Solving the Happiness Equation - with Mo Gawdat

[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] mark mark thank thank you so much mark mark so nicely started by saying four hundred and sixty-two people numbers don't pass me that easily so massive stress now I got no idea what to do sixty-five did he say and then and then he also said the magic that smells like come on you're setting me up here but but no I am actually really really grateful to be here thank you so much for showing up this is much more important to me than you think it is it's actually the rest of my life if you want and so we we you know thought about this quite a lot and then decided that we're going to run through the content very very quickly because normally we have a lot of questions so are you comfortable anybody here planning to ask questions so just so that I know okay those laughs are not reassuring but but but I think I think that would probably be a good use of our time so I'll try to get to 45 minutes maybe of content and then the rest of the of the evening for our conversations I think sharing between us is going to be an incredible value-add rather than just the theory if you want this is Wow look at that this is London and I have to start by asking you why do you guys walk so fast no no I swear I make I'm not so I tried to walk faster than you today I swear I'm not making this up Google told me would you like to switch to driving directions seriously what's going on so why why do people here so III run this test in every city I go to when I landed in Gatwick I basically look at the commune oh the bags baggage claim and when I pick my bags I look at the British arse or or the residents of London and I see the zooming out okay and basically I noticed a few of them four or five and I always find them waiting at the Gatwick station still got two Express station so you know what happens and it was a Saturday like why are we rushing so much why don't why do we sometimes not make decisions that make us happier in all honesty if you actually stop to think and say Gatwick Express is every 15 minutes the worst case scenario here is I'm gonna be there 15 minutes earlier or 15 minutes later on a Saturday do I really need to rush or should I like the Middle Eastern tourists you know leisurely walk around and enjoy life like in listen to music and look at everything and maybe stop and at MNS food or whatever anyway you know I I actually think that most of what I'm gonna talk about today is about making choices and really my my core message is that your happiness and survival of our humanity believe it or not is about the choices that we the this group of four hundred and sixty thumbs something people will make and so how many of you have read the book or watched some of my videos not everybody so that's great I'm gonna bore you a little bit was telling the story again but it because it really is important to connect us I I am I'm a corporate you know success story if you want I spent my entire life in Microsoft IBM and Google and came to the top of Google became the chief business officer of Google so what do I have to do with happiness I wrote my book literally 17 days after my wonderful son Holly died and an ally was not just my son Holly was my son and my best friend I had him at a very very young age but also he was my coach and I know you may think of that as strange but I'm not exaggerating when I tell you ally at age eight would start to teach me things that still today make the person that I am he was extremely wise and incredibly peaceful and happy all his life and so you know when when when I was miserable in my late 20s I actually would go to Ali all the time to try and understand a little more about happiness I was I was very very happy until age 23 and then by age 29 I was literally wealthy beyond my wildest imagination had everything I could wish for had a wonderful wonderful wonderful wife who I still believe is the most amazing woman on earth even though we're not together but but and she gave me two amazing kids and I was completely depressed everything I tried to do to get out of my depression would make me more depressed I bought cars I went on vacations I bought gadgets whatever I did I became more and more and more depressed and so I decided to look at my my happiness from an a way that I could understand and I I say that with love and respect but not everything that works for people who are spiritual or meditate and so on and so forth worked for me at the time at all so when people told me to say um it got me really upset okay and and and seriously I started to look at the topic as an engineer but an engineering topic an engineering view of happiness is quite interesting but it's completely you know lacking it's incomplete if you want and so I would go to Ali and I would explain to him what I found out and he would explain it to me in how in his instinctive understanding of happiness and somehow that made me find the model that started to make me happy almost all the time no one is happy all the time and we'll come back to that later but I could find my happiness every time unhappiness attacked me July 2014 I he came to visit us in Dubai for a vacation then went for a very simple appendix you know up and doctor me I think they call it you know and five things went wrong the doctors did five mistakes in a row and in four hours and he left our world and so you can imagine if someone is your son or your best friend or your coach and they leave you any of those would make you collapse but for some reason I had a very unusual reaction to losing Adi my reaction you know how they say a life for a life you know and you know every one of my friends was like you have to you know no go beyond you know after that doctor and so on in the only message constantly ringing in my mind was that I his life is not worth alive that Heidi's life was worth millions of lives and instead of wanting to take a life I wanted to give life and I don't know exactly how that happened but I basically told myself I would sit down I would write what he taught me and if I can manage to share it with forget that stuff if I can manage to share it with ten million people if I can make 10 million people happy and tell them about my you know what Holly taught me then maybe I've honored him it doesn't bring him back but it definitely makes our world slightly better than the day he left and so I I wrote salt for happy within four and a half months I had publishing deals around the world I became a bestseller almost everywhere it launched and then 30 language 31 languages so far and then the 10 million happy machine actually thanks to the UK was overachieved within eight weeks so so what happened is I you know if you if you want to believe it or not I was supposed to mail to talk in the u.s. in one of the major networks as always you know some other major news happened and so they declined and so I flew to London had the chance to to be interviewed by channel 4 and you know how it is you know in the news networks and maybe you don't so I should tell you your news networks are very harsh right they're constantly telling looking for the negative thing about everything including happiness okay and and it was really a very stressful interview and somehow in the middle of the interview life helped me or God or the universe or whatever you choose to believe and the a blue fly started to to you know fly in the studio and literally landed on my nose okay and so we had to stop the recording okay and when as they tried to chase the fly out I basically had two minutes for myself to actually tell myself you know what whatever they're doing let's just find in your heart what it is that you want to say and so when they came back with the question I spoke for three minutes that went super violet viral on the web so within within I think the first day it was watched like a million times by the fourth day it was the largest the most watched you know news clip of Channel 4's history and today it's three X that okay and I don't actually measure things by views I measure people that join the mission when they view a video but they take an action after that which basically means they got the message and they actually started to invest and so the small team of volunteers that was surrounding me believing in the 10 million happy mission cornered me like my managers also my sales career cornered me and said you set a very low target and so we took it up to what we call a Google scale target which is a billion happy okay and you may think a billion is a crazy number I promise you I promise you I'm standing in front of you here I promise you we'll get there a billion in today's world on the Internet is not a big number at all and if this is not my mission okay the the thing about this is because I worked on the in technology and on the internet for so long I actually understand that if this was about me I would end up being Kim Kardashian 180 million followers it's not a billion okay and that would be the biggest failure for this mission ever this mission is about you okay and the way to make that happen is I always ask people before I speak about happiness if I if I manage to give you a few things that change your mind and make you happier make me a simple promise and tell to people about what you learnt okay and make them promise to tell through people if it becomes useful to them and they tell to people and so on that's the exact definition of the exponential function if you've seen Ali's favorite movie of all time it was called pay it forward okay if we manage to do that I guarantee you will get to a billion people in five years and this movement has been going reasonably well so far we're actually in the tens of millions already so before I start let