The Happiness Expert Making 1 Billion People Happier - Mo Gawdat
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Oh, by the way, before we get into this episode, I would love to tell you a little bit about Life Notes. Now, Life Notes is a weekly-ish email that I send completely for free to my subscribers, and it contains my notes from life. So notes from books that I've read, podcasts I'm listening to, conversations I'm having, and experiences I'm having in work and in life. And around once a week, I write these up and share them in an email with my subscribers. So if you would like to get an email from me that contains the stuff that I'm learning, almost in real time as I'm learning it, you might like to subscribe. There is a link down in the show notes or in the video description.

The brain is capable of anything, but if you leave it uncontrolled, its tendency, its instinct is to look for what's wrong. Before he went into the operating room, I promise you the highest point of my life. And then four hours later, and he's gone.

My new baseline of happiness in life has gone from here to here. And you can make a choice to stay here, or you can make a choice to make it slightly better. And that incremental bit is within the hands of every one of us. Happiness is mixed up in our modern world with so many weapons of mass distraction, as I call them. Joy, pleasure, fun, entertainment, elation, excitement, and a lot of ego.

But that's not happiness. That's not genuine happiness. And my answer, my only answer, and I actually ask our listeners and you to tell me I'm wrong, is I...

Hey friends, and welcome back to Deep Dive. My name is Ali, and each week I have the immense pleasure to sit down with authors, creators, entrepreneurs, and other inspiring people, and we talk about how they got to where they are, and some of the principles, strategies, and tools that can help us along our shared journey of trying to live our best lives. Now, Mo's had a pretty interesting background in that he used to be the chief business officer of Google X, which is like the moonshot division of Google where they do like weird and wacky and wonderful projects.

And he got there after spending 30 years of his career in tech, working at Microsoft and other such big companies. But then in 2014, a tragic event happened that really shook everything about Mo's life to its core. And that was that his son Ali, who was just 21 at the time, ended up getting appendicitis. And then because of various medical errors during the appendectomy, the removal of the appendix,

Ali tragically and sadly lost his life. Now it's hard to imagine the impact that losing a son has on a family, but that incident caused Mo to basically re-evaluate his life and transfer, transition his mission from kind of getting involved in big tech and making all this money towards trying to help 1 billion people become happier, which sort of became his mission because that was what his son Ali was all about. For me, this was one of my favorite episodes of the podcast. I feel like I learned so much and I got a masterclass in

happiness, in control of the ego, in emotions. And we talked a lot about how to play the infinite game of life and what is really the point of all of this stuff. We kind of touched a little bit on Mo's new book, The Little Voice in Your Head, which kind of talks about the subroutines that we have running in our mind that cause us to be distressed or sad or unhappy. Anyway, I really hope you enjoy this conversation with Mo Gowdat.

All right, well, thank you so much for coming on here. I am very, very, very happy to be here. Thank you so much for having me. This is going to be so fun. And it's nice hearing your voice in person because I've been hearing your voice on the audiobook of your first book. So the thing about that audiobook is that most people will say, I know you. I've had you in my ears for like 11 hours. It's a very intimate experience. It really is. Having someone just in your earphones, in your headphones for a long time. I think that audiobook, when it was recorded...

It was literally the first time. So I wrote the book two and a half years before it came out. Oh, okay. Yeah, and then editors wanted to change it, and it was very precious for me because it was Ali's story. Yeah. And anyway, so eventually when it came out, and as I was reading the audio book, it was the very first time that I read any of the paragraphs I wrote about Ali because these were never edited. Every editor, I worked with five editors, every editor was like, yeah,

I'm happy with that right and so it was very emotional when I read them because I didn't know about them for two and a half years yeah and yeah and so it made made the book very personal I think

Yeah, that really came through because when I was listening, I remember listening to the introduction. It really kind of brought me to tears. I was like, I've never been brought to tears by an audio book before, but it was just fantastic. The introduction was really the shock, honestly. Dealing with the loss of a child is a lifetime, I think, of grief. Of course, you can find peace, you can find contentment, but to find...

To get rid of the pain, I think, is impossible. So there is always a tiny bit of pain. When I wrote the introduction, I was pouring my heart out because my son had been gone for 17 days, right? That was it. Then I read it again two and a half years later, and it's just...

Yeah, it exploded me. I think I also cried on the introduction myself. And I had this incredible producer of the audiobook who would tell me, oh, no, no, no, it's fine, Moe, remove those parts, read it again. And then he took the parts that I was crying and put them on the audiobook. I was like, okay, that's a bit of a deceit here, but anyway, yeah.

Wow. Yeah. And I can imagine kind of then reading it two and a half years later would have kind of brought back up a lot of the memories. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, for me, every time I remember Ali is a beautiful memory as much as it is a little bit of a pain. More and more, by the way, I think it's more... I think there was a point around the year after he left us where I realized something that completely flipped my view of everything, which was...

Yes, Ali died, but Ali also lived. And you see the interesting part about us humans is that we never really, you know, everything that we were given, we take for granted. It's like in reality, we never planned for him to come. My wife and I were not expecting kids. Ali just happened, right? And he comes into our life and he enriches our life so much for 21 and a half years that

And then he leaves and the typical human mind will say, how could life take my son? But the typical human mind would forget, how could life have given me my son? And it's so interesting when you realize that, that honestly, if I was given a choice with all the pain I left, I felt when he left us.

If I would avoid the pain by not having him, absolutely not. I'd take the pain 10 times just to have him in my life. And so when you don't take those things for granted, suddenly you realize that I'm so blessed. Even with the pain of leaving him, I'm so blessed that I had him.

Yeah. And you just look at the rest of our lives, Ali. We have so much. We have so much in our lives. If anyone listening to us now just considers the fact that they have a device,

you know, that connects to the entire world of information, that they can come and join us in this conversation, that this device is in full color with high-speed internet, that they can click away from what they like and not like, they have safety and a roof on top of their heads, obviously.

Because if they didn't, they wouldn't have the time to watch this, right? Or listen to this. And when you really think about it, all of those blessings in places like Ukraine today or in Syria or in Palestine or in Yemen or in so many places around the world, these things are not taken for granted. And when you see it that way, you suddenly say, oh my God, my life is so blessed. Even with the pain that's in it, because there's always going to be pain in life.

It's just an amazing life. Yeah. Wow. I think stuff like that, like just appreciating the blessings that we have, it's one of those things that is almost a cliche. But I think it's cliche for a reason because it just is so true. It is really battling your...

instinct of the negativity bias. Interestingly, your brain is capable of anything. I mean, my new book is exactly about that. It's exactly about your brain being able to do anything, what you tell it to do. But if you leave it uncontrolled, its tendency, its instinct is to look for what's wrong.

Why? Because it's a survival machine. It is there for the simple reason of detecting if there is a tiger so it can protect you. And yes, if there are no tigers, it can go on and invent iPhones. But it's still, even as it's inventing iPhones, trying to detect everything. Is my boss annoying? Is my boyfriend, girlfriend trying to leave me? Am I going to starve? Whatever. Right?

But that's until you take charge. If you take charge, you know, that little voice in your head, I basically say it's like your computer, it's like your device. You can tell it what to do and it will do it. And once you start to take charge, that machine can be instructed to look for what's right. And when you look for what's right, my claim, I have no scientific evidence behind it, that 99.9% of your life is right.

Whoever you are, I have a tiny bit of a sore throat today, but that happens to me twice a year. Most of the year, my voice is okay. Most of us live our entire life on solid ground.

Most of us never ever see an earthquake, right? Ever, unless it's in the news. And even if you do, it's like once or twice in your lifetime. The baseline of life is okay. And then the negatives...

just happen, you know, there are dips out of okay and then back to the baseline, right? And when you see that, then it's only fair to instruct your brain, if you want to see the truth, if you want to acknowledge the truth of your life, it's only fair to instruct your brain to look for 99%, 99.9% as I say, of good things.

So I have this very simple exercise when my brain tells me something wrong about anything. Okay. Okay. I ask for nine other good things about the situation. Oh, nice. So, you know, when I, you know, arrived downstairs and because you were so generous to send a car to bring me here, I didn't actually have the address. So I didn't know where to go. Right. The first thing that my brain tells me is, whoops. Oh, but they were so kind to send me a

car, but there is, you know, it's sunny and it's not raining, but you know, there's this beautiful cafe that the downstairs that I need to try later, but I have your number so I can text you and say, Hey, I'm downstairs. And, and, and, and, and if I focus on all of these, then it's amazing. Thank you so much for not putting the address in the, in the calendar. Right. And if you focus on, ah, but things need to be perfect. How come, how come, you know, my team didn't, uh,

find that point, I can make myself miserable. The event is exactly the same. But it's my choice to look at it as a wonderful event or as a negative event.

