The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett - Moment 38 - Happiness Is A Choice: The Controversial Truth: Mo Gawdat

Episode Date: December 30, 2021

In these ‘Moment’ episodes of my podcast, I’ll be selecting my favourite moments from previous episodes of The Diary Of A CEO. In this episode we go back to a moment from one of my favourite episodes with Mo Gawdat. Mo has co-founded over 20 businesses, he’s the author of the ground-breaking ‘Solve for Happy’ and he was chief business officer of the pioneering wing of google, Google X, the ‘moonshot factory’ where they work on all the latest technologies like self-driving cars and robots. But most importantly, Mo has learnt perspective about life. When his son died, this sent him on an incredible journey to look within himself and find the ‘happiness equation’, a simple technique that can help us all reduce our unhappiness and appreciate life, and ourselves, more. Mo Gawdat’s episode simply blew me away. There were so many hard-hitting truths which he exposed about happiness, but this clip might just have the best of them all. Happiness is a choice. This is something not everyone is willing to accept. But as you’ll hear in this moment episode, you can only be happy once you choose to be. Episode 101 - https://g2ul0.app.link/9MCCcFlLnmb Mo: https://twitter.com/MGawdat? https://www.instagram.com/mo_gawdat/?... Watch the episodes on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheDiaryOfACEO/videos

Quick one, just wanted to say a big thank you to three people very quickly. First people I want to say thank you to is all of you that listen to the show. Never in my wildest dreams is all I can say. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd start a podcast in my kitchen and that it would expand all over the world as it has done. And we've now opened our first studio in America, thanks to my very helpful team led by Jack on the production side of things. So thank you to Jack and the team for building out the new American studio.

And thirdly to Amazon Music who, when they heard that we were expanding to the United States, and I'd be recording a lot more over in the States, they put a massive billboard in Times Square for the show. So thank you so much, Amazon Music. Thank you to our team. And thank you to all of you that listened to this show. Let's continue. You're inferring something which I think will annoy a lot of people and that is that happiness is a choice oh totally and that you you you can choose to be happy totally and that if you're unhappy and really for many circumstances in our life day to day and work and love and relationships personal responsibility is the is the answer and entirely on you and a lack thereof is the answer. And entirely on you.

And a lack thereof is the cause. Absolutely. You know what you just did? You've just lost us 80% of the audience. I know. Do you know why I know? Because I did a tweet one day about this. And what my tweet was,

there's like, I guess a mental model, but there's a reframing that can, I think has brought me happiness, which is when something happens to me, I used to, like many people say, X thing that happened has brought me happiness which is when something happens to me I used to like many people say x thing that happened has pissed me off yeah and just by changing that sentence to I've pissed myself off because of x thing absolutely and I tweeted that and I was like try it just like reframe it and take personal responsibility for how you're feeling and in the comment section

everyone was like, nope. Yeah. People don't like the idea that they have control over their emotional responses. So when I, when I wrote, so when I wrote, when I write books in general, I write them, I write them like software. So I issue a beta version. Okay. And I get 270 people. I don't know why 270, but it's fascinating. Yeah. I get 270 people to read it on Google Docs. So I give them editor privileges so they can actually edit the text, right? And then something fascinating happens. They edit the text and then others edit what they edited, okay? And there is a conversation happening.

And basically it takes the book to its best possible version, if you want. In Solve for Happy, I had a sentence on page 11 that basically said exactly what you said. Happiness is a choice, okay? And at that page, I lost 8% of the readers, okay? And I looked into the information that they gave me about themselves, the early readers,

and most of the 8% that left were already in depression. Okay. And to tell someone it's your responsibility to get yourself out of this horrible place that you're in is quite disturbing because we like the idea of saying, no, no, hold on. No, it's not me. Life is treating me really badly. That's why I'm not happy. Okay. I can't do anything about it. Life took my son. You know, life took my son. I. I can't do anything about it. Life took my son. You know, life took my son. I have the right to be unhappy. Yes. Life took your son. That's true. And you have the right to be unhappy, but you're never going to get out of unhappiness. If you wait for life to bring him back or you wait for life to correct its action. Okay. The only way

