The Resilient Mind - Master Your Mind - Mo Gawdat

Episode Date: March 7, 2025

Mohammad "Mo" Gawdat is an Egyptian entrepreneur, author, and former Chief Business Officer of Google X. With a background in engineering and a passion for human happiness, he authored Solve for Happy, which explores the science of joy, and Scary Smart, which examines the future of AI. Through his books, talks, and initiatives, Mo advocates for a balanced, mindful approach to technology and personal fulfillment.Take action and strengthen your mind with The Resilient Mind Journal. Get your free digital copy today: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Download Now⁠⁠Subscribe to Steven Bartlett for more inspiring videos: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheDiaryOfACEO Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the Resilient Mind podcast. In this episode, you will be listening to Mastering Your Mind with Mo Godat. Get access to the Resilient Mind Journal by clicking the link in the show notes. Enjoy. It could be. I mean, if you want to find love, do what you love. It's very straightforward. If you're into reflection and personal development, go to personal development conferences,

sit with personal development. People like me, I'll buy you coffee anytime. or go to a retreat, for example. The people that will go to the retreat will be the type of person that you're looking for. I gave that advice to one of my dear friends and colleagues when I worked at Google. She was part of Google in Poland.

And I told her that. I said, if you want to find love, do what you love. So she went and asked herself, what do I love? I love tango. Went and started, you know, attended a tango class, ended up marrying the instructor, right? It's simple. You want someone that matches you.

Go to the places where those things happen. Those places could be physical places. They could be online. Okay. They could be serendipitous because you're searching for those things. But just know what you stand for. I'm, you know, not a party animal. I'm never going to find my match in a party.

So do I go to parties? No, I don't, really. I mean, I go sometimes when there is a reason to go, but otherwise, no, that's not how I spend my time. Money is an illusion at every level. Money doesn't exist. You and I know that. Anyone who understands fractional reserve

and how money is printed and generated, money does not even exist. You walk into a bank and you ask for a 50,000 pounds loan for a car, and they literally write the numbers, 5,000-000-0-0-0 in a spreadsheet, and poof, money comes out of nowhere. That money never existed before you borrowed it, okay, and will only exist. when you work your backside off to pay it back.

Right. And interestingly, that illusion was created to make our lives easier, and then it ended up making our life a lot more difficult. Now, why? Because most of us are so chasing the revenue side of money without a full understanding of the cost side of money. Let me try to explain. for you to get a job in London that pays you 100,000 pounds,

just for simplification of the mathematics, you have to live in London, which costs you 70,000 pounds. For example, I don't know London very well, but let's say these are the numbers. But on top of the 70,000 pounds, it also costs your stress. It also costs you being far away from your mom if your mom lives elsewhere.

it costs you, you know, your time, which is your most valuable resource. The only thing you really have in your life is your time. And it costs you so many other things, right? And so most people don't understand the cost-benefit relationship to start. Now, you take that and then you add a Louis Vuitton bag or a fancy car, and suddenly your money is not even going as far as it could, because you could get yourself a bag that is beautiful and everything for a hundred pounds, but then you choose to buy one for several thousand pounds.

And then you have to work harder, which makes you pay more costs, and the cycle becomes even more vicious, right? You continue further than that, and you start to say, so I save some of that, some of my money in the future, but your savings are suffering inflation. So you save a thousand pounds, they become 900, they become 800, when in reality, by the way, you've saved the thousand pounds, when you could have borrowed them by entering some numbers in a spreadsheet.

The entire recipe around that story is wrong. Everything around money is not what we believe in it is, okay, which basically makes it an illusion. Now, the biggest part of that illusion, believe it or not, is, and I know you have money in the bank, is that you have nothing. I don't know if you realize that. Most people don't understand that.

if I have a hundred pounds in the bank, I literally have nothing. I have nothing. The bank has my hundred pounds, and the bank can decide whatever they want to do if they wanted to take it away from me. And it is only my money when I choose to buy an iPhone or something with it.