One of the things that I found interesting is that you often say that happiness is a choice. Totally a choice. And you also often say that saying that is very controversial and it loses you, whatever percentage of podcast listeners who don't want to believe that happiness is a choice. It loses me exactly 8% if my statistics are correct. Eight? Yeah. Oh, nice. I'll tell you why. When I wrote Soul for Happy the first time,

I basically wrote it like we write software. I created a beta version, put it online, invited people to come and read it. Literally on Google Docs, I would invite them to walk in and edit my words, which was an amazing experience. 270 people to be exact. And I asked them to do a little survey to tell me a little bit about themselves before that. And because it's on Docs, you can actually follow how the readers are progressing.

And I lost 8% of my readers on page 11. Okay? And page 11 was the page where I said happiness is a choice. And it's obvious because for so many people, being the victim is a very interesting place to be. Interesting. Yeah, it's because, of course, there is value to being the victim. Okay. So remember, a lot of what we are as humans comes from when you were younger. So as a two-year-old,

You know how you sometimes, I know you did, sometimes you would go like, mommy, and you pretend to cry. Oh, yeah. Right? Why would you pretend to cry? Because crying allowed your mom to go like, okay, baby, something's wrong. Either, you know, tap you on the back or remove whatever was annoying you or whatever. Just give you attention. Yeah. So there is a utility to that. And for some reason,

as I always say, most of our problems with happiness are because some of us decided not to grow beyond six. Oh, okay. Okay. So, so, you know, after a while you start to tell yourself there's no utility to that. There isn't, you know, I, I can actually get up myself and get the Nutella jar that I wanted. I don't have to wait for mommy anymore. Why am I crying? Right. Or I can actually take charge of my life. You know, if life is a little challenging, right.

I can cry for mommy, but mommy's not going to show up if my boss is annoying. And when you're stuck in that space...

For some of us, there is a utility of I'm the victim, which means I have no responsibility for my unhappiness. It's life. Life is treating me bad. No, life is treating everyone bad occasionally. Or I don't have to really go out of my way to do my homework to be happy or to do my homework to be fit or to do my homework to make my relationship work well. And there is an interesting comfort in that. It's like I'm...

You know, I don't need to do anything about it because there is nothing to be done about it. It's the responsibility of life and not me. Yeah. But that's not true.

Happiness is a choice. And it's, you know, I always tell people the simplest way to understand that is you can obsess about the comment your partner told you all through your commute to work. Okay. And the minute you get to work, your boss says, you know, where is the report we asked for? Or you have to be in a meeting. And what do you do? You tell your brain, okay, brain, that's it. We can't think about this for now. Focus on the meeting. And throughout the meeting, you're okay.

Throughout the meeting, you're sitting there, you're listening attentively, and you're not thinking about this issue. You're probably thinking about how boring the meeting is. But you're not unhappy about that issue at all. The minute you walk out of the meeting, you go like, okay, but my partner said this on Friday. Let's play it again. It's a choice. And I hosted on Slow Mo on my podcast, I hosted Dr. Jill Balty-Taylor, which is definitely one of my favorite humans on the planet. So Jill is a neuroscientist.

And she analyzes the brain's relationship with unhappiness. I refer to her a lot in my book. And her studies will show you that from the time, take any negative emotion, take anger, for example, from the time an event triggers you,

to the time you're flooded with stress hormones, to the time you take a reaction or you don't, to the time the hormones are flooded out of your body is 90 seconds. That's it. You can't hold your anger. That over physiological response is 90 seconds. So I asked her, I said, so Jill, what does that mean? Why do people stay angry for years? And she said they regenerate it every 90 seconds.

So every 90 seconds you have the ability to say, your body is saying, okay, here is a buffer.

Do you need me to be, is there still a threat? Should I still be stressed? Okay. And you go like, yeah, but my partner said this. And you get angry again and again and again for 90 seconds. And for most of us, we're so creative. So, you know, your partner says something hurtful on a Friday. On Saturday, you say, he must be cheating on me. On Sunday, you say all the things I do for them, but, you know, they don't do for me. And you can make it much worse. We're very, very creative every 90 seconds.

And that's why we stay unhappy. That's why we stay angry. That's really interesting. I've not come across the 90-second thing before, but I think that's like this idea that in between stimulus and response, there is a gap. Absolutely. And there's a gap in which we can choose a response. Absolutely. It's an idea like, for example, the Stoics have been talking about for ages as well. And it's cool how modern science is now showing this to be true. Okay, a few questions on this point. The first one is,

So obviously I'm also on board with this idea that happiness is a choice. But anytime I say that, I feel a niggling part of myself because I know that some people will be thinking, what about child abuse? What about depression? What about clinical anxiety? What about post-traumatic stress disorder? What about all of these other extreme things? Is it really fair to say happiness is a choice? Is that like just telling a depressed person to cheer up?

And I've never quite been able to answer that. That's a great question, by the way. So absolute happiness is not a choice. Nobody's ever always happy. I had the joy of spending an hour and a half with His Holiness the Dalai Lama. I know most of the top monks in the world who have practiced for 40, 50, 60 years. Someone like Matthew Ricard, which again is a very dear friend and I hosted on slow-mo, is a person that has done 60,000 hours of meditation.

of lifetime meditation. And I asked him and I said, Matthew, are you always happy? And he said, of course not. I'm always pissed off. And he's very open about it. It's like he's the state of the world. If you have compassion, it makes you feel negative emotions. Of course, if you have chronic pain, if you have been subjected to abuse, if you've lost someone that you love, it's not the same emotion.

ease of finding happiness that then like if you went wanted to buy a sandwich and your place was closed you know your favorite or they didn't have your favorite sandwich some of us feel unhappy about that and it's absolutely a choice not to right it's not comparable to I've been abused

The question is, in relative terms, in relative terms, which is what matters, losing my child could make me miserable. And nobody would blame me for that. But also in relative terms, from that new low point of my life. So Ali, my son, died because of a medical error. You know, basically, they made a mistake in a very simple, five mistakes in a very simple surgical operation. Now,

I hugged him before he went into the operating room. I promise you, the highest point of my life. He was handsome, he was tall, he was strong, he was every father's dream. And then, four hours later, Ali's gone. Four hours later, my new baseline of happiness in life has gone from here to here. And you can make a choice to stay here, or you can make a choice to make it slightly better, and slightly better, and slightly better.

Yeah, I may never return back to that high point. I may never return back to a place of absolute happiness of remembering my son and not missing him. But I have the choice to make that incremental bit. And that incremental bit is within the hands of every one of us. And that incremental bit, interestingly, is the wise choice. Because isn't it bad enough to have been abused? Isn't it bad enough that you broke up? Isn't it bad enough that you lost someone that you love?

do you want to stay there or do you want to make the choice to make it slightly better? And I think that still counts as a choice, even if it doesn't get you to absolute happiness, which nobody is ever at, it still counts as a choice. Got it. So it's like we're saying,

I guess people's immediate objection to happiness as a choice sounds like, well, I can't be happy all the time. The happiness that I have when playing video games with my friends obviously is not the happiness I can have when I'm depressed for whatever reason. But what we're saying is that becoming a little happier when whatever situation that you're in. Happier is a choice. Happier is a choice. Less unhappy is a choice. By the way, happiness when you're playing video games is not happiness.

Okay, so the most important part of the definition is what is happiness? What am I talking about? Because happiness is mixed up in our modern world with so many weapons of mass distraction, as I call them. Basically, the idea is I can't sell you happiness. Why can I not sell you happiness? Because you're born happy.

Every child you've ever seen, if they have their basic needs, they're happy. You just make a child safe and loved and make the room warm enough and don't shout next to the child. And the child is giggling and playing with its toes. It's our innate state. It's our default setting. So I can't sell you that. What the modern world tries to sell you is

joy, pleasure, fun, entertainment, elation, excitement. This is what they're selling you. And a lot of ego. This is what they're selling you. But that's not happiness. That's not genuine happiness. Genuine happiness is that calm and peaceful contentment you feel when you're okay with life as it is. Doesn't matter what life is, but when you're okay with it.