me please raise your right hand and say if you you know don't say but if I if I if I if I tell you two things that will make you happy today you will tell two people who will tell two people I promise I promise good if I I always say if I tell you more than two people if I tell you more than Tuesday then tell more than two people okay so 20 is not a big number your sister your brother whatever that is so well let's start with a very quick survey just so that you you know understand some of the realities that we don't always realize when we're rushing so quickly through Gatwick Airport okay how many of you want to be happy raise your hand good how many of you keep your hand up please how many of you actually are happy great how many of those are happy most of the time ninety-five percent of the time or more very good so I want you to look at the room please there were people still raising their hand when I said ninety-five percent or more you know what that means it means that those who want to be happy and are not as happy as those others are missing their target okay if that was your job you would be fired do you understand and and for some for some reason we prioritize our job and we never missed the target or at least we try very hard not to miss the target but when it comes to our our happiness we're sort of like yeah I want that I want that idea you want to be happy but it's okay okay it's fine I'm okay right and the real question is why is it that we are not happy all the time and I think this this were this is truly going to be the core of what my my message will be today but before we do that maybe I should ask you which of those make you happier if if you don't mind honestly by the way were just family here raise your hand on the ones that make you happy actually if more than one makes you happy raise your hand on the one that makes you happier a sexy boyfriend/girlfriend okay we have 57 hands okay is that because the others don't have a sexy boyfriend okay anyway so I would probably say 2% a vacation or a weekend okay that's a good maybe 20% money and safety oh that's interesting at you know so this is not the typical group so not a lot of people are into money and safety achievement and growth of course everyone so always I get like 60% of the audience chasing money are chasing a progress and achievement and growth quick question so how many of you know someone who is with a very sexy boyfriend girlfriend and is miserable alright how many of you know someone who's with a very sexy boyfriend girlfriend and is miserable because of them right great so so so the truth is there is no intrinsic happiness value in a sexy boyfriend girlfriend right good vacations how many of you felt happy one and a half weeks after their vacation ended right normally the happiness that comes from vacations is fleeting so there is no intrinsic resilient value of happiness in vacations right money how many know have heard of recent millionaires or billionaires that committed suicide okay how many you know have know about people who have everything for the rest of their life and are not happy at all I know many so remember I lived in Silicon Valley for a long time and with my current work I meet with a lot of billionaires miserable okay but by the way also you if you remember hmm you told yourself when you graduated University if I make a thousand pounds I'll be happy and then when you made a thousand pounds you wanted a thousand two hundred and then when you made a thousand two hundred you wanted six thousand and so on and so forth right so there is no intrinsic happiness value and money safety and luxury achievement and progress can I ask you a question I mean you don't seem to me like people who have just all graduated out of university so have have you actually had any achievements in your life at all yes have they made you happy for more than three days right for most of us hmm what happens is we achieve and then what happens when we achieve we set a new goal right and then we achieve that and what do we do we set another one and another one the goal is constantly moving right and so there is truly no intrinsic value in constantly chasing achievement at all of happiness it doesn't it doesn't make anyone happy as a matter of fact achievers are some of the most miserable people on earth okay because when they achieve suddenly it appears that I can see some wives and girlfriends kicking their boyfriends and husbands so so reality the achievers if you're obsessed with achievement what happens is you're constantly unhappy because it's never good enough okay so the other most important question is how much of your life are you spending to acquire those things that have no intrinsic happiness value and be honest with yourself would it would it would it be fair if I told you 95% of your week after the eight hours sleep if you managed to get our eight hours of sleep are to chase relationships you work the whole week for the weekend to come you want more money more safety you want more progress and growth and learning we spend most of our life in the modern world chasing those things okay and in reality if we just stop rushing through Gatwick Airport and actually think to ourselves I've been chasing progress for the last twenty years is there going to be a point in my life where I will say okay it's time to be happy now okay because my mother when I was growing up told me this she told me if you just withstand life for a little bit save a little bit and take a little bit of harshness eventually you're gonna be happy okay I think she meant eventually you're gonna be safe hmm but I actually came back to her in my mid-30s and I said mommy I did exactly what you told me I'm wealthy and I'm miserable like what's going on is this ever a change okay and if there is no intrinsic happiness value in this then you might have to ask yourself why why can we not find happiness because when we look for it in those things we'll look we're looking for it in all the wrong places it's exactly as if you have your keys inside your pocket you know when you're rushing out of home in the morning and then you just are so you know concerned and you want to go out quickly so you start searching for your keys everywhere right and you start searching in the fridge and under the sofa and you cannot find them under the sofa why because they're inside your pocket already and so my first and most important assumption if you want is to tell you that happiness will never be found outside you okay because happiness has always been found inside you and if you don't believe me you may want to ask yourself when were you happiest in your life okay most people will definitely anyone here was happiest when they were teens okay we have one two three if those people are single find them okay because these are the best of all of us right most of us become happier when we become old not adults but we're always happiest when we were child you realize that as a child you just ran around carelessly and went through life very very happily and very few things actually bothered you at all until someone was really mean and really wanted you to be unhappy or a diaper got wet or something right and so in reality I have done a ton of research on this topic like it took me around 18 minutes on the internet really so to actually tell you something that's really profound when you think about it every single infant you have ever seen in your life if they were fed and safe and given their basic needs for survival they were lying on their back and giggling right understand infants cry but they cry when mommy and daddy are violent or they're fighting or the place is too cold or the diaper is wet if there is no reason for them to be unhappy what's their state the state is the default setting is happy right and so you think about this for a second by the way you too huh you too when you're that age you didn't ask for an Xbox to be happy you didn't want to anyone to go like should look my butt is beautiful to be happy like nothing really mattered to you at all you didn't want anything from outside you to be happy you remember that now that to me is what in technology we call your default setting your default setting is when you buy a new mobile phone it works perfectly well for the first day remember that so the battery lasts the whole day all right and then the next day something goes wrong have you bought the wrong phone it worked well yesterday now you started to install weird apps on it right there is one app that is responsible for reporting what people eat around the world and you have to like absolutely right another app that's responsible for making our butts look better and we have to like ok and it's really really quite interesting that the phone is not doing anything wrong the phone is just obeying the instructions it was given but in the process it misbehaves so we as humans go through the exact same cycle we start our life happy and then we we start to land into an unhappiness because of weird beliefs and the best place I found this actually the first eye-opener for me was a song by Supertramp within the UK and if you Supertramp fans you're showing your age so so if you're not a Supertramp fan I would actually encourage you to download the logical song legally because I love those guys ok and and listen to the first 40 seconds because it really is the summary of your life this is how it go you and that's the story of your life and reality most of us by the way many of us will continue the rest of their lives believing this that we're supposed to be here to be in dependable and intellectual and cynical and clinical and yeah good for you okay many of us will believe that we're supposed to be here to make more money good for you but remember that day when you