Mo Gawdat's Happiness Formula: Retrain Your Brain to Be Happy Now

if something is wrong it's okay to feel the pain it's okay to feel alerted what's not okay is the suffering what's not okay is telling yourself the next morning to replay the pain what's not okay is to add to the pain hello everyone it's Sage welcome to the Tony Robins podcast Tony and I had the privilege to sit with a beautiful friend and brother his name is MGA that at a platinum partnership program that we did in Mexico gosh uh the Brilliance of this man's mind he's an engineer he's got the most beautiful heart he's used his life experiences loss of his St created algorithm for happiness and just practical pragmatic ways to apply inquiry he also came up with a new book called unpressable It's one of my favorite episodes please tune in and join us for Mo very quick introduction I'm the luckiest man you will ever meet despite the harshness of my life I'm so lucky I was born and raised in Egypt a public school public university in Egypt which basically means I'm almost uneducated uh and and I went so far in life it really really was unbelievable it's it's just so strange that I could live a life that took me this far and when I um when I started uh my life I I lived two literally two full lives so far okay one of them was the life that you saw with the big logos of Google and what have you um at uh which there was a very defining moment I graduated from University as an engineer I'm a very serious math geek I promise you I speak mathematics and numbers better than I speak English by a very large distance and I had to learn to to to sort of translate my view of life which is highly algorithmic into words so that people can benefit from it in Egypt where I was born and raised this is really from the pawn if you don't talk about football and you know all of the stuff that my other fellow friends were talking about you know you you're not in a good place to grow up being a geek at all okay and so I struggled with that in my early life but then somehow as I finished my University I was at a stage in life where I decided you know what I'm just going to live whatever I like and and I was a very serious carp Carpenter so I um I started a a workshop I didn't care never really cared about money to be honest which is probably one of the reasons why it chases me and and in an interesting way I'm in that carpentry workshop and I'm totally in love uh with the with the woman of my life now my ex-wife but was still really one of the dearest people to me in the world uh you know stayed together for 27 years but but she was like look if we're going to get married you're going to have to show up with something more than a carpenter to my dad so you know do something so I start you know through sheer luck I worked at IBM uh then I worked at Microsoft then I worked at Google at the time where those companies were completely changing the world qualifications I promise you know right but somehow you know there must have been 50,000 people around the world that could do this job better than me at the height of my career I became Chief business Officer of Google X so it wasn't just Google it wasn't just X which is like the best part of Google it was Chief business officer of a place that was promising to change the world enormous enormous privilege that Journey on the other hand was parallel to a very different journey I was the happiest moment you will have ever seen until age 25 age 25 I married my college sweetheart uh who I loved dearly who is a gorgeous and wonderful and spiritual and smart woman and uh she gives me this wonderful little child Ali and ali uh you know like any good father would do I went to the operating the delivery room and you know the minute this little crumbly thing shows up they're really not pretty when they're born just let's be very clear about at least fathers don't see that even if they tell you that they are okay and I look at that thing and I promise you my entire life flipped upside down I was like that's it this thing is never going to need anything ever again okay and so I put my head down used my mathematics and from age 25 where all I had was my carpent carpentry shop just started working at IBM I think I was paid $29 a month okay uh age 29 I promise you I was printing money on demand like literally my my my my lovely wonderful wife then would tell me we need to change the car and I would say so what would you like honey and she would say a Range Rover and I'd say that's going to have to be Wednesday right because between Monday you know I can't do it on Monday right and that I I somehow understood mathematics to the point where I could literally print money on demand in a market before automatic trading and all of stuff that you know today and I was miserable I had the most gorgeous woman in my life two wonderful kids a massive place to live all of the cars that I was crazy about fancy suits everything you can think of and I was clinically depressed and the more life gave me the more unhappy I became sounds familiar you must know someone like that who's so blessed in life and totally miserable until a defining moment where my wonderful little daughter so I'm I'm unhappy I'm grumpy all the time it doesn't feel great but you know what Middle Eastern men we don't cry so who cares who cares about happiness let's just go with it right my daughter walks in on a Saturday I am looking at something crunching numbers or looking at my an email and she's literally jumping up and down so Ali my son was born a tiny little Zen monk okay constant ly at peace a my daughter was born as life itself enormous amounts of fun and energy and playfulness two beautiful gifts a jumping up and down saying Papa we're going to do this and we're going to play that and you know can we stop and get that ice cream on the way and I and I quoted H I looked at her so grumpy and I said can we please be serious for a minute okay she was five right what's what where did that come from and I could see with my own eyes as my daughter's heart broke okay she literally wept crying ran out of the room and for the first time I suddenly realized I don't like this person anymore I made a vow that I will not be that person vows are not good enough I really struggled so I remember vividly i w walked out of that place and did the only thing I know how to do I read every book I watched every documentary I went to every event I could get could get access to and I understood absolutely nothing I couldn't get it I what are they talking about what why are they saying meditate if someone said tell you know say om I would go mad like what om you would don't say om right you know I don't want that stuff and it was crazy because it wasn't that what they were saying was was wrong or difficult it was actually very straightforward and you put your mind to it it was that what they were telling me did not match my way of looking at things and my way of looking at things was the way of an engineer I I'll come back to that in a minute but let me just take you through the rest of the story somehow I found an engineering approach to happiness you may have seen the equation in the video and it really worked it was incredibly effective not because it's something genius but because our world has moved from the heart to the Head okay so when you start to talk to people through the head somehow they get it even though you know like when you when you just feel it it's also the same but it took me a very long time to get there 12 years later I was the happiest person you'll ever meet at the time it was post 911 and I'm a middle eastern my actual name is Muhammad Ali like every second Terrorist on the planet is Muhammad Ali right and I remember vividly at the time I worked at Microsoft and I uh I had to travel from Dubai to Seattle every single month I did that 37 times in a row every single time I would land in JFK and they would give me a big red envelope and a big guy with a big gun would come to me and say sir do not move and they would walk me to the homeland security room as a criminal okay as I walk in because I worked at Microsoft at the time the people behind the counter would look at me and say oh Mr Gates is back okay come to the counter answer the same 10 questions you were asked last time after lots of humiliation an hour and a half of suffering and so on and so forth with a massive smile on my face nothing could Dent my happiness it worked the model worked until 2014 now Chief business Officer of Google X right uh you know it seems that life cannot be any better than this um we're I decided to take a vacation in July I never ever did that in my life uh my daughter was coming to visit us from Canada she studied in Montreal and Concordia and then my uh son somehow who was a very you know um artistic excellent bass guitar player they had a tour they were opening for a band here in the US and he said and I quote he called us and said um I feel compelled to come and see you in the next couple of weeks when Ali said something we knew he was