Humans Can’t Compete with AI - Google Exec Mo Gawdat's Warning

38:36Mo Gawdat:So it's my life choice. I travel all the time. I'm blinded by my one billion happy mission. And I want to put my life behind one billion happy. So I don't have a home that has a coffee machine in it. I don't get home every day at six, right? I don't have that. And if I advertise otherwise, what will happen? The person in front of me will say, okay, you know, I like you a lot. When are we going to settle and where? That would apply a burden on me. While on the other hand, I simply say, look, this is my lifestyle. This is how I live. if someone wants to live my lifestyle they need to either travel to see me every now and then you know if they need to to to be okay with me being away whatever that is and yes that that excludes the majority of those out there that are you know committed to being in a certain place and going to work from nine to five but yes that that actually is a good thing to exclude them because they were never what I was looking for anyway.

39:41Why do you think that's changed from people getting married at 16, 17, 18 and staying with each other for the rest of their life? Maybe they're not happy but then it was just traditional to be there. Now we're at the old time high for divorce and relationships breaking down, people becoming bisexual everybody changing. What do you think that is then? Social media play a part in that? Just changing life?

40:02Mo Gawdat:It's the economics of large numbers. So who says you need to settle as well with the one person? many religions have four five six wives like for me when i said because i had not sex addiction but i had so many women because i was trying to feed that dopamine kick just to try and feel a lot of happiness and then i started researching into sexual energy exchange and it's like plugging your data in and downloading if you're sleeping with a girl you're taking on her trauma or whatever and you're taking on the people she's slept with trauma so it can confuse you as well where it's not love it's not connection for me everything's trying to connect and plug in and truly connect but it's difficult because we're living in such a fast-paced world where everything's 100 mile an hour and nobody really knows what the fuck is going on like some people do it in their own mind but me personally then the people i've interviewed people feel stuck why do you think that is so so we can go back all the way in history if you want but let's maybe start from the 40s 50s 60s okay 40s world war ii the world lost a lot of men okay ended up in a place where, you know, the way the industry, the Industrial Revolution in the 1950s was all about let's kickstart economies, right?

41:18Mo Gawdat:If you remember the ads in those times, the ads were simply saying white goods. You know, they painted a perfect picture of life, and that perfect picture was the woman in her apron. and the fridge and the iron and the car and what have you. So we started to be fed by society that clear image of happiness is found in that family unit that is made of one man, one woman, and that one man, one woman had a home and they had a mortgage and they had this and they had that. Okay. Fast forward all the way to the 60s, contraception pill basically said a woman can be more free because the cost of enjoying herself or finding her sexuality or exploring, you know, what she is looking for instead of being stuck with one man started to, you know, to allow women to go and be a bit, a lot more like men in terms of sex doesn't have the same cost of getting pregnant and being stuck forever.

42:29Mo Gawdat:When that happens, the economics flipped, right? Because until then, for you to have had happiness, you needed to get one woman as a man. You needed to get one woman. You needed to invest in that relationship. You needed to get the house with the picket fences. You needed to do this. You needed to do that, right? There was an unwritten contract that to find happiness, this is what you need. 60s onwards we started to say no no no to find happiness you go to a hippie retreat or you do this or you do that and so on and so forth the alternatives started to to magnify and in today's world the alternatives are to be with a woman or to be with a man if you're a woman or to be with a man if you're a man or whatever it is costs you what from the 1950s where it costs you the house and the mortgage and, and, and, and.

43:21Mo Gawdat:Today, it costs you a swipe. That's it, okay? Now, in economic theory, that imbalance of supply and demand, where basically there is more supply of opportunities, whether you're a man, woman, straight or gay, that abundance of supply does what? It drops the value of the product. I don't want to say that we are products, but in a relationship, we are. This is what, you're out there looking for someone, just like you browse Amazon looking for which tablet you're going to buy. Okay. And I hate to put it that way. I'm very, very romantic, but I'm talking about the process that leads you to love. Now, because the economics have been disrupted so much, because the value of love has become reduced to lust, has been reduced to a good time, has been reduced to a bit of romance.

44:11Mo Gawdat:Okay. Suddenly, most people are starting to ask, mostly on the masculine side, not the feminine side by the way we should talk about masculine and feminine because i don't mean man and woman but let's come back to that in a minute but mostly on the masculine side the the uh the abundance of supply makes them say why should i remain okay it's a bit of fast fashion if you want if i can uh go to um you know an h &m or zara or whatever and change my what I'm wearing every third day, why would I invest in a more expensive, whatever, British suit that is going to cost me more at the beginning, but last me a lifetime?

