Dr Rupy: Today I feel like I've had one of the most impactful conversations on a personal level because I vividly remember watching Mo Gawdat's interview on Channel 4 News back in 2017 when he was touring and promoting his international bestseller, Solve for Happy. His story of loss deeply touched me and it changed my perspective on happiness and how to attain it. Mo wants you to achieve happiness and wants you to understand that happiness is easier to achieve than we've been led to believe. And for me to have the opportunity to now interview him four years later was just such a surreal privilege I just cannot explain. I do want to warn you that today's podcast contains details of parental bereavement, so please do exercise caution if this is triggering for you. A bit of background, Mo Gawdat is the former chief business officer of Google X. He's author of the international bestselling book Solve for Happy and founder of One Billion Happy. After a long career in tech, Mo has made happiness his primary topic of research, diving deeply into literature and conversing on the topic with some of the wisest people in the world. Mo is also host of Slo Mo, a podcast with Mo Gawdat where he has the most wonderful conversations with some of the greatest minds of our time, including Dr Tara Swart, Alain de Botton, Mark Williamson. I highly recommend that you dive into this library of incredible episodes if you find Mo's voice as soothing and as rhythmical as I do. You'll definitely love listening back to those episodes. A bit of backstory to Mo. In 2014, he endured the tragic loss of Ali, his 21-year-old son after routine surgery. Motivated by his loss, Mo began pouring his findings into his book, Solve for Happy, and his mission to help one billion people become happier, #1billionhappy, is his attempt to honour Ali by spreading the message that happiness can be learned and shared. And this is exactly what you'll hear about in today's podcast, where we talk about Mo's intention for the year, flow and various definitions of the flow state, the inability to sit with ourselves, the tragic loss of Ali and how that pushed his mission to solve happy. His midlife crisis at age 29 and how happiness and the happiness equation is received across culturally. If you are inspired by this episode, do listen to more of Mo's work, including his own podcast and workshop videos on YouTube that were recorded at Stanford University. He's done a whole lecture series of a number of hours and I've linked to all those on the show notes found at thedoctorskitchen.com. It is a wonderful, wonderful exploration into multiple topics around happiness and I personally have watched those a couple of times and they are truly impactful. So if you enjoyed the topics on today's podcast, you will love the Stanford series of lectures. Again, they're on thedoctorskitchen.com. For now, please do enjoy my conversation with Mo Gawdat. Mo, thank you so much for agreeing to be on my podcast. It was such a pleasure to be on yours late last year. And as you know, I'm now a fan of it and I think it's been brilliant. First of all, I just want to ask how you're doing and and how things are for you right now and whereabouts in the world are you?
Mo Gawdat: How am I doing? I'm I'm, I'm I'm always good and grateful. I should always say that. It's been a very unusual start of the year. I had four of my best, like real closest friends, diagnosed with COVID and and one of them had another surgical operation at the same time. And so they were going through a very tough time. One of my dearest, dearest friends lost his mother, actually, just very recently. And so it's been a bit of like, oops, you know, is this, you know, is this happening again? But at the same time, I I sort of have a, you know, a glass half full view of life, if you want. And you know, the reality is that my four friends have recovered, they're, you know, they're in good shape. Many others have recovered. It seems that, of course, while we are annoyed with all of the conditions and restrictions and lockdowns and so on, at least it seems that things are being monitored and under control. I on my personal side have had quite a bit of progress on my business front, which has really, you know, been challenged through the COVID time. So, you know, that's actually reasonably promising. And at the same time, which is my favourite thing, I have to say is I I I start every year of my life with a bit of a New Year's intention. And my New Year's intention this year has been really, really, really inspiring and it's doing very well so far.
Dr Rupy: Okay.
Mo Gawdat: So, so I'm so I'm happy about that.
Dr Rupy: Do you share your intentions or is it something that's deeply personal to you?
Mo Gawdat: I do, I do, I do. I do, of course. I mean, of course, I hope you don't mind I shared so much detail.
Dr Rupy: Of course.
Mo Gawdat: I found that it's it's it's only genuine when someone asks you how you're doing to actually give a real answer. You know, you know when someone tells you, hey, Rupy, how are you? And you go like, I'm fine. That doesn't mean anything, right? You you know, you should somehow be a little introspective. It's almost an invitation to reflect, an invitation to go like, how how am I doing? That's interesting. My my New Year's intention is is flow. So this is the year of flow. And it's a big part, it's a big part of a six and a half years plan for me, self improvement, self connection plan, self love plan, if you want, which has been to attempt to connect a lot more with my feminine side, if that's, if that's understood. So so, you know, of course, feminine and masculine is not a, is not a male female thing. Feminine and masculine are are are qualities, are characters of who we are. And I, you know, I I seem to be reasonably balanced between them, but but because of the way the modern world has groomed me, if you want, you know, as a business executive, as a thinker and an author and a mathematician, in many ways, I had prioritised my left brain for quite a while. And and so my left brain drives a lot of my masculine characters, you know, linear thinking and and analytical thinking and so on. And so for the last six and a half years, I've been trying to empower the other side, if you want, which I believe, by the way, if you connect to it is absolute genius. Like it's so much smarter. And I know I know men will be upset when I say that, but it is so, it is so much smarter to use intuition than it is to use linear thinking, right? It is so much smarter to use empathy than it is to use forcefulness, if you want, or strength, right? And and so part of that whole cycle, the part that your left brain sort of blocks most is flow. Because, you know, if you're if you're very much in the masculine, you want everything to be planned, you have a very clear, you know, future and time, you know, horizon and you really follow through that arrow of time, if you want. And so my year this year is the year where I'm exercising flow, where I'm exercising my ability to let the universe think on my behalf and allow me to, I actually built a very simple guideline. I said, I will set my self love boundaries. So the the boundaries beyond which it would be, you know, intrusive to my self love, if you want. And then I will flow with everything else. And it is an incredible feeling. It really is liberating in so many ways, but it's also very connecting to a part of me that has been yearning to come out for a very long time.
Dr Rupy: I mean, I'm really glad that we're starting straight away with the intention of being as authentic and as vulnerable as possible, actually, because I and I appreciate that perspective into how you're feeling, particularly at the start of the year and your intention this year. I've heard you mention flow and I've heard the term around getting into that flow state often. And I know one of the things that I've heard you talk about is actively listening to music. So instead of it being a passive enjoyment where something is on in the background whilst you complete a task or whilst you do cleaning, you you actually listen to the music and it and it connects with you. Are these kind of exercises things that you feel help you achieve that flow state?