serious so we said sure Habibi we'd love to have you AAS here it would be wonderful he arrives 4 days later he has a belly pain he goes to a hospital they diagnose him with an inflamed appendex which is really really the simplest surgical uh procedure known to humanity and um and somehow the the surgeon does five mistakes in a row every single one of them is preventable every single one of them is fixable when you do five and you fix them wrong four hours later Ali was gone and I must have spoken about this probably thousands of time and it hurts it really it's it's the most painful thing I believe that a human could ever feel losing a child is very very very very unlike our nature as humans and yet somehow four days after Ali died I decided I needed um to um to do something okay my uh my daughter walked in and she said uh Papa Ali had a dream and his dream uh he he only told her his dream and his dream was that he was going going to be everywhere and part of everyone and um I late later I understood by the way that in some spiritual teachings everywhere and part of everyone is is the definition of death but she said he said that I felt so good that I didn't want to go back to my body now remember at the time I'm Chief business Officer of Google X before that I was vice president of Google I opened half of Google's offices uh globally and reached 4 billion people with the internet and so I heard this she said everywhere and part of everyone in my blurry mind of the pain of a father losing his child I heard it as if Ali was saying here is your quot okay here is your target okay I promise you you you know a will tell me you answered the weirdest answer so I was sitting I was standing in front of her I found myself falling on the on the on the living room couch uh so and and basically saying of course Habibi consider it done okay and in my brain I was like yeah I know how to reach billions of people I've done that before I'm just going to have to take whatever he taught me about happiness and put it in a book and at the time we had a very simple a mission 10 million happy I said through six degrees of separation in 70 years if I reach 10 million you know in 70 years it will a part of his Essence will be everywhere and part of everyone I'll come back back to that at the end but but the idea here is what Tony mentioned a few times the idea of I could if you have seen Ali once I promise you he was tall handsome so wise so kind so loving so at the peak of his success and you know if you hugged him he had that amazing amazing energy to him and you know if I had decided to spend the rest of my life crying I don't think you would have blamed me honestly nobody would have blamed me for that but somehow somehow in that situation I actually found a way to make me happier by making others happy and hopefully if you believe if you understand death the way I understand death make him happy okay so let's go back to that happiness thing because we spoke about this quite a lot uh and as I said I I will probably not tell you anything new but I'll try to organize it to you in a very very logical way of the modern world any questions by the way Midway just jump in and we'll have a conversation okay um this happiness thing as as tonan Sage actually said everyone has a different definition for happiness I don't I'm a I'm a freaking engineer I don't take it that way okay to me if you say if you give me a problem to solve I need to know what the problem that definition is every every engineer you'll ever meet will tell you I can't solve it until you give me a problem definition and so I'm struggling there m you know causing pain for my family and very grumpy very unhappy and I need to solve that thing and I then found myself asking but I don't know what happiness is I don't understand it and I got stuck really for four years trying to understand what is it that I'm searching for until one day I was in a uh Cafe in Seattle I I remember uh um the the time it was 400 p.m. I was in a cafe in Seattle and I was playing uh music on the 10 megabyte iPod do you remember those we were so happy with them like they were amazing right and and you know and a band called Super anyone knows super oh there you go that's a good crowd what's wrong with the others hold on yeah so anyway Super is an old British band that played the song called The Logical Song okay and the Logical Song starts with for those who remember it when I was young it seemed that life was so wonderful all the birds on the trees were singing so happily right again sage and and and and Tony spoke about this how a little child is always happy I mean of course sometimes they fuss and cry but that's because there is a reason to be unhappy do you understand that the idea is if you give a child love safety care uh you know feed them make them warm give them their basic needs for survival what is their state they're lying on their back playing with their toes and giggling right if I give you your basic needs for survival would you lie on your back and play with your toes and giggle probably not right and I think that's the whole point huh the whole point is suddenly when I when I heard that song h I started to ask myself sorry I started to ask myself that's actually true that's the story of my life when I was young everything was easy everything was fun everything was playful happiness did not seem to be a difficult thing to reach at all was very it was accessible all the time and then the song continues to say and then they sent me away to teach me how to be cynical uh logical responsible pract iCal clinical and so on and so forth and that too is the story of your life right they send you to school or you have a couple of of demanding parents or whatever that is and your situation suddenly goes from I'm happy all the time all I need is to be given my my basic needs for survival two no no hold on hold on I'm unhappy all the time everything seems to be wrong right think about it huh that whole idea that difference are two very important assumptions two very very important things that they never talk to us when they talk about happiness one of them is we're born happy there's nothing to look for there's nowhere to go there's nothing to seek okay it's actually already within us and that completely flipped my mind because remember at the time I was printing money on demand grumpy like f and and literally bombarding myself with things like every time I felt unhappy I bought something or I went on a vacation or I dressed in a more expensive way or I whatever right in my first book uh uh you you will you know if you read it I mention a time where I was literally so empty that I was on eBay looking at two classic rolls-royces didn't know which one of them is going to make me happier so I literally clicked twice about two rolls-royces tick tick okay not even bidding it's like what's your you know your your your price tick tick okay they arrived two months later in Dubai I promise you I was happy for S minutes I looked at them I like oh wow that's amazing what is this little scratch you know why why is this I should have bought a different color ah but this one is no the whatever right 7 Minutes H and when you start to think about this I was bombarding myself with what the world was telling me is going to make me happy Sage spoke about this many times the idea of external things we need external things to be you know in certain uh uh scenarios or setups to be happy but they never work they never work okay when in reality I was happy as a child I was happy until the moment very openly that Ali was born until that delivery room when I decided you know what I'm going to tackle life head on and as I started to tackle life head on nothing made sense anymore everything I looked at was not as good as as as I wanted it to be the you know the the the Rolls-Royce cornes with beautiful silver and blue and what have you yeah the a tiny bit of the leather was not what I liked right and then you look at that and you see that and you forget the whole thing you forget that your you know health y enough to actually look for a car that you are wealthy enough to find the car that you actually did get the car and that the car has so many things that you love about it you just remember the one thing that you hate right now let's go back to the assumptions I am born happy as a child I don't ask for Instagram likes I don't ask for Xboxes I don't ask for cars I don't want anyone to like my crumbly little bum nobody cares right children are happy right then the interesting second assumption which truly blew me away was the second one was the idea that happiness is the absence of unhappiness so you look at a child the child is unhappy when there is a reason to be unhappy a diaper gets wet the child will cry you change the diaper the child goes back to happiness okay I promise you this is the case for you too if you wake up tomorrow at 7:00 a.m. you're feeling nice and healthy you're sitting on the beach your partner didn't say anything stupid so far you know life is no reason