That's the feeling we look for. This is the feeling you feel when you're sitting on a little river somewhere in the middle of nature and you don't have access to your phone or to data networks, so no bosses' emails and no bosses' phone calls and no Instagram posts to annoy you, right? And what's your state? Then you have that calm and peace and you tell yourself, I wish I can stay here longer. Now,

Now, that, in my definition, that calm and peaceful contentment, that's what happiness is. You can add to it excitement. You can add to it pleasure. You can add to it fun. You can add to it elation, right? You can go and play a video game with your friends, and on top of that calmness, you have fun too, right? But then if you start from fun, the problem is it becomes very...

transient. The minute you stop playing video games, you start to go back to think about what your partner said on Friday, and you end up in a place where you're unhappy again. Your brain just goes through it. And this is reflected very, very clearly in our biology.

So in our biology, that state of calm and peaceful contentment is when your parasympathetic nervous system is engaged. So you're supposed to have two modes of operation as a machine, as a human machine for survival. One of them is in a state of stress, fight or flight or freeze, and that you're flooded with hormones, stress hormones, and you're trying to become superhuman to escape a threat or to deal with a challenge. That state...

is important for your survival. It's also complemented with another state when the tiger has run away or you managed to escape it or you beat it in the nose and the tiger fell down or whatever you did heroically. You're in a state now where all of the adrenaline rushes out of your body, all of your cortisol flushes away and you sit back to do what?

to do the opposite of that state. In that state, your stomach stops to digest food, all of your blood is directed to your muscles and your brain and to your eyesight, you no longer have the ability to do other important critical functions properly.

So, when you're in calm and peace, what is happening really is you're being told, "I need that other time to digest my food, to rest my body, to replenish my muscles, to reflect, to sleep," and so on. Now, when we define happiness as that calm and peaceful contentment, when you're in that state, your body is actually flooded with serotonin.

And serotonin, even though the internet will tell you that there are four happiness hormones, no, my view is that the only happiness hormone is serotonin. It's that calm and peaceful contentment. And serotonin actually is a calmer. It basically tells your body everything's safe. I've scanned the world around me. Hold it. Rest. Relax. Enjoy the calm. Enjoy the quiet.

Fun, on the other hand, pleasure, elation, excitement, all of those other wonderful emotions as well. They're very positive emotions. They're dopamine driven. So when you're...

When your survival, the survival of the species, for example, depends on reproduction, procreation. So sex feels very good. And because it feels very good, and you've been trying to get that girl to be with you for a while, and then suddenly she's interested in you, and oh my God, the dopamine hit that you get. It's like, that's amazing. That's the best feeling I've ever felt. And dopamine is an excitatory.

What it's doing is it's telling you, do more, do more, do more. And in our nature of fun and pleasure and so on, we keep chasing it.

So, you know, you have a tough week at work, you go to a party, you jump up and down, music, a couple of drinks, and you're just constantly hitting yourself with rewards, rewards, rewards, this feels good, this feels good. And two things happen. One is your brain receptors down-regulate for the dopamine. They say, okay, okay, hold on. The baseline is a lot of dopamine, so I'm going to keep that baseline and I'm going to look for more.

So that's why you see people go from a party to a wilder party, go from running on the treadmill to jumping out of an airplane. You're trying to have more dopamine so you feel it. That's number one. Number two is dopamine gets depleted so quickly that when you run out of it,

You want more and more, like a drug addict. You literally get addicted to dopamine. And I always said that one of the biggest reasons why people suffered so much in lockdown is because we deprived them of their dopamine supply.

We told people, hold on, hold on. You can't drown your unhappiness in parties and fun and distractions. You're going to have to sit with yourself for a while. Listen to your brain saying something is wrong. And that completely gets you, like a drug addict really, it gets you that deprivation, gives you withdrawal symptoms. And so when you compare the two of them,

fun and playing video games with your friends, that's in the dopamine camp for 100%. And the thing is, I said one is a calmer and the other is an excitatory. So the minute you get an injection of dopamine in your blood, serotonin is out. So the more you're dependent on dopamine, the more deprived of serotonin you are. And the harder it becomes to be happy. This is...

Like, kind of intellectually, I have known this for a while, this idea of serotonin as sort of inhibitory and calming to things like citatory. But like the way you're putting it now, I feel like lots of pieces are slotting into place in my mind. One of the things that I've been, you know, this is a fairly minor example, but that I've been thinking about these days is do I want to get back into video games?

Oh yeah, absolutely do. I'm a serious video gamer. Because I used to be big on World of Warcraft back in the day, three and a half hours a day on average for about 185 days of playtime when I was younger. Oh wow. And those were, if I think back, those were I think some of the quote happiest times that I remember where it's like you've got this feeling, you're working with your friends, you're taking down this raid boss, etc., etc.,

But then kind of when I got to university and started replacing that with social interaction, you know, at some point in fifth year of med school, I decided I was going to go back into World of Warcraft. And because my friends were telling me, Ali, you work too hard. You need to like relax. I was like, okay, cool. I'm going to relax. I'm going to go back into the video gaming thing. And I'd play a few hours. And at the end of it, I would feel like really drained. Yeah. And it was not at all a feeling of like being re-energized. And it was not the feeling of relaxing. It was a feeling of like, oh my God, like...

I've got all this stuff to do, I'm gonna be thinking about it now, I'm gonna be theory crafting like tomorrow morning when I'm in a lecture and I'm supposed to be doing medicine, I'm actually gonna be reading up on what the optimal Warlock rotation is. All of this stuff started happening in my brain and then I kind of stopped a bit more and then I feel like life became a bit more calm. So I'm kind of thinking... So that's an amazing example as a matter of fact. So the question is, is there anything wrong with fun? Okay? Not always. There is sometimes something wrong with fun and sometimes not. So if fun...

is your escape from a state of my mind is not calm. I have all of those things pending, but I'm just going to play for a while. You're using fun as a painkiller.

It's like I have a headache, and the answer to the headache is I'll pop a couple of pills. And then the minute the effect of the painkiller goes away, literally exactly like you described it, the minute you're done playing, you're still drained, and your brain immediately goes, I have to do this, I have to do that. Are you numbing me? And numbing me is what really fun does in that space. But if you're already peaceful and calm, and you found that state of contentment,

And then you add fun to it. It's like a supplement. It's like taking a vitamin. It's like my life is already stable. It's already okay. I'm on a good foundation. And I'm just going to have a good time on top of that. And it's wonderful. So I am a very serious video gamer. The only thing I warn you against with video games is if you go back, I'll be the one that kills you. So just don't blame me for it. But that's how the way it's played. Amazing. Yeah.

Just a little quick interlude on the topic of happiness. This is a very good book, "The Happiness Advantage" by Sean Acker. Sean is this Harvard professor who does a bunch of research into the psychology of happiness. And his main argument in the book is actually that weirdly being happy leads to success rather than success leading to happiness.

Anyway, you can read the book. It's a very good book. I have a video about it on the main channel. But also what you can do is you can read the book summary of the book over at Shortform, who are very kindly sponsoring this episode. Shortform is by far and away the single best service I have ever found for summarizing books. It's way more than book summaries. They don't just give you a one page summary of the book. They do that. But they also give you a chapter by chapter summary of everything that's going on in the book.

And in addition to that, they also include little segments where if the author of a book has made a claim and that claim has been disagreed with by the author of another book, they will have a little kind of short form note which draws in research from the other author and says, hey, this is a controversial point. You should look into this book by this author that says the exact opposite thing. And so really it's a great way of actually kind of engaging with the ideas in the book in a way more efficient fashion and in a way more, uh,

integrated and engaging fashion than it is actually just reading a simple book summary. I've been using short form for the last several years. Anytime I get a book recommendation, I'll often look it up on short form. And if it's there, then I'll read that first. And then that'll help me decide if I actually want to read the book. It's also really helpful when I'm actually making book videos about these books, because we will then use the short form summary to be like, oh, just revisiting the key ideas in the

Anyway, if you want to check it out, then head over to shortform.com forward slash deep dive and that URL will give you 20% off the annual premium subscription. But yeah, Shortform is sick and I'm super excited that they're a sponsor of this episode. Thank you for picking me up on the video games thing because the way I think of it or I thought of it previously in my mind was, you know,

My mum occasionally asks me if I'm happy, you know, and then I'm like, yeah, I feel like life is a 10 out of 10. And she's like, but you don't look very happy. I'm like, I'm just, you know, I have a resting bored face. I always seem to look tired, bags under the eyes and all that stuff.

