comedy because because I told you Justin was really smart you know it's the truth no but but no but the truth so that that last scene of love, actually, the airport, where you see so much love, so many different people, the child meeting his

grandparent, and, you know, the girlfriend meeting her boyfriend, the, you know, the families, the friends, and it's so beautiful. It is so beautiful when you see humanity that way. So much love and so many types of love. And we forget, we forget this. Actually, that scene is what I would love to see in our world today, maybe virtually. So without the hugging, can we all virtually reach out to those people that we love and say, we love you. We know what you're going through. We're going through it too. If you just give that, think of how many rolls of toilet paper this is worth, right? This is this gift of like, oh my God, I've thought of you. I love you. I connected. So I do that.

And then definitely I, you know, on my self self-development I have so much time now to catch up on so I'm you know me I write several books in parallel so I have so much you know YouTube videos and TED talks and what have you and books to read that I've been keeping for the time where I have some space and I'm doing a lot of this now and I'm absolutely loving it and by the way you're wrong because when Harry Met Sally is the best rom-com of all time. But that's fine. I'm watching it tonight. Let's have that debate tomorrow.

Okay. So what would your advice be if you had been undergoing relationship issues with your significant other? Say you'd been about to get divorced or break up with someone and now you are in quarantine together for an uncertain period of time do you have advice for those people that's theoretical that's not a theoretical situation but it is not everyone's situation having said that well what can I tell you I think it's about time that you should have done what you've always should have done I don't think there is any reason ever, and I may sound romantic or idealistic, I don't think there is any reason ever for two people to fall

out to the point where they cannot work through things by communicating. And the challenge is when we communicate, there are two reasons to communicate. One is to actually express what you feel inside, and the other is to hurt the other person. And if you remove the latter, all of communication, everything that's said lovingly and positively is good, is valuable, is positive, is enriching, is energizing. And maybe it's about time that you start your day with an exercise of saying, instead of all the things that you hate about him or her, think about all of the things that they may hate about you. And think about all of the things that

you like about them. And maybe sit down and think about all of the things that you would want to see different in your life. By the way, whether you're stuck in quarantine or not, it's always a very good thing to have a conversation with someone and say, I'm not saying you should change. I'm not saying that there is anything wrong with you, because by the way, nobody ever changes. We are who we are. I'm just saying I need this in my life. Can you go to someone today, even if you've been fighting for the last seven weeks and say, look, we're going to be stuck here together for two weeks. I need to have space every morning between 7 a.m. and noon

where I can reflect on things and work without interacting with you. Is that okay? By the way, I'm not saying that you talking to me at 9 a.m. is a horrible thing or that makes you a bad person. It's just something that I need. Is that okay? And by the way, I'm also open for something that you need. What would you like me to do to make this easier for you? That actually sort of transcends that ego of like, no, no, I want to hurt them. I want to annoy them because they hurt me and annoy me. If you don't mind, this is a six-year-old behavior. A mature behavior is to say, in the current situation, with the current

facts of our life, again, committed acceptance. It seems we're going to be together for two weeks. How can we make this better? How can we make it easier for both of us? And who knows? Maybe you'll find the way back to finding what started you to like each other in the beginning. started you to like each other in the beginning. What if you are at home with young children, they're out of school, and you feel under pressure to maintain their homeschooling? Oh, come on.

Who gives a damn? We have viruses around the world. Make them play and have fun. Don't stress them anymore. Seriously, what's up with you people? Your children are stuck at home. They're not applying for Harvard Business School yet. You know, who gives a damn?

Just make this a time of connection. When was the last time you had the time to be at home? I'll tell you, and this hurts me every time I say it, Elizabeth, I miss my son. And if I had a moment in my life where I could spend more with him, I would have spent it. I think it's stupid to worry about all of this. This is your chance to sit with your annoying, noisy, crazy, frustrated, locked up kids and watch them with admiration and try to connect and get closer to them. I don't know how to say it otherwise. If I had Aya with me here, we would be having the time of our life.