to be unhappy your state is happy you're okay right if there is no reason for unhappiness we feel happy now here's the challenge there are so many things that piss us off in life okay it's like literally buying a new phone you you know that experience you buy a new phone the default state of the phone is happy it's working really well and then you start to install weird apps on it all of that weird stuff that you install right and then the phone doesn't work anymore this is what we're doing to ourselves now any human being that gets to that conclusion happiness is the absence of unhappiness would simply do a list but not Engineers like you know okay I'm unhappy about this I'm going to change it unhappy about that going to change it not software engineers at the time crazy as it sounds but what I did is I decided you know what there must be an algorithm there must be a way where I can actually program that into my computer so that it spits out all of the possible situations that I will ever feel unhappy in the future and then I can scratch them out once and for all and we're done with that code okay crazy yes but it worked and this actually really flipped my life H when I was looking for the happiness algorithm I was basically saying what is common you you know how sometimes scientists will draw random points of an experiment on a chart and they're trying to find a fitting line between them if you find that fitting line the equation that describes this line is how that machine behaves okay so I simply did that I took all of the moments in my life that I felt happy and I started to plot them against charts of my age my weight my the amount of hair on my head whatever okay my love life trying to find the trend line couldn't find any until I found a very interesting one which I believe is my definition of Happiness okay you may have another one but I can promise you if we agree this definition I can deliver it for you and my definition of happiness is very very interesting do you remember when covid happened and for some of us it was a disaster for the others it was a celebration okay do you remember when Co happened and they locked us down and and for some for some of us it was a disaster one day and a celebration the next and then a disaster again and then right it seems that no event ever has the consistency the inherent happiness value in it no rain doesn't always make you happy or unhappy do you understand that right rain makes you very happy if it rains on your ex-boyfriend's wedding it's amazing right it's like we love it right if it's if it rains when we're going to be outside on the pool to you know tomorrow it's going to make you very unhappy do you understand rain has no inherent happiness value in it now what what makes us sometimes happy in rain or why are we always happy in nature is really the equation your happiness is not a result of the events of your life as a matter of fact the events of your life are almost irrelevant okay your happiness is a result of a comparison that happens in your brain remember it is in your brain it's not out there in the real world between what the event is and what you want the event to be if it's your ex-boyfriend's wedding you want rain and so when it rains you're happy do you understand that why are we always happy in nature I actually I I woke up at 4:00 a.m. today so anything I say now by the way shouldn't be taken against me but I I woke up at 4:00 a.m. today I sat on on the beach and I was in such a calm State and I don't know why the waves were so loud but I didn't complain about that I I didn't say can I please keep the view and mute the sound Nobody Does that in in nature right you go out in nature and you know nothing is really properly hedged no tree is really properly vertical okay when you're out in nature you don't expect nature to be that you want nature to be chaotic and so you look at a tree that is crooked and you go oh my God that's so beautiful you're not a German engineer you don't like you know you don't want this tree to be vertical right and so and so the idea of nature is it's always going to meet the happiness equation event the event chaotic nature of nature okay always meets your expectation of chaotic nature chaotic nature of nature it's very simple everything in your life that you ever felt unhappy about like Tony was saying is an event that missed your expectation okay now I'm going to say something that might make a few of us upset so if you're upset please raise your hand and let's discuss it if it is happening as a comparison between your perception of the event and your hopes and wishes and expectations of how life should be then happiness is 100% a choice okay it's 100% a choice because your perception of the event is informed by you by the way your brain I'm sorry to say this has never ever ever ever once in your life ever told you the truth ever take that for take that from me as a brainiac okay your brain tells you what it thinks is the truth so we can go through an economic crisis in the next few years and some of us will have their brains tell them I'm going to be homeless okay I'm going to be homeless is not the truth all future looking statements are not the truth okay the only truth is it is difficult right now that's a truth right but if your brain doesn't tell you the truth that event actually is your choice to see it in different ways if your brain doesn't always set realistic expectations then it's your choice to set realistic expectations and if you do that right I'll tell you something amazing and any are we okay with that happiness is a choice life can take away your son and you can make a choice most people will tell you when you lose a child you have one choice which is to grief for the rest of your life okay no I had two I had one of them where I felt a lot of pain and I could grief for the rest of my life and the other where I felt a lot of pain and I could do something about it I could do something to make my life better okay it doesn't bring him back I'll come back to that at the end doesn't bring him back but it's a choice do do we understand that so the happiness equation is events minus expectations every moment in your life where you felt unhappy was a comparison in your head event minus expectations if it if life meets or beats expectations you're happy if life misses your expect ations you're unhappy so let's have a few definitions I told you I have a definition of Happiness okay in that equation the definition of happiness is very straightforward it's a moment where you feel that life has met or beat your expectations which means it's a moment where you are calm and peaceful and contented and okay with life as it is doesn't mean life is amazing it just means I'm okay with life as it is okay if I'm okay with life as it is I get that calm and peace in me that makes me want to spend the rest of my life in that moment because I'm okay with it okay physiologically when you are in that state you're getting a a a flood of serotonin in your body serotonin is a calmer it's a calming hormone that basically is indicating to your body I scanned the world around me there doesn't seem to be any tiger you can rest you can digest your food you can have a snack you can close your eyes and reflect and sleep and replenish your muscles and so on believe it or not that state which is rarely spoken about is more important for your survival than the adrenaline rush of of of fight flight or or freeze fight flight or freeze is the exceptional case that we need to run away from danger if there is a genuine danger okay if you you know when you're in that state you're literally depriving your liver your kidneys your digestive system most of your most of your vital organs are not being fed okay and serotonin is that hormone that comes in and says hey everything's okay chill okay sit back relax let's take care of our body so that's happiness calm and peaceful contentment when we're okay with life as it is happiness in the modern world is bad mixed up with another state that is also very positive huh fun Elation excitement all positive emotions optimism all positive emotions okay but those emotions are not happiness and there is a very vital difference okay those emotions let me give you an example you have a tough week at work okay it's very very difficult so you go uh on Friday night to a few friends place or you go to a party a couple of drinks loud music you dance right what do you feel you feel you think you feel happy but what you actually feel could be elated could be uh joyful could be other positive emotions now those positive emotions they sort of numb your brain long enough so that you don't actually analyze the situation that is annoying you you're not solving your happiness equation so your default State as a child with nothing NE in your head is happy if your brain doesn't tell you remember huh we're we're born happy as a default we need a reason in our head to find unhappiness okay so if your brain is not telling you that something is wrong you're happy you think