Mo Gawdat: So so definitely a big part of flow is presence. You know, so so by the way, there are flow can be viewed from different paths. There is the Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's book of flow and the concept of doing something to a level of proficiency like a pianist that is in a state of flow. And that's slightly different actually than the flow I'm seeking. The flow I'm seeking can be visualised, you know, in terms of, imagine if you have a a white water raft, right? And you're on white waters. The masculine would try to pedal their way up the stream. Okay? It's it's all about forcefulness. It's all about, I want to get there, I want to push myself, I can, you know, I can persevere, I can do it. The feminine would literally let the water, the river take them. And they would pedal every now and then just to, you know, just to change direction a little bit, but it's mostly with the flow, right? And and and that's very different. So that kind of flow is a trust in the universal consciousness, if you want. It's the ability to say to yourself, my brain, my physical brain is capable of doing certain things really, really well, but there seems to be a much bigger intelligence out there in the world, which you can actually judge yourself, huh? If you really look at the most pivotal moments in your life, the moments that really made you, the moments that changed everything, they were not planned. They were not forced on you, through you. They were not forced by you, they were actually given to you. At least that was true for most of my life, huh? Even my work on happiness was just triggered by the death of my wonderful son. Most of the big jobs I got in my life, I mean, my first job I got because I got in a car accident. And the person that I got in a car accident with was one of my best friends and he worked at IBM, right? And he said, oh, I was looking for you, I didn't have your number, we need you at IBM. I'm like, okay, right? And and and you can see that if you flow with life, sometimes life is a little more intelligent than we are. Now, go back to exercises. The challenge we have in connecting to that consciousness, believe it or not, is actually not that our brains are weak. It's that our brains are too strong. Okay? So so so if you and I are talking now, Rupy, and there is, I can guarantee you, there must be six noises around you. You know, a police siren somewhere and a car and maybe a coffee machine and a ventilation or whatever that is. And you don't hear them. You don't hear them because you and I want to engage in this conversation. We want to filter everything else and focus on this conversation. Now, to engage, your brain activates filters, right? It activates filters that that is that are so powerful that when you when when they say you're only using a portion, a small portion of your brain capacity, it's because your brain is literally neglecting so many things to focus on a few things. But it does that without your conscious attention. Okay? It does that in a way where sometimes your brain would obsess over and over and over and over about what's going to happen in March, what's going to happen in March, what's going to happen in March? What's going, what's the Prime Minister going to say? Is are they going to lock us down more? Are they going to, right? And you can obsess around those things. And if you're into those spaces, you're missing out life itself. You're missing out the things that are happening here and now. And and part again, believe it or not, that's also a masculine property. Part of the masculine brain is that it focuses a lot on the past and the future. Time, linear time is very important for the for the masculine brain. And by the way, again, I I say that with respect, huh? You could be a woman or a person of any gender, any choice of gender, and you can still have that masculine tendency and you're using the masculine quality to focus on time. When you're in the past and the future, something amazing, two things, two amazing things happen. One of them is you're no longer in the world. Do you realise that, huh? If you're focusing on something that happened in the past or something that happened in the future, you're not now. And by the way, you never actually lived in the past other than inside your head. When the past happened, when yesterday happened, it was called today. And when tomorrow will happen in the future, when it happens, it's going to be called today, right? The only way for you to live in tomorrow or yesterday is to live inside your head. And when you're living inside your head, you're actually not living. You're actually not alive. You don't you don't feel alive. And the other side of this is surprisingly, I did a survey, a research on when I wrote Solve for Happy, that basically analysed your emotion, where is it anchored? Is it is it looking at the past, the present or the future? And it's positivity or negativity. And you'll be amazed that most positive emotions are anchored in the present. They're anchored here and now, elation, excitement, you know, calm and all of that is anchored now. Regret, shame and so on, negative emotions are anchored in the past, and worry, anxiety, fear are anchored in the future. And so when you're in the past and the future, you're not living, and yet, and and it's negative, huh? It's it's mostly negative. And yet we choose to be there. I decided to run exercises in my life to reverse that. Okay? I wanted to be in the moment as much as I can, not only when I'm meditating, but as much as I can. So when I listen to music, I only listen to music. Okay? So, yeah, sometimes there is music in the background, but but when I when it's time to listen to music, I will listen to music. I never play a playlist that I prepare. I always go to one song and have Spotify choose a radio for me, right? With one objective, which is I'm not going to listen to a song I don't love. So what does that mean? When the music is playing, I have to listen to what is being played because when a song I don't love happens, I advance. I go to the next song. Right? And and and and by doing that, I'm completely present in that experience, maybe for 10 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, it doesn't matter, but I'm completely there, completely enjoying it. Now, if I want to go wash the dishes, believe it or not, I go and wash the dishes. I focus on the dishes, right? Which might seem to be a very mundane task, not when you're focused on it. When you're focused on it, it's calming almost as watching the, you know, the the the oceans, the waves of the ocean, because what you're doing there is you're almost meditating. You're looking at it and then you're putting it there and you're wondering if this can be, right? And and it's a wonderful and and you know, this is living. This is being in the present moment.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's so many things I want to unpack there because I think it's a very well established tradition in Buddhist monasteries to sweep and to focus purely on that action of sweeping. In the same way you are describing doing the dishes, something that might be seen as a mundane activity for many people. However, it is an opportunity, an invitation, if you like, to really feel in that present moment. And I'll give you an example from from my life because very much like yourself, and I've heard you say this before, meditation or elements of mindfulness isn't something that you drive to go to a centre and you do 25 minutes and then you you drive back and then that's the only time you have an opportunity to meditate or be present. It's something that litters throughout your whole day. And in my sort of line of work, particularly when I'm at work, work, in clinical work, my mindfulness is when I wash my hands. And when I'm washing my hands, no matter what I'm doing, obviously outside of emergency emergencies, but when I'm washing my hands after doing a procedure or seeing a patient or whatever, I'm just washing my hands and I'm not really thinking about the the ruminations or the negative thoughts that I might be having at that point in time. And I'm trying to pepper more of those points in my day to, I would describe it as being more present, but I guess it's a way, as you've eloquently described it, of tapping into that flow as well.