But the way I was previously defining it was that contentment was this sort of baseline level of peace and acceptance and calm. But then happiness was... I was always unsure. Is happiness more like a kind of hour by hour, minute by minute fluctuation? Or when we say happiness, are we referring more to this sort of climate rather than weather, this idea of long-term-ish contentment, I'm happy with how life is going? The target is definitely to be happy. So happiness is binary.

So if you don't mind me, let me talk about the happiness equation for a minute. So when I struggled with my unhappiness as a young man, having been given everything, I was so fortunate. I had the most beautiful wife, two amazing kids, you know, fortune and power, if you want. I had so much money, the big villa and so on. I was miserable.

And the idea for me was like, so what is happening? Why is it not working for me? And I attempted in a very crazy scientific way, believe it or not, as an engineer, I said, okay, so we're going to have to look for that happiness thing. And what do engineers do? The first thing we do is we define the problem. So what is that happiness thing? You need to know what it is before you look for it. And interestingly, there was no definition anywhere. And so I went out and I said, okay,

Let's write down moments where we felt that thing called happy. And I wrote down, if I remember correctly, 92 bullet points at the time. I feel happy when my daughter smiles. I feel happy when I have a good cup of coffee. I feel happy when I have an enriching conversation and so on. And I started to look for commonalities between those points. In an engineer's way, I was literally looking for a fitting line.

It's like you take a few random readings from a machine and you just put them on a graph and if there is a line, that line is the equation of how that machine performs. I was looking for that line. I plotted those moments against everything. My height, my weight, my age, my hair on my head, whatever that is. Seriously, I was very open to the idea of those moments when I felt happy were...

Were they because I lost my hair in my late 20s that I started to feel unhappy? So it's a it's a worthwhile experiment. But no, there was no relationship at all The only relationship was this happiness was not triggered by any single event as a matter of fact the same event I said I feel happy when my daughter smiles That same event made me happy most of my life it made me very unhappy when she once failed a class in school and came back to from from school smiling and

Right? When, you know, why is that? When, you know, generally I feel happy when my daughter smiles, but when she was smiling after failing a class, I sort of had a feeling in my head that she maybe does not realize the weight of the issue or that she's not responsible or whatever. But even the same event does not always trigger happiness. And when you start to see that, you say, so what is happiness then? It's not just the events of our life. There is something else in the equation at play.

And the other thing is your expectation. I expect that my daughter will smile all the time, other than the times where she needs to be more responsible. So my expectation is when someone fails an exam, they should not be very happy. Interesting. Now, you put that in an equation and suddenly it becomes very clear. Happiness is events minus expectations. If you want to complicate the equation a little bit, it's happiness.

because if events beat expectations, so it's equal to or greater than the perception of events minus your expectations of how life should be.

Okay. And the joke I always tell, and maybe people have heard that before is rain never makes you happy or unhappy. Right. Rain makes you happy when it's your ex-boyfriend's wedding. Yeah. Right. It makes you very unhappy when it's your wedding. Yeah. It's the same rain. Right. But you don't want it in your wedding. That's your expectation is that life is going to bless your wedding and it's going to pour on his. Okay. And so when you realize that, you suddenly see that happiness

happiness is a lot more manageable. And when we talk about that, then you have the interesting definitions I gave you. Events minus expectations means I'm okay with life.

Events less than expectations, which is events missing expectations, gives you a very interesting definition of unhappiness, which I think probably in my mind was the turning point for me. Which was not the definition of happiness, was the definition of unhappiness for two reasons. One is, remember I told you we are born happy. Our childlike nature is happy. It's unhappiness that is the anomaly to the norm.

And you can see that very clearly with children. If a nappy gets wet, the child becomes unhappy. There is a reason to cry. You remove that, you change the diaper or the nappy, and the child is back to happiness. More importantly...

Because when you realize that you realize that the child is actually unhappy because if that wet diaper Stays for a long time it's gonna cause you know skin irritation And so we're as a machine we humans are actually detecting a survival threat Every negative emotion you've ever felt was detecting a survival threat when when when my daughter comes back and

smiling after failing an exam, my survivor threat is she's not taking this seriously enough to study for the exam next time.

It's a survival threat. You know, if your partner says something hurtful, your survival threat is, are they going to leave me? Do they not like me anymore? And you can apply that to every negative emotion. A politician, like, you know, our news media will tell you almost every day, four times a day, that there is a corrupt politician. They'll find one, okay, and make that the center of your life. And your survival threat is, how can I feel safe when our politicians are corrupt?

And keep going through that as many times as you want. And you realize that this definition of unhappiness being a survival mechanism is the answer to everything. Because what do you do about threat alerts? What do you do if the fire alarm goes on? You react. You do something about it. You verify if that threat is true. And if it is, you take action. That's not what we do with unhappiness. Interestingly.

What we do with unhappiness is every 90 seconds, instead of reacting, we regenerate the emotion. And we add drama to the emotions. I call it pain on demand. Oh, I like that. Yeah, Netflix of unhappiness. It's like, okay, you know, remember that, you know, when the bully told me something in school 14 years ago? Let me play that again and tell myself I'm not worth it and I'm not big enough and I'm not good enough. And I can tell that story for 27 years to go if I want.

Interestingly, there is no more bullying. And most of us don't keep that context. Most of us think a threat in the past is worth thinking about for the rest of our life. Misleading because the answer should be if there is a threat today, let me look at it today and see if it's still there. And if it is, can I do something about it? Absolutely. Okay, so happiness equation. Happiness is greater than or equal to events minus expectations. So one...

One, I guess, issue with this idea, issue in inverted commas, that I've never quite been able to square is the response of, does that therefore mean that we should just have low expectations for everything in life and, you know, always think of life with a slightly pessimistic outlook so that whatever happens, then life, it's a surprise and it's a good thing?

When people say that to me, I kind of think, yes. Yes. Asterisks. Well, I don't know what the asterisk is. If your target in life is to be happy. Yeah. Okay. Honestly, then yeah, lower expectations will make you happier.

So, you know, if you basically tell yourself, I know many friends in my life that decided that they've had enough of life, you know, the fast-paced lives. They went and lived in the Dominican Republic. And the only thing that would make them unhappy on a day is that there is not enough wind to kite surf. Right. Okay? And they make enough money to live a very simple life and they want to kite surf. That's it.

Their expectations are very low. They don't expect a Ferrari. They don't expect to be able to live in a big city. They don't want to go to museums. Their expectations are low. And apply that to anything. You go to India, and if many, many people, hundreds of millions of people, don't expect to eat today. Give them a bowl of rice, and they're very happy. So if your target is happiness, yeah, that's the way to go.

If your target is success and impact on life, however, you need to go the opposite way. And the opposite way is I need ambition. So when I wrote Solve for Happy at the beginning, I wrote it with the mission of 10 million happy. And then 10 million happy happened very quickly. And my team got together and said, maybe we should set a bigger target. So we didn't set 11. We didn't set 100 million. We set a billion happy.

Now, a billion happy is a crazy target to have. How many people in the world have reached a billion people? But it's a nice, ambitious target.

a target to aspire to. So when I wake up in the morning, year one, when we've achieved another 10 million or so, I don't tell myself, that's it, we've achieved, we're done. I say to myself, there is still a way to go, there is still more to do. So you're stuck between those two extents, if you want. One that says, have no expectation at all and you'll be happy. And the other says, have extremely high expectations and you'll be successful.

What's the problem with the modern world is that we believed in this and not that. You know, the problem with the modern world is when you're growing up, I'm sure, I don't know your mom, but your mom told you success is more important than happiness. Go thrive in life. Or that success leads to happiness. Or that success leads to happiness, right? So we believe that. Well, it's not true. I mean, how often do you meet someone who's successful and rich and famous and swimming in money and everyone's attracted to them and paparazzis are all around them and they're miserable?

Success doesn't always lead to happiness.

between those two there is a midpoint like everything in life which is I need a realistic expectation. A realistic expectation is not lowered than how it should be and it's not higher than how it should be. I need an ambitious ambition that is higher than the realistic expectation and I need a contentment that sometimes even my realistic expectation might be missed. Okay? And in that case

While I aim for a realistic expectation and a high ambition, I'm getting the best of both worlds. I'm trying to be successful. And at the same time, I'm contented as I go through that path when life misses my expectations sometimes. Oh, sick. Okay, this is nice. So I have this dilemma when it comes to the book that I'm working on, which is the dilemma of what should be my ambition for the book?

when it comes to writing, one of the classic accolades is hitting the New York Times bestseller list. And so I have this as a very clear thing like, okay, if I was being quite ambitious about this, I would be like, hey, I want the book to be a New York Times bestseller. But there's something about that, that like when I sit down to write it, in a way, it doesn't feel good. It doesn't feel, it feels like almost demotivating because that's a thing that's outside of my control. Whereas when I think of it as

The objective of this book is I want to write a book I'm proud of and I want to enjoy the journey along the way. That's a very kind of contentment-y type goal rather than an ambitious type goal. And when I lean towards that, then I feel, oh, it's all good. I feel the parasympathetic kind of activation rather than the sympathetic activation, which is what I feel for the more ambitious goal. Now, I think this is great because then I can optimize for happiness and just write the book that I want.