were six and they put you in school and they said hey you know that playful joyful fun thing you know like enjoying yourself no more no more you sit here and when you sit here you don't talk whatever the teacher says you say yes even if it's stupid right and and you know like it's about time to be serious and I'm like I'm six what serious right where did that come from and I will tell you even though I was an A student I rebelled I was like why did you want me to do this and then all of us without exception we come fall and when we conform we become those things and those things become this okay and in reality between societal obligations false beliefs and illusions most of us spend most of our life chasing the exact wrong apps running the wrong apps and believing that this is the way to go through life now I would actually ask you to read through those even though it would take us a minute or two and visit yourself don't don't speak out loud if you don't want to and ask yourself do you actually believe in yourself that success is more important than happiness do you believe that material possessions is a measure of your success because many people around the world do so they chase that because it's the only way they can measure success even though you know teaching like you know they like you you will hear from the stories today making others happy should also be measured as success but we don't unless we make money unhappiness is the tax we should be willing to pay for success how many of us have been told by our parents or our whoever raised us that look it's more important to find a good job and if you're unhappy in the process that's fine live your entire life in an unhappy job that's okay as long as it pays the bills how many of us actually go and search for a job that makes us happy rather than gives us 100 pounds more and take it all the shape of our bodies matter the opinions of others matter we have to fit in with everybody serious is better than playful you know take things like it's week to show your vulnerability this is the second biggest place on earth where it's weak to show your vulnerability has to be proper the biggest in my view is New York if you ask any New Yorker how are you today they would go like I'm fine I'm okay today yes everything's fine right and and in reality is it really weak to show our vulnerability and I'm actually being not I'm not trying to be critical I'm actually trying to show you an external view of what I see when I come to London 80% of the people in the street are walking alone did you notice that I don't know if it is the right for a number but the majority are working walk walking alone hmm we're walking very fast and we're really sometimes just we don't seem very happy but we never stop we never say why don't I just ask someone at work if they want to come out with me to lunch I am I truly am really surprised why is that not the case there must be one nice person at work and they there they are they are walking alone too right I'm serious what why don't we ever change any of that now I'll go back to that little child by the way because really this is where the anchor of the story starts the angle of the story is I spent many years researching happiness The Cosmopolitan magazine way looking for the 10 things that will make me happier okay and in reality I realized when I remember that I was always happy unless a diaper became wet hmm that in a very simple term happiness is the absence of unhappiness that instead of searching for things like vacations and gadgets and money and success and stuff outside us that has no intrinsic value of happiness in it what the only thing you can actually do to find happiness is to stop being unhappy if you stop being unhappy or default is happy okay and and in reality you can apply that to any experience in your life you may have a wonderful partner in your life who unless you manage to manage to choose an angel has a few great things about them and a few annoying things about them if you focus on the annoying things by definition you're going to be unhappy okay it's not their mistake by the way it's not what life gave you because when you leave them and look for another they will have different annoying things it's just it's just how life is now if you manage to remove the unhappiness suddenly you'll look at your partner and go like Judas Oh sweetie I love you right and it really is that simple okay you can spend the rest of your life looking for that amazing man or woman good luck good luck it's not gonna happen but our mindset is I need to find something outside me to be happy if I cannot find it then I'm not gonna be happy a happiness is the absence of unhappiness if we remove the unhappiness what's left behind this happy now what is that happiness thingy so so so truly I asked that question for more than 20,000 people and I could do it here but in favor of time I won't the interesting thing is that we all have a slightly different definition of happiness and by the way I could have gone through my entire presentation till the end and we would end it and it's all absolutely fine no one will go like yeah he spoke about that thing I believe is happiness and he did a good job but that's not what engineers do unless I know what problem I'm solving for I won't be able to solve it so I spent a lot of time behind the problem definition of what happiness is and I did it like an engineer earlier I took data points of every moment in my life I felt happy and I plotted them on charts trying to find an equation that actually fits all of those data points and believe it or not there is one common thing across every moment in your life you felt happy and every moment in your life you felt unhappy and you know what that is every moment in your life you felt unhappy was an event where life seemed to have missed your expectations who here is upset about the rain in London right a few hands hmm I'm I'm very upset about the renal and I don't expect to live in a place that has a lot of rain but all of you don't expect anything else okay so rain is fine seriously but the interesting question is if you really really had plans to suntan with your friends when it rains it makes you much more unhappy the last three days by the way made you a lot happier because it wasn't expected to be sunny okay if you got the same Sun in August you wouldn't go like nah that's fine that's expected that's what I want so every moment in your life where you felt unhappy with them was a moment where life missed your expectations and every moment in your life where you felt happy was a moment where life met your expectations and this can be summarized in a very simple mathematical equation which for an engineer is the clue to find solving everything else your happiness is equal to or greater than the events of your life - your expectations of how life should behave I'll give you a second to think about that because that truly is the only reason you have a brain okay so so your brain is busy solving this equation literally every tiny change of your life your brain will go and solve events - expectations so when I said I'm gonna give you a couple of seconds to think about this mmm in that moment of silence your brain was like okay is this okay it's like is he going throw something at us there's you know what's going on and and our brains are calling you come here and you sit in a seat in the in the back row and your brain goes like is that good am i seeing okay no I want a seat in the front seat you go to the front seat you sit down no this one is too hard and you then you go in the middle oh no the air conditioner is here right your brain is constantly looking at every event and comparing it to how it wants life to be for a safe model for you to survive okay if it finds that the event meets your expectations it does something amazing it's like the best thing our brains have ever done it shuts up okay like if there is nothing to worry it it just stays quiet and your default setting as a child is happy okay what happens is when it finds something that what is it it starts to alert you in the form of what not a thought but an emotion because you pay attention to your attention to emotions actually we don't anymore or even becoming numb to that mm-hmm but you know if I make you worried if I make you you know regretful or shameful or whatever you suddenly start to go like now I feel so bad you know I write this is literally a survival mechanism where your brain is trying to find out what's right and what's wrong with life all the time now when you think about that you would find two very interesting definitions definition number one is what happiness is happiness happens when events match you'll meet your expectations simple okay by expectations by the way I don't mean ambitions by expectations I mean how you would like life to be okay so when events meet Matt Matt's orbit your expectations happiness then becomes that peaceful contentment that you feel when you're okay with life as it is so you would have an wonderful partner but he has three hairs in his ear okay and if you're not okay with the three hairs this is never gonna work okay it's as simple as that hmm and and and you know if you if you can look at the three hairs and say actually this is I still like him or or the other way around huh you you would have a wonderful partner but she you know tends to speak a little too much when she comes back from work okay whatever that is okay now if you take that definition of happiness then it demystifies the biggest mess we have about happiness in the modern world and the biggest myth I will say that with a ton of love and respect is an American export is a capitalist export okay because we want to productize everything and put it in a pill we have