you're happy and and the problem with this by the way nothing wrong with fun huh so fun pleasure Joy all of those things nothing wrong with them I have more fun than all of you combined okay but but here's the interesting thing when you're having a a fun joyful experience a playful experience what you get in your body is dopamine and dopamine is normally mixed up on the internet as another happiness hormone dopamine is a reward hormone okay it's basically telling your body I like this so much do more of it okay when we're have when we're making love we feel an amazing pleasure because that's very important for the species right so your your your dopamine is basically saying do more of this I want more of this okay when you win a deal it's good for your business good for your family your body tells you your dopamine tells you I want more of this now here's the problem with dopamine dopamine is highly highly highly addictive okay so what happens is the more dopamine you have in your system the more your brain uh uh receptors that detect dopamine down regulate so if you have a if you have one unit of dopamine in your blood to Feel the Rush again your brain and and you get another one unit the your receptors don't feel it you need 1.2 units and then now it's 1.2 then you need 1.4 and 1.6 and so this is why you find that people who are addicted to fun okay when they're unable to find their happiness in calm and peace and contentment they go from a party to a Wilder party to a Wilder party they go from the gym to R jumping out of airanes to you know to do whatever crazy stuff that we do why because you know you need enough dopamine to numb the brain so you stop thinking about your your problems now as I said there is nothing wrong with that nothing wrong with that positivity if you found your happiness first let me try to make this very clear if you're having fun to escape your unhappiness you're basically taking a painkiller you're popping popping in a couple of Panadol or Advils or whatever you have a headache you're not treating the reason for the headache you're just taking a painkiller the fun numbs your unhappiness for a while and then you go back four hours later and you need to pop pop in two more pills and two more and then you go from normal strength to maximum strength and so on okay so that's the addictive nature of dopamine by the way one of the main reasons why people when we were locked down were so depressed in the first lockdown is that people depending so much on those that external stimulation to find their happiness that when you deprived them on of it they could not produce uh uh serotonin that quickly the right way to use dopamine is to find happiness already to be calm and peaceful and contented and then add fun in your life as a supplement okay I'm already healthy and I'm going to enjoy life on top of my my state of Happiness so that as a you know so that I can have that Joy that makes life even better so so the game is very straightforward if you're escaping your unhappiness don't revert to fun if you're already calm and peaceful and contented flood yourself with fun and joy and pleasure right now these are two interesting definitions the third definition is the definition that matters most and the most important definition we said happiness is the absence of unhappiness so what is unhappiness unhappiness in the happiness equation events minus expectation means a moment in your life where an event missed your expectation you know what that means it means that unhappiness is a survival mechanism okay it's your brain telling you I scanned the world around me and there is something that doesn't seem right okay and because it doesn't seem right and your brain is just chattering away all day and you never really listen it needs to alert you in the form of an emotion okay now if it's a survival mechan me ISM then quite interestingly we should probably react to it as we react to other survival mechanisms like think about it huh cutting your finger the pain is a survival mechanism you you wouldn't actually want to get rid of the pain even if you could because that pain is what makes you pull your hand away and save your hand okay but here's an interesting thing that pain of cutting your finger can only be felt in the state where your hand is at risk you can never go back if you want to try to do it now and close your eyes and say I want to feel how it felt when I cut my finger two weeks ago can't do that you can't regenerate It On Demand emotional pain however you can your boyfriend says something annoying on Friday what do you do on Saturday you wake up and say m that clip from 400 p.m. yesterday play that again and torture me right it's like the Netflix of unhappiness unhappiness on demand it's like I love that horror movie so much the event is over okay the words were harsh they hurt you but it's done but you have the ability to play it over and over again you also have the creativity you know to make it not really the truth so your boyfriend or the girlfriend said uh hey baby can you leave me alone right now that's the fact okay on Saturday it's not he said or she said oh baby don't can you leave me alone right now it is he or she doesn't love me anymore okay on Monday it is because I'm not lovable on Wednesday it's it is I'm going to spend the rest of my life alone right we have that creativity through the Netflix of unhappiness to add our own scenarios okay of creativity to torture ourselves which is quite interesting now if as I said unhappiness is a survival mechanism let's compare it to other survival mechanisms the the one that I like to compare it to most is a fire alarm if the fire alarm goes off in this place what will we do any anyone here will choose to sit and listen to it no right most of us will just walk out away from the noise we will do something about we'll verify if there is a fire and then we'll take action that's not what we do with happiness okay okay that's not what we do with unhappiness when we feel unhappy we not only sit in the fire alarm Okay as a matter of fact when the fire alarm switches off we put a lighter next to it and light it again interesting right which actually means and I'll finish with two techniques and then we open for questions which actually means there is a way to come out of unhappiness now uh Tony asked the question who here is happy all the time I I have a very very uh uh successful podcast in the well-being space and I host tons of world uh renowned um um monks and practitioners and so on one of them was Matthew Ricard Matthew was known in the in the media for a long time as the world happiest man he had 60,000 hours of Lifetime meditation that reconfigured his brain in a way that basically allows him to always be happier than the rest of us and I asked him m is a good friend and I said Matthew so so they say you're the world happiest man does that mean you're happy all the time and he laughed like really out loud in his very French accent and said what are you talking about I'm always pissed off okay and and that's the truth huh the truth is we are always pissed off don't deny that because it's a survival mechanism if something is wrong it's okay to feel the pain it's okay to feel alerted what's not okay is the suffering what's not okay is telling yourself the next morning to replay the pain what's not okay is to add to the pain so happiness practitioners uh literally measure not if they're happy all the time but how quickly and I probably think this is what you meant how quickly can you overcome that initial jolt of unhappiness okay now I'm I'm dedicating the rest of my life to making a b people happy so to do that I need to be the Olympic champion of the sport but I'm also an engineer so annoying like hell so I measure I actually measure how long it takes me to bounce back from unhappiness to happiness and by the way I feel unhappy hundreds of times a day okay I get stuck in traffic there is a jolt of unhappiness I get you know a little worried about me speaking to you and I'm jetlagged a jolt of unhappiness right between that jolt and the time I get back to happiness I promise you I'm not bragging you can do it too it's 7 Seconds that's my average time from unhappy to happy other than four or five times a year sometimes it gets to a day or an hour or whatever okay 7 seconds because I follow a flow chart Engineers right so uh so I follow a flow chart it's a no I don't even think right when something happens in my heart and I feel unhappy by the way the first thing is acknowledged the first thing thing is what what what is that feeling that's not calm and peaceful contentment something is not right okay and if you don't acknowledge that you're never going to do anything about it so the first thing you do is acknowledge it okay and then tell yourself what's the trigger what is triggering my unhappiness and what's triggering your unhappiness by the way is not an event if you're unhappy about the current situation in the world H it's not the current situation because you're safe you're okay