As we enter into March, the weather remains chilly and the trees brittle without the color and life of its leaves. It is far too easy to slip into a wintery slump as the seasonal changes affect the mental health of many around the world. Times like these bring me back to the year 2020, a time where unproductivity and mental health issues spiked under the heaviness of quarantine around the world. I was sent a podcast by my dad in the midst of these quarantine blues, and I often refer back to its wisdom when the humdrums of life catch up to me today. As I listened to this podcast again recently, I could not help but think that the messages it alludes to should continue to be shared with people, especially those struggling with their mental health. I recommend listening to this podcast in full on The Diary of a CEO with Steven Bartlett, The Happiness Expert That Made 51 Million People Happier: Mo Gawdat.
Mo Gawdat is the Former Chief Business Officer of Google X where he spent thirty years in the “moonshot factory,” engineering robots and the latest technology of our time. Mo is an accomplished genius whose previous title provided him a life with so much power, where anything he desired could appear in his hands within a matter of days. “I could make money on demand. And yet I poured that money on my life, and I couldn’t find happiness,” Mo states.
Many are found guilty of believing this exaggerated notion that money buys happiness or money can solve every one of our problems. Although this can be true to an extent, one of the most successful leaders of a world-renowned company, Mo, was still unable to experience true happiness, even when all of his materialistic desires were met. Nothing could make him happy, one of the many signs that led Mo to be diagnosed with depression as a 29 year old.
As he battled, he also began his research journey on discovering the key to happiness. None of the recommended techniques and practices, such as meditation or journaling, truthfully helped Mo, so he took a more systematic approach instead. His brain understood topics through applied mathematics and engineering, a method that fully allowed him to discover how to be happy. “I would take data points and measurements and try to do fitting lines and curves and charts on topics like happiness… four years later and I started to really become a little better.”
In 2014, the sudden and tragic loss of his son, Ali, gave Mo the motivation to fully launch his second career as an author and expert on the topic of happiness. In the face of death, Mo still claimed “nothing could dent my happiness.” His son was only 21 when he died during one of the most common procedures in the world, which treats appendicitis. It only took five steps to go completely wrong in the operating room. Moments later, and due to human error, Mo’s son was gone forever.
Mo was asked by an interviewer on the podcast how he was able to avoid resentment towards the doctors and towards the world after losing something as significant as his own child. Mo replies with two short questions: “What would it (resentment) do? Would it bring him back?” Often as emotional beings, we feel the need to blame someone or something as a means to validate our negative emotions and reactions. But Mo makes the very rational stance that he will not spend energy scrutinizing others or the world when life already took its course because he simply cannot undo the event. In the hours following Ali’s death, Mo had remarkably accepted the situation for what it was. His reaction was not because he did not love his son, but rather a result of the positive neuroplasticity performed in his brain, which allowed him to fully accept the situation that laid beyond his control.
From that point on, Mo decided to sprinkle the memory of his son to others and teach people, through his findings, how to become happier. Solve for Happy, Mo’s first best-selling book, was published in 2016. Mo realized it was time to produce something other than phones and engines for once, something humanity desperately needed in a pandemic of unhappiness.
In his book, Mo extensively writes about the causes of unhappiness to which he briefly summarizes in the podcast. Mo begins with a simple example of rain to further his points. Mo states, “Rain makes you happy when you want to water your plants and makes you unhappy when you want to sunbathe. And so it is not just the event, rain, it’s the comparison between the event and an expectation in your mind on how life should be.”
The expectations the human mind creates, that are often unrealistic and bound to cause disappointment, are the major reasons humans are unhappy, yet most people cannot acknowledge this responsibility. Mo wants us to understand the fact that nothing can make people unhappy until an event is turned into a negative thought or through a failed expectation we created ourselves.
Ideas of personal initiative tied to happiness leads to Mo’s overall claim, which is, “happiness is a choice.” A forward statement such as this lost Mo nearly eight percent of his audience reading Solve for Happy. Humans do not particularly enjoy being told to take responsibility for their negative emotions and likewise many are unwilling to accept this responsibility. But Mo does not want humanity to be afraid of this. We can control our thought processes for the better, to feel happier and live happier lives, and it is possible through personal choice and effort.
In the podcast episode, the topic of time is discussed as well. Although time is such a difficult concept for the human mind to grasp, it plays a critical role in the way our brains associate emotions. “Regret is anchored in the past… anxiety is anchored in the future… The majority of negative emotions are anchored in the past or future.” This profound idea is really a simple realization once taken into consideration. In this present moment, the reader who is reading this article is not necessarily unhappy now. For the reader, there is a piece of technology at their convenience, allowing them to access an article, furthering Mo’s claim that “there is nothing trying to eat you right now.” And because everything is okay right now, we can be grateful. Gratitude is a practice humans often ignore and struggle to recognize in their respective careers and lives. When compared to the billionaire, we feel unhappy, and when compared to children without food in Africa, we are grateful. The big idea that Mo wants us to realize is that we are in full control of the thoughts we decide to feed our brain. We are in control of being grateful and happy, but we first have to choose to ignore the negative thoughts.
Mo has created a three question “flow chart” as guidance when choosing to act on negative or positive thoughts. The flow chart is as follows: Is this thought true? Can I do something about it? Can I accept it and do something despite its presence? This flow chart has completely transformed the way Mo perceives his life, and similarly, he hopes his audience can be happier from simple yet impactful thought processes like this.
Mo Gawdat turned his life around from Google X Officer to happiness expert with a goal of making ten million people happier. He is now a four time bestselling author and host of his own podcast called Slo Mo: A Podcast with Mo Gawdat. Mo has discovered his own key to happiness, and through his findings, he encourages others to seek theirs. In what ways are you choosing your own happiness? Advice from Mo may be just the thing you need to launch you on your own path towards happiness.