Mo Gawdat: Totally, totally, totally. So once you're in that present moment and you accept that present moment, the universe itself changes that moment. Right? So so so the next moment arrives and instead of resisting it, you become part of that next moment. And then the third moment arrives and instead of resisting it, you become part of that next moment. Now, most people will say, hey, are you unemployed? I mean, like, do you not have things to do? Like, no, I do. I do. But believe it or not, I distinguish clearly between what I call brain time and practical time. Practical time is you and I agreed we're going to meet and we're going to have this conversation. So I look at my watch, I don't I don't wear a watch, but you know, I look at the clock. And yeah, and and I and I basically realise I have 10 more minutes to go. I start to get up and prepare the setup and now we have this conversation. That's called practical time. It doesn't occupy cycles of your brain. It's actually really easy to manage, especially if you're aware of the moments where you stress yourself too much. Okay? So so basically, if you plan your day reasonably and have a few buffers here and there, practical time is easy to manage. Brain time is the problem. Brain time is the time we spend inside our head spinning in thoughts that have absolutely nothing to do with the truth most of the time and nothing to do with the current moment. And and believe it or not, huh? Most of the time because as I said, when you're inside your head, you're in the past and the future, you're not in the current moment because most of the current moment is okay. And and and as a matter of fact, having the brain cycles to be able to focus on the past and the future is in itself proof that now is okay. Because if there was a tiger attacking you right now, you wouldn't be thinking about, oh my God, is my boss going to fire me tomorrow? Right? You you don't think about the future or the past when if there is a present danger. And because of that, you start to tell yourself, okay, if now, if now is okay, why am I resisting it? If now is okay, why am I not able to enjoy it? And and the joy of now, including sweeping, the the the the joy of now and I I'll say this with a ton of respect because I know this is black belt level of of, you know, insight if you want. The joy of now is to sit with your annoying brain and laugh. You know, I I I call my brain Becky as most people know. And Becky says the weirdest things. And I'm instead of trying to avoid that by switching on Netflix or, you know, hiding myself somewhere or just, you know, trying to shut her up somehow, I actually listen and it's, she's the best comedian ever. It's like, uh, like, you know, and and seriously, it's like, okay, so, you know, and I and I have an exercise that I do in the mornings two, three times a week, I call meet Becky, where I actually sit down and, no, yeah, I sit down and I let her speak with two simple rules. One is, you know, I I I recognise, I acknowledge everything that she says and then I and then I basically say what else, okay? And and I don't allow my brain to repeat the same thought twice. It's two very simple rules. And and I start and then my my brain would go like, hey, don't don't forget you have a 12 o'clock today. So I say, yeah, sure, we have a 12 o'clock, what else? It goes like, um, um, you know, that email that came from that person, he's annoying. Okay, he's annoying, that's your view, but fine, what else? Right? And then it goes like, you're fat. And I'm like, why? Why, Becky, right? Okay, okay, you think I'm fat, what else? Uh, your daughter doesn't love you anymore. Like, where the F did you get that from? Like, do you have any proof for this? And then you go like, okay, Becky, what else? Right? And the idea here is being having the courage to sit down with your thoughts and take note of how ridiculous they are. Okay? Cleanses them. And this is one of the biggest challenges and I say this with tons of respect, Rupy. The biggest challenges we had with lockdown was our inability to sit with us. Yeah. It's it's just so difficult for some of us to sit and listen to that machine hover over and over and over and white noise inside our heads and most of it is annoying. And and none of it actually is even relevant. And none of it has any power over you unless you give it that power. You can simply dismiss it as if your friend Becky, who, you know, is really not making a lot of sense, is just saying things. And you go like, seriously, Becky, are you kidding? Like, you know, my daughter adores me, I adore my daughter, where did you get that from?
Dr Rupy: Exactly. Yeah. I mean, there's so many truths to what what you're talking about here. And I think, you know, that combination of being locked up and the negative stories in the media and the inability or the lack of practice of how to sit with oneself is a catastrophic sort of mixture that has led to so many people falling into the trap of depression. And this isn't to, you know, um, disregard or to belittle what is a very complicated subject matter around mental health, but it certainly that collection, the confluence of all those different things that you were talking about there that has led to so many people really having bad, bad experiences. And I'm seeing, you know, the aftermath and the tidal wave of illnesses that we're all expecting over the next couple of years, not to put a negative spin on what we've got to look forward to, but certainly it's something that we definitely need to be aware of. And I think learning those skills, and I'm really glad we're talking about this because I have a list of things that I wanted to talk about, you know, uh, about your work and stuff. And I'm really glad we're having this conversation because I think this is really key to happiness and it and it is ultimately your your mission what you're doing now.
Mo Gawdat: Absolutely. And and and I would say openly, again, if you think about it from a point of view of flow, right? Um, it doesn't seem that there is, you know, I'm I'm I'm not in the UK as we speak, huh? So, but I I I spent the first lockdown in the UK. It does it doesn't seem that you have that anyone has the ability to change the mind of the government. They're trying to do the best that they can. There is an increase in the number of cases and so on. So it seems that if you live in the UK, you're going to be suffering those conditions for a while. And there is one of two ways you can handle this. One of them is to say, you know, I I hate my life. This is not working. Everything's wrong. You know, this is not fair. And criticise and watch the BBC and engage in those debates and you know, you can do that. Good for you. Or you can simply say, enough waste of brainwaves on this. It seems that this is what it is. What can I do to make my life better despite the presence of this new baseline? Okay? Can I can I get in touch with my dear friends on Zoom a little more often? Can I watch Despicable Me? Okay? Can I, you know, go get up and dance? Can I um, uh, learn how to to crochet or do something amazing? I don't know, right? And you know, can I just take a subject matter like Sufism or playing the jazz piano and just watch every YouTube video about it? Not by the way, and and I'm and I'm being open here, not plugging my thoughts into the blacklist or, you know, some kind of a Netflix documentary because that actually really numbs your brain even more. But actively engaging in something. And and that idea, that idea of I'm going to flow with life instead of resisting it, believe it or not, has been an amazing gift for me during the first lockdown. And and it's not a secret, huh? I I those who know my work, I I started one billion happy to honour my wonderful son. I lost my son because of a medical error. And and, you know, and and I basically, it's he was the most amazing thing that ever happened in my life. He was my teacher, he was my best friend, he was my coach, he was my son. And and losing him, you can surrender to life and say, okay, game over, checkmate, life you win, and sit back and hit your head against the wall until your deathbed, right? Or the the other is to say, okay, so he's gone, and there's no way, nothing I can do to bring him back. But can I at least honour him? Can I tell the world what he taught me? Can I share, you know, what we discussed about happiness and make everyone love him as much as I loved him? And it wouldn't bring him back, but it would make it for nothing, it wouldn't make it for nothing that he left. Now, with that in mind, when when the lockdown happened, I was on a trip that was going to take me to seven destinations around the world to talk to somewhere around 16,000 people. Okay? And I'm very engineered, huh? I I have a mission and I want to deliver the message to as many people as I can. And I have to admit to you, the first few days, I was like, what is this life? I'm trying to make people happy. Why are you working against me here? Right? And then I sat back and I realised, actually, that's not bad at all. If I'm at home, that means I can start that podcast I was, you know, dreaming of starting for two years. I, you know, I actually have a very interesting subject to start the podcast with, which was the silver lining of of COVID-19. And, you know what? I'm going to give that a try. I'm going to flow with the fact that I'm locked in and build something new. Right? My it's it's now in the top 10 in many countries around the world in in mental health and well-being. It's in the top 2% of of many apps and and it's really, really, really amazing. I could have never even dreamt, I swear to you, of reaching as many people if I had travelled my bum off to the rest of the world, right? No way, absolutely no way. And life was literally nudging me saying, stay home, take care of yourself and do something that is really more impactful. Yeah. Can we think about life this way? Can we think about life as it's not against me? And yeah, sometimes it's tough, it's not supposed to be easy, but I can find the silver lining in it. I can do something with it.