But then part of me wonders that like, am I missing something by not going for a more ambitious goal, by not putting a number on and saying, I want to get a million sales. I want to get 3 million sales because sales translates to impact on the one hand, but also more money and all of the other selfish desires on the other hand. Any thoughts about that particular conundrum? Lots of thoughts. Okay, so I want to cover this in, if you'll allow me, in two layers. Fantastic. So layer one is,

is a very, very important definition. We're video gamers. So I always say life is like a video game and we can come back to that conversation in a minute. But if life is a game, there are two types of games that are defined. One is an infinite game and the other is a finite game. A finite game is a game where there is a target, a destination and a win.

An infinite game is like Pac-Man. Have you ever checked your score when you were playing Pac-Man? No. The purpose of Pac-Man was to play Pac-Man for as long as you're playing Pac-Man. And then sometimes you lose and then you play again. Very few people were trying to be world champions on Pac-Man and so they were monitoring the score.

Life is an infinite game because the finite bit of it is when you die and you're no longer playing. That's it. So as long as you're in this game, your target is what? It's to play. Interestingly, it's not to achieve anything. So the most interesting part of life is for most of us who are highly engaged in the modern world, if you remove the target, suddenly everything becomes okay.

Everything becomes so enjoyable. I write, honestly, Ali, I write to write. I write at least two and a half times more books than what I publish. And I don't care. I wake up sometimes in the morning and I write for three, four, five hours. And then I look at that stuff and I say, I have no use for it. I wrote it anyway.

I loved the journey of writing it. I loved the journey of exploration. I loved the analysis, the research. I loved the conversation I had with a friend to say, does this make sense to you? I love all of that. And it's, you know what? It's hours of my life that are filled with joy. If I told myself, on the other hand, hey, look, we need to get a book out in six weeks. Don't waste your hours on doing that stuff. Write the stuff that you need to put in the book. It will be a crappy book.

Honestly, because the target is not to explore and research and enjoy. The target is I need to put ink on paper. You might as well copy something from the internet and put it on paper. And with your reputation or my reputation, it will probably sell anyway. So the idea of an infinite game, that is when life is joyful. When I wake up in the morning and I truly say that to myself, what are we going to play today?

Today, there's going to be a little bit of joy in solving a challenge. There is a little bit of joy in being with a loved one. There is a little bit of joy in cooking a meal or whatever. And that infinite game is not restricted by time because for as long as you're playing, the game is going on. Interesting. The other side of this is when you think of having targets

that are so blinding for us, I do a very simple exercise. I ask myself why. Why do I want to be a bestseller? And the first thing that you will get normally is an answer that says, because it will impact more people. Wink. Wink, wink, can I touch? Your brain is sort of telling you that you're God and you have the ability to make a difference to a lot of people. Which is, by the way, honestly, is the byproduct of doing a great job on the infinite game.

But then underneath that, and I say those with respect, you know, I told you I'm a big fan, right? And I'm like you, every one of us, there are other negative secondary targets. You know, 3 million copies multiplied by the royalties, a lot of money.

And I've seen some of your personal finance videos and you're encouraging people all the time to make money, to save money, to do all of that because it's the right thing to do. So interesting. I'm sort of thinking in your head that when you've done that, you're going to add book to your revenue streams and you're going to be able to teach people that book is a good idea for revenue streams. And I'll sell a course about how to write a book further down the line and the group continues. This is a secondary objective.

Okay, so it sounds like you're saying when it comes to, quote, ambitious goals, let's question the goal to figure out where it comes from and whether we actually care about, like genuinely care about the things that lead to the ambitious goal. Yeah, and also, by the way, if achieving the goal is going to deliver what we think it's going to be.

Oh, yeah. So if you tell yourself, because if I make the New York Times bestseller list, I'll be well known, you're forgetting that you already have 3 million followers. You're already well known. And the reality is that books rarely ever sell 3 million copies. I think there has been less than maybe 1,500 books, if my numbers are correct, that has ever sold more than a million copies.

So including the Bible and Harry Potter. So you have very serious competition there. Right. And then think about, is that the only path? Is there another path that's easier? Okay. Is there another way that I can enjoy the book and maybe achieve only 100,000 readers? Whatever that is. Yeah.

Yeah, so kind of my target for the book at the moment, like after doing some soul searching about this New York Times thing, was that like, it would be nice if it happens, but like I am going to try my best to not even think about that. Yeah. Unless I'm having a conversation like this where it's a nice sort of like dichotomy example. And the thing that I think about is, yeah, I want a book that I'm happy with. I want a book that I enjoy writing. And I want a book that can have...

some kind of impact on some kind of people. Yeah. And I find this with the YouTube channel as well and this podcast that the less I look at the numbers, the more calm and content I feel. I promise you that's true. So you have a very ambitious goal. One billion people happy. That's a different goal. So what's going on there? It's a different goal. So I think the biggest...

The biggest mistake with capitalism is how we define success. Capitalism as a system is a very efficient system. It works. Rewards drive effort. Execution drives success. It's beautiful. And there is fair competition or unfair sometimes, but at least there is a competitive landscape where you really want to excel to do something.

The problem with capitalism is not the system. The problem with capitalism is the target, and the target is dollar signs. Now, if your target is a billion happy people, that's the best form of billionaire you will ever need to be. And I don't know how to say this any other way. I mean, because people don't believe me when I say this. I made so much money. Most of the time, by the way, the money I made came from places I didn't expect. That's number one.

My daughter sometimes tells me you've been paid in advance because you were not worthy of the money that you made you need to make give the world back now Okay, I gave most of my money away and I wear $4 t-shirts Okay, and I promise you they're easier to handle and deal with and travel with then the $40 or $400 t-shirts that my friends will wear okay, and I literally I have very little of my money left and

But that little that is left is actually enough. And tomorrow there will be more money, hopefully. If there isn't, there will be less $4 t-shirts. It's really not that complicated when you think about it. And that peace of mind...

of I'm not chasing this illusion anymore. That peace of mind, that clarity of I've had everything. From Rolls Royces to Bentleys to Ferraris. And you know what the challenge is, Ali? You sit, I promise you, I had 16 cars in my garage.

And it was a very vivid eye-opening moment for me because I arrived from a trip, took one of the cars out and I had to pee somewhere at 10 p.m. So it was dark, I was driving, and for that one second, I actually couldn't remember which car I'm driving.

Right. Because in reality, when you're driving, what are you looking at? You're looking at the road and all cars are the same when you're looking at the road. OK, especially, by the way, in the modern era of cars where quality is so high that all cars are more or less the same. Right. And so when you realize that, you say, so why do I have two? I mean, if they're all the same, why do I have to not let alone 16?

And you can take that same target, that same illusion if you want and apply it to everything. You apply it to how many houses can a rich man have? Many. Some people have in the hundreds of properties and houses. How many beds can you sleep on? One. How many meals can you eat?

One, is our palate really, really refined enough to know that tiny bit of champagne that was added at the very last... Honestly, if you tell yourself that you're lying to yourself, or maybe I'm a different human being, maybe I don't have a tongue, okay? But

But food to me, if you go to an Indian restaurant that basically serves you something for a couple of pounds sometimes or five pounds sometimes, it's delicious. As delicious as when you go to that amazing restaurant that costs you 500 pounds per meal. The only difference between them is ego.

the only difference between them is i don't go to the five pound place i go to the five pound place all the time and i meet the nicest people in the five pound place and i and i have the most amazing experiences and yeah sometimes i go to the more expensive places as well but but i own my life my life doesn't own me there's a such an a big difference between i can't have this or

I can have whatever I want, whatever I feel like. And I'm not confined to wearing an Armani suit and eating in a, I don't know, let's not name any restaurants because most of their owners are my friends. So, right. But that's the truth. The truth is you remove your ego, you remove your conditioning and life becomes a lot more delicious.