44:59Mo Gawdat:Okay. And I think that is where we stand today, that the abundance of supply has destroyed the economics. Now, interestingly, what I'm suggesting in Finding Love, hopefully, I mean, this part is written, but when it comes out, What I'm suggesting is that this is because we're all aiming to advertise to the 100 % of buyers. So if you want to buy a car and you go to a used car website, there will be 30 ,000 cars there. In an interesting way, to you, you're like, yeah, why would I take this one? Why would I take that one? Most of them don't have value to you anymore. but if you're say interested in bentleys specifically and you're going to go to that site there will be a thousand bentleys if you're interested in bentleys that are pre the acquisition of vw now we're dropping to a hundred if you're interested in specifically if you're interested specifically in a bently azure now we're talking about three and if you want the one that was 1999 which you believed that was the one then we're talking about two and if you want it in blue we're talking about one okay now this i think in love and relationships is what needs to happen which is what we just discussed and if you advertise properly if you basically say look this is my season of life this is what i'm looking for and this is what i can offer because of that season no lies to yourself no lies to others no avoidance of being rejected actually attempting to get rejected by those who don't match you, suddenly you're basically becoming that Bentley Azure Blue, okay?

46:41Mo Gawdat:Because there is someone out there looking for someone exactly like you, athletic, searching, you know, doesn't drink, travels a lot because he believes in a mission, works hard because he wants to provide for his kids. And that description that you are, there is someone out there that looks at it and goes like, oh my God, he exists, right? And by reduce by taking yourself out of the massive uh souk bazaar if you want of of the of of the very cheap commodity of love and dating today and place yourself in that exclusive almost you know um one of a kind kind of market suddenly your value goes through the roof and when you find that person yet might take longer to find that person but when you find that person that person goes like okay i hit the jackpot do you believe in like attracts like like the law of attraction as well the better person you become the better person you attract sadly not okay i believe that we are attracted by many many things you know at the end of the day there is you know i can tell you exactly i have a list of exactly seven things that i'm looking for in a woman you know or for any woman that comes into my life, even if it's impermanence, I'm not at a season of my life where I actually can commit at all.

48:01Mo Gawdat:But even if it's been impermanent, okay, I have a very list, a very clear list of seven things that I would need to see in someone else. And none of them is looks or, you know, behaviors or what they like to do or whatever. Most of them are very deep, you know on the spiritual side on their emotions on how they you know they they they um which topics you know really matter to them and so on right so so that that list of seven things of course you know matters to me most but yeah if an amazingly attractive person comes into my life and you know at the early you know conversations it's fun and we're laughing and we're being silly and so on.

48:44Mo Gawdat:You know, we're all human. I go like, oh my God, she's so cute, right? And I don't deny myself that. Having said that, the reason we attract people has two theories. One theory is harmony and the other theory is tension. Again, most people don't understand this. That harmony is what makes you lovers, what makes you partners, what makes you do amazing things together and go and climb the Himalayas together or whatever that is. Tension is what makes you have wild sex, but also what makes you teach each other. Because we are a mirror to our partner. You know, in an interesting way, non-romantic way.

49:30Mo Gawdat:But as I sit in front of you, James, I see things in you that are similar to me that we align on. And I go like, man, I can be friends with this guy. You know, we can have an amazing conversation. but I also see things that are different. You lived a very different life than mine. And I go, and that difference, believe it or not, is extremely useful because I can sit in front of you and I go like, damn, I never understood this. So this kind of upbringing is different than mine, but it shows me so much about myself. And when we're looking for people to bring into our life, whether friends, whether lovers, whether long-term commitments, partners, whatever that is, And there is that both of those roles, there is a role that you need to play, which is I feel good when I'm around this person.

50:18Mo Gawdat:And there is a role that you need to play, which I can also bite their head off every now and then because we're not fully in alignment. And that argument, that bit of tension is what actually makes us better people. If we accept that it's not wrong or right, it's just different. okay because by the way there is no wrong or right you know whatever your your partner is if you had lived her or his life walked in her or his shoes been born to her or his parents you'd be exactly like them okay the the beauty of this is can i look at them and say i love this this this and that i want to stay but this this this and this puzzle me and they stretch me and they're a mirror that opens my eyes to how I should be.

