Solve for Happy (Engineer Your Path to Joy)

Nugget from Mo Gawdat

Aug 09, 2024

Hello Friend!

Today’s insight come from a speech that Mo Gawdat gave at a Tony Robbins event.

I think it’s extremely powerful. It gives us a robust mental tool to process negative life events or intrusive thoughts so that we can either be free from them or free despite them.

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👤 Doers

💡Nugget

🟠 Mo Gawdat:
Video → Mo Gawdat's Happiness Formula (from timestamp 43:25 until the timestamp 49:05)
The first step of the flowchart is, I ask myself a question, which is, "is this true?"
I love my daughter. One day we had an argument. So I said, baby, I'm going to go out to a coffee shop, have a coffee, calm down. And we come and talk about it again. The minute I walk out 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 "Aya 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 fuck did you just say?"
In Montreal, it's okay. We're all, you know, like that. But, seriously, what the fuck did you just say? How can you give yourself 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?
Is that true? Number one. Okay?
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 citizen number 7 billion in the world that's going to become homeless, there are 6.99 billion that are going to become homeless before you... then wait! Be unhappy then. Okay?
But if it's true that 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? By the way, there is nothing you can do about the winter coming. There is nothing you can do. We'll come to that in question three. But 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? And 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.
And the second most interesting thing is you move the thought from your incessant part of the brain, 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 is something you can do about it, do it. If there is nothing you can do about it, then it's question number three...
And question number three is what I call the Jedi 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 child, including being stuck in traffic? Simple as that. If you're stuck in traffic, there is nothing you can do to change 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?
[Just] "What can I do" will not fix the problem, but "what can I do to 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 sat down and 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). It doesn't solve the problems. 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.
And so, What can I do? Can I accept life as it is? (not as a sign of weakness, [but] as a sign of absolute strength). The strongest of all of us are the ones that look at 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?”
This is a homework that I would ask you to do repeatedly. The next time you feel something changing, take your piece of paper out...
1. Is it true?
2. [If it's true] What can I do to fix it?
3. [If it's not fixable] 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 [Contract -> "My brain is allowed a useful thought—if it's gonna hurt me. Or a joyful thought"]. Okay? Literally in my third book it is a signed contract with... I call my brain "Becky" 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?

"In any situation in life, you always have three choices: you can change it, you can accept it, or you can leave it."

- Naval Ravikant (Book - The Almanack of Naval Ravikant)

📁 All the insights in this article are saved and classified in a searchable Database, which (as of August 2024) contains 2,100+ timeless insights, sourced directly from the most influential doers and entrepreneurs (handpicked from books, interviews/podcasts and articles).

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“In an age of infinite leverage [code and media], judgment is the most important skill.”
- Naval Ravikant

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💥 Stuff I Loved

Happy Friday ;)

Julio xx

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