turned fun into a happiness replacement so what really happens is you know you're so stressed about those three hairs or whatever it is that stressing you in life that by Friday evening you dress beautifully you go out and get drunk and you have a lot of music playing in your ears and you're really trying so hard to do what to get your brain to stop solving the happiness equation the minute your brain stops solving the happiness equation your brain shuts up and the minute it shuts up your default setting is happy okay so this is really very interesting fun is engaging your physical form in activities that will shut your brain up for a while as long as your brain doesn't complain you're happy now here's the interesting thing fry Saturday morning you wake up you have a little bit of a hangover on top of the fact that the three hairs are still there okay so you wake up you open your eyes the first thing you see is three hairs okay and so what happens is your brain panics it says are you trying to know me you're trying to make me drunk I'm telling you we have a problem we really have a problem and and so you get up and you say you know what brain let's go to the gym you get on a treadmill and you start training at level six or eight or whatever speed six or eight your brain goes like okay this is too fast I'm gonna die so I might as well just focus on this thing right as long as you're doing this your brain doesn't think about the happiness equation and what's your state you're happy you hit the showers and your brain goes ugh seriously you're trying to numb you we have a problem we need to talk about the head okay and as long as you do that fun becomes really really interesting because it really starts to work for you as a panadol with wood so you have a headache for some reason that you should treat but instead of treating the headache what do you do you pop a pan at all so you get six hours of quiet and then the effect wears out so it puts two panels and then seven hours later you start to go for extra strength and then 12 hours later you start to I don't know maybe go for drugs and that's actually what happens to us first we go to a party and then all of us know that after a while the parties don't work anymore so we go to a wilder party some of us go to a treadmill and then we realize it's not working anymore so we bungee jump okay and and that is an endless process for a very interesting reason happiness this calm peaceful feeling is associated in your body with serotonin and serotonin is a calmer it's a hormone where your body where your brain is basically telling your body I'm really okay with this situation can we just keep it as it is can we just stay where we are okay the endorphins that come with fun or excite us and so what happens is the more you pump those in your blood the more serotonin disappears as a matter of fact it would not be available as long as you're exciting yourself and so because of that cycle and of course because you're really not solving the problem of unhappiness that you're facing fun works against you in a very interesting way the more fun you have the more dependent on fun you become to have that excitement that makes you think that you're happy now the answer is to realize that fun is not happiness and so the right way to do it just like whether your headache is to fix the reason for your headache okay but if it's then maybe a little bit of an allergy or whatever that is so if you add fun you add it as a supplement as a vitamin so that you stay healthy they are not dependent on it reasonable now the other definition is my favorite unhappiness happens when events miss expectations so in that case suffering truly is just a survival mechanism truly is it's just like your legs are made to run away from the tiger we use those to go for my you know run marathons sometimes we push our human abilities to the limit your brain is made to make sense of the concepts around you and make sure that this environment is safe for you and we push that to create iPhones and do accounting and all of that nice stuff now if suffering is a survival mechanism then let's start to understand survival mechanisms because if we know how those work we can deal with them the right way so if if this room if the fire alarm goes off what does that mean what is it telling you it's telling you there is something you know that you need to worry about you might as well leave the room right what if you stay have you ever tried to do that it's like have you ever tried to stay with the fire alarm for five hours seven hours 17 days most of us do that with unhappiness the you know unhappiness is really telling you there is something wrong can you do something about it but we stay with it but not only do we stay with it we actually generate it on demand which is really my most it's the most ridiculous process we humans have ever generates the difference between pain and unhappiness by the way there is physical pain and emotional pain physical pain is you cut your finger you put your hand away emotional pain is I feel worried about time so I keep looking at the watch okay both are good because this is London you know it's important for my survival to be on time so I'm looking at the watch to make sure that the you know the whole event is as we plant the difference between physical pain and emotional pain however is this can you close your eyes and remember the pain you had in your sinuses the last time you had a cold it's impossible to regenerate that when the pain is gone it's gone but you can think about what your boyfriend or girlfriend said last Friday and the minute you do that it's unhappiness on demand the minute you allow your brain to bring it up literally it's the Netflix of unhappiness it's like yeah let's watch that one again okay and seriously it's so interesting because you can do that the next hour the next day the next week for the rest of your life the record I had was one of my students who walked to me after we spoke about a couple of hours of happiness and she walked to me and she said mo you have no idea what happened to me when I was 17 she was 84 I'm not making this up I swear to you it was it we can keep holding on to that single movie and play it over and over and over for 67 years now just like we rushed through Gatwick Airport when would be the time when you stop and say it hasn't changed anything I mean all of my happiness is unhappiness is not working I realized that you know literally four hours after Ali died so because of all of the training I have been going through for 14 years before he died I suddenly asked myself a very simple question I said look you have one of two options one of them is to stay crying about him for the next 27 years and then 27 years later on your deathbed Adi is still not going to be here or you can choose to do something about it now the interesting question is this if this process of unhappiness is triggered by nothing because that wonderful lady was unhappy about something that happened 67 years ago nothing happened right now it's 67 years ago okay and it leads to nothing it will never bring the honey back it will never bring him back or actually do anything by the way men groom because ladies are doing such an amazing job and ladies if your gentleman has a or a mean I means just using this without gender specification but you know if your partner has three hairs tell them lovingly hey by the way you look so much more attractive without their right and then life will go on now if you do something that about it it will go away but the interesting thing is we stay with it we stay with it and you know what that means this is the most stupid process that has ever been invented by humanity if you had a friend of yours any Becky's in the audience do we have Becky's or we have one Becky so any glitch ins no Gretchen good so if you had a friend of yours called Gretchen and Gretchen used to always pull you to the side and then you annoying things about yourself every seven minutes and poke you in the ribs at the same time then go back to class nothing no change whatsoever nothing happened okay would you actually jump up and down of happiness when Gretchen is approaching you would you call her and miss her would you listen to her wouldn't you actually tell her hey Gretchen by the way would you please would you please stop annoying me why do we not do that with our brains why is it that our brains have the ability to lock us on one side for 67 years and we still listen when we know for certain that Ally is not coming back that the reason for your unhappiness is not going to change by you crying about it it's only going to change by you doing something about it and when you realize that you realize that this process is absolutely stupid now the reason why is not because your brain is evil at all it's because your brain really really likes you so it goes through a cycle that starts from a thought that produces that emotion and then you do nothing about it so your brain goes like hey we need to talk because I'm really worried about you I'm sure you have one of those friends who wakes up at 6 a.m. in the morning so excited because he what he or she wants to tell you something and so they text you at 6 and then they call you at 8 and then they call you at 8:15 and then at nine o'clock you text them and say I'll call you at 10 is that okay if I call you at 10 and once you do that they stop right your brain is doing exactly the same thing until you tell your brain I've got it I heard you I understand that you're annoyed by the three hairs I'm gonna talk to him about it okay when you do that ninety percent of your unhappiness goes away and that truly is such an interesting message because you know what that means it means that we are 100% in charge of our