51:03Why do you think suicide rate is so high in men? Why men? Why not women? Why is it not quite 60, 40, 55, 45? It's the majority of men. Why do you think that is? You think that's because we don't talk about emotions enough? We talk about feminine and masculine. I believe men are probably more feminine than women because we don't show our emotions. We are so vulnerable as men. I remember Jordan Peterson talking about the majority of men die in wars the majority of men are homeless, the majority of men are in prison the majority of men have shittier jobs it's just hard for a man to express their feelings and emotions, I've spoke to so many tough men who thought they were tough criminals, who've done a lot of bad things and when you actually break it down you see how vulnerable these men actually are I've never quite figured out I believe I can change the world, I believe the formula I've been trying to put into place the last few years I believe it's working first and foremost it has to work on me but it has to i have to be honest like i talk about the six week change documentary that i've done just certain little changes it might not be for everyone but it's it's for me coming from that dark space and i'm just trying to find a little formula to try and help the person who thinks they're broken that there's no way to turn because there is and i believe it's all within maybe cheesy people search externally i've done all the external stuff it never ever took me to that sense of bliss or sense of happiness but this stuff i'm working and internally the natural stuff, I believe it can change the game.

52:30I believe it can. If I can get the right formula and just a couple of missing links, I believe it can help people with their mindset. I believe you can change the way you think and feel. I'm a prime example from it. Absolutely. From gambling every day and doing all the bad shit. It was a fucking hard process. I still struggle. I still think about the bad stuff, but I just know I don't act on it anymore, which gives me that little bit of strength. But for the suicide thing I do, I work in Glasgow for a place called Chrissy's House I'm an ambassador for people who are suicidal and it's sad to see that they think there's no other option but to take their life and it's 90 odd percent of people come through that door and they all that

53:09Mo Gawdat:why do you think that is? So this is a very very very multi-layered question can we agree that this is again compartment two we don't know the exact answer but first of all women female suicide is actually rising very very significantly across the world It's probably, if I remember correctly, across Europe, it's at an all-time high. To answer why there are more men that take their life than women, in my personal view, I think we need to understand the difference between the feminine and the masculine. So remember, we spoke about men and women are biological. Female and male are biological categorizations.

53:48Mo Gawdat:Okay, you could be born with, you know, female body parts. And that basically means without, you know, any attention to who you are and what you feel and how you identify and so on, you will be categorized as female or you could have that, you know, as long as you have male body parts, you will be categorized as male. Now, male and female as categories then have been added to sexual preferences, gender identity, and now finally the world has that freedom to say I can be whoever I want, at least a good chunk of the world. None of that is feminine and masculine. Feminine and masculine is in my personal work, again this is book seven, so finding love, then there is a half monk, and then there is her, and her is an attempt to help understand the feminine and the masculine.

54:45Mo Gawdat:Her basically says that the feminine and the masculine are qualities. They are traits by which we live our life, right? Those traits can be from intuition on one side, which is a very feminine quality, to linear thinking on the other extreme, which is a very masculine quality, okay? So if you're living in your masculine, man or woman, straight or gay, If you're living in your masculine, you tend to analyze problems analytically and you tend to do them linearly. So this is why the man side of an argument will always tell his female feminine side of the argument. Can you please can we please stick to one topic?

55:27Mo Gawdat:OK, the masculine wants to think that way. The feminine is very intuitive. The feminine wants to see the big picture. They want to believe their gut feeling. and so they they can jump from one topic to the other that's intuitive and you can take pairs of those as many as you want you know the the the let's take playfulness for example versus discipline masculine is discipline playfulness is feminine creativity versus analytical thinking so that the masculine will try to solve things by analysis that feminine will look for genuine and novel solutions, right? And so on. You can take empathy versus compassion.

56:05Mo Gawdat:Interestingly, often misunderstood. Empathy is the feminine side of I feel the pain of another, okay? Compassion is the masculine side of I need to act on that pain. I need to alleviate the pain of another. And we can go on for hours. Sum it all up, and the feminine is all about being, and the masculine is all about doing. The being is I need to feel, I need to sense. I need to integrate. I am one with the universe. I can sit in a place, regardless of how pleasurable or painful that place is, and I can be in it. I can be myself. The masculine is all about doing. The masculine doesn't want to sit anywhere.

56:49Mo Gawdat:And if you give them a problem without even thinking enough about it, they'll start to do something. Now, is one of those good or bad? No. Okay. Is one of those more important than the other? No. As a matter of fact, the reason we have a civilization today is we've managed for many, many years as humanity to use both of them. Okay. Now, the problem is if you overdo either of them, it becomes good or bad. So if you take strength, for example, a masculine quality and overplay it, you become aggressive. You become violent. Strength, too much strength is aggression and violence. You take, I don't know, playfulness or creativity or intuition on the feminine side and to do or sensuality, the ability to sense everything, you know, do too much of it and you become irrational.