And I will tell you, I still make money. It's my skill. I've spent 30 years being a businessman. The biggest joy you will ever get out of that money is twofold. One is making it so you own it, but it doesn't own you. So my last startup, mega failure, lost a lot of money, lost two and a half years of my life because my partner did a mistake that he wasn't supposed to do. Right?

Didn't even blink. Like, so what? I lost a lot of money. I also like the concept of I lost Ali, but I had Ali. I lost a lot of money, but I made a lot of money that I didn't think I deserved, right? At the same time, what you do with that money, and I'm not claiming to be like a mega charitable person, but the biggest joy you'll ever get out of the money is to help someone out.

And honestly, the people that have money that are within my friend's zone that are really happy answer only one question when I tell them, answer only one answer when I ask them the question, I say, why are you making money? And they say, because it enables me to do good things.

So the happiest rich people are the ones, and there are not many of them, but I know a few, that will tell you, because if I manage to make a million dollars more, then I can invest in that project, and that project is going to make a difference. And by the way, while it's making a difference, it's also making money, which is another million dollars I can put in that other project that I wish I would do to change the world. Those who have targets that are...

focused on themselves are driven by ego and they're always going to be disappointed. Those who have targets that are focused on others are driven by compassion and they will always have the joy of feeling that they made a difference to another person. I say you are born a millionaire, okay? Each and every one of us is born with somewhere around 500,000 hours of life, of active life, okay?

Each one of those hours, if you multiply them by 60 minutes, each one of those minutes, you have now 30 million minutes. You're a millionaire already. Every minute that you use, you're exchanging that minute for something else. So your asset, your only asset is 30 million minutes.

If I were to spend 2,000 of those minutes with you to create this podcast, what return to my well-being, to my life, to my feelings, to my happiness, to my connection to the world, to my value set, that those 2,000 minutes are worth, right? If I use them swiping on Instagram, if I use them to make 100 pounds more. And the question is, 100 pounds is worth it. It's a good thing.

but if it's exchanged for 2000 minutes and I can do something else with the 2000 minutes, maybe it's not. And the point is within context, when do you stop and say no more of my minutes are needed to create more and more and more ambition. Okay. Nice. Right. So that's number one. Number two is the Stoics have always taught you and most religious and spiritual teachings have always taught you to simulate suffering.

If you simulate suffering, suddenly you realize what it is that you actually have so that instead of looking for what you don't and continuing to be ambitious, you start to look at what you have and go like, this is amazing. So I am...

Multifaith spiritual, if you want to describe how I look at life. And I practice a lot of things, you know, meditation from certain spiritual practices. I fast in Ramadan, in Islam, and so on and so forth.

And I will tell you, Ramadan was just a month ago, an incredible experience. Because you're supposed to not eat and drink and have sex between sunrise and sunset. And the first day you go like, whoa, there are people that live like that, who are somewhere in a desert or who don't have enough to eat. There are people that feel like that. By day 20, Ali...

You're like, I'm the most blessed person on the planet. There are people that live that way 20 days in a row. And I promise you by day 20, you're like, this is, I'm so blessed to even have a glass of water at any point. And then the next time I sip a cup of tea, I'm like, man, that tea really tastes good. And by simulating suffering, whether in your head or in practice, to say, I am so blessed to

Suddenly you get to the point where you say, okay, so I may now want to reconsider how I'm going to place my minutes going forward. This is enough. How do I place the next minute? In my silly analysis, I'd say that there are only two rewarding minutes that you can spend. One is a minute of connection to a human, to an animal, to the environment, to a connection, a minute of connection. And the other is a minute of giving. Okay.

And, you know, again, I'm not saying this because I'm that, you know, lovely spiritual guru. It is very selfish. Giving is an incredible joy. It truly is. It truly, and there is a ton of research that, you know, where they give $20 to people and ask some of them to give it to friends and others. Your happiness goes through the roof, not just through the act of giving. It seems somehow that the physics of the universe is

favors those who give. So it's not just that my moment of giving someone something or spending a minute teaching someone something I knew feels good. I will tell you my life is so easy because it seems that life is pushing me forward. It's not, you know, it's not really...

because I'm trying to grab at it. It's saying, good boy. You're helping others. I want to help others too. So I'm going to help you a little. Here is a little bit of a push on your little bum. Move forward.

I would love to get your take on this. It seems like a lot of people achieve a bunch of success first and then realize, oh, I'm going to become a bit of a monk and become a bit of a spiritual, like, oh, it's all about the journey. You know, literally we've released notebooks that say, quote from Brandon Sanderson, Journey Before Destination. And I sometimes think that like, is this sort of this whole thing about, you know, soul for happy and stuff,

the domain of the privileged where you've already solved for safety and food and shelter and now you've got a luxury of solving for happy. And then I often wonder like when I'm giving advice and videos, am I talking to the audience that's already solved the basic thingies or

And I know there will be people in my audience, like sometimes we get comments. I made a video called Eight Habits That Made Me A Millionaire. It's like whatever. And one of the comments was, bro, I live in like some village in Yemen. I struggle to get food and water, like easy for you to say all of this. And I think that's a very good point. Like I have no response to that. What do you reckon? Yeah. Solving for happy is the, did you call it the domain of the privilege? Yeah. Yeah, we're all privileged.

Maybe that gentleman in Yemen is not. But between what you're talking about and where that gentleman in Yemen is, there are 70 billion

700 million people that are unhappy while privileged. Right. Okay? That's number one. Number two, if that gentleman in Yemen had a device, an electronic device connected to the internet so that he can write that and he had an hour of safety to watch your video or 10 minutes of safety to watch your video, then there are 7 million others in Yemen that are less privileged than him. Okay? And yes, of course, life for each of us has challenges.

But interestingly, life for each of us has lots of blessings. And gratitude, the ability to actually look at life and say, yes, I am not going to be a millionaire like Ali, but I am at least not captive as a sex-trafficked woman like three million women in the world. That ability to look at that

actually is what Viktor Frankl teaches us in Man's Search for Reason, is that there is always someone

that is less privileged than you. And we go back to that topic of relativity. That, you know, I broke up with my boyfriend, someone would say I'm brokenhearted. Yes, but you're still privileged compared to the one that didn't. And her boyfriend's abusing her, for example. Who is also privileged over the one that is being captive and so on. So part of my work in Soul for Happy was a concept that I call look down.

Sadly, we always look up. We say, you know, I have a Mercedes and he has a Ferrari. Or I am in the bus and he's in his Mercedes. Or I'm walking and he's in the bus. Or I'm not able to walk and he's walking. And you can always go down. Of course, of course, life is tough.

So this is the interesting thing. One of the philosophies of a lot of spiritual teachings is that your test is always a tiny little bit more stretching than your capabilities. So you never really get tested in life as per your capabilities because that wouldn't be a test. And you never really get an easy test. You always get a test that is a tiny bit. If it's too challenging, you're going to break. Life doesn't want that.

So why does life challenge us? For two reasons. Reason number one is to

learn something and most of us were as we look back at our life and the difficult parts of our life whatever they were if you were born in Yemen not in you know in in the UK then yes there is an interesting challenge between in privilege between living in Yemen and living in the UK but that privilege sorry that lack of privilege that's challenge that you're facing is suited for what you need to learn

And then, you know, if you, so I always say, if I, when Ali left our world, when my son left our world, I had so much money, I had no idea how much money I had. Okay? I promise you, money would pour in from everywhere. And I lost my son. If I had lost all of my money, I promise you, Ali, if I had lost all of my money down to zero, I wouldn't have blinked.

would not have blinked. The only way for life to stop me and say it's time to change direction, it's time to stop focusing on being a chief business officer of Google X, it's time to stop traveling the world like a maniac trying to sell more technology, it's time to do what you were supposed to do and write about happiness and teach people about happiness. The only way that would take my notice was for Ali to leave.

If it was anything else, I promise you I would have gone more into business. And it's so interesting. So life either wants you to learn or wants you to change direction. And every time you either learn or change direction, you move on. And then there is another test. It wants you to learn or change direction. Okay? Every time you do that. So you date bad boys. Right? The bad boy treats you bad. So you get heartbroken and cry. All right?

That's the test. You go out and date another bad boy, you're still in the same place. And a third bad boy, you're still in the same place. Until suddenly, you go like, that's it, I learned. Change direction. I'm not going to date bad boys anymore. You date a good man or a good woman or whatever your preference is. And then suddenly, you have a new challenge. And that new challenge is, how can we align around having a family?

Right? And that doesn't work. You're heartbroken. Then you see another one, still good, but not ready. You're still the same. And then, right? And then the third, fourth, whatever takes you. You grasp the test and you say, okay, I'm going to talk to them about my family intentions before we date.