Dr Rupy: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this really does circle back to how we started our conversation about your intention for flow this year and surrendering perhaps even more so to the state of the universe or the state of our current situation at the moment and allowing yourself to be nudged in whatever direction you're being being put into and and you know, starting your podcast, which I think is a wonderful endeavour and and something I really want to unpack in a bit. Um, it is an example of that. Just to kind of get listeners up to speed, um, for anyone who hasn't come across the foundations of your movement and the formula, which you've alluded to there, around happiness, where this clearly came from the experience with your your son, you were working on your own happiness prior to the tragedy. Is that right?
Mo Gawdat: Yeah. Yeah, I I I'm I'm one of the most fortunate people you will ever meet. I'm I'm fortunate in so many ways. One of which is I had my middle-aged crisis when I was 29. So, so it, you know, middle-aged crisis is not an age thing. It is the point at which you've spent a lot of effort to get what you thought you wanted from life, and then you got to it and you went like, is that it? Is that actually what I wanted at all? I mean, it doesn't seem like what I dreamt at all. And I was very fortunate. I was I'm Egyptian. I was born and raised in Egypt, educated in public school and public university. And then by age 29, I had the dream life. Like I had everything. I had big villa with a swimming pool and cars, cars, cars, cars, and you know, vacations and I had my the most amazing woman on earth who has a horrible taste in men accepted to be my wife, right? And and and and I mean, people those who know her know what I'm talking about, stunningly beautiful, super loving, very kind, the best mother on the planet, gave me two wonderful kids, right? And I ended up hating everything. Like I was so unhappy. I was so unhappy to the point that, you know, at the time, of course, you know, Middle Eastern manly man, I wouldn't go for therapy, but I would have definitely been diagnosed clinically depressed, right? And and and and I had to find a way out of here. And I actually remember vividly the moment where I broke my daughter's heart with my grumpiness. Okay? So Aya, uh, you know, my daughter is is life itself. She's she's literally sunshine itself. Full of energy, full of life, full of joy. And she would be the one that takes us out and takes us places and she was five or six at the time and she comes to me on a Saturday morning, Papa, we're going to do this today and and I'm looking at some worthless email at work and I go like, can we please be serious for a minute? Like to a five-year-old, Rupy, like what the what was going on in my mind? And I could, I swear to you, I could see her heartbreak. I could see it with my eyes. And until now, actually, it gets me emotional because poor the poor girl, all she wanted was to live and be happy and who cares about another email? And so I locked myself in a room and I said, that's it. That's it. I hate this person. We're going to find a way out of here. Complete miserable failure for four years. I swear to you, I couldn't get it. I read everything I could find about happiness, watched every documentary, you know, went for seminars where they, you know, told us to do weird things. Couldn't get it because my engineer's mind doesn't understand. I mean, my engineer's mind is basically highly mathematical, highly logical. And if you tell me to say om, I go like, no, tell, you know, explain to me why om works, show me the frequencies, you know, tell me how the machine works. And and yeah, I refused everything. And until my engineering approach decided the only way I could do this is to find an equation. Okay? I needed to find how that machine called happiness worked. And so I did, which is really weird. And I did it in the weirdest way. I swear, it's really, I basically assumed if I was in a lab and there was a specific reaction happening that you didn't understand how it happened, you would take as many readings of it as you can and find a trend line. And so I did that. I wrote down as many readings as I can of moments in my life where I felt happy, and I tried to look for a trend line. And the only thing that is common across all of the moments in life you've ever felt happy is actually very simple. You don't feel happy when a certain event happens, okay? You feel happy when that event matches how you want life to be. Okay? So if you're, let me give you a great example, huh? In the UK, you guys feel very happy when it's sunshine. It's like, oh my God, yeah, it's one of the four days we're going to get sunshine this year. I'm the happiest person ever, right? But if but if the sun is shining and you're locked down, you would feel miserable. Right? Because you don't want the sun to shine. You wanted to actually rain outside if you're locked in and to be sunny when you're out. Okay? And so that's the same event, sunshine. If you wanted life to be sunny, makes you happy. If you if you didn't want it to be happy, to be sunny, you would feel unhappy. You know, you know the saying, when you're in love, everything's amazing. You would be in the you're in the same house, working for the same annoying boss, listening to the same annoying news, okay? But you're in love and everything seems to be happy. Not you know, suddenly, just the idea of I have love in my life, this is what I expect life to give me, makes everything okay. Yeah. So, so summarise this in an equation, happiness is equal to or greater than the difference between the events of your life, or at least your perception of them, and your hopes and expectations of how life should be. It's a very simple equation. It's events minus expectations. And every minute in your life, as a matter of fact, people who are listening to us in this podcast, for the last 30 minutes, you might have actually made that comparison in your head thousands of times. They say up to 60,000 times a day, where you go like, oh, his voice is weird. Do I want to waste an hour on this guy? Uh, you know, he interrupts Rupy a lot, you know, it doesn't seem to be good. Or, oh, he spoke about Becky, you know, whatever, right? And every one of those comparisons, you're saying, is this, does this meet my expectation? Is this what I want? Is my chair too hard? Is my back rested well? You know, is it too chilly? Is it too warm? And so on. Okay? And the reason our brains do that is actually really interesting. Our brains are just a survival machine. They're solving that equation as a survival algorithm. Basically, they're they're they're telling, they're they're looking at the world around them and analysing it and saying, good, nothing is wrong. You can chill and be happy, calm and peaceful and content. Or hold on, hold on, something is wrong, let me sound the fire alarm. And that's the difference between them. Unhappiness, worry, fear, anxiety, regret, shame, all of those negative emotions are a fire alarm. They're your brain saying something is not perfect. I want you to pay attention to it. In the absence of anything that is not perfect, your brain goes like, okay, I'll chill now. You can rest your muscles, uh, you know, uh, uh, replenish your body, digest your food, you can have a few minutes of, uh, serotonin and and feel okay with your parasympathetic nervous system engaged.