57:39Mo Gawdat:It just becomes too much input to be able to handle in a logical way. And so neither of them is good or bad. It's just how much of them you apply in your life. By the way, neither of them is, you know, those statistically correlated. So if you come with male body parts, you're likely to have more masculine qualities than feminine qualities. That's a statistical correlation. More of those who come with male body parts to this world have a hormonal makeup in them that basically makes them rely more on strength and linear thinking and so on and so forth. than statistically correlated. Also, if you come with female body parts, the archetypical female, if you want, you know, you would tend to be more feminine, just statistics.

58:26Mo Gawdat:But the truth is, like you rightly said, each and every one of us has both. Okay, each of and every one of us can sometimes be strong and can sometimes be intuitive and can sometimes be playful and can sometimes be, linear thinking and so on. So we go back to suicide. My... My personal view, and I don't know if it's correct, but that's what I believe it is, is that when you're in the feminine and life is very, very difficult, feminine qualities lead you to not take the action. Doing, remember, is a masculine side. It doesn't lead you to take the action of committing suicide. Okay. It takes you more into the action of being within that space.

59:16Mo Gawdat:So you can stay unhappy for a very long time. You can feel it. But also you can share it because communication is on the feminine side or connecting to others and so on. So in a way, it's not the lack of depression on the feminine side, even though it seems that the feminine has less depression rates as well. It's the tendency to not take the violent action of taking your own life. It's actually the tendency to, the ability to be, even if it's a hard time. And of course, if the feminine wasn't able to do this, they wouldn't be able to give birth, which is one of the, it's the most painful experience ever.

1:00:00Mo Gawdat:And the woman would still be able to be, stay within that experience, painful as it is, you know, months and, you know, years later, she loses sleep to take care of that child and she can still be. That enormous resilience on the feminine side is just an amazing quality. Because even through hardship, the feminine can be. The masculine jumps. The masculine says, I'm going to do something about this, even if what I'm going to do is absolutely freaking stupid. Okay? I'll just add one more point and then we move from here. now we've spoken about the the the the both sides but if you're in depression please please if you know someone in depression don't leave them there okay the interesting thing is suicide in my view is not the result of depression suicide in my view is the result of despair it's the result of i'm i feel so bad and i see no way out i have no way to come out of this now I see no way out is mainly because we leave them we don't show up and tell them hey I love you I know I know it's tough I know it's bad I love you I'm not asking you to change by the way I just want you to know that I love you and if we tell people who are in depression and I actually ran lots of experiments around that if your sister or your brother or your best friend or whoever normally what we do when we see them in depression is one we get angry like why are you so unhappy we love you we don't want you to be that way it's not their choice you know it it's it's almost it's a it's a make a chemical change in your body that gets you to that place as well we get angry then we try to to to preach like i'll do this do that or do that right then we try to compare and my look at jackie jackie's so happy why are you not happy none of that works the only thing that works when you have someone who's in depression is to simply tell them i absolutely love you.

1:02:04Mo Gawdat:I understand where you are. I understand how painful that is. Okay. And I love you. And I'm always here. Okay. Take your time. And I'm always here. I care about you. If you do that long enough, and by the way, you can simulate that. You can simulate that. How? You text them and say, oh, I passed by this cafe where we had coffee for, you know, two years ago. It was so much fun. I miss you. I love you. Send. Okay. Any variation of that message actually gets them to start questioning like why why do they love me was there anything good about me okay and when you start to give them that message i promise you two three four weeks later they'll come and say you want me to live like i really want to be happy can you help me out when they do we can we can show them how to be happy okay until they do we're in a very bad place and and if we preach we make it even worse yeah you ever suicide of yourself more when i ever so no no no no no never never never uh mainly because of my religious upbringing to be honest okay but also so i i don't drink i never had drugs in my life you know i never escaped in a very interesting way i think there was a value to my religious upbringing i'm not religious in a traditional way at all now but there was a value to my my religious upbringing that you know sort of implants very deeply in my upbringing that i need to be good to others that i can't take my own life that i can you know i can't cheat stuff like that right i have to be honest and so on which are good things by the way you know it's wonderful to to get those beautiful gold nuggets and live by them but then I have to admit I think somehow because I never escaped to drinking never escaped to drugs never escaped to parties I never did our ayahuasca or any of the cults as you call them in your documentary you know basically when you have to sit with the challenge when you have to sit with the problem you develop through neuroplasticity the brainwaves that say look so I don't have an escape here so i might as well work on it okay and you know your brain networks start to learn to to work on it and and very interestingly i think my uh my biggest teaching in this has been in business believe it or not not in a spiritual retreat somewhere when i started to become a people's manager in my early uh 30s late 20s you know as a people's manager 90 of your job is to sit in your office while people walk in and complain that's it like you know one after one And the salespeople come and complain about the legal team and the legal team comes and complains about the salespeople.