you're absolutely fine nothing is wrong with your life today as it is today even with the Ukraine war nothing is wrong with the food that you ate today as compared to yesterday with the economic crisis you're still driving your same car nothing has changed right your now is absolutely perfect but when we are unhappy what triggers our unhappiness is a thought and the thought is H not the event it's a description of the event offered by your brain as Modified by your conditioning and traumas and assumptions and you know what your what your neighbor is telling you and what the news media is telling you and so on so if the thought is H we're going through tough times we're going through winter like like Tony said okay it's a great thought it's a great thought if the thought is I'm going to be homeless that's a worthless thought so the first step of the flow chart is I ask myself a question which is is this true is this true okay I I you know I love my daughter to bits I think you know that by now one day we had an argument so I said baby I'm going to go out to the you know to a coffee shop have a coffee calm down and we come and talk about it again the minute I walk out of my of the of of her apartment she had called me in in the morning made me breakfast hugged me when I came in the minute I walk out my brain says a doesn't love you anymore it was in Montreal I promise you I stopped in the middle of the street and I said what the did you just say okay in Montreal it's okay we're all you know like that right but but but but but seriously what the did you just say how can you give yourself the the the the privilege to destroy my life by telling me that my daughter doesn't love me where did you get that from do you have evidence of this okay is that true number one okay if it is true sorry if it isn't true drop it why would you ever be unhappy about something that's not true if you're not going to be homeless or you're probably citizen number 7 billion in the world that's going to become homeless there are 699 whatever right are that are going to become homeless before you then wait be unhappy then okay right but if but if it is true there there is a winter coming then question number two what can I do about it okay question number two is very straightforward what can I do to fix this H by the way there's nothing you can do about the winter coming there's nothing you can do we'll come to that in question three but there you know if the thought in your head is my business is going to decline because of the winter that's coming right that's an easy question to ask what can I do about it can I cut expenses can I find new clients can I find new lines of business can I what whatever what can I do about it and when you when you when you ask that question two things happen one is you make the world better you actually solve the problem instead of sitting in a corner and complaining about it okay and the second most interesting thing is you move the thought from your incessant part of the brain the you know the the default mode Network as they call it to the problem solving area of the brain and interestingly our brains cannot do two things at the same time so if you ask yourself the question what can I do about it immediately your brain stops complaining your brain is now in the positive mode of what can I actually do to make things better if there's something you can do about it do it if there is something if there is nothing you can do about it then it's question number three and question number three is what I call the Judi Master Level of Happiness truly this is the ultimate level of Happiness what can I do about the things that I cannot change including a winter coming including losing a a child including being stuck in traffic simple as that huh if you're stuck in traffic there is nothing you can do to change the the the you know the the layout of the city within a second so that the traffic starts to move again it's impossible okay so question number three is can I accept and commit what can I do now to make my life better despite the presence of that problem what can I do will not fix the problem but what can I do to make make my life better despite the problem okay and when you start to think about it this way you suddenly realize that there are lots of things you can do like I I sat down and I wrote a book and it's reached 600,000 people and then my videos are like hundreds of millions of people and part of my wonderful son Ali is everywhere and part of everyone at least it's heading there okay it doesn't solve the problems thank you uh he's it doesn't bring him back do you understand that it does not bring him back but it makes my life and the lives of tens of millions of people better despite the pain that I continue to feel the pain doesn't go away understand that right and so what can I do can I accept life as it is not as a sign of weakness as a sign of absolute strength the strongest of all of us are the ones that looks at adversity adversity and say okay I get it don't like that move life it was really not my favorite move but I can deal with this okay what can I do to make life better despite its presence so I I summarize all of this uh in another agreement so this by the way is is again a homework that I would ask you to do repeatedly the next time you feel something changing okay take your piece of paper out is it true what can I do to fix it can I accept and do something to make my life and the life of others better despite its presence okay so this is the practice when you do this enough I ended up signing a contract with my brain okay literally in my third book it is a signed contract with I call my brain Becky for very interesting reasons but right so so because it's a third party it's not me do you understand that you have to understand this one of the biggest challenges in the modern world is that we think that that the voice in your head talking to you is you it's not if it was you talking to you why would it need to talk okay there was an MIT study uh actually uh it's so it's really so intuitive but there was a study actually in MIT in 2007 they put people in MRI machines they give them word puzzles and they measure the activity in their brain and the problem solving areas of the brain would light up for you know whatever as long as it is needed to solve the problem and then when the answer is found listen to this the verbal Association area of the brain the same area I'm using to talk to you right now starts to light up for up to 8 seconds and then the participant would know the answer your brain finds the answer and then it's freaking talking to you okay it turns the answer into words so that you understand it your brain is a biological function okay nobody wakes up in the morning and says I go to the bathroom therefore I am right it's you know it's another biological function but for some reason we say I think therefore I am I don't understand that bit so so that that brain I have a deal with it Becky signed an agreement and the agreement is this there are only two types of thoughts allowed in my brain this is this is going to be intermediary so we're going to try that next week okay but but but the agreement is as follows my brain is allowed a a useful thought if it's going to hurt me okay or a joyful thought simple as that so when my when Ali left the world Hab so you know one of the struggles of losing a child is that you your ego as a father attacks you very heavily because your ego is to protect him okay and so my ego started to attack me severely like viciously telling me you should have driven him to another hospital so the 4 hours after Ali left the only thought in my head was you should have driven him to another hospital constantly until I told my brain openly I heard you I can't go back in time and drive him to another hospital can you give me something I can do right a useful thought a useful thought right until a came and said hey I had that dream and then I had the idea of writing his model and so on and so forth so so that's a useful thought I'm going to sit down I'm going to write what he taught me I'm going to share it with the world it's a useful thought the other part of the agreement so I said two thoughts one is useful and the other is a joyful thought and I'll close with this and then we take questions no lying no lying look at me bearded Bal manly right I cry once or twice a week there is a specific pain right here bottom right heart bottom right side of my heart okay that I always feel when I miss him okay it just doesn't go away doesn't go away every time I feel that pain my brain is telling me Ali died very painful thought okay when I think Ali died I think of what happened I think how unfair I think of the last moment where I hugged him on on in the Intensive Care T table and so on and I learned very quickly to say yeah brain you told me that around 16,700 times before but Ali also lived okay it's it's a thought from the same canvas Ali by the way we didn't plan for Ali we didn't plan for Ali I was given 21 and