Dr Rupy: Yeah. I mean, the the whole, the the analogy you used there, I think is very timely, first of all. And the formula, which I've gone through in my head a number of different times now, of where expectation or reality meets the perception of reality and the mismatch or the match between those two and the and the various grades of that and how that leads to the experience of contentness or happiness as itself is something that is very, for only could be explained by someone like you with a mathematician's mind and an engineering mind and it makes so much sense to me who appreciates that sort of scientific, logical component to it. And it's certainly something you can feel as well when you explain it using analogies and parallels and people can understand it. On your mission, which is now to spread happiness to over a billion people, I think it used to be 10 million if I'm not incorrect.
Mo Gawdat: We started with 10 million.
Dr Rupy: Start with 10 million. How has the reception of the equation for happiness been received internationally across different cultures? Because you've been in an incredible position to influence so many different people with different upbringings, different cultural heritages. How how does that equation cross communicate?
Mo Gawdat: It's a great question. So the machine is exactly the same. It seems that we all have the exact same software. The data we put in it, Rupy, is way different. The the the way a Latin American solves the happiness equation is totally different than a Scandinavian, for example, right? So, so so the idea is events minus expectations. So so take take, um, you know, people in India, Latin America, Africa, where they do not expect to be fed every day. So believe it or not, there are people around the world who actually don't expect to get food every day, let alone food like yours. Okay? So so you, right? No, I'm serious, yeah. You go, you go to those and and you know, you've been to India many times. You go to one of those people and you give them a bowl of rice and they'll be the happiest person on the planet. One bowl of rice. For us, on the other hand, you use your iPhone or Samsung or whatever and click on Deliveroo and within, I don't know how many minutes, you get a meal that is five different colours and everything is wonderful. But no, that's not what I want. I'm supposed to be outside with my friends in the pub with a with a glass of wine so that I enjoy the food. Why? Because your expectation is set to life is only good if I have that. Right? If if Deliveroo, if Deliveroo did what you what we gave in India, people would be literally dancing in the streets, right? Like if if you give what you your meal to anyone in Africa, people would be dancing in the streets. On the other hand, you go to places like Scandinavia where they have the highest quality of living in the world. They call it subjective well-being and it's it's measured, huh? And you have also some of the highest suicide rates in the world. And by the way, interestingly, some of the highest suicide rates amongst women. And and you start to ask why? How can you have the highest quality of living where basically events must meet expectations? I mean, in comparison, things seem to be okay. Why are we so unhappy? For the same reason, I had everything when I was 29 and I was unhappy. Why? Because everything that I had when I was 29 did not meet my expectations of what I wanted. Okay? You know, I I had a beautiful, I I this is a true story. I bought my first BMW 5 series, you know, I'm I came from nothing. Bought my first BMW 5 series, beautiful car. And the first time I took it to the service, I bought it used from one of my friends, 10,000 kilometres on it for dirt cheap. Dirt cheap. Took it to the service the first day, as they were changing the oil, I was looking at the seven series and saying life is unfair. Right? It's as simple as that, huh? You you never appreciate, the goal continues to evolve. And and basically in in countries where our quality of life is so much better, our expectations continue to increase. If you want to complain about BoJo, come to one of the dictatorships I lived in, okay? And you would know what it means to be actually in a in a bad political space. Or don't go very far, look at Trump, right? And and you and you would know that it's, you know, every human being has errors and, you know, the the situation is difficult, but by the way, it can get much worse. And so the truth is, life is not that bad. As a matter of fact, if I list to you the number of people that, I if you don't mind me talking about COVID.
Dr Rupy: Please do.
Mo Gawdat: There could be one, there could be one of four situations you're in. Either you've been diagnosed with COVID, which is nasty. Uh, you lost someone you love to COVID, which is hurtful. Or you lost your job and economic livelihood and are unable to survive, which is really, really, really tough. Okay? Or you're okay. This is the fourth situation. Why do I say that if if you're not one of the three, you're okay? Because if you're listening to us right now, hopefully that means you have a device to listen on, which is better than most people in the world. You don't have enough worries to prevent you from actually spending an hour listening to us and you're not diagnosed with COVID. Okay? And and and hopefully, I I hope, I hope, I hope you haven't lost a loved one. It's the hardest thing in the world. But if you're not one of those three, then the extent of the lockdown for you is you've been forced to stay at home, work on Zoom, order from Deliveroo or Uber Eats or whatever you're ordering from, and binge watch Netflix. And I know Netflix is horrible, but it's really not that bad. Yeah. Like seriously, life is really not that bad. Okay? Yes, we're lonely, we we we we long for touch and connection and so on and so forth. And I understand life can be a lot better if we had those things. But it really is not that bad. You want bad? Okay? Look out for the rest of the world and you will know what bad is. You will know what being in a war zone is, you will know what being in a in a hunger, you know, uh, uh, um, a whole country suffering, you know, lack of food or lack of water or, you know, being under a dictator or being it's it's life can be so much worse. So much worse. And if we learn to see that, then you'll be like me, you'll wake up every morning and you'll go like, woohoo, I'm alive. Right? My company suffers, my company doesn't, you know, my I haven't seen my daughter for four months. I'm it's fine. It's okay. It's going to pass, by the way, just like the first lockdown passed.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, exactly. I mean, for me, and I think this is, again, with the humblest of respect for people who don't subscribe to this perspective yet, but when you count the number of blessings that you have, or you have a daily activity, I'm a big fan of gratitude and thinking of three things that I'm grateful for every single day, as a mechanism for determining how net positive you are, you begin to realise the wealth that you already have and have attained by virtue of living in a society which is free, where you are fed, where you are sheltered, where you have relative security. And when you think about those things at a comparable level globally, as the pandemic has shown, has really put a spotlight on, then you begin to realise we've won the lottery here. Absolutely won the lottery. And I and I think one of the things that I did want to ask you about, and I do want to go on to your podcast as well, because you've had some incredible guests and I'm sure that they have taught you and you know, you've changed perhaps your opinions or perhaps, you know, solidified some of your beliefs before, but one thing I did want to touch on that perhaps we don't talk about enough, particularly in the West, is the the the concept of death and the, you know, considering, you know, our current global situation and and this is a topic I think needs more attention. We have to get comfortable discussing death a lot more. And from your own experiences personally, but also your wealth of knowledge across different cultures and how they treat death and and respect death as an inevitable event in everyone's lives. What what advice do you have for for people and and how do you decide to approach this sensitive topic?