happiness by the way we're not in charge of the events in our lives that will make us unhappy every one of us will get tested as I Lee used to teach me a video game where you push the controller forward and wait 70 years is a very boring game this game of life the only times when we learn and develop and become better are the times were life of us a few interesting challenges and by the way at actually if you look back at the times of your life where you faced challenges today you will realize that five years ago 10 years ago 15 years ago these were actually the events that shaped you these were the events that made you the person that you are today then they felt bad but most of the time today as you look back at them you wouldn't erase them you wouldn't get rid of them because they were really so pivotal for you now the question becomes why do we want to erase this one why is this one that's making us unhappy so different than every other event that tested us and challenged us and made us stronger in the past with that I want to tell you that scientifically as your brain by the way there are they say that your brain has of the megahertz of your brain the processing power of your brain is capable of solving this happiness equation up to sixty thousand times a day 60 to 70 percent of that that's a lot of unhappy thoughts 60 to 70 percent of that in the adult brain by research your brain will say something's wrong 60 to 70 percent of the thought in an adult brain on average or a negative this by the way changes from country to country so in you know in Colombia they don't seem to have 60 to 70 percent negative thoughts the average seems to come from right from Eastern Europe from Germany from the UK from all of the countries where we are taught to be critical we're taught by education to be critical so the interesting thing is this is it possible that 60 to 70 percent of the events of your day are wrong would you even survive if negative 60 to 70 percent of the events of your day are wrong no the reason why your brain finds it that way is because your brain is solving the equation wrong if you put the wrong e or the wrong e in your equation the result is bound to be wrong any mathematician will tell you if I give you a equals B plus C and I give you the wrong value for B or the wrong value for C is bound to be wrong and this truly is what we actually suffer from the reason why we are unhappy more often than we should be is because we're solving this wrong and so all that we spoke about is literally the first chapter of solve for happy really the reasons why we solve this equation wrong are the six seventy five the six seven five the six and seven are the reasons we feel unhappy when we shouldn't feel unhappy and the five is the way I recommend for us to be happy most of the time now just just before we jump into those some of us raised their hands and said we're happy most of the time any of you has a friend that's like that that's happy most of the time I'm sure you do right you know when when it's when it's winter they go like yeah it's about time I want to go ski when it's summer they'll say hey amazing it's time to go sometime right anyone here has a friend who's unhappy all the time leave them okay anyway those those people hmm when it's when it's winter they say it's too cold right when it's summer they say it's too hot is are they getting different seasons or are they the same seasons it's the way that each of them is solving the equation now some of us are affected by most of us are affected by six grand illusions six grand illusions are basically concepts that you grow up to believe so that you'll succeed in the modern world they tell you as you start to join the work force that control is very very important so you start to try and control everything do you actually ever control anything not at all control is an illusion by the way by the design of entropy and chaos theory our universe is built to decay our universe is built to go out of control it's the design of how how things are if you associate yourself with control all the time what ends up happening is that almost every event misses your expectations of full control every single event if you compare that to your expectations of full control it's not gotta match and so you're constantly unhappy salt the illusion of salt is one of my favorites we spoke about how your brain is constantly telling you things anyone here who doesn't have a voice in their head that's telling anyone has more than one voice please great yes those who haven't raised their hands are lazy but yes so so so if you so that voice in your head is is not an illusion ah it really isn't but almost every or let's say 60% of the majority of the men or the majority of the Western world believed that this voice is me telling me what to do do you believe that I think therefore I am that this voice is me okay so the most interesting thing is this if if I ask you a quick question your heart pumps blood around your body to make you survive how many of you believe that your blood right how many believe that you are urine the biological product of your kidneys is urine then you but but but you don't wake up and say I urinate therefore I am do you okay so the the question really is this is a three pound lump of meat don't over water glorify it it literally is a three pound lump of meat okay its job is to look around the world and give you concepts that you understand in the form of words as a matter of fact MIT did a study in 2009 they put people in MRI machines they asked them to solve puzzles they saw their brains lighting in areas where they do problem solving and then after those areas stopped flashing their verbal association areas the areas we use to speak out loud started to light up for up to eight seconds your brain found the answer and then for eight seconds it was turning it into English it literally is talking to you this actually in science we call this the internal dialogue now if your brain is talking to you then everything changes because the illusion I think that for I am becomes I am therefore my brain thinks and you know what that means when Gretchen speaks you can tell her I don't want to hear this or you can tell her have you any evidence to verify what you told me or you can tell her by the way I heard you but I don't want to obey and once you start to see the world this way the illusion of thought is no longer an illusion and you no longer have to listen and so I have a very simple deal with my brain it's the same deal I had with everyone that ever worked for me we can talk about one of two things you can either give me joyful thoughts or useful thoughts to come into my office and complain for thirty minutes you're not going to get that I may let you complain for the first six - you know vent a bit of emotions but then afterwards I will ask you and say what can we do about it what can we do about it and so if we know what we can do about it everything changes so these are illusions if you know the truth you can behave very differently in the modern world these are also very interesting seven blind spots if a tiger attacks me right now I can guarantee you my brain is not gonna say wow look at the muscle tones of those animals right it has absolutely no benefit whatsoever and trying to find what's good in the situation your brain is designed that to look for what's wrong because that has a survival value to it and so it's designed with filters assumptions memories predictions and so on which it adds to the event so that it makes sure it finds what's wrong with the event and so this is why 60 to 70 percent of the time we find the three hairs we don't find a wonderful flower they got last week or the you know the the wonderful relationship that we have today right because we're looking for those we find them and so if we remove the 6 and the 7 promise me I promise you 90% of the time you won't find any reason to be unhappy when I started to do this I'm very very measure than everything I do so I started to do this and measure for four and a half years every time I solved the equation correctly surprise surprise events met expectations and so I started to realize maybe events always meet expectations maybe as a matter of fact I'm either setting the wrong expectations or I'm seeing the events the wrong way and so it's easier for me to navigate the world with what I call the ultimate truth and the ultimate truths are my truths by the way because one of the illusions is the illusion of so I actually don't know if these are true that would be very arrogant to say okay but but these are my truth every event of my life when I took them through that filter it actually was expected and you have to ask yourself this two opposite poles of a magnet attract has that ever upset you seriously is if your finger was stuck between them you sit around and blame life you don't right because you're expecting them because it's the truth you've accepted that as the truth so when I worked with my teams in Google change was the truth we knew that deals were sometimes are going to change and the CEO is gonna change and you know someone else is gonna stop the deal it's fine that's how life is if you don't expect that you're gonna be unhappy most of the time I will leave those here for our questions and answers but before I open for questions I would like to remind you of the promise so if please if you found two things that will make you happier I have every concept of the book available in a free video online if you wanna read that's fine if you want to watch them that's fine but please invest in your happiness what I ask people is to do what they do with fitness and hour a day three to four times a week okay if you if you put an hour a day and your happiness three to four