And when you start to do that, you're good. Yeah. And then the next challenge. So it's almost like little, you know, math exams. You need to understand addition. And when you do, we'll teach you multiplication.

So individual challenges for individual people, one at a time. And your challenge is different than mine. So you, I don't know if that's true, but you may actually find it difficult to lose all your money. I know people who may find it more difficult to lose all of their money than to lose their son. My test is for me. And for each and every one of us, that test is just a tiny bit more stretching. So you can achieve it, you can succeed, but it's made for you. Yeah, nice.

Speaking of tests, a bit of a weird segue. What's going on in your dating life these days? What's that experience been? Why is everyone talking to me about this? I was with Stephen yesterday, a couple of days ago, and spoke about the same topic. What's going on in my dating life? Lots. So I married my college sweetheart. Amazing woman, still my best friend. Enriched my life in every possible way. We spent 27 years together, raised a couple of kids together. And then we separated seven years ago.

And I tried different models and realized eventually, which I think actually does not only apply to me, that interestingly, life is a question of context. So even your dating life is a question of context, that within context, you could want different things in life. And for most of us, we have been sold that traditional way of relationships should look that way.

And in Finding Love, my book about the economics of love and romance, one of my favorite chapters, which is already written, is all the different models. And if you look at life in the last 10, 15, 20 years, since dating apps started and since we finally, finally, finally accepted that everyone is free to live the way they want to live in their sexuality and gender identity and so on.

Finally, we started to realize that there isn't one model. The one model of I'm going to live that life with one person and there is a contract between us and it's going to be a lifetime. There are endless models, endless models today. I am in a place where I finally realized around a year ago that I have to say I appreciate my mission and the importance of my mission in my life more than I appreciate a traditional relationship.

You appreciate your mission more than you appreciate him. I'm much more committed and I'm much more interested in the success of my 1 billion happy mission than I am in having another traditional relationship. So my life follows very unusual seasons, if you want. And those seasons are not the seasons of a normal person at all. And I think the one thing that drove it home for me is I interviewed Matthew Ricardt.

And Mathieu was, he's probably the world's most renowned monk and a good friend. And Mathieu was a cellular biology PhD, very, very, very sophisticated person. And then by age 29, if I remember correctly, he left the whole world behind and became a monk. And he was well known for his dedication. I mean, sometimes he would go into his hermitage for years at a time, alone in isolation. And I asked him and I said, "Mathieu, why?"

Why does a monk has to be celibate? Why does a monk have to sit, you know, to leave the world behind? Yeah.

And he simply said, well, Mo, understand. If I had a woman in my life and children, and I dedicated that, you know, and I had my responsibility for them, it would be so unfair for them when I go following my teachers or when I go in reflection or when I go, right? It would be so unfair to them. So you had to make a choice. Now, I'm not a monk, for sure, okay? But my choice, right?

does not allow me to stay in one place where my relationship takes 30% of my day and effort. So I am in flow, really. I have wonderful experiences in my life with amazing, amazing human beings that enrich my life that are not attached to that traditional model. And when I say that, I'm sure that some of our listeners will judge me. Okay?

but that's okay because it's me the way i live yeah with full honesty to the point that i can say it to your three million people okay and i think that honesty is highly appreciated with the with the women that actually want to be part of that honesty and that's how i live nice i love that um do you interesting okay yeah no judgment yeah absolutely that's great um so i am about eight and a bit and a bit months into my relationship and it's the longest i've ever dated someone

Any advice for what it is that any or any tips for long term relationship success slash happiness? I don't know how to say this politely, so I'm going to say it in a rude way. That's OK. Nudity in a very interesting way.

The only way that makes a relationship work is that there is nothing ever hidden. Nothing ever hidden. We wear masks all the time, Ali. We wear masks all the time. I try as much as I can not to, but I still do. When you talk about my writing, people ask me, so what's so special about your writing? I write like an engineer, I say.

An engineer is a form of ego. I'm not an engineer. I'm Mo. I was an engineer at a point in time. I'm now probably more of an author than an engineer. And I don't know why I keep saying I'm an engineer. Yeah, I have a very structured way of writing, but it's a form of ego. When I'm with someone that I love, that engineer surfaces. That engineer shows up and starts to say, that's the way I do life. But believe it or not, again, life is context. When I'm in a romantic relationship of any form,

It's not about the engineer at all. As a matter of fact, it's a lot more about letting go of the engineer. Okay. About following your heart and opening up and discussing things and so on. Yeah. So in my personal view, the couples that flow and get to where they need to go are couples that hide nothing at all. Nothing at all? Nothing. Okay? If sex was amazing yesterday, you should say it's amazing. Okay? If it wasn't, you should talk about it.

If you like to go to fancy restaurants, you should say it. If she likes to go to fancy restaurants, she should say it. If you don't, however, you shouldn't hide that. You should say, baby, I would go for you. It's not my place. And anything. Now,

One of the very, very controversial topics that I discuss briefly in that little voice in your head in one chapter, but I discuss deeply in her, the book about the feminine and in finding love is that we have differences between us and

that are not dependent on our body parts, but they are dependent on the way we live our life, in the feminine or in the masculine. Each and every one of us has masculine and feminine in them.

But some of us tend to go through life more in their masculine, man or woman, straight or gay, doesn't matter. Some of us would behave in qualities that are more masculine. And some of us will behave in qualities that are more feminine, man or woman, straight or gay. What's the difference?

If you're a linear thinker, for example, you're living in your masculine. It could be man or woman, but you're a linear thinker. That's the way you analyze your problem. Then you are in your masculine. If you're intuitive, then you're in your feminine. In every relationship, there is attraction and tension.

The attraction is what gives the comfort and harmony and beautiful hugs. The tension is what creates playfulness, silliness, and sexuality. If you don't have a little bit of both, the relationship is not complete. And the challenge is the tension happens because of those differences. Because you're a linear thinker.

and she's intuitive or the other way around. So those differences, believe it or not, between the two partners are like Chinese and Czech or Slovakian or whatever that is, right? They're totally different languages to the point that when she behaves in a certain way or your partner, he or she, doesn't matter,

You completely don't get it. Most of the questions I get on the topic would be like, why is she like that? Like, what happened? The only way to find out why she's like that is two steps. Step one is for you to listen. Step two is for her to talk.

Okay? And for most of us, when we do those things, it's almost in a foreign language. It's like she starts to say A, B, C, and you go like, why is she saying four, five, six? Yeah. Right? And the only way to actually start to translate is to pause and say, I didn't get it. I didn't get it. I didn't get it. I mean, one of the...

of the examples of that is I had a person in my life where we were dating and then we broke up and then, you know, I love her dearly. She's a wonderful woman. And, you know, last time I was here in London, I couldn't give her enough time and this, and she, she was very upset and she said, you know, I want you to give me more time. And so this time around I texted her, I saw her several times. And then one of them I said, uh, I, and then I texted her and said, am I doing better than last time? Mm-hmm.

Okay? Her answer was silence, total silence. In a masculine brain, this is my engineer measuring performance. Okay?

In her feminine side, she was like, is this a task on him? Does he feel that this is a burden on him? Okay. So I waited because that's what communication is all about. Communication is not just about talking all the time. Communication is about also silence sometimes. Sometimes to think about it, to give me some time to read it again. I waited. And then...

When she answered back and said, I felt from your answer. Now look at what she's done. What she's done here is she allowed herself to talk. I felt from your answer that you feel that it's a burden to spend time with me. Okay.

What did I do? I waited. Because if I responded immediately, it would be an argument. And then a couple of hours later, I responded and I said, but it could also be understood that I care so much for you to be happy. And I was asking if I'm doing the right thing just in case I wasn't to be able to do better. Communication. That's great. Done. And by the way, this is so enriching because the minute you get it,

You suddenly look at her and she looks at you and you go like, oh my God, she's so wonderful. She felt that way. This is why it was silence. It's not a fight. She felt that way. It was silence. It's either because I did something shitty or she misunderstood what I did. Okay. Which basically means I need to correct what I did or maybe I need to explain what I did. And most of the time challenges between couples are, you know, honestly, when there is a challenge between a couple, I basically always say,

That's because you care about each other. If you didn't, you would have walked away. And I think a lot of that really comes to that feminine and masculine. A lot of that comes to the fact that you really are talking Chinese. And she's talking Slovakian or whatever that is. Yeah, I recently reread Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus. Yeah, great. Great, great illustration of that. It's quite controversial these days. But, I mean, honestly...