For that one instant, that money is mine. And then once I get the iPhone, it's not mine anymore. I now have the iPhone. Right? You basically assign that money that is never yours, it's the banks, until the minute you spend it to spending it on

things that most of us don't ever interact with. I mean, look at your own home, anyone listening to us, and how many things you have in that home that you've not ever used, ever. You know, you saw that pair of shoes in the window and you were like, oh my God, I have to have them, spent several hundred pounds on them or several tens of pounds on them, and then ended up taking them home, never, ever putting them on. Right. Now, all of that, waste along the way, the cost of earning the money, the things that you spend it on, the actual value of the things that you spend it on, basically tells you that there is one truth to money, which is, I have basic needs. I have basic needs and my basic needs are to be

reasonably covered, reasonably fed, reasonably safe, and so on and so forth. And in the Islamic culture, we call this risk, which is different than income. Rizk is not. not what how much money you earn. It's the good that that money brings you. It's did you eat a meal today? That is actually what you're looking for in life. It's not the money that gets you the meal. What you're looking for is the meal.

Could you actually buy something for your daughter today? The thing is what you're looking for. It's not the money that got the thing. And if you start to chase that, something very different happens, right? Suddenly you start to ask yourself, Hmm. Is buying that thing worth the 17 hours of work I'm going to put in them? Right? Which of those? Which would I prefer if I gave you the two choices and said,

buy this bag or spend 17 hours with your friends? If you see it that way, you may make very different decisions. It leaves us with a very big other illusion, which is, but money is safety, Mo, you know, it's not like I want money because I want more fancy things. I just want to feel safe because the world is unpredictable. Sadly, when the world is unpredictable, money is not going to save you. And I think my story's been very, very, very big eye open. I had enough money. I, you know, I had enough connections and enough influence and I, you know, failed to protect my child's life when it was time for him to go, right? I, you know, I think we know many stories of someone that maybe falls and breaks your back. What will your money do for you? Safety is a

much bigger thing than just a little bit of money in the bank. And by the way, safety is an attitude, is an idea to tell yourself, when I need it, I will make it. When I need it, I will have it. Perhaps the answer is, I don't need so much of it anyway. And I think, you know, again, like everything in life, you want to have the skill of making money. Money is power. You know, again, when you were speaking on slow-mo, you basically said, I love the idea of being. You being able to build this setup for the podcast of spending on my show and so on. That's wonderful. Okay?

Money is power. But it's power as long as you own it and it doesn't own you. The minute money owns you and lack of it starts to distract you and looking at how much your other friend has and he has a little more than you, you know, hurts your ego. Once it gets into that realm, then money works against you. It doesn't work for you. Nothing is good or bad, nothing is right or wrong. Everything is both right and wrong and everything can be both good and bad.

It depends on what you want to do with it. And one of the messages I constantly tell everyone in the world is absolutely become successful, become powerful, become rich. Because the biggest problem with our world is that the most successful, most powerful, and the richest are the worst of us. Okay. And I don't generalize and say that's the truth, but it's actually easier to make money if you break some rules, then it is, if you're ethical.

And so as a result of that, a good chunk of the big money in the world is not super ethical, right? And if I have more money, I can fuel my $1 billion happy mission. And that's a good thing for the world. That's, by the way, owning money, not letting it own you. Right? So if I can get to the point where I make it and actually give it to $1 billion happy, then that's amazing.

If I get to the point where I make it and then suddenly go like, oh, let's wait a little bit, grow it a tiny bit and then give it to $1 billion happy, then I'm not doing the right thing. Having said that, of course, you know how I admire you and respect you. This is your zoom lens of the world, okay? For someone else, four pounds,

some sticky paper and a couple of scissors, and spending an hour with her daughter doing something beautiful, okay, is as impactful, maybe even more impactful than the entire show because that one daughter with the sticky paper and scissors might end up becoming one of the most pronounced artists in the world prominent enough to change the world with four pounds, scissors and a piece of paper.