Would I be worrying about her university? Who gives a damn? The world is in an unprecedented place. Who cares? I love that. Thank you. I just don't think you could have put it more profoundly. What if someone is worried about losing their job

or has in fact already lost their job? Yes, that really hurts me, by the way. That really hurts me because I think businesses have lost the essence of we're building a small family to achieve something together and that this family takes care of its members, either fails together or succeeds together. And when profit becomes in a like this, becomes so distancing from a human connection to the point that during the toughest of all times, you let someone go or you cut their salary or whatever. I think that's sad, to be honest. Especially if you didn't need to do it as a business.

I think that's really, really, really almost inhuman. Now, having said that, there are two sides to this. One is there is a realistic side, which is some of us will actually need help. So not everyone is privileged enough to have enough savings to take them through this time. And I would ask those of us who are privileged enough to have enough savings to actually reach out to the others and maybe help out if you can. I can't even imagine how combining so many challenges would be handled by someone. This is something I call on to those who haven't lost their jobs. And in an interesting

way, think about it as, you know, you're not going out anymore. You're not spending money on dining or the pub or, you know, or a cinema or even the tube. Give that money away if you can help someone out. I think that's really important. The other side, of course, is to tell those who lost their jobs that this is just temporary. Okay. To be quite honest, a lot of financial analysts will say this is much more similar to 9-11 than it was to 2008. So this is not a systemic economic crisis with errors that need to be corrected. This is just a massive, massive urgent response to a temporary situation that is going to change.

And if you look at the economy of our world and the stock markets and performance of businesses and so on post 9-11, many of them came back, many of them rebounded. And so there will be economic activity quickly, and there will be people needing new employees. And my hope and my expectation is that the elation, the excitement as things start to go back to normal will even get us to be more positive and bullish and hopefully get us back to where we should be. Having said that, once again, it's committed acceptance. So you are in a situation where you need to be responsible for protecting yourself from the virus, but also you need to find out what you can do to go through the current situation. And I think as difficult as it may

sound, the only thing you can do is to just sit down and tell yourself, what can I do with this right now? How can I make it as easy as I can make it, or at least as not difficult as it can become? Okay. And my final group of people is people who are elderly themselves, or who are very worried about elderly parents, or elderly relatives, or elderly friends that they can't go and visit. Yes, that's a structural challenge that we have in society, which is not, you know, in the old days, you would have asked a neighbor or a friend who's nearby to pass by and take care of them. And maybe you have that and maybe that's an idea you need to keep in mind. But, you know, I'd ask you to try and get out of your way to support them, even move them in with you if you can. One of the statistical interesting debates and conversations I saw about the current situation is that the virus is fatal or is severe and it affects, you know, in its effects when it affects the vulnerable of us,

the elderly, the, you know, maybe the ones without enough immunity and so on. And I have many of those in my life. And what I do is I try very, very hard to ask them to be in a place where they can be cared for. And maybe this is about the time where we exceptional times, you know, call for exceptional measures. And maybe this is about the time where you can tell yourself, I know it's hard and I'm in isolation and all of this is going on, but maybe I should go an extra step and ask my parents to come and spend time with me. Or, you know, I go spend time with them or have a friend pass by every morning to see if they're okay, as much as you can do to protect them.

If there is anything that I can tell you has shaped my beliefs since I was a young person is that what goes around comes around. And truly, in my younger years, I really, really cared for the elderly. And I'm not old now, but I'm reasonably older than I used to be. And I have so many people caring for me. Think of it as an investment to try and do something. By the way, of course, as you can see, my answer is all about action. It's all about things that we can do. It's not about how you can handle your emotions. Because interestingly, yeah, we have the right to be concerned.