It really helped me understand lots of things. It's not if you don't look at men and women. Okay? So let me talk about this concept for a bit. Yeah.

Qualities are a beautiful thing. So let me explain. We said linear thinking and intuition, masculine and feminine. You have, for example, forcefulness and playfulness. So the masculine is strong. The feminine is playful. It's in flow. You have empathy and compassion.

Sorry, or compassion and empathy. Empathy is feminine. It's to feel what another person is feeling. Compassion is to act upon what you're feeling. Oh, okay. Okay? And so on. I can give you a million examples. Now, take any of them. Let's list some of my favorites, which are really underrated in the world. Okay.

The feminine is, as I said, is intuitive. It's also creative. All of creativity comes from the feminine. It's also in flow, so it doesn't resist life. It's also into oneness and inclusion. So the masculine has that idea of it's an individual against the world. The feminine is I'm part of the world. I'm part of all being. Yeah.

They're a quality. They're an approach, an attitude to deal with life. If I'm given a problem, the masculine will take that problem and say, let me analyze it in linear format. The feminine will say, let me sense it and understand all of the different inputs and then trust my intuition. Is one better than the other? Depends on the problem. Absolutely not. Every problem requires both. Every single problem requires both. And if you drop one

and stick to the other, you're limited. So linear thinking, when you haven't sensed properly all of the different inputs, is stupid because you're analyzing not enough information. Getting all of the input from sensing or from your intuition and not analyzing it is very ineffective. The game is can we integrate? Can we put those two together?

The modern world, however, has demonized the feminine. Why? Because we're capitalists. The masculine is all about doing. The feminine is all about being. Beautiful. We don't get being in that fast-paced modern world. Being, by the way, is not me creating a video.

but me being who I am. So that when I create a video, people go like, "This guy is good. This guy actually has a mission and he believes in something." That being might be more effective than the words I put in my video. You understand? And actually this is felt. I told you I'm a fan of your work. For some reason, when I look at your videos, I go like, "I like this person." It's not what you're saying. I just like you as a person.

That's part of your being, not what you're doing. Interesting, huh? So where does it go wrong? The modern world wants more doing because we just want more profits and more success and more numbers and is demonizing the feminine. When in reality, every single person that ever made the world a better place, this might sound shocking, was more in their feminine than in their masculine.

Gandhi could have rallied 1 billion people to fight the Brits. Instead, he went into nonviolent resistance. Nonviolence, that's 100% feminine. Gandhi, in that choice, was more feminine than masculine. The most shocking example that I write about in her is Steve Jobs.

So most people will think that Steve Jobs succeeded because he was hyper-masculine, obnoxious, pushy, forceful, and so on, aggressive sometimes, which are the extremes of the masculine. No, this is what pulled him back. This is why he was taken off as a CEO at the beginning. What made Steve Jobs Steve Jobs is his empathy for the user needs, his understanding of color and beauty, his understanding of art and calligraphy.

and his appreciation of simplicity, his appreciation of play and flow and so on and so forth. These are what made him successful.

The feminine is what makes him successful. Interestingly, the masculine is very good at doing, even if what we're doing is a stupid thing. Okay? This is why we create amazing technologies that are destroying our planet. If we allowed a little more feminine, the feminine would come in and say, is there any way we can create some way to go to Australia and not destroy the planet at the same time? Because we care about going to Australia and not destroying the planet. So finally, what I try to say is,

Where does it go wrong? It goes wrong if you overdo any of those qualities. So if you take strong, strong is a masculine trait. If you take strong and use it properly, it leads to protection and safety of our tribe. You do too much of it, it becomes aggression and violence. You take intuition, intuition.

Intuition allows us to see what was not what is not obvious and trusts and connect to the rest of intelligence if you want Okay, do a little bit of that you get a better knowledge of life do too much of it And you're not practical in your analytic analysis of the problem. Yeah, right and so on Yeah, so so where is the where is the answer? The answer is for a couple to literally come together and say hey, I'm crap at this You're amazing at it

You lead on this one. I'm good at this. You're not so good at it. Let me lead on that one. And then suddenly those two become so much better than each one of them alone. Nice. Yeah, this is sort of like, again, having that experience of lots of puzzles slotting into space in my brain. Two things come to mind. Actually, one in particular, where I was having a chat with my girlfriend, let's call her Jane, that around...

It was really around intuition. And Jane was asking, you know, do I ever get the feeling of bad vibes from anyone? And I was like, not really. Like, if they give me a reason to suspect that their behavior, their kind of intentions are misaligned or like, you know, malicious intent and all that. But probably not. Most people are good most of the time. Like, it's all good.

And we were on holiday and some guy came up to us and was offering to buy us a bus ticket to go somewhere. I was like, oh, what a nice guy he's offering to buy us a bus ticket. And she was like, no, it doesn't feel right. Let's not do this thing.

And we were talking about this afterwards where she felt like maybe for me, the fact that I don't really feel the bad vibes was a bit of a red flag because it's like, oh, I don't have this intuition that this person could be dangerous. Therefore, would that be bad for the family further down the line? My solution to this was,

Genuinely, I don't feel the bad vibes. I think everyone has good intentions most of the time. Given that you're better at this, why don't we just default to yours? - Exactly. - If you ever get a whiff of bad vibes from someone, we just don't do the thing and I won't even question it. - Absolutely. - And she was like, yeah, that's reasonable. That's a reasonable resolution to the problem. - Absolutely, that's the way it, exactly, that's the way it goes. It is for you to realize that her intuition is such a valuable asset that you would so benefit from having and rather than fight over it, appreciate it, okay?

Yeah, this is all really resonating. I think part of... And I like that distinction you drew with men are from ours, which is that the only reason it's controversial is if you attach to men and women. It's not men and women. Rather than masculine and feminine. Absolutely. Even with the labels masculine and feminine, I think...

It would be nice if we had a phrasing for them that was not so gendered in a way. Because it immediately red flags with people's minds. Oh my God. That's the exact problem. The exact problem for me is I am crazy about the idea of everyone should be free to do exactly what they want, to identify exactly what they want. So I'll give you an example. My diet through my years has changed in a very unusual way. So there was a time where I ate no chicken, no meat,

no eggs, but I drank milk and I ate fish occasionally, but no other seafood.

And so when I explained that to people, they would say, okay, so you're vegan, vegan, vegan. Oh, but you drink milk. That means you're vegetarian, but you don't eat eggs. Maybe you're still a vegetarian who doesn't like eggs, but you eat fish. Occasionally, does that make you a pescatarian? Right? And I was like, I'm a mortarian. Right? I eat what I want, what I like. Do I have to fit within a category? Do you have to call me something? Or can I just order and say, no red meat, please? Okay?

Okay. No chicken, please. Is that so difficult for humanity to understand? Why do we try to categorize everything? Okay. And so as we now expand it from finally from man, woman into you can be any gender you want. I want to be a motarian. I want to be more. I identify as what I identify. And nobody should judge me for that. Right. Nobody should try to fit me within a category. Yeah.

If I want to identify as a double-decker bus, there doesn't need to be a category for that. Honestly, I can identify with whatever I want. This is the true freedom we're looking for. This is the true revolution, if you ask me. And I know that the reason why we're going through this phase is because it was so extreme that we're teething through it. But my dream is to end up in a place where

I don't need to identify at all. I'm Mo. I am the person that I am. I live the way I want to live. As long as I don't hurt anyone, okay, you don't have to put me in a box. I think that's a great place to end this, Mo. I can't wait to read the books. And yeah, we'll put links to all of the stuff, all of the books that you've released so far, including that little voice in your head, which should be out by the time this podcast is released. So links to all of that will be in the video description and in the show notes.

Yeah, I just wanted to say thank you so much for coming on. This has been an absolute joy. I feel like so much stuff in my head has connected into interesting different places. Such a pleasure to be here. Big fan. Thank you for the opportunity. Thank you so much for coming. All right, so that's it for this week's episode of Deep Dive. Thank you so much for watching or listening. All the links and resources that we mentioned in the podcast

are gonna be linked down in the video description or in the show notes, depending on where you're watching or listening to this. If you're listening to this on a podcast platform, then do please leave us a review on the iTunes store. It really helps other people discover the podcast. Or if you're watching this in full HD or 4K on YouTube, then you can leave a comment down below and ask any questions or any insights or any thoughts about the episode. That would be awesome. So yeah, thank you very much for listening. I'll catch you hopefully in the next episode.