Mo Gawdat: It's a very sensitive topic. And by the way, it, you know, there is no amount of wisdom you can ever acquire to not feel the pain and the fear. So so I I I mean, I I talk about happiness and I share what Ali taught me, but I'll I'll tell you openly every, you know, three to four times a week, I will wake up with a hole in my heart for missing him, huh? It is it's it's just, you know, death is it has a finality to it that is quite painful. But I I want to talk about this topic from two sides. Uh, I I hear that the UK has lost 100,000 people to to COVID-19 recently, you know, so far. And hopefully, hopefully not one single life more, but this is what we have so far. Around the world, I think we lost somewhere around 2.6, 2.7 million. And um, and I have to put things in perspective and I and I I hope again, people are not offended by this. I'm I'm 53 years of age. Okay? So I was born in 1967. If I was born in the year 1900, by age 53, I would have witnessed World War I, uh, the Spanish flu, the Great Depression, World War II, and uh, smallpox. Okay? Between them combined, by age 53, the world would have lost 976 million people. Wow. 976 million people of a population that had not exceeded 1.7 billion at any point in that period. Okay? When you really think about it, that is like one of every two people, you know? Now, if you put things in perspective, and and COVID is nasty in so many ways, and it's nasty because it puts pressure on, you know, health workers like you, huh? And and it actually, when when my friends, when one of my friends got diagnosed and he was saved by being in ICU, huh? The idea of let's make sure there are not too many people seeking ICU attention so that we we cannot serve all of them and then we'll start losing them. That's noble in many ways. That basically means that by you staying at home and protecting yourself, you're actually saving lives. Right? And and that's a very noble idea to think about. Having said that, in comparison, COVID at the end of last year, I think was the eighth reason cause of death. Okay? At a 10% of cardiac disease, right? And we've survived as humanity with cardiac disease for hundreds of years. It doesn't take the same level of attention to talk about it, huh? You know, and you could say, oh, no, no, no, but it's not contagious. Yes, it is with all of the stresses of life, it is contagious in a different way. But at the same time, by the way, there were other causes that are respiratory diseases that are contagious that were higher on the causes of death last year than actually COVID-19. The reason why we're all so worried about COVID-19 is because of the media attention and the political agenda around it. Okay? And because it's a pandemic, it's something we don't know, so there is a lot of fear and anxiety and and uncertainty. If you really think about it, the extent of this, again, I I again, I please don't I don't want to offend anyone, but in reality, if you just let go and say, yes, I'm going to stay home, I'm going to talk to my friends, I'm going to find a way to make my life better for a while, we will win. We won against the Spanish flu with nothing, zero technology. We won against smallpox, 300 million people died of smallpox and we won. With with no technology in the 1940s, 1950s. We will absolutely win this one, but we need everyone to just do it right. Just please, please prioritise. Imagine if that person that you infected was your mother or your lover or your or your sister and say, I don't want that for anyone. And with that, stay home and try to make it happy. And everything will be easy. You seriously. Now, let's talk about death itself. Day before yesterday, I interviewed an incredible thinker, a cardiac, a cardiologist for 40 years who wrote about near death experiences, an international bestseller, sold, I think 300,000 copies of of a book called Consciousness for Beyond Life. Uh, Pim van Lommel. And and Pim spoke about the idea of the non-locality of uh, of consciousness. That consciousness is not within us. Consciousness is, think about the internet. The internet is not on your iPhone, it's not on your smartphone. The internet is received by your smartphone, but it's everywhere. Okay? And so is consciousness. Your life, your your ability to perceive, your ability to to to comprehend is not within the machine that's called your brain or your body. It's everywhere. This is just a receiver that enables you in this current physical form to receive all of this enormous, enormous consciousness. Now, when you really understand that, and I I don't want to be too complex in terms of physics and and and mathematics, but when you really understand at any level of simplicity, the basics of uh, space, the space-time continuum and the and the and and theory of relativity, you would understand that time actually does not exist as we perceive it to exist. Okay? That that all of space and all of time exists in a four-dimensional loaf of bread like structure that is called space-time. Okay? Which basically in physics, every physicist understands that there is no before or after. As a matter of fact, there are case studies that are proven by practical observations where your before could be different than my, could be my after. Okay? So if a if an astronaut is approaching the earth at a certain angle at a certain speed, they could they could actually see a world where the world they witness is my son being born in Dubai, in Egypt, okay? My son dying in uh, in Dubai as the same moment. It actually would appear to them as a slice of space-time that is the same moment. Now, when you think of that, you have to start realising that because when Ali Habibi left our world, Ali was very handsome. He was a beautiful, wise, white-shouldered, tall man, who uh, who would really have that glow to him, something about him, a charm to him. Actually, when he was younger, you know, in in school years, every photograph of Ali is Ali in the middle and six girls from this side and six girls from the other side hugging him, right? He had that incredible energy to him. Habibi, when he left in the ICU, when he left our world, you looked at that body and it wasn't Ali. It looked like him, it had his features, but it wasn't him. And I know you know that because of your work. There is something that animates that that inanimate object that we call our body and makes it alive. And when that something disconnects with that body, that body is not you anymore. As a matter of fact, I carried him, I put him in his grave, Habibi. And and he disappeared. That body completely disappeared. Did you understand that? What disappeared was not my son. What disappeared was the vehicle my son used to navigate this world that is physical. But if you understand space-time, you would realise that the real Ali, the the real um, player of the game that's holding the controller for that avatar that we called the physical form of Ali, the real player was not born before me. He was not born, he he didn't die before me. He didn't he wasn't born after me. Okay? His physical form was born after me and died before my physical form, but his real essence, like my real essence, was timeless. It exists outside space-time. It exists outside this physical space that we live in. And it just connects to that antenna like the iPhone connects to the internet. Okay? If you take any understanding of quantum physics whatsoever and you combine that with a simple understanding of uh, of the Big Bang theory, you would have to imagine that life had to exist before matter. Life itself is what creates matter. Okay? We're always alive. Death is not the opposite of life. Death is the opposite of birth. You come into this physical form, this level of the game, if you want, through a portal called birth, and you leave this level of the game through a portal called death. And life exists before, during, and after. Now, when you see it that way, you realise that the only certainty I have, honestly, Rupy, is that one day I will be where Ali is. I don't know what that is, huh? But I have no, that I have more certainty of that than I have certainty that I will live another day. And believe it or not, just like my last 53 years have passed so quickly, my next, I don't know how many, will also pass. The question is, what will I make out of them? Death does not teach us to think, to fear it. Death teaches us to live. To live now, now, I can I can make this amazing until I go and play the next level. But until I play and go and play the next level, by the way, I can guarantee you there is a next level. As a matter of fact, this level, if you understand space-time, is so minuscule compared to the actual reality of timelessness.