a half years of absolute Bliss a blessing that I didn't ask for as a matter of fact if I had been asked I would have told my wife let's delay a little bit okay and then shows up this beautiful angel in my life for 21 and A2 years that makes me the person that I am right and my brain chooses to say Ali died no brain Ali absolutely lived we had we played video games together we laughed together we hugged we he taught me things we had an amazing amazing journey okay amazing journey and that's what I choose to remember a joyful thought if it's not going to be useful don't hurt me that's the agreement with Becky and believe it or not every every single one of us has that choice every single one of us is able to stand firm with your Becky and say that's it that's it don't destroy my life this is stupid don't waste my life either give me something I can do or give me something I can I can think about with joy I'm actually perfectly on time we have 15 minutes for questions yes first off thank you thank you thank you that was was uh that touched me very deeply very deeply and my question is how long did it take you to train your brain ah great question to to go to the S seconds great question great question so my my third book was entirely my my third book was an analogy between neuroscience and computer science geek right uh in Neuroscience the most important uh property of our brain for happiness is neuroplasticity okay and neuroplasticity is actually a very interesting character of the brain we we didn't think that the brain changes until the 1970s 1980s we thought that you you get a brain it grows until 24 and then it's what you're left with for the rest of your life not true at all your brain behaves exactly like your muscles behave when you go to the gym right if you go to the gym every day and lift weights you're going to look like a triangle if you go to the gym every day and squat you're going to look like a pear right it's as simple as that right and the truth is uh your brain is exactly the same if you wake up every morning and watch the news you're going to become very good at believing that the world is going to end you're literally training your brain for that if you wake up every morning and say oh my God I have so much amazing stuff in my life you're going to be training your brain for gratitude and so scientists will say that neurons that fire together wire together so basically think of it as the old times where you had the switchboard before the Telecom industry became so uh you know automated there was an operator where you dialed and said I want to talk to Jonathan and so she would patch you to Jonathan okay after a while you know three days later she realizes you only talk to Jonathan so she basically keeps a permanent wire between you and Jonathan that's neuroplasticity if you if part of your brain is used frequently it becomes a permanent configuration of your brain unhappiness is the biggest training we've given ourselves in in in the modern world we're so good at finding things to be unhappy about scientists will say it will take you 21 days to remove a bit of the wiring and to feel a difference okay and then in my case sometimes it took up to four and a half years right but you have already made 80% of the progress to get to 100% And I I'll tell you my biggest trick that idea of Becky of my brain not being me was a major major game Chang Cher for me I I learned it from eer a new Earth okay so he calls he calls it that voice in your head The Thinker and I don't know if you've heard of eer to's work he's an incredible teacher but he speaks very slowly so I think a new Earth was 17 hours long I don't remember but it definitely felt like 17 hours long okay so every time my brain would hijack me and try to convince me that it is me and I should listen to it I promise you what I did was I listen to a new Earth again from start to finish normal speed okay and and about seven or eight times in my brain was like that's it I'm never going to do that again like I I'm not you I am Becky I am a horrible Becky I'm never going to do that again so so the game is this I I always tell people it's an 8 20 rule H 80% of your unhappiness is probably due to one reason it could be the illusion of control it could be ego it could be ego is not in a bad way not arrogance it's it's the way you want to be seen in the world it could be the your fear uh it could be whatever okay and my advice to people is find that one thing and make it your next 21 days okay find that one thing and consistently work on it until you rewire that thing with 80% of the problems removed the rest is so easy so I've been having the time of my life for the last 12 years like I every two two and a half years I find a new thing and I go like wouldn't it be nice if we painted this metallic and did this and that you know in my brain and because the major problems are no longer there now again I'm not bragging but the incessant thoughts in our brain that make us unhappy are one of the biggest reasons why we're constantly thinking about the negative when I I was writing soul for happy I spoke about the idea of incessant thinking and so on and so my uh my editor which was a great editor Peter gardi basically texted me one day and said you know this incessant thinking thing that's really good the reader wants to know about this can you give us a few examples and I promise you I'm not making this up I couldn't come up with one my brain had not thought incessantly for so long that I couldn't think of any I had to call my friends and eventually the actual example in the book is about Peter's daughter teenage daughter and how his teenage daughter is causing him incess in thinking okay that's how far neuroplasticity can go and I did I don't think by the way I learned that as a happiness practitioner I learned that as a business executive when I was a business executive 90% of my job was people walking in to complain okay so I basically learned very very quickly to not allow the incessant complaint to take more 10 minutes of the meeting so every time someone walked into the meeting and just complained complained complained I would give them 10 minutes I would even you know uh uh pour some you know fuel on the fire so that they rage even more and then I would go like okay okay is there anything good about that relationship for example if they're complaining about the guys illegal when they are in sales I go like is there anything good so trying to see the whole truce is this true question okay can we do something about it the last 10 minutes and then that process very quickly M made me learn to stop the incessant thought it's like let's not just ramble in our heads about that doesn't do anything okay let's just let's literally when we've heard the brain let's put our heads down and just get start to do something about that's how far neuroplasticity can go more yes thank you for your presentation it's been amazing my question is about meditation oh yes how do you use meditation to get to the happiness state so uh meditation is quite misunderstood in many ways so I I meditated not I have not missed a day for the last 828 days and I measure okay not a day why because of neuroplasticity by the way because it's neuroplasticity is not about meditating for 4 hours one day and then stopping the next day it's about meditating every single day now meditation if Done Right will flip your life upside down upside down why because it's basically firing the correct neurons that allow you to take control of your of your own brain so when your brain um um you know tries to wander you can bring it back and say calm down we want to focus on our breathing or we want to focus on this or we want to focus on that and that ability is incredibly valuable in times where your brain starts to chatter okay you can then use that same ability basically Bally you literally people who meditate frequently they have a bigger prefrontal cortex and a bigger insula so the brain literally reconfigures itself okay with that ability when your brain starts to wonder you go like hold on hold on let's focus we don't want to think about this we want to think about that now the challenge with meditation and why it's not done correctly is two fold fold number one is that people do not do it regularly enough as we do going to the gym okay it has to be a regular practice that is constantly uh you know happening every single day so that neuroplasticity starts to take place the second is we think that meditation is about calming the brain one of my favorite guests on the podcast was a a monk called giling galing tupton ging tupton is the top monk in the UK and he basically was saying no no no no it's all about your brain wandering the idea is if you go to the gym your success is not to carry an empty bar 100 times your success is that the bar is difficult enough for you to actually practice you you know use the muscle and so that mind wondering that idea of your brain actually going out of focus and then you calling calling it back to silence that calling