times a week I promise you'll be happier okay spend at reading spend it spend it watching a video spend it with spending it will start with people that know happiness or people that are seeking happiness okay or spend it making others happy because that's the other part of the mission the 1 billion happy mission is really a reminder to the Western world that you cannot be happy as an individual that that in you know individual focus that we've acquired since the Great Depression and World War two is not going to take us forward anymore before that if you guys remember maybe even until 4050 years ago in London neighbors cared about neighbors we had compassion to want others to be happy and we succeeded together because we dropped that compassion our planet is going to pieces with global warming you know people are homeless all over the street and we don't care and there are so many issues in our world so many issues because we don't have the compassion to make others happy so the mission is very straightforward the mission is investing your happiness one to two hours a you know a day three to four times a week and then spread happiness and if you do that for me I think that would be 462 champions that would get us to the billion thank you and I'll take as many questions as you [Applause] thank you so I don't know if we have mics or we're gonna have to shout okay so yes can you just wait one second until the Micra see ya hi so you said basically one of the things that can cause beeps being happy is that they have unrealistic filters so but my question was basically how do you know where to set your filter cuz you could actually have a bad partner so you could it could just be the three hairs or it could be like I know this person's a credible question so was truly an incredible questions thank you so much so so the the the whole idea is to start with a realization that you're unhappy by the way you may have an incredible partner but it's just not the right fit okay but you the one thing I ask people to do is to truly and honestly be you know aware aware awareness being is a very feminine character and as you know the feminine is being you know pushed really hard in this world as if it's a bad thing but really sitting with ourselves and acknowledging the emotions are not saying I'm fine right it's truly the first step of any change the first step is to tell yourself I think I'm not happy right when you know that the second step is to actually ask yourself exactly why exactly why is not events so the event might be he has three hairs in his in his ear I'm just making this example because it's funny but I know that our challenges are sometimes much deeper than that but that could be the the the event but the thought would be he doesn't take care of himself for me now that's a very interesting thought that thought could be true or not true and so what I do literally is I tell myself I am I'm writing about what I call the happiness fourth flow chart I tell myself I call my brain Becky so not Gretchen so I apologize Becky I really am okay but but the reason by the way is I had a friend a British friend whose name's as and when I told her this concept the next week she came and said Becky told me I was like who's Becky and she said yeah the most annoying girl in school so so you're not I apologize everyone you know up next - Becky tuff her and say we love you okay but yeah so I call my put my brain back here and and literally I question Becky when Becky if Becky tells me he you know she doesn't really care enough about herself for you I say is that true Becky do you have evidence for this and you have evidence against okay this is number one number two is if it if it believes if it proves to be not true I drop it if it proves to be true I ask myself the second most important question which is can I do something about it can I go to my partner and say look I love this this and that about you but that idea of not taking care of yourself for me is really it makes me feel you know can you do that for me very simple and sometimes instead of keeping it inside to kill us it's so easy to go out there and say okay you know I'm gonna do something about it if he or she says no then God you have your answer you know if he or she says yes and tries but doesn't do it remind them it's easy the problem is sometimes there are things we cannot do anything about and and truly when you cannot do anything about them so by the way your partner your job your the place where you live your friends you can always do something about those as a matter of fact even your parents and your blood relatives you can do something about those you owe them love care and respect but you don't owe them your life you understand that you can always make a choice and the problem is we don't make the choice and we accept expect that life will become better now there are things we cannot do anything about like art is dead I cannot bring him back and sometimes I hope rarely ever in your lives but sometimes life will throw you one or two of those when there is something that you cannot do anything about spiritual beliefs not with the spiritual side of them actually teach us something in most of them that's called committed acceptance committed acceptances two steps that number one is for me to accept that Heidi is gone and that this is the new reality of my life no believe it or not the truth is I was going to accept it sooner or later some parents accept it a year later some are you know two years later and some on their deathbed but you accept it sooner or later but but acceptance is not good enough committed acceptance is what matters committed acceptance is to say to yourself in the case of your partner for example with many years behind you or whatever and then you decide to break up you accept that this is the new reality of your life and you tell yourself can I do something about this so that tomorrow is better than today that I you know I feel better about my relationships about myself about the past of my life then I feel today and then after tomorrow better than tomorrow all of that is the process the question is is it are you are we putting too many filters I would always side on the you know go on the side of caution if you're unhappy then there is a problem honestly okay unless you're happy and you find a way to be happy keep doing something about it even if that thing is to actually see the truth and by seeing the truth I'll give you a very simple example on filtering when it rains you know in two weeks time you're going to somehow complain about it in your heart you're going to go like I hate the gray rain of London when that happens see the full truth filtering your brain filtering is actually removing the fact that you could have been born in Syria and it could have been bought by a raining bombs on your head and so you you're not seeing the whole truth of not only what it is that you're getting is what we focus on and not only with a negative side of it but actually what we're not getting we are the most fortunate 1% of everyone who's ever lived and sometimes we just hold on to little things by filtering 99% of the truth and so I long answer to a very specific question if you don't feel that things are right don't settle you deserve to be happy every minute of your life but don't sit in the corner and cry take action after action actor after action until you verify if it's true you can do something about it or if you're Billy you're going to accept it others while we get another question can I can I just add a point to this so one of a part of the work I'm working on now I'm working on six books in parallel but the one that will come out first really is a very interesting insight into the balance between the feminine and the masculine and and being aware believe it or not I realize that you cannot be happy unless you embrace both so being aware being in general is a very feminine quality doing is a very masculine quality and some of us regardless of body parts you could be a man or a woman but if we associate more with the feminine we tend to feel the emotions but not do much about them and if we're if you're associated more of you with your masculine again man or woman you would tend to do things without knowing what your wire doing them at all you never sit and reflect and understand that you're doing this because of an emotion or a feeling and so on so so my my ask of everyone is to actually keep alternating between that doing and feeling and doing and feeling and a big part of doing we I was talked to talking to to Lord Richard today a big part of doing is that analytical thinking of why am I feeling this way is it true can I do something about it and so on how do you let because as you said there's so much negativity sometimes around you you might come into work fairly happy but then people seem to be determined to bring you down because you're the only happy person yeah so how do you sort of you know survive float in this sea of negativity sometimes I find it quite hard step number one is decide this day is decide to leave I mean it don't don't don't be rash a rash and leave the next day okay but start looking six months later a year later you're going to find a place that makes you happier by the way so search for a place that makes you happier I've never made been in an interview where I was being interviewed only I was always interviewing them to make sure that I will have a good life in that place right so that's number one number two is to be very honest hmm ask yourself if it really matters so so a lot of the time things that work matter because we tend to believe that work is our life's purpose for some of us maybe it is I think it's a lie I think again it's one of the products of the Great Depression and