you can come out of unhappiness is if you choose and say, okay, it's going to be a long journey. It's going to take a lot of time. Okay. And I'm going to try you choose and say, okay, it's going to be a long journey. It's going to take a lot of time, okay? And I'm going to try and try and try, but I'll get there. And neuroplasticity proves that. Neuroplasticity basically tells you that if you just run a happiness kind of activity once a day, every day your brain will be better at it. And I mean, please don't get me wrong,

but what do most of us do every day? We watch negative news. We swipe on toxic positivity and we're just drowning ourselves in negativity. And then what happens? What happens is we become really good at being negative. We become really good at finding what's wrong with life. We become very good at, you know,

getting pissed off with the prime minister, right? Because it's an activity we do on daily basis. So your brain goes like, this must be important for her or him, okay? I'm just gonna make sure I have the neurons aligned around that. And so you're basically, we're basically configuring our brains to be unhappy.

I have not watched a horror movie for 15 years. Really? Yeah, you know what that means? I have not had a nightmare for 15 years. Not? Yeah. You know what that means? I have not had a nightmare for 15 years. Not a single one. Okay. I have not watched a violent movie unless really badly recommended to me because it has a good message in it. And I watch Michael McIntyre every night before I sleep. I love Michael McIntyre. Who's going to get me to say hi to Michael McIntyre? But think about that practice.

My brain, before I go to sleep, is laughing. It's laughing. That's a choice. That's a choice. And that is the kind of neuroplasticity that we need to shift. You know, if you go to the gym and lift weights every day, you're gonna look like a triangle. If you squat every day, you're going to look like a triangle. If you squat every day, you're going to look like a pear.

Okay. The same is happening inside your brain. You just don't see it. If you're constantly watching, you know, news media, right? You're literally building your muscles that are concerned and are, you know, critical and are worried about the world. When in reality, most of the time, you can't do anything about it. Like, okay, so I'll give you a very strange example.

When I was locked down, first lockdown, I was in London. Second lockdown, I was in Canada, okay? As the lockdown was approaching, I stopped watching news after April, 2020. Zero news, okay? And by the time I was in Montreal, someone texted me and said, hey, by the way, did you know

we're going to Code Red tomorrow? I said, yeah, what's Code Red? She said, all restaurants are closed. You wear a mask everywhere. I said, good. That's it. That's all the news I needed to know. Really.

Okay. People would go like, no, how come? You need to know the numbers and the statistics and the death rate. And they're, no, I don Really? Okay. People would go like, no, how come you need to know the numbers and the statistics and the death rate? And they're, no, I don't. Okay. Someone else is doing this. And by the way, if I know it and I don't like it and I don't believe in what they're doing, I'm going to be locked down anyway. So can I waste my time or actually utilize my time in building a podcast that becomes one of the top half percent of all podcasts globally. Isn't that a better use of my life than just watching the news and creating that illusion

for myself that I can actually influence anything when in reality? So I normally advise people and say, look, if you've been following a certain topic for the last two months and have not been able to influence the decision on that topic for the last two months and have not been able to influence the decision on that topic for the last two months, you're useless. So stop watching that topic. Okay. And start choosing topics that you can champion. Okay. One or two, because you're human. You're not, you know, you're not Superman. Find one or two real, you know, purposes that you actually care about and try to learn enough about them, enough depth about them to influence them. That's the way to make the world better. That's the way

to make your life better. And yeah, climate change is really something very important, but it's not on my agenda. I don't work on climate change. I work on happiness. That's my part of life. Okay. Someone else I trust will be working on climate change, which I believe is as important, if not more important, but it's not mine. I don't need to watch everything about it. Okay. And concern myself about it all the time. I need to be updated. I need to do my part by, by really changing my habits as a human, but that's it. That's as far as I go. There's something in there, which is clearly a theme. And I think three topics we've touched on,

the passing of your son, you know, you talked there about COVID and other elements, which is this theme of like radical acceptance. Oh, absolutely. Like instant radical acceptance. Oh, absolutely. I mean, this is what I call the Jedi master level of happiness.

So there are three levels of happiness, right? The, you know, if you really think about it, I call it the happiness flow chart. Events are going to piss you off. It's just the truth. If you can manage to acknowledge your emotion and say, oh my God, I feel, am I angry? Is this anger? I mean, is this, is this what I'm feeling? And then, and then you take that feeling and you say to yourself, okay, interesting. I am angry. I need to do something about it.