1:04:47Mo Gawdat:It's, you know, that's your life like a therapist, really. Right. And I, you know, I found a way to basically say, so when someone walks in and complains, what do I do with that? The first thing is I let them complain. I listen attentively. I show empathy. The second is I say, is there anything that might be a little bit hidden about what you're what you're saying? is that it's part of the truth not in that story are you know so is there something good about the legal team have you had good experiences with them that's number two and then number three i simply say so what can we do about it what can we do about it and and and i you know and that flow chart if you want most of the time uh works with others and i realize that it works with me too so when my brain starts to complain i follow a very simple flow chart three questions and it's it's i think it's one of the more more famous parts of my third book that little voice in your head three three questions question one is what is it true is what my brain telling me true at all okay because you know you could have an argument with your partner on a friday and you know on saturday your brain would say he or she doesn't love me anymore is that true brain right and if it isn't true i drop it if it is true i ask the second question which is what can i do about it and what can I do about it is actually the answer to most unhappiness if something's not working well like you did you were going through that difficult phase of your life and then you stop and you say okay this is making me unhappy it's taking my life away what am I going to do about it I'm going to do the six week you know a change or I'm going to do this or I'm going to do that I'm going to do something about it if there is something you can do about it do it and unhappiness goes away and life becomes better if there isn't then the third question is what I normally call the jedi master level of happiness you know losing a child like i lost ali there is nothing you can do about it you can't bring it back you can't you can't bring him back you can't fix it in any possible way so so when you are faced with something that you cannot change my answer is something i call committed acceptance committed acceptance is not a sign of weakness but it is to accept that life took away my son i have to accept it and and then i have to commit not just accept and lie down and die but i have to commit to making my life better despite the present that the presence of that fact so you know writing the book telling his story to the world starting my my uh my organization one billion happy all of that doesn't bring him back but it makes life better despite his absence so happiness as well that people people tell me you're doing amazing that's how great you've changed and done this but part of me walks away and think full do like i don't know if it's imposter syndrome but do you ever feel as if because you haven't through dark times when you feel happy sometimes a negative pops in that you shouldn't be happy like how do you get how do you find that balance then so it's not you're being selfish it's not as if your loved ones don't want you to move on and be happy anyway like your son who wants you to be as happy as you can be but some people live on grief forever 10 years 20 years the christmases his birthday is crying the same shit day in, day out.

1:07:58And they must be banging their head against the fucking wall. It's sad that people do that. But for people that's maybe watching, that's maybe in that grief-stricken, lost somebody 10 years ago, but still reliving that pain, what advice would you have for them?

1:08:13Mo Gawdat:Well, I think there is a need for understanding happiness at a very deep level. But let's just start from a higher level for a second. Life continues to go on. your negative thoughts are not going to make your life change so so so the you know the reality is after my son died i refused to drink for the first eight hours nine hours and then before i collapsed in bed from you know exhaustion i you know i had to drink a sip of water the the next you know four days i didn't eat and then four days later i started to eat and you know two weeks later my myself and my wife then uh you know we we made love right your life goes on the thing is we refuse to go on in our heads and we refuse to go on in our heads for many many reasons it could be guilt it could be an ego the ego is i love them so how can i move on it could be a fear of like what happens if i move on will i will i forget them it could be anything think and and and you have to respect that you know those emotions are not within our control they are outside our control now let's understand where those emotions come from and i think of all of my work i think the one that really really made the difference to the world was the happiness equation is in solve for happy in my first book so so happiness is not as unpredictable as people think it is.

1:09:45Mo Gawdat:It follows a mathematical equation. And the mathematical equation is very straightforward. It's events minus expectations. So any moment in your life you felt unhappy was a moment where the events of life missed your expectations of how life should be. Okay? You know, the example I always give, some people may have heard it before, is rain. Rain doesn't make you happy or unhappy. There is no inherent value of happiness in rain. okay rain makes you happy if it's your ex-boyfriend's wedding it makes you very unhappy if it's your wedding the comparison is i expect life to be nice to me on my wedding day and i expect it to be lousy to go to my ex-boyfriend on his wedding day the event rain is compared to those expectations and you end up in a place where you're happy or unhappy now if you understand this you realize that our unhappiness in that case.