the capitalism is to make people feel that they are here to work and that we should survive by working okay the truth is you work to pay the bills and then you find your life's purpose after you paid the bell at the bit okay and so if you don't feel that way you would take work a lot less likely we also tend to believe that unless everything is perfect we're not going to have enough tomorrow so unless I'm accepted at work and promoted at work and so on we're not gonna have enough - more or less absolutely a lie the reality of work is that you have reasonably you don't have enough today and you're not gonna have enough tomorrow and you're not gonna have enough the day after I know billionaires who complain that there are other billionaires that are richer okay and and yeah it's the truth of you know of our human endless cravings okay so so you always want to ask yourself if will work is not my life's purpose am I happy with this okay can I be okay peaceful with this setup because it allows me to go back home and do other things the problem is if you don't go home and do other things than your life is void I think mark I don't know where Marcus but mark is a great example of that very successful businessman that starts to find his purpose in action for happiness right and that and that's the idea the idea is it's always for you to question now if the place is too negative and it's making you unhappy leave it's absolutely a no-brainer you're not stuck and you're not jailed anywhere if you make those choices the universe will add and do you ever think that because I found that gratitude is what made me truly happy and I was in that place where you know was working hard playing hard I remember watching your channel for interview and I remember specifically thinking yes I've confused funding for happiness I've been distracting myself but I found that I'm in a place where I'm actually really happy 95% of the time and one of those few people flock to her but do you think but I don't necessarily always take action because i i i really accept everything that happens to me and i'm always truly happy do you think that sometimes you kid yourself or there's a danger that actually being too accepting and always happy might make you lazy or might make you not take animals that you would have taken not at all so the truth is they tell us remember huh part of the modern world programming is to keep you constantly dissatisfied marketing is entirely built around the idea of you will be ridiculed by everyone if you don't have the iphone XR okay and and i appeal will never make an ad that says your iPhone 6 is as good as the day you bought it okay they're never gonna do that and and there is that constant bombardment of you know ted talks and and Harvard Business Review articles and literally they're telling you do more try harder don't be a I don't know if that's a bad word in English but in England don't be a wuss don't stay on the side right I don't know the truth is any smart person will tell you that we do all of this searching for happiness if there is a way to find happiness without all of this I'm not saying happiness is to go surfing and not work by the way I'm saying happiness to is to find that peace and and calm in you while you do things amazing things in life happier people by definition or 12-person percent more productive than unhappy people now gratitude I'll answer three things because this is a very very good question gratitude by definition says they happiness equation is soft so your the attitude of gratitude is basically reminding your brain over and over that events not only meet expectations but that they beat expectations so much that you're grateful for them so that habit of telling yourself I am so happy with I'm so grateful for my life is it by definition telling your brain shut up it's all good okay this also by the way applies to nature if you've ever asked yourself why we're mostly happy in nature because when we look at nature we don't expect a tree to be 90 per a 90 degrees angle and totally straight when a clear tree is a little crooked we go like how beautiful well you know you never sit in front of the ocean and say I love that view but can someone mute the sound we just accept things our expectation is that you know nature is going to be a little chaotic and that's the beauty of it so so when you when you start to have those things in your life you're training your brain to be happy as it is your question then is would that make me complacent I'm setting a billion people happy target I could be motivated by the enormous sadness in the world which by the way is what they taught us in school to only motivate ourselves with the negatives the truth is I am motivated by every single smile that you guys give me that's a beautiful thing to motivate me if I was motivated by the enormous sadness in the world then I'll tell you openly a billion is not enough if I was motivated by the enormous sadness in the world even if I reached the billion one unhappy person would make me cry but that's not the case I learned to motivate myself by the positive instead of being motivated by anger about what's happening in Syria I can motivate myself by compassion for the people of Syria and next time your brain motivates you with the negative remember mommy mommy and daddy motivated you this way your teacher motivated you that way it never made you happy wrong thing now having said that people would start to say but Moe in that case for us to be motivated unhappiness is good now unhappiness is a total waste of your life there is a difference between pain and unhappiness okay pain is what motivates us to do amazing things the pain of missing golly we'll never miss it will never leave my heart I cry three to four times a week it's okay I will always miss him having said that it's not unhappiness it's pain I don't granted the power by saying you should have driven him to another hospital you're a very bad father you're never gonna see him again what's going brother I can I can come up with a million and a half Netflix episodes that can make me miserable but I don't do that I get motivated by the pain of missing him when I wake up in the morning and listen to music we listen to a ton of music together so half of the songs are reminding me of hell and when when I when I get one of those songs you know what I do I tell myself okay that hurts let's go make a thousand people happy today right and to be able to find a way through life where you get yourself to make to be motivated by what's good in life that's when gratitude starts to be your typical habit of everything that you do and it's absolutely wonderful would you accept the fact that there can be cases where happiness or unhappiness is caused by a chemical imbalance so people some people believe that you're depressed because there's a chemical imbalance no I actually don't I believe that the chemical imbalance is caused by long periods of unhappiness so so so you know if if if this is you know to be debated you always ask yourself do we have adrenaline in our blood so that we panic or do we have adrenaline our blood when we panic so the way our our system works is when we need a specific superhuman reaction our blood our brains uses use hormones to keep that going so you know as I said serotonin is a calmer what your brain is trying to do is to say stay where you are okay dopamine is an exciter what your brain is trying to do is to say do more of what you're doing and these chemical languages also go into depression where we start to be flooded with hormones that need to be changed now here is the interesting challenge the antidepressant industry will try to convince you that it's okay to stay on antidepressants because they are fixing the imbalance they are but they are not fixing the thoughts that are causing the imbalance and so you can see that people who depend only on antidepressants continue to depend on them for a very very long time and so my my ask of every one of us by the way this is something I normally ask people very openly one of your friends is depressed don't ignore it okay because we have seen my wonderful wonderful incredible daughter sometimes I talk about aliens forget to talk about area my incredible daughter had one of her friends attempting to commit suicide and the idea was that for that little period where there were her friend was actually starting to go down I I was moving houses so she wasn't really always responding and you know it's it's not right that we actually let that go so so ask if your friends are not feeling great you know ask having said that the idea is can we use the chemical treatment the modern medicine to fix the imbalance to a point where we can actually start thinking straight and meditate and do the right things so that we can bring the reproduction of that unhappy hormone less and less and less and less it's behind you you have more than one mic because we also have our questions up here it's like I'm high so I wanted to ask you about happiness and well-being with teenagers and so I'm a Londoner born and bred I've completely rebelled against the system we homeschool our kids and we work from home and we travel the world yet as my kids into their teenage years they're displaying anxiety and symptoms of depression despite on the outside actually showing happiness and I'm seeing this not just with my own children but with plenty of children that I was engaged with so I'm wondering what can we do to help them and kind of improve their levels of happiness so so reality is that what they're dealing with is much much more complex than what I dealt with when I was when I was a teen so technology tends to magnify everything and it's magnifying the negativity of our world our our world is really in a very