I will give you three steps, okay? The beginner's level is ask yourself if what you're thinking is true. Your partner said something hurtful on Friday. Your thought is he or she doesn't love me anymore, okay? Ask yourself if that thought is true. If it isn't, drop it. There is no point to be unhappy. If it is, then let's go to the black belt level of unhappiness, which is, can I do something about it? That's the second question. Is it true? It's question one. Can I do something about it? It's question two, right? And honestly,

by the way, it doesn't take more than two seconds to feel the emotion, ask yourself if it's true, and then go to, to, to, to, to, can I do something about it? And if yes, then do it. What are you waiting for? Text him or text her and say, baby, can we please talk over dinner? What you said on Friday hurt me. Okay. Instead of just banging your head against the table, hoping that they will find out and come and say, oh, I'm so sorry. You know, I was teaching, this story really hurts me. I was teaching, you know, before lockdown, I taught a lot of people in workshops and seminars, more than 20,000 people. One day, one of them comes to me in the first break and says, what are you talking about? What do you mean happiness is a choice? You have no idea what happened to me.

Okay. And I said, okay. And she said, when I was 17, she was 74 at the time. Can you believe that? 57 years of holding onto one thought, hitting her head against the wall. Right. And I hugged her. I hugged her. I cried. And I said, did it work? Did all of that work? Or was the better thought, okay, it was horrible, but can I do something about it? And that's question number two. That's black belt. Sometimes, however, there's nothing you can do about it.

Whatever she experienced could be irreversible. What I have experienced, the loss of Ali, is irreversible. There's nothing you can do about it, okay? And I'm not asking everyone to get there quickly, but the Jedi master level of happiness is to say, okay, it happened and I have no choice to change it. There is nothing I can do to fix it. So can I accept it, but not surrender and lie down and, you know, and die, accept it and then start

to do something to make my life better despite its presence, or maybe because of its presence. Okay. Can I accept that Ali died and start to spread his message so that my life and the life of others become better? Can I accept that I'm locked down and start my podcast so that I can use the time where I'm not traveling? Can I do that? I call that committed acceptance. Okay. And it's very simple. If you commit and accept to, if you accept things, you, you can't change and commit to make your life better despite of, or because of their presence, nothing can beat you. Nothing can beat you. And yeah, is it horrible that I actually managed to move on and not hit my head against the wall for 27 years? Does that say I don't love Ali?

What are you talking about? I adore Ali. I cry about missing him still today, right? It's not that, there is nothing to prove in that. What, what I can prove is I love him so much that I actually dedicate my life to spreading his message. That's so much better than sitting there and saying, ah, life hit me. I don't like life. That's a six-year-old attitude, honestly. Okay. Adults okay adults will say okay and especially business people i mean your audiences huh the market changes all the time do you sit down and go like i lost another deal or do you just get up and say why did we lose this deal what can we do about it right and if if there is something wrong with the product can we change the product

right well you took talk to there about business in particular rings very, very true because in business, and you've been, you know, very successful entrepreneur yourself and worked with teams, you'll get people who are high in defaulting to logic in moments of chaos and also default to personal responsibility and those that don't. Yeah. And the outcomes of both groups are quite predictable. Very different. And actually this, this approach of, is it true? Can I do something about it? Can I accept it and, and, and commit? I learned that in business. Okay. So I've spent most of my, my career, I was managing managers and what do managers do?

They open your door and they sit down and complain. Okay. And after a while it becomes too much. So my attitude was very straightforward. I would give them 10 minutes to vent, then 10 minutes to ask them, is this true? Okay. Is there anything you're missing? Is the legal team also nice? Not just making your life miserable, right? Have you seen evidence that they've helped you before? So, you know, is it true? And then I go like, so now, great, last 10 minutes of the meeting, what are we going to do about it? Are we going to be able to improve it, fix it, or are we going to accept it and do something despite its presence? And it's a very simple business approach. Now, most of us do that in business, but when it comes to our personal life, we don't do that. And interestingly, most of us, by the way, who do that in business are very successful in business.

And most of us who do that in life are very successful in life. It's not just happy. It makes us successful because it doesn't waste our cycles on things that are not necessary. So if you can do it at work, do it at home, do it in your life, do it in your relationships. It's really a very straightforward flowchart.