A 10-year-in-the-making equation for happiness was tested by the death of his son.
I was nearly in tears while hearing Mo Gawdat’s story of how he has learned how to be happy no matter what is going on.
Mo is a genius and has always enjoyed professional success and wonderful family relationships.
If you’ve ever heard of Google’s amazing branch X, you know they’re the geniuses who are working on self-driving cars and a world-wide network of balloons that would give internet access everywhere.
Mo runs that company.
So when he found himself miserable 10 years ago, despite all his success and family fulfillment, he put his brilliant engineering mind to the task of figuring out what actually creates happiness.
Over 10 years he studied every book and idea he could find and slowly developed what he calls an equation for happiness.
It is simple and straightforward and is all based around expectations and reality.
Once he applied his equation to his own life, he found he was happy no matter what.
But then he lost his son Ali to a simple medical mistake by a doctor.
And his research and equation were put to a whole new test.
Inspired by Ali and his family’s experience of this tragedy, Mo wrote a book to explain his happiness equation and why it works even under the hardest circumstances.
I learned so much from Mo in just this one hour conversation and I know you will too in Episode 467 with Mo Gawdat.
Some Questions I Ask:
- Who are the people who are the most unhappy in the world? (7:06)
- When did you start the search for the happiness equation? (14:39)
- What’s the biggest lesson your son Ali taught you? (22:54)
- What is your approach to getting back to happiness when something goes wrong? (41:13)
In this episode, you will learn:
- The reason Mo took a 6 month sabbatical from Google to promote this book (6:36)
- How our expectations determine our happiness (10:12)
- The difference between pain and suffering (19:55)
- The advice Mo’s son gave him before he passed (22:06)
- Why we become less wise as we get older (24:22)
- The 6 big illusions that cause much of our suffering (31:54)
- How Mo open sourced edits for his book to make it better (39:00)
- Plus much more…
Show Notes:
Transcript of this Episode
Music Credits:
Music Credit: In This Moment by Sappheiros
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