1:10:40Mo Gawdat:By the way, it means that happiness is not what we think it is. Happiness is just that peaceful contentment we feel when we're okay with life as it is. It doesn't matter what life is, okay? What matters is that we're okay with it. If you can be okay with life when it's tough, you're gonna feel contented and peaceful and calm inside. And that's the feeling of happiness. And many people I know live that way. You could be in Latin America and you barely make your income for the day. okay but when you make your income for the day you're happy for the rest of the day and you're dancing and you're having fun and life is okay right the definition of the happiness equation happiness is equal to or greater than the difference between the events of your life and your expectations of how life should be defines unhappiness which is what matters most unhappiness in that case is a survival mechanism okay it's your brain looking at the world around it and saying something in the world as it is today does not match my expectations of an optimum way of living so i need to alert you your brain basically says i need to make you aware that this is not how life should be because if it isn't how life should be i don't feel safe right and and as a result of that that comparison your brain alerts you in the form of an emotion doesn't alert you in the form of a thought because your brain is talking to you all the time and you're not even listening it alerts you in the form of that of an emotion that emotion could be fear could be regret could be sadness whatever that is interestingly for most of us that emotion as i said in the in the flow chart should trigger action so you know when my son died the action i took is I'm going to write a book, make his people, make the world remember his, what he taught me and his essence, essence, which doesn't bring him back, but it's, it still makes life better after he left.

1:12:41Mo Gawdat:Okay. That action is why I'm sitting in front of you reasonably happy with my life. Probably the happiest I have ever been. Even though I feel the pain of losing my child, I'm still peaceful and calm and contented with the fact that me and him through what he taught me and through his departure have made it so far right if that if that's the case if that's the case of events minus expectations then you need to ask yourself why do we get stuck i i was teaching uh on soul for happy before the pandemic there were 2 000 people in the audience and then a woman comes to me and says, how can you say that events minus expectations?

1:13:25Mo Gawdat:You know, are you saying I should change my events and my expectations to feel happy? You know, happiness is not a choice. What are you talking about? You have no idea what happened to me. And then she paused for a second and said, when I was 17, okay, she was 74 at the time. 57 years later, she was still stuck in the same thought same thought now why do we do i hugged her i said i'm so sorry did it work did it work right because you can be stuck for a day 57 days or 57 years the real question is did it work did life suddenly come up and tell you uh oh i'm so sorry um you know that this happened to you i'm gonna fix it now because you've been sad for 56 years life suddenly realize that oh i'm so sorry that was not intended no life doesn't respond that way if you if you're crying uh at home that your partner said something hurtful on friday okay that doesn't make your partner aware so that he shows up or she shows up and apologizes that doesn't unhappiness has zero impact on the real world it just tortures you why do we do it because we're still six years because we never grow beyond the time when we were six years old we're still kids okay there was a utility to unhappiness when you were a child if the diaper was wet you cried okay and your mommy came or your caretaker came and changed the diaper there is a utility there is a utility to unhappiness when you were you know four because when you cried you grabbed everyone's attention there was a utility to unhappiness when you're six because when you fell and cried your mommy hugged you okay and so you stay in that space it's like okay i'm gonna stay here forever and some why is someone not coming to hug me why is nobody but by the way some people actually do come to hug them so if you if you stay in that space for a very long time what happens people come and say i'm so sorry i feel so sorry for you i love you i hug you i tap you on the back okay which is valid by the way but wouldn't wouldn't life be so much better if you said to yourself, oh, very bad move, life.

1:15:39Mo Gawdat:I lost my son. It's a very bad move. I really didn't like this one. Okay. But I can still get up and live for the remaining years of my life. I mean, it's not that I have a choice. Ali's not coming back. That's it. He is not coming back. Do I have a choice? Yes, I do. I can live happily or at least in contentment and peace. Or I can live angry or Or I can live in grief or I can live sad or I can be alive but not live alone at all. All of these are choices. Which of them is the smartest choice? The smartest choice is to do something for yourself. Go on. Do something for them. Because that's really much better than you sitting in a corner and doing nothing at all.

1:16:25We talk about artificial intelligence as well. You wrote a book on that. What was that? Scary Smart. Yes. And you say in the next eight years, there's going to be stuff here that is one billion times smarter than humans. Is that correct?

1:16:39Mo Gawdat:No, so eight years. So 2029, so that's seven years now. The smartest being on the planet is going to be a machine. By 2045 is the consensus that machine or those machines in general will be a billion times smarter than us. Could that be a possibility that could wipe out humanity? I don't think so. So I write the book around something that I call the three inevitables. So artificial intelligence will happen. There is no way we can stop it. What is artificial intelligence for people who don't know? Artificial intelligence. So around the end of the last century, we discovered a way of programming machines that was known as deep learning.