Dr Rupy: I I really appreciate you sharing that perspective because I think even for me hearing it firsthand and really being in this present moment right now, listening to you talk about it so well, has given me that positive perspective despite the tragedy and the bereavement of loss. And that perspective, I guess it was almost like the ultimate exercise for you to put your theory of happiness to test. And in a way, this pandemic that is testing a lot of us is our exercise in changing our perception around what is happening at the moment. And I've heard you say something really beautiful about how when Ali was taken to the ICU, he was fasting. And prior to the surgery, he had to be nil by mouth as per surgical protocols. And that led to another incredible initiative outside of what you're doing with happiness or very much related about water and the importance of water and fresh water and how Ali's essence essentially lives on through further projects that are touching thousands if not more lives across the world.
Mo Gawdat: And and isn't that what it's all about? I mean, so so Ali didn't drink for 24 hours before he left. And of course, that touched me really deeply and, you know, I'm I'm a man of means, so I had the ability, even though I'm actually dwindling my worldly wealth as we speak, I try to put it in appropriate places. But at the time, I had enough to actually help just to honour him, you know, give water. And again, if you want to have find gratitude, just look on the internet and understand how many people live without a drop of water. So so without a drop of clean water. The water that's available to them in Africa or so many places around the world, if they drank it, they would get sick. You know, I I had a a friend of mine who would was helping with a project in South Africa where a few of the of the tin houses were burned, a few hundred actually. And the thing she told me, which is so eye-opening, she said, the first thing you need to get them is stoves. And I said, stove, what stove? I mean, is that really important for them to cook hot hot food? And she said, no, without a stove, they can't boil water and that basically means they will end up literally getting sick. And so when Ali died, I tried to honour him by giving, you know, digging some wells and so on and so forth. And and it helped, I don't know how many and I don't even want to talk about it. And and I'm I'm almost certain because I wrote about it in Solve for Happy and Solve for Happy sold hundreds of thousands of copies, that people who who were touched and got to love Ali as much as I did, also maybe have given $10 or whatever to to water causes. And and I I started to wonder at a point in time, knowing my son, if I had told him, Ali, would you give your life to save 100,000 lives? I promise you, he would said immediately. He would he would have said, now, Papa, take it now. Right? And and that that is, believe it or not, if you want to play the game of life, this is what the game of life is about. This game of life fools you by making you think that there is uh, uh, lack in everything, that if you don't, you know, hold on to things that, you know, life is abundance. But that abundance goes to those who believe in abundance and act in abundance. So so so if you if you limit yourself, I'll I'll tell you something about COVID-19, huh? So so the lockdown from one side is probably the the the the highest time of depression we will see in the modern world. But it's also, in my view, the golden age of empathy. There has never been a time where it was so easy for you to feel what another person feels. Empathy is to be able to feel the emotions of others, especially the the negative emotions, the difficult times. Because if you wake up lonely tomorrow, well, congratulations, this is how 70% of your friends feel. Right? If you if you wake up feeling a little despair, well, great, that's most of your family members, they feel the same way. Okay? When when you have a little bit of uncertainty, yep, the entire nation is feeling that. Right? And and empathy is an incredible enabler. It's by the way, the one of the most glorious feminine qualities, huh? To feel empathy in a in a world that's hyper masculine is a great gift. But here's the challenge. The challenge is that empathy, too much empathy in difficult times depresses you because you're just feeling your pain and the pain of so many others. And the only way you can get empathy to work in your favour is to turn empathy into compassion. To simply take action. To tell yourself, I can I know I'm I woke up, I feel lonely. Jenny must feel lonely too. I'm going to text her and say, do you want to have a virtual coffee? Okay? And if you give yourself the target, so we wake up in the morning, we say, okay, we're going to watch three episodes of Netflix and we're going to order food twice and we're going to, you know, uh, uh, watch two two YouTube videos and swipe on Instagram for 16 and a half hours, right? Add to those one objective, which is, and I'm going to make one person happy, just one person. I'm just I'm just going to reach out and make it a little easier for one person today. I promise you, if you make that your target, you will not be you will not be able to wait until you jump out of bed. Because you will jump out of bed and say, okay, who am I going to get the joy of seeing happy today? Right? And suddenly when you when you suddenly realise that the world is not just about you, about those little, uh, I'm I'm a victim feelings, and that there are others that might actually be more in a tough time than you and that you can actually help them. Suddenly everything becomes different. Suddenly everything becomes different.
Dr Rupy: Absolutely. I mean, I you'd be forgiven or I I certainly feel a lot of compassion for people who whose perspective doesn't come naturally to being positive or appreciative of their current scenario. And I think a lot of that comes down to social media and the the the constant story that we tell ourselves that we deserve more, we deserve what we see other people having, particularly as, you know, it's been presented to us in such a fashion and we expose ourselves, but I think if you come at it with that perspective of how can I make other people happier, or how can I make just one person happier? That is just such a fantastic concept to to sort of spread. And and this leads me to the the wider aspiration of your mission to try and inspire more than a billion people to achieve happiness or to find happiness through the medium of long form conversation. I certainly have found so much virtue and so much, it's almost like a selfish endeavour for me to be able to have these conversations with incredible minds like yourselves. But, you know, and I feel like it's a a weird privilege to not only have the conversation and be present in the moment with someone like yourself, but also share that and actually lead to someone else sparking joy in someone else. But your podcast in particular, I am such a fan of the the breadth of guests that you've had. How is the podcast influenced you as a person and and what do you what do you hope to achieve from those conversations with those those different characters?
Mo Gawdat: What do I hope to achieve? I I don't have an answer to that, Rupy, actually. I one very interesting place again in a year of flow is I don't hope to achieve, I hope to be achieved through.
Dr Rupy: Okay.
Mo Gawdat: And I think that's a very, very different place. I I I enjoy those conversations tremendously. When you came on on, you know, on Slo Mo, we laughed, we laughed our heads off. Okay? We we told people about how to be healthy. We spoke about your wonderful approach to, you know, how honest and sincere you are about social media and even asking people to unfollow you and it was a wonderful conversation, right? Wonderful conversation. And I felt I gained a very good friend.
Dr Rupy: Absolutely.