Now, we somehow, especially those of us like you and I who had experiences in life where they put effort and the effort rewarded them, okay? We think that we are the ones that are changing the world or making a difference. No, we're not, okay? The reality is we need to understand that, again, I admire you and I know you'll not feel upset,

but half of what you know is wrong. Half of what I know is wrong. More than that. Absolutely, right? And it's just an attempt. It's just an attempt with, you know, whether that attempt, Steve is an attempt, because of money or is it, it's an attempt because you just spend time with your driver talking

about something or, you know, you were telling the story. All of those things. I think the game is I'm going to do the best that I can to acquire the resources that I'm good at acquiring, to direct them in the investments that I have accessible to me. Okay. If you are, are a cashier, you know, at a supermarket, and you're making enough money to spend wonderful time with your daughter to be, you know, to do a bit of art. And that in itself is a form of contribution that changes the world.

And you'll never know that one daughter might cure cancer. Well, I mean, what I admire most about you is you're able to see and say this. Okay. If you're, you know, if you've achieved total enlightenment, you'll be gone. Okay. None of us is ever there. The challenge is this. Some people are completely egocentric and not even aware. Yeah. Okay. Some people are struggling. Okay. And some people are, you know, doing the best they can, understanding, as I say, that in compartment two, there is something and they're okay with it. Okay. And the trick is you're always trying to, you're always trying to

to move a little bit higher. And that higher, you know, and that little voice in your head, I follow that model. And it sounds simple, but it's actually quite interesting. I call it be, learn, do, right? Be learn do is most of us in our life, we look at problems and we say, here's the solution, right? That's, we're mostly almost anchored in doing. Doing, again, is a very masculine trait. Okay. Interestingly, a lot of doing is as harmful as it is beneficial. You know, the good doing is a doing that is informed by a form of being and by a certain level of skill that comes from learning.

So what I normally try to follow in the entire manual to your brain is to say, okay, for everything that we will find, we will have to be, then learn, then do. Okay? So you're very good. One of the people I respect most about that idea of being. You look at yourself and you say, oh, I am doing that because of that insecurity that happened when I was this.

That's an amazing achievement in itself. That's a third of the way, right? I know what I need to work on. And I think it's the challenging third of the way, believe it or not, because we humans are very good at solving the problems when they're defined. If you make it your priority, you're going to learn the skill. Everyone is capable of doing that. Again, I speak a lot about neuroplasticity and how learning works.

But once you've learned, once you've realized. realized what it is that you need to work on, you're going to learn the skill, and then you're going to start practicing and doing it the right way. The challenge is when you don't know what you're working on. Now, I'll say this openly. What you're doing to the world with your awareness that part of it is ego-driven. Of course, part of what I do is ego-driven. I tell the whole world that I'm an engineer. Being an engineer is an ego, right? Why do I tell the whole world that there is a utility to that ego. The utility is, by the way, guys, if you're going to read my work or listen to my analysis, it's going to appear a little over-engineered even when I talk about something

as beautiful as love and relationships, right? It will have that engineering element to it, which is not entirely myself, by the way. It's just the way I present myself to the world because others don't present themselves that way, so I'm differentiating. Yeah, I wish I didn't have to use that ego. You may wish that you stood on state. and didn't feel the rush of people clapping and saying, well done, you're amazing. But by the way, if you're delivering to thousands and hundreds of thousands of people on your podcast,

great. You're so much better than those who are not. And now the fact that you have your awareness makes you even better than those who are but are not aware of the parts that they need to work on. I think the whole idea is that we're all contradictions. The only difference is you're aware. Yeah.

You realize that. So the thing, I think you should be the example for everyone to recognize that we're all contradictions. It's everyone, every single one listening to us. Life is a contradiction. This is why one of my favorite feminine qualities is the ability to embrace paradoxes. And the reality is the only way you can almost like at a quantum level solve life better is if you're able to embrace two extremes and say, both are true. And I'm going to include both of them in my lifestyle. of them in my decision making because both of them are me.