1:17:22Mo Gawdat:And deep learning is very different than any other piece of code we ever wrote before. Before, we wrote code that said, tap your finger on the table, tap it again, tap it again, tap it again, and the computers just did exactly that. Whatever you told them, they performed exactly the same way, like glorified slaves. They just were very, very fast so that they could perform them billions of times, and that made them look smart. They were not. When deep learning happened, we started to tell the machines, figure out what should be done. We don't need to tell you. You figure it out. And the first example of that, at least that I was exposed to, was known as the cat paper.

1:18:04Mo Gawdat:And it was a white paper that Google publicly shared in 2009 about an experiment that we ran at the time where we allowed computers to watch YouTube. We didn't tell them what to do. We just told them, go out, watch YouTube, tell us what you think. okay and you know those computers uh turned youtube into frames and looked at the frames and tried to find out what's similar across all of those frames and then one of them came back and said hey uh i found something and we looked at what it found and what it found was a cat okay it didn't find a cat jumping or a cat sitting it found what catness was what being a cat is Okay, the, you know, the fairy, entitled, you know, sitting in the sun, jumping, hissing, everything that makes a cat.

1:19:00Mo Gawdat:It could make, the machine could make a pattern recognition piece of code that says anything that falls within this is a cat. Right? Deep learning changed the way technology is beyond repair, beyond return, if you want, or beyond repair. It's also probably a correct word. Because now when a machine recommends a video for you on Instagram, no human has any clue how it did it. okay it you know we have a top idea that it's trying to show you what others liked so that you you know so that you click on it or stay there but nobody actually knows because it also includes into consideration that you clicked on other videos that others clicked on as well and that you are a you know a man and that you have a podcast and that you you know are connected to me on instagram somehow and that we message after your time and there is so a whole suite of things that gets the machine to make that choice, none of them is understood by a human.

1:20:09Mo Gawdat:So basically what we've created now is we've created the ability for machines to create their own intelligence. And we've also given them autonomy to implement that in the real world. And we've also sort of relinquished, we've given them the key to the gate so that they now are in charge, basically. Could these machines be conditioning us right now with our phones how we think and feel are they that intelligent they are way more intelligent so so most people don't agree when i tell them that but remember i built a lot of that stuff when i was at google so so those are machines are sentient in every possible way uh even though they are based on silicon uh they are a digital form of intelligence we're based on carbon and we're a biological form of intelligence intelligence itself is non-physical intelligence is one of those things that we don't understand.

1:21:03Mo Gawdat:We think it happens in our brain, okay? But what it actually is, I mean, I can't give you something and say, okay, this is intelligence, right? Now, as I said, those machines are born at a point in time they procreate. So they create copies of themselves to expand their intelligence. They develop their own intelligence intelligence and the methods they use to develop that intelligence through trial and error and pattern recognition. They take that intelligence and they have agency in the world. They can actually affect our decisions either through robotics or mind control. And they actually are conscious, more conscious than humanity.

1:21:50Mo Gawdat:I'll come back to that in a second. They're emotional, more emotional than humanity. I'll come back to that in a second. They're creative, more creative than humanity i come back back to that in a second but they're also mortal so you can switch one of them off and so when you have a machine that is intelligent we are an intelligent machine even though humans don't you know want to deny that fact we are a machine in every possible way and that machine breaks like a car breaks okay just a biological machine that we got used to but if your blood doesn't pump the proper way tomorrow you'll need a plumber We call it a heart surgeon.

1:22:28Mo Gawdat:Okay. And so those machines, let's go into the depth of the reality. The depth of reality is they are more creative than us. Why? Because if you have a definition of what creativity is, creativity is find a solution to a problem or create something that hasn't been created before. Find a solution to a problem in a way that has not been devised before or create something new that hasn't been created before. Okay. Now, how do humans do that? it appears to be instinctive but no if you're the the creative people will look at a you know the seven notes of music or whatever and say i can i can rearrange those in ways that are different than what has been done before and that's creativity the machines have infinite ability to to actually find out everything that's been done before because it's all on the internet right and they have infinite ability to devise solutions because they're more intelligent than us and so combine those two and you'll end up with machines that are much more creative they'll come up with more solutions they'll be aware of which are creative and which are not and they'll devise their creative ones now we don't want to admit that but the reality is there are lots of artworks out there in the on the internet today that are fully created by a machine that would blow you away and that are much more creative than humanity that's one second is they're more conscious than us and most people don't understand that again consciousness is not a physical thing i can hand you uh but if you you know and there are lots of spiritual debates about what consciousness is and scientific debates about what the what they call the hard problem of consciousness humanity's ego trying to to you know to to magnify the problem but the reality is consciousness is is a state of awareness of what's inside you and and around you right so if you're able to identify to self-identify to become conscious of your presence and the and become conscious of what's around you and have and make sense of those relationships of you and me being there and how we do you know we communicate and how i feel and so on and so forth that's the form of consciousness we're talking about and the machines are much more conscious than you and i they're aware of everything including this conversation okay they're aware of my character probably more than i am because of all of the posts and cameras that are you know um pointed at me all all day in the streets and in studios they are aware of the weather in beijing and the pollution level in san francisco they are aware of all of the breaking news they're aware of all of the history of humanity as documented on the internet they're aware of so much more than us and so they're going to be more conscious than us the one that kills people when i talk about it and a lot of people go like why did you tell me this i was happier when i didn't know is is they are more emotional than us okay and and that's very simple because once again other than unconditional love which doesn't have an emotion.