Mo Gawdat: And and it's an amazing privilege that I have and I and I have that privilege of being able to meet the most incredible people on the planet and then it poof disappears, right? And then somehow I said, why don't we just record them? That's that's nice, right? Even if just to listen to them later. And then I put them out there and they seem to be amazing for for a simple reason. I I choose only two types of guests. Most most are my friends or become my friends, but I choose only two types of guests. Those who can help you change yourself or those who can help you change the world. And and it's as simple as that. Okay? And believe it or not, I've had guests that were 21 year olds that have really not broken their, you know, path through life yet, but had a very personal, very touching personal story as teens, for example, all the way to the incredible 93 year old Edith Eger, right? And and everyone teaches you something. I mean, I can I can pick a few and tell you, Edith, for example, in the middle of the lockdowns, in the middle of the pandemic, where everyone was completely desperate and and and and depressed and unhappy. And there goes this incredibly beautiful 93 year old being, I wouldn't call her a human being, honestly, who was taken to Auschwitz when she was 16, beautiful young woman, a ballerina, right? With her with her sister and mother, her mother was sentenced to the gas chamber in front of her eyes. And she was forced to dance to the angel of death, the the the general that was sentencing people, uh, um, to to life and death, while he was doing it. So she would be dancing for him and he would say to that person to die and that person to live. And at the end of of World War II, they had to dig her out from under dead bodies, like several layers of dead bodies, because her finger moved slightly and a soldier noticed. And you tell that story and and I asked Edith and I said, so what do you think about the people that that that did this? And she said, I love them. And I said, what are you talking about? And she said, I love them. If I was born German and I was told today Germany and tomorrow the world, I would have shouted in German and followed too. Oh my God, Edith. Like unbelievable, unbelievable when you can see someone who's gone through all of that. And and we're complaining about binge watching Netflix and she goes out of this experience with this kind of love and forgiveness for the world. Right? All the way to so many. I I I interviewed Kevin, Kevin Abdulrahman, which was a very, very successful inspirational speaker, and his life, his whole livelihood is about travelling and speaking. And I said, Kevin, so what's the plan? And he said, I'm going to come out of this better than I came in. And I was like, what do you mean? And he said, yeah, I'm I've not been working out well, I've not called my mother enough. I've, you know, I always wanted to learn the piano. I'm going to do that. Right? And so many, huh? So many, but I I don't want to dig into the details, huh? Um, I want to dig into the experience of so many people that look at life because they've gone through real tragedy, if you want, and say, I can do this. You know, I'm, you know, Karen Guggenheim was on my podcast when her partner was in the hospital diagnosed with COVID-19, while her ex-husband actually died of pneumonia. Oh wow. So imagine the fear, imagine the stress. And and and imagine the the peace and the calm and the tranquility that she could bring to people saying, it's going to be fine. And I asked her, I said, Karen, so what are you doing about this? And she said, a big a big noise is the media. And I said, so what are we doing about it? And she said, I schedule my anxiety. I said, what do you mean, Karen? And she said, I I watch the news from 2:00 to 2:30 every day. I can't take any more. So I laughed and I said, I watch the news from 2:00 to 2:10 back in April and I haven't done it ever again. Okay? And and you know, and and it's it's that incredible joy of being with incredible people. I think we've done now like 78 episodes have been released, right? And all of them, all of them are just pure joy. Pure joy. And I think people are feeling it. People are feeling how much I'm I'm completely obsessed with this thing. We actually have like 20 episodes in in the log because I can't stop doing it. Like I'm totally addicted. I I do like four a week when we're releasing two a week and I have no idea when we're releasing them, but I don't, you know, it's amazing really.
Dr Rupy: It's brilliant. I mean, I yeah, I I share the same love of uh, of podcasting now and I'm a big listener of podcasts including yours and stuff and I'm making my way through the library, but it is absolutely fascinating. So my my puppy's uh, trying to join in the conversation here at the moment. I do need to show it to you. Hello. Come here, sweetie. Come here. I want to show you, show you her. She um, she's very, oh my God, man. Man, this is like the those hairs were not those colours. You painted this.
Dr Rupy: No, no, this is her natural colour. She's a beautiful apricot colour and she's got a very nice personality. So she's uh, yeah. Yeah, she just comes up. She's very, very good. She like, you know, obviously when I'm working from home, she has to entertain herself. But um, yeah.
Mo Gawdat: But she's not barking, so that's she doesn't want to be heard.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Well, she she does have a voice sometimes, but um, but yeah. But I I share that that love of of conversation, um, and sharing that as well because it it's, I mean, this this conversation is so rich in gems for me. And if I can spark, you know, a change in other people and and we can do that as a team, I think it's a brilliant endeavour that is totally worth your time.
Mo Gawdat: Totally agree. Totally agree. But but I again, I I think what I what I felt about writing books specifically and Slo Mo, the podcast, the thing that is so distinctly different for me in them is I actually have no target. Okay? I'm doing the process for the process. I'm actually meeting the guests because I'm dying to meet them. I'm writing the books because they're killing me from the inside. I have to express those things I'm writing about, right? Different than my business where I wake up in the morning and I need to close this and the P&L has to be right and, right? Different than uh, uh, you know, even my happiness mission, which I actually measure like an engineer, huh? I measure how many people we've affected every month and what's the progress and trajectory and so on and so forth. But with those two things, they are almost my joy. They're like really my thing. I I just love doing them. And I think to me, this really is something that many people could benefit from, to do something with no objective at all. With no purpose at all. I mean, I I'll I'll give you an example. When I was locked down in London, I I draw very well. I draw charcoal portraits really, really well, but I've really constantly failed with colour. And and, you know, I've I've struggled because, you know, you if you if I do something in colour and it's so crappy, I go like, man, that was a wasted effort. So I I did something amazing, which really helped me. I said, okay, I'm going to buy an acrylic set, you know, buy an easel, buy the whole thing. I'm in lockdown and I'm going to give myself one condition, which is I will throw away every single painting I finish. Okay? Good or bad, I will throw it away.
Dr Rupy: Oh wow. Okay.
Mo Gawdat: The joy, and I did actually. I I I finished four of them in London. I threw all four away. Right? And and and the whole idea here was to liberate myself completely from the result. I completely wanted to allow myself to just enjoy the process. Okay? And and you know, and tell myself before I started painting this thing, I didn't really care if it existed in life or not. Why does that change when you've finished it? Okay? Can you detach yourself from, I want to keep it, I want to preserve it for the rest of my life and I want to show it to people and say, look, I'm good, I'm good, right? So I and and and that liberation of doing something for a reason, but doing something for the something, for the thing that you're doing, I I think changes a lot of things.
Dr Rupy: Mo, I I can't begin to count how many pearls um, people are going to gain from this this short conversation we've had. Um, I I would love to do this again at some other point, uh, later on in your in your in your career, in your year, whatever. We are 100% friends. And uh, I just want to give you the biggest virtual hug. This is the same, the same feeling I had when I was on your podcast and we had that conversation. I just wanted to give you the biggest, biggest hug. Like just, I'm so glad there are people out there in the world doing what you do and with the love and the energy you bring to it. My heartfelt thanks goes to you. So please keep doing what you're doing. It's incredible.
Mo Gawdat: It is because you are brilliant in every possible way. I the only thing that's wrong with the with the with the lockdown is I can't make you a coffee, which I which I promise you is as good as your food, but we will do that one day. And uh, I'm so grateful for for your presence in my life, Rupy. You're an amazing being in every possible way. Thank you.
Dr Rupy: Much appreciated. Much appreciated.
