Jun 13, 2017
Whether we're struggling with negative thoughts, an unsatisfying job, or believing we're not enough, this episode is a powerful reminder that we're all worthy of self-love, joy, and an amazing life.
Today is all about fighting our inner demons and discovering our purpose in the world. Together, we'll be doing some real soul searching to find out what's holding us back from the happiness we deserve.
By the end of this podcast, we'll better understand how our brain, thoughts, and emotions all play a part in our wellness.
Chief Business Officer for Google [X], serial entrepreneur and author of, Solve for Happy, Mo Gawdat had an amazing career during his late twenties. He was working as a Director for a major consumer goods company which gave him a terrific salary, amazing perks, and a career ladder to climb. However, despite how wonderful his life appeared on the outside, he wasn't truly happy on the inside.
When his son, Ali, unexpectedly passed away, Mo began to see life in a different light. Keeping Ali's tattoo in mind, The Gravity of Battle Means Nothing to Those at Peace, he set out to discover the perfect equation for happiness. After 12 years of research, he is sharing his Happiness Model with the rest of the world. His personal moonshot mission is to honor his son's memory and continue his legacy by making 10 million more people happy.
In this powerful episode, we will discover how to end self-sabotage by comparison, what pain and suffering can teach us, why our brain never tells us the truth and why death can be our best life coach.
Despite the global narrative, 'I'll be happy when I have _____,' money, relationships, and possessions cannot bring us true joy. So, Mo created his own narrative, 'I feel happy when I ____.' When he changed is focus from receiving possessions to valuing what he already had, he realized that people only seem to be happy when life is going their way.
When there's so much narrative coming our way, it's hard to listen to the narrative inside of us.
The harder we work to achieve happiness, the deeper the hole it creates in our soul. Happiness cannot come from outside of ourselves. It truly only comes from within.
With Ali as his inspiration, Mo crafted The Happiness Model to help us uncover any assumptions and doubts we have about life so that we may discover our inner joy.
The Happiness Model:
The 6 Grand Illusions
The 7 Blind Spots
The 5 Ultimate Truths
We're all born happy and free to become whomever we want to be.
We start out strong like machines, but then we begin to break down when we engage more with life. Life's expectations lead us to believe that no matter how hard we try, we're never enough. We can end up subjecting ourselves to an inner, false dialogue that we'll only be happy if we have that job, relationship, or gadget.
Happiness > to your perceptions of the events in your life (-) your expectations of how life should be.
With phones at our fingertips, it's easy to get lost in all of the latest images, videos, and news about other people's lives. When we compare ourselves to other people, our brain interrupts those thoughts as threats to our ego. Eventually, we're not satisfied with our lives. Rather than being happy with what we have, we end up creating new expectations for the life we think we should be living.
If we don't perceive ourselves as successful, then we only see our failures. Therefore, we're only happy when life is going our way.
[tweetthis]"People who find their happiness are the ones that make it their number one priority." - @Solveforhappy [/tweetthis]
Mo Gawdat is a remarkable thinker and the
Chief Business Officer at Google’s [X], an elite team of engineers
that comprise Google’s futuristic “dream factory.” Applying his
superior skills of logic and problem solving to the issue of
happiness, he proposes an algorithm based on an understanding of
how the brain takes in and processes joy and sadness. Then he
solves for happy.
In 2001 Mo Gawdat realized that despite his incredible success, he was desperately unhappy. A lifelong learner, he attacked the problem as an engineer would: examining all the provable facts and scrupulously applying logic. Eventually, his countless hours of research and science proved successful, and he discovered the equation for permanent happiness.
Thirteen years later, Mo’s algorithm would be put to the ultimate test. After the sudden death of his son, Ali, Mo and his family turned to his equation—and it saved them from despair. In dealing with the horrible loss, Mo found his mission: he would pull off the type of “moonshot” goal that he and his colleagues were always aiming for—he would share his equation with the world and help as many people as possible become happier.
In Solve for Happy Mo questions some of the most fundamental aspects of our existence, shares the underlying reasons for suffering, and plots out a step-by-step process for achieving lifelong happiness and enduring contentment. He shows us how to view life through a clear lens, teaching us how to dispel the illusions that cloud our thinking; overcome the brain’s blind spots; and embrace five ultimate truths.
No matter what obstacles we face, what burdens we bear, what trials we’ve experienced, we can all be content with our present situation and optimistic about the future.
Mo Gawdat is the Chief Business Officer for Google [X], a serial entrepreneur and author of “Solve for Happy.”
Mo has an impressive combined career of 27 years, starting at IBM Egypt as a Systems Engineer before moving to a sales role in the government sector. Venturing in to the UAE, Mo joined NCR Abu Dhabi to cover the non-finance sector. He then became acquainted with the consumer goods industry as Regional Manager of BAT. At Microsoft he assumed various roles over a span of seven and a half years, in his last role at Microsoft he headed the Communications Sector across Emerging Markets worldwide.
Alongside his career, Mo remained a serial entrepreneur who has co-founded more than 20 businesses in fields such as health and fitness, food and beverage and real estate. He served as a board member in several technology, health and fitness and consumer goods companies as well as several government technology and innovation boards in the Middle East and Eastern Europe. He mentors tens of start-ups at any point in time.
Mo Gawdat is the author of “Solve for Happy: Engineering Your Path to Joy” (2017). Through his 12 year research on the topic of happiness, he created an algorithm and a repeatable well engineered model to reach a state of uninterrupted happiness regardless of the circumstances of life. Mo’s happiness model proved highly effective. And, in 2014, was put to the ultimate test when Mo lost his son Ali to preventable medical error during a simple surgical procedure. Solve For Happy is the pillar for a mission Mo has committed to as his personal moonshot, a mission to deliver his happiness message to 10 million people around the world.
[tweetthis]"If you compare yourself to the rest of the world, you will always break the happiness equation." - @Solveforhappy[/tweetthis]
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