it back to silence is what meditation is all about and if your mind doesn't wonder you wouldn't do that move that's so good for you and so when people most people who give up on meditation they give up because they say I can't do it I can't focus right yeah you're doing it that's the absolute best thing you can do is to get out of it and then pull yourself back even if it takes you five minutes to pull back or you know you spend the whole day and you don't pull back but tomorrow you pull back that pull back is the muscle movement that creates that uh neuroplasticity that makes us more focused now I'll I'll say this with u with openness I have a very loved person in my life and again in my work in my in in my third book I talk about something I call deliberate attention okay deliberate attention is a is a sort of not to upset the uh the the psychologists and psychiatrists and so on is basically the idea of being able to take control of your brain now the lack of deliberate attention believe it or not is highly associated with almost all mental illnesses everything from ADD ADHD to uh substance abuse to addiction to uh to depression and so on and so forth is associated with an with a lack of ability to regulate the functions of the brain that wandering brain okay and I had a very loved person in my life that was highly add and as as a result of that was constantly depressed and my advice was simply all I asked for is 5 minutes a day I use a device to measure so that you you can actually know how well you're doing and when you're mind wandering you can go back quicker okay and I asked the person to use that and in no time at all they're like literally in four week weeks their life flipped upside down 10 minutes a day that was all okay so it's invaluable if you do it correctly if you don't do it as a regular practice then you're fooling yourself because you feel amazing during the meditation and then you're not building the brain circuitry so when you leave it you're not you're no longer able to use that more questions so I'll move quicker topics uh one question is first of all I practice meditation I practice happiness everything that you're saying is really dear to my heart and it's very easy for me to get happy great however sit down okay however how do you I don't want to say make somebody else happy but help somebody to become happy attend to yourself first before you help others remember when you go on the plane and they say put the mask on yourself first so I I I write in a very strange way I write like a software engineer so my books are actually produced in a beta version and then I put them on online and literally I asked 300 people to go in and edit the book so in my first book uh 300 people filled a survey of their state of Happiness uh 8% of them were actually depressed so they wrote openly I'm I'm suffering depression all 8% without exception every single one of them dropped out on page 11 okay because on page 11 I wrote happiness is a choice right and that's really really eye openening when someone has decided they want to be unhappy all the tools in the world all of your attention all of your time is not going to change a thing the only thing that will change them believe it or not and I know that to work really really every single time is to pour love on them okay the only thing that worked is when someone is unhappy don't tell them why are you like that don't tell them I wish you were different don't tell them all of that is making them unhappier again one of my favorite uh conversations at a point in is a a British psych psychologist and TV star that was called Ruby wax and Ruby suffered many episodes in her life of depression and she will tell you I don't know when I am depressed it's like someone cut my head my my skull open and filled my entire head and body with concrete can't do anything okay so if you tell me to be happy and you give me advice I can't do anything about it now the trick here is give them a reason to want to be happy and the only reason that always gets to every single one of us is love pour love on them and be very deliberate in it so write down a list of memories you share with them write down a list of experience you'd like to share with them and text them every now and then and say hey by the way I passed by this ice cream shop it was so wonderful when we went here last time I love you very much let's do it again okay the next day you say hey by the way you know I uh I remember the time when you did this and that I'm so grateful for what you did for me I love you very much I hope to see you soon never bringing up that they're unhappy and never ask asking them to change until they come to you and say I'm so upset with myself for you being so loving and kind and I'm always grumpy what can I do that's when you bombard them with advice right that's the time like that yeah all right more questions yes so first off thank you I mean this is you know absolutely all respect to Tony we know what he brings but if I came here just for this I mean God so thank you thank you thank you um so so you this is something you know very uh important for me and you know I'm as I look at Tony's you know what are your hierarchy of of needs and that type of thing growth has always been my number one and so but it's a tricky thing growth because when you're always focused on growth then happy with the present well yeah because then you know and then you can adjust your definition of growth and that's what I've been doing but you know looking at those two questions that you're asking yourself when you find yourself um you know with those thoughts that you don't so I sometimes get caught up in that number one you know where you know something useful so okay maybe I'm trying to dissect a situation or I'm trying to dissect you know what I could have done better what I could do better next time or is it do I offer an apology or do I adjust this aspect and then that becomes a thing that you know you can't get out of easily and so my question is when there's so many things that you can do then how do you let go of that at some point okay so uh there are two layers to this question so I'm going to ask answer a layer you may not have asked first if you don't mind me saying um we are taught to be motivated by the negative it's it's our schooling system it's our parenting system it's everything that we've learned as young children is go to school so you don't fail in life okay or score a higher score in mathematics so that you don't miss the opportunity to go to university or whatever okay we're always telling ourselves to be to do things so that we avoid a negative and that's by the way again Tony spoke about that very openly it's the negativity bias of the brain the brain doesn't want to uh to to to talk about anything positive it just wants to talk about what could go wrong okay it captures our attention when when we tell our uh you know our colleagues or employees or whatever when we tell them hey if we don't achieve this this is going to be the case we are equally equally as capable as humans to be motivated by the positive okay to be motivated by the positive allows us to say I'm going to do this because achieving it is going to be amazing right it's not like I I am so so to take the concept of growth H growth can be motivated by I want to grow because now is not good enough okay or it could be now is amazing but there is potential for more so so my advice to people is always find a way to motivate yourself with the positive love by the way as a motivator is a is a very positive uh thing to motivate us uh with now when it comes to um to to to um to Solutions and ideas that we can take in terms of what can I do about it I tend to it's not I'm you know it's not my best feel to answer you but my Approach is I tend to do it like a software engineer okay and software Engineers never find the right answer no code I have ever written in my life was perfect there was never a way to make it perfect okay and no code that you've ever used in your life including things that are highly established like iOS or Android or whatever is perfect it's never perfect what what we do as software Engineers is what we call uh is is basically an iterative approach with AB testing so we try something and then we mod ify it and modify it and modify it and modify it so my my normal approach is I actually allow my brain if I'm sitting down to solve a problem I will actually start an egg timer so a lot of the things I do I start a timer and I say within 7 minutes or 10 or 15 depending on the complexity of the problem and the analysis I need to do I'm going to identify the easiest more most effective solution I can find find right now and I'm going to put that into action okay and then I'm going to review again in an hour in a day in five days whatever that is depending on the solution I found and I'm going to do the process again now most people will tell you that no decision ever will destroy your life the only thing that will destroy your life is indecision okay so the idea