I'm not saying the situation does not call for concern and does not call for heartache sometime and does not call for feeling challenged and stressed. It's just that I'm saying when you feel those things, yeah, embrace your emotion fully and then turn on to action mode. And when you're in action mode, do the best that you can within committed acceptance to make things a little better. I think that's amazing advice. Thank you. I wanted to end by asking you perhaps the biggest question of all, which is that I know

you have spent a lot of time studying different faiths and spiritual philosophies. I wonder if I can ask you whether you personally believe that the universe is unfolding according to some kind of plan, or whether it is a random collision of events. In three words. Nothing is random at all. As I told you, I work on several books at the same time. One of them is a book I call Understanding Fate. And Understanding Fate is an attempt that I did early when after my son left to sort of make sense of why events like that happen. And I will tell you openly, forget spirituality or faith. The truth is, our world unfolds according to very tight rules of physics and thermodynamics and quantum physics

and so on and so forth, and chemistry and so on. And it seems to me that everything is highly organized, including chaos. So even chaos follows a theory that we all know that's called chaos theory and entropy and so on and so forth. But our universe and our world is so complex, there are so many things happening at the same time that it may appear to be random. So in an attempt to make sense of it all, I started by asking myself the question of free will. Do we have free will? Do we actually choose? I chose to wear one of my favorite t-shirts, a t-shirt that was given to me by my son for today's interview, even though we're just on audio only. It gave me the feeling of love and containment and being close to him. It's a choice that I made. It's absolutely my free will.

Now, think about how our free will has the power to affect our destiny. And then you will understand that fate is the sum of three different free wills. There is your own free will, your own choices to do things, regardless of the situations around you. There is the free will of all other being, like a tiny little virus called COVID-19, and its will to spread around the world and how that impacts on your free will. And then there is the free will of the universe itself, the mechanical movement, the rules of physics, the fact that we're currently in March and that the sun is starting to shine and how that might affect the free will of COVID-19 and your free will. Now, when you combine all three of those, you would realize that there is always a plan. There is always a mathematical view that

you can actually deduct if you really had enough compute power to understand what's going on. It's just so complex that sometimes we don't get it. Now, what does that mean for me? It means that I can surely affect my own free will. This is what I've spoken about this entire conversation, is the idea of committed acceptance, is to look at the circumstances around me and do what I can to make sure that I get the best possible outcome. But believe it or not, we also have influence on the free will of all other beings and influence on the free will of the universe. Our influence on the free will of COVID-19 could be by taking certain actions that halt its spreading. It has the free will to spread. It wants to go everywhere.

But if we decide to socially distance ourselves, we influence that. We may even influence the movement of the universe itself. And I know this sounds really, really, really difficult for some of us, but at the core of quantum physics and the understanding of the Copenhagen Interpretation is the idea that when we observe something, we influence its position. And so perhaps it's about time for us, and this is why, you know, I hope you didn't mind me saying, let's not talk about grief. If we observe an April where we're all out in the sun and everything is fine, an April where we're all out in the sun and everything is fine, and we internalize this in us, we get that optimism to be felt by the universe around us,

we might actually influence that free will. We might actually make that the observation that renders the reality that quantum physics tells us is true. This perhaps is the biggest thing you can do with your time now, is to sit down, reflect and be optimistic, and realize that your optimism is not just to make you feel better, but because that positivity can change the world itself. Mo Gowdat, I've said it before, and I will say it again. You are an absolute inspiration. And you said earlier about how your daily routine involves three things, meeting yourself, being productive and finding happiness. And I have to say that through the course of this interview, you have done all three for me. You have made me think, you have given me impetus to act, and you've made me very, very happy talking to you. And I cannot thank you enough for coming back on the podcast.

You know, Elizabeth, I'm always so grateful for the opportunity that you give me together. I hope we made a few people think differently today. So I'm really, really grateful for the opportunity. if you enjoyed this episode of how to fail with elizabeth day i would so appreciate it if you could rate review and subscribe apparently it helps other people know that we exist