bad place and so they get bullied a lot more often they don't have to fit in with five kids in school they have to fit in with the whole you know universe of social media and so on and when you take those things away from them by force they end up feeling that they are deprived of something that is that human right and so and so the reality is in my view I always say children in general teens are a little more difficult but the only way a parent can succeed to raise happy children is to number one prioritize happiness and so in reality I would say this with a you know with full commitment if you raise successful kids that are unhappy you failed and that's not what they taught us by the way huh so when my mother my wonderful mother was was raising me she focused on me being smart and successful and educated and so on the idea is can we actually consider that success is were gonna make you successful and happy and so in you know for example when Holly left our world yeah took a year and a half of university if I was focused on success I would my immediate reaction would be like a year and a half is too long but the reality is because these were incredible years what she reflected on her own self in ways that 45 year olds don't do I was saying yeah so we're prioritizing happiness for a year and a half before she can go back and she's amazing if you look at what she's doing at her art university today really incredible because we prioritized happiness followed by success that's number one number two is I will say that to all parents your children will not do what you tell them okay is that news to anybody so if you if you if you tell your children to not lie while you're lying they're gonna lie so your children don't do what you do they do what you say so don't do what you say they do what you do and the trick here is I found and you know in many and many of my friends close friends who are always businessmen and successful and so on is that when the parents start to say we're gonna make this a very happy place we want to be happy and we're gonna make you happy with us actually the children will follow the children just want to do what the parents are doing so instead of preaching them in any way my recommendation is to actually practice what you preach and if you practice what you preach you go much further I know it's hard because all of us get concerned about our children but my number one comment was get concerned about their happiness before you get concerned about their safety or success or anything else in London yes so I would preempt this with saying that knowledge is an illusion okay so this is my view of of the world I could be wrong so please don't dislike me if I disagree with your point of view I've I was born a Muslim and it's a very confirmative religion and so it forced me to do a lot of things that was going to take over my life and so at age 16 I decided to announce myself as agnostic and because I am an engineer I did what I call the math of God okay and so in chapter 14 I share what what I believe is a very different way of looking at the idea by the way the God has nothing to do with religion just so that we agree religion just owned that brand somehow and said okay this is our brand and if you want to use that brand you come to us and part of what they say is amazing mmm but it's not the whole thing so so if you'll separate those two and my personal view I realized that the question of is there something out there or not truly is a simple question of probabilities so if someone tells you there is nothing there absolutely wrong because there is no way scientifically you can prove that if something someone tells you that there is there absolutely wrong because there is no scientific way of doing that and so I did the mathematics okay and the mathematics are very straightforward if you actually think about it the mathematics if you include T which most scientists don't include in the idea of evolution and natural selection you would realize that we didn't have enough T to generate what we have so in my current view of the world I have a tendency to believe that our world our world is made up of several factors at the same time it's made up of your free will and my free will and the way the machine works and the way the machine works in my personal view is hyper designed so when a tsunami happens its hyper predicted if you actually understood the exact seismic forces the exact height of the water the exact distance from from the shore you would be able to predict that in a very organized way and so accordingly when Ali died that wasn't just a bad throw of the dice and when I talk about design I started to talk about death and design in the last two chapters because my unhappiness was caused by something that goes beyond my physical form having said that I don't think your belief in death or design is a prerequisite to happiness I believe that for some of us who lost a loved one it might be a very comfortable of comforting notion to have my personal view but could be right or wrong so we have time for now so yeah so I actually had a whole chapter about that in the original book that was deleted by my editors and rightly so because it's already quite a lot to comprehend but let's just say this is the oh yes I'm sorry well being as well as well being a prerequisite for your happiness yes I mean in reality if your feet hurt all the time it's harder to be happy and for some of us by the way actually well-being is not even a choice sometimes you know some of us are chronically ill and so on and my heart goes to those people but it's actually hard hard to find happiness when you're not well and and so and so yes again in my next work I talk very very clearly about you know and the idea when I said you need to find the thought that triggered your unhappiness before I even set you down for that exercise I actually asked you to examine your physical form in ways that allows you to to to differentiate between physical reasons for your unhappiness and emotional reasons for your unhappiness having said that you absolutely rightly said that well-being is a lot more than just the form of your physical form and eating healthy and so on parts of it are the surrounding the people that around you you know how often do you give yourself meditation breaks or time to reflect and so on and so forth absolutely I I would not you know I I think if you can manage to do that before you start on your happiness that would be amazing but I have found that most people actually start on their happiness journey first and then they realize the need for their well-being and then they go further on their happiness journey and stir and realize that they can go further on one being ah yes upstairs again watch out yes yeah life's purpose is another pill that's that's truly created by capitalism and I will say that with a lot of respect to that view I was taught that by my son so a lot of people talk about life purpose and that life purpose is an important component for happiness so I am my son when I was when he was sick 16 he came to my room I am that TED talk like executive I set myself big targets and I go chase them and then I make a few slides and and move to the next target and and he walked to me and said Papa I know your heart I know you want to make the world a better place but I will tell you very openly that there is no way you're gonna fix the world I was like honey come on you're never depressive why are you saying this and he basically told me something that completely flipped my life upside down he said look papa the only thing you can change is your little world which by the way starts with you so if you change you then your little world grows if you manage to change you then you can impact me an area and if then you can impact me and i--i maybe you can impact your small team at work and then you can impact all of Google and then you may be able able to impact whatever okay and so it seems in his view which now I understand clearly that you actually never find your life's purpose your life's purpose find you and in a very very interesting way his view was analogous to video games so in his view he basically said that no one can do deliberate you know they can have a deliberate choice to achieve a certain place in the game that the only way you can achieve a certain purpose in the game is to be a good gamer and the way to become a good gamer is to do it over and over and over and over and when you're ready learn certain levels of the game will open up now my story clearly is an example of that I spent my most of my life in the capitalist way believing that my life's purpose was to help startups grow okay - coach startups to invest in startups and so on I told myself this was my life purpose and then I started to chase it and I was good at it until life first made me depressed then let me do the research then send you know I had a lead to teach me and then to Cali and obviously as you can imagine my life's purpose is this or maybe it isn't I don't know hmm but the truth is I haven't chosen this I did not you know I was very very happy at Google but you know maybe were chasing the wrong target maybe your life's purpose is to become the absolute best gamer you can ever become because if you can become the best game not the best gamer in the world the best gamer you can become because if you can become the best gamer that you can become then the game will show up that's probably the way to look at it so with that mark thank you guys so much [Applause]

Channel: Action for Happiness

Views: 23,529

Keywords: happiness, wellbeing, action for happiness, mo gawdat, onebillionhappy, solve for happy

Id: JjGrzyAARtw

Length: 88min 9sec (5289 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 12 2018