of I'm going to find something that seems reasonable right now and review it again in a couple of hours time or in a week's time is a very effective way because life as a matter of fact is always going to get to make you do this one of the things I always say is that life and every experience in it is never a journey you've never walked the same path twice do you understand that even if you're commuting from home to work every single day it was never the same path it always changes okay so the idea is I will go around you know life is a quest it's not a journey a quest is I don't know what's going to happen in an hour's time so I'm constantly taking one step and then looking left and right and then taking another step and then maybe going back a step and so on so instead of wasting time like trying to look for the perfect solution and the most Optimum way of doing anything just find the best and easiest easiest by the way is not the the means of a perfectionist okay so sometimes you you know we will tell ourselves there is solution a that's going to cost me a 100 units of effort and going to get me to 110% units of 110 units of success and there is solution B that's going to cost me 10% of efforts and going to get me 80% of the way okay that 10% of effort 80% of the way even if it's not perfect it's not 100% is a much better choice because it saves your effort until you review later and maybe take it to 100% so kind of making an agreement with your brain so to speak I'm going to sit here I'm going to think about what is the most reasonable or you know solution or you know what I can put into practice for next time but then once that's arrived that then making the agreement with your brain okay I'm off the hook off the hook we're absolutely going for it we're going to do it and we're going to review again in an hour's time if we need to but it's going to be done right now and if it comes back you just remind better and better and that it's the only the only thing I would caution you on this is the emotions of others so if if the if the decision you're taking is going to affect another my only ask of you is find a way put 5 minutes more to deliver what you're going to deliver kind L and lovingly okay it by the way it doesn't matter what you're going to deliver you can actually go and tell them we're going to break up with you or we're going to fire you or we're going to do this or we're going to do that as long as you do it respectfully kindly and lovingly it's okay it's a good solution and you can work on that how are we doing on time what's what's the time yeah one more one more yes I uh listened to your book about 18 months ago and prescribed it for all of my employees to listen to thank you and it really impacted the culture of our team and um the question I have for you is how do you suggest that we utilize what you're teaching with our youth I have a 12 and a nine-year-old son and I'm taking my 12-year-old son to Unleash the Power thin and he went last year but I'm already noticing that the the negative selft talk with social media and just other things with school and such I want to be able to influence them more as a young age yeah and if you have any suggestions or books or yeah the formul knowing that they're so young that would be really appreciative so I'm I'm actually finally ready with five children's books but for younger children than that but it's been a very difficult responsibility for me believe it or not children know what I told you more than we do as adults because they're not as spoiled as we are but our children of today I can promise you we have not seen suffering as compared to what they have to go through they are constantly bombarded with choices which is really crippling in a very interesting way more choices are more difficult we've left them a horrible world with lots of issues okay and lots of them are are struggling with what is what's my life going to be like and and you can see that in the numbers huh teen suicide is at an all time high now there are two things I will say one thing is um is your children will never do what you tell them they will do what you do okay and I think that's the the the CH that's the challenge that most parents don't actually think enough about is what can I teach them what can I tell them and so on if you're a control freak and you're telling them to chill they're going to be control freaks at chilling right it's as simple as that so so the number one responsibility if we want to change anyone around us most importantly our kids is to actually be the example we want them to be and a a really good parent would Bond around those issues I I'll give you a very simple example I used to um I had a very simple agreement with my kids um which again goes back to pouring love on them I I had two wonderful kids in many many ways but your kids are never perfect if you're a parent you're like they always want them to be better and so at age a was 13 Ali was 14 I sat them down and I said I'm going to retire Parenthood okay of course Ali in his very uh a in her in her very Lively way said what what does that mean I don't have C you anymore Ali of course in his very wise way said can you elaborate on that right and and and basically the conversation was about there are a few things that I want you to to to pay attention to literally three things okay and everything else is okay I'm going to pour love on you unconditionally whatever you do other than those three things where I will still love you unconditionally but we're going to have a very tough conversation okay one of those three things believe it or not was I asked them to bring their friends over for a barbecue every single month once a month I was going to grill for 10 friends of Ali and 10 friends of AAS they overlapped quite often okay and my only thing was when they showed up I engaged in their reality I actually understood what they were going through and I promise you the life of a teenager is so difficult okay when I heard it from their friends oh you know this person is doing this and that happened and you know that band said this and you don't know all of that stuff so if you managed to really engage I I actually became I don't know if you if you guys know this but if any of you are playing Halo I am the one that killed you yesterday okay so I I I I am I am a lit literally I am an Olympic champion level video gamer okay because I played with Ali I had to sit next to him for hours and hours and hours playing with him listening to him okay I I a my my the love of my life anytime I me and a are in the same place I will literally free up my entire day okay whatever if the queen no more but the the king of England wants time with me I'm not going to go if Aya wants me okay and I think as parents there's nothing you can teach them but giving them again pouring love on them and giving them a lot a lot of your attention and showing them an example an example that doesn't ask them to change that doesn't minimize what they're going through because they're going through a lot okay but that simply goes NE sits next to them and when when they say you know I don't believe in this or this is not working for me or this is making me unhappy hug them and stay there do nothing just be happy yourself that they're okay right and I think that constant process did one thing that flipped our relationship with our kids which is they came back to us over and over and over when times were tough there is absolutely no way I believe in our current world where we can equip them for the challenges that they're coming up against the only thing we can equip them with is a level of trust that they will come back to us when things are tough and say papa I dated a boy and he turned out to be a horrible boy okay and if if I if I can be the one that she comes back to when that happens I can be her sponge for unhappiness I can take her unhappiness and pain in me and pour my love on her to heal her that's what you want with your kids and especially a teenage you want them to consider you their best friend no longer their parent you you retired Parenthood you absolutely retire you just hug them say that you trust them and be there for them in a way that makes them keep coming back to you okay I'm here for the entire uh 5 days other than the last half a day so if any question at all or any hugs I'm available thank you all so much let's give it up for [Applause] MO [Music]

Channel: Tony Robbins

Views: 200,321

Keywords: Tony Robbins, Anthony Robbins, tony robbins podcast, mo gawdat, happiness expert, mo gawdat ai, mo gawdat podcast, mo gawdat happiness, mo gawdat interview, mo gawdat happiness equation, mo gawdat how to be happy, how to be happier, how to be happy, happiness with mo gawdat, mo gawdat happiness is a choice, becoming happier, why am i not happy, why am i not happy with anything in my life, tony podcast, tony robbins happiness, self improvement, how to be happy in life

Id: AL7Cb2O6Lhk

Length: 81min 33sec (4893 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 13 2024