Goes back to your point about the equilibrium as well, that the reason why the pendulum sits in the middle is because it's at balance with two opposing forces. Gravity has balanced it on that particular point. But when you apply one force to either side, it will swing into a direction. Maybe balance is being a perfect contradiction. Absolutely. Balance is always a contradiction.

Balance is that ability to take all of those forces. Now, you have to imagine, I separated. them into six forces and said your health, you know, six pendulums, your health is one and your love is one and this is one. But the reality is your one pendulum. So many forces are applying from so many directions. And the contradiction is not just if I work harder, I'll make more money or less money. If I work harder, I will also be a little more stressed. If I work harder, my relationships will be affected. And each of those, eventually you're ending up in one place that is very, very complex. We're a very complex being as a human and we're dealing with an even more complex life.

And the thing is, we need to take it easy on ourselves and say, yeah, yeah, I'll figure out my relationship bit in a while. I now need to figure out my one billion mission and, you know, a little more or I need to figure out this more or I need to do that more. And it's okay to say it's never perfect. It's absolutely never perfect. The game is if I told myself, no, no, hold on, I've done the thinking and this situation is my perfect situation, I'm doomed because I'm basically telling myself, keep that pendulum in this place and defend it with your life, okay? Put all of the effort in the world when that pendulum is in the wrong place. It's not in balance. The first challenge with thought is that we create our thoughts from the wrong

ingredients. So if I gave you bad vegetables and told you to make the best salad recipe on the planet, it's still going to taste that. And the reality is we have only one proper ingredient that we should allow into our brain so that we create proper accurate thoughts. And that one ingredient is actual observation. Okay. Observation is, I, look at this glass and I say this glass is at 37% full. Okay. That is an observation. Yeah, you can, we can debate in physics if it is or if it isn't and so on. But in, you know, the typical way we look at life, this is 37% full. Right. My brain would then tell me, if I used that information, I may ask someone in the team and say, guys, can I please another, have a little bit more water?

my brain would then tell me, no, no, hold on, it's tapered. It is not, you know, the same from the top as it is from the bottom. No, you've calculated wrong. No, you're getting old and your mathematics are not accurate anymore. You can go into so many different inputs into your thoughts that would debate that fact that it is more empty than it is full. Okay? You take that and you can find them in categories.

One of them is conditioning. Believe it or not, one of the most frequently used sources for creating your thoughts is not what's happening in the world at all. It's your conditioning. And your conditioning creates thoughts within you that are not at all a reality.

I speak about an experience where I was dating a Buddhist girl who was very calm and wonderful in every possible way. And, you know, two of our best friends were a couple and they had a big fight before coming to our place. And so anyway, the girl basically said, no, I need to talk to you about something and, you know, want to ask your view.

And she sat next to me very, very, very good friends, all the four of us for a very long time. And so she hugged me. She sat on, you know, put her head on my shoulder and cried. Okay. My girlfriend came in and said, excuse my English. She said, take your hands off my man you be. Okay.

And, you know, I was like, whoa, she's one of the calmest people I know. What happened here? And what happened was she had been cheated on before, right? By the best, by her best girlfriend and, you know, a friend of the person she was dating at the time. And the input into her head that said this girl was sort of doing something inappropriate with me was coming from the fact that she had that conditioning in her. It wasn't the event itself. The event was highly exaggerated by the conditioning. So we're unable to find that when we look at the makeup of our thoughts.

The second and the third are recycled emotions and recycled thoughts. So we recycle so much of what our parents told us. Recycling of a memory or the recycling of a thought. Your friend tells you, hey, by the way, all men are cheats. And you recycle that thought. Okay. All men are cheats. All men are cheats. And then, you know, you end up making decisions based on that. The fourth, and I think the most, the biggest challenge we have in the modern world is the mainstream media, basically. The large advertising media story that we're told that is a ton of input, whether it's movies, it's social media, it's, you know, tweets or or reels or if it's the BBC or Channel 4 playing.

the news and the reality of what we're getting is we're getting a highly biased section of life. Why? Because of the human nature which is around negativity bias, humans are only paying attention most of the time to the negative side of life. Those or all of those outlets are constantly using that negativity bias to broadcast to you. It's actually not the full truth, but the negative side of the truth. So, you know, a channel will not talk about a child that went out with his mother and played on the swings. They'll talk about a child that fell in a well and we have that disaster. And, you know, a social media person, I always say you're a balanced one, but a social media influencer will always show the pictures that appear to be more than what they're living

and there will be filters and so on. And that negativity that you feel as a result is not a reflection of the actual truth of life. It's a reflection of the subset of knowledge that you get from life. Now, what does that mean? I'm trying to say, if I give you your phone and your phone has a perfect phone app on it, if you type the wrong number,

you're going to call the wrong person. Nothing wrong with the phone, nothing wrong with the app. In your brain, if you put in the wrong data all the time, if you allow all of that negativity coming from the media and the news, if you allow the conditioning, to be part of your decision-making criteria, the recycle thoughts and emotions, then you're eventually going to end up calling the wrong action. Okay.

And I think the reality is that at that very fundamental level, unless you start to really iron out all of the wrong inputs, there is very little possibility that you're actually going to get to the accurate output. This is 37% full is my brain's calculation. Let's use a simpler example. You have an argument with your partner. The next morning you wake up and say, doesn't love me or she doesn't love me anymore.

The argument is what you observed, that there was a bit of attention that those specific words were said. That's observation, right? Observation is literally like narration of the situation. That's it. And if you can stick down, you can take yourself all the way down to narration,

you're done. I observe that you're sitting crosshand. you know, crossing your arms. That's an observation. My brain could take that observation and say, he's bored. He's protective. He is angry with me. We've been talking too much.

Whatever, okay? I can translate it into a million things in my head. None of them is true. The only truth is Stephen's sitting in front of me and he's crossing his arms. If I accept that to be the truth, then my brain suggests those other things. I can then ask and I say, have we been talking too long, Steve?

Should we take a break? Can we do this? Can we do that? And then you would say something and that would be my next observation. I can include that in my analysis as another fact. Without those facts, sadly what happens to us in life is that we're completely absorbed and consumed by stories that we've built. The story is this is 37% full.

a story, believe it or not, even so though it appears to be very accurate, it's a story that includes, hey, by the way, Mo, you're good in geography, you've done your mathematics really well, you've looked at those two, it looks at a few, and, you know, it's a big story. And I would tend to tell myself, hey, it's 37. If I complemented this with, you know, I think it's 37, it could be a little more or a little less. That's a much better observation. If I tell myself the story and believe it and start acting upon it, then I'm in a very deep trouble because, because basically my input into my brain is leading me to confusion, certain confusion, because I'm not using the truth. Because what are your beliefs? The beliefs are built

within context. Again, I write about this. You know, there was a proverb in Egypt that was developed in the times of poverty and famine. People couldn't have an and it was a difficult time. And it basically said as far as your, extend your legs as far as your blanket goes. Okay? Interesting. And, you know, it's basically within context,

it invites people to say, hey, live within your resources, live within your means. It's not an easy time. You take that and take it out of context. And it's widely, widely used in Egypt. You put it out of context and it becomes, you know, a bit of complacence. It's like, don't try to buy a bigger blanket.

Just live within your blanket. And that's a very, very, very different view of looking at something that was meant to be correct. And if you take, when I talk about conditioning, you have so many of those in you. So many, something that your mom said at a point in time, something that your, you know, teacher said at a point in time, something that you did and your friends in school reacted in a way that you didn't want and so on. And all of that is embedded within.

us. How do I get rid of it? Again, it's very simple. It's that contradiction. It's a very simple contradiction of something is not in balance. I say that I want a Rolls-Royce, but I actually go to the Rolls-Royce and then feel that maybe people will think this way about me. Maybe, you know, it's going to cost me that much, maybe, right? And suddenly you go like, okay, so I'm not in balance. Thank you for tuning in. Continue strengthening your mind by listening to our other episodes. Download the Resilient Mind Journal by clicking the link in the show notes.