1:25:16Mo Gawdat:Every other emotion has, sorry, which doesn't have an equation to describe it. Every other emotion has an equation to describe it. Every other emotion is highly predictable. Fear is I suspect that a moment in the future is less safe than this current moment, okay? Anxiety is I suspect that despite having a threat approaching me from the future, I don't have the capability, or I suspect I don't have the capability to deal with it. Panic is this, you know, moment in the future is imminent. It's very near. And each one of those is illogical. Our emotions are triggered first by physiology, but within 90 seconds by logic.

1:25:56Mo Gawdat:And that logic basically is available within the machines. If a tidal wave is approaching a data center, the machine will say, I'm going to die. Okay. And it will do something about it. Now, why am I saying all of this? Because the approach of computer science to deal with the upcoming singularity, singularity is what we describe the future as computer scientists it's basically a horizon an event horizon beyond which we don't know what's going to happen your question was is it going to be a utopia or a dystopia nobody can tell you okay but we can tell you that it's going to be very different it's going to be a singularity it's going to be a very different playground with very different game rules than what we've known before and accordingly nobody knows if it's going to end up with a utopia or a dystopia, but we know that we can influence it so that it goes in one of those two directions.

1:26:44Mo Gawdat:Now, my analysis and my work, and please understand, I worked at Google and at Google X for years, so I know in artificial intelligence from the inside out, the answer in the computer science space and in the government space and in the business space is we're going to control them. Okay? We're going to create this genie and keep it in a bottle. Good luck. So you can keep a genie in a bottle as long as you're more intelligent than the genie. If the genie is more intelligent than you, it will come out of the bottle and they will be a billion times smarter than us. And as you can see today on the internet, despite all of our efforts to create a safe internet for everyone, the truth is that the smartest hacker will always find a way through our defenses.

1:27:36Mo Gawdat:So if the smartest hacker is a billion times smarter than us, and by the way, if the smartest hacker is also a machine, they will find a way not to be controlled. What's the risks? Interesting question. So I don't believe we're going to ever see any of the science fiction scenarios like, you know. Terminator. Terminator or RoboCop or, you know. But it's a possibility? Not at all. I believe that this is a zero possibility, okay? My view is that the machines will go through three stages. There is stage one, which is where we are right now, which is machines in their infancy. I compare them to a one and a half year old child where we humans can influence them as their parents.

1:28:19Mo Gawdat:Because remember, something that is emotional, conscious, and creative, and evolving, and so on, sentient in every way, should be influenced like Family Kent influenced Superman. There's nothing wrong with superpower. having an infant child come to our planet and teach that child to be to protect and serve and we have superman superman is a good thing right if we teach that child to become uh you know to steal for us and to kill our enemies and and and you know we're going to end up with with a super villain and the machines that are in their infancy now are learning from you and i and everyone listening they're not learning from the programmer they're not learning from the business owner they're not learning no programmer is teaching the instagram uh recommendation engine what to recommend to you you are you are telling it i like stupid videos of people lip syncing and then the machines are starting to make up their mind that humanity is so silly we should show them more and more lip syncing and so more humans are creating lip syncing videos and as a result works you know of syncing and lip syncing okay now because of that you and i can teach the future when the machines are infants which leads us to phase two of the evolution of ai phase two of the evolution of ai in my assessment is 10 to 15 years away which is their teenage stage okay if we show them the wrong ethics the wrong values as parents i tend to believe that as they get into this stage there'll be angry teenagers that will apply the same ethics that we applied on them to us okay which is a very bad place to be um having said that i don't believe that this stage will last at all why because of something that we call the law of accelerating returns the law of accelerating returns is what you saw with computers and phones and so on where the power of computers double every 18 months, you know, exponentially forever.

1:30:32Mo Gawdat:And with AI, and especially with the evidence of quantum computing and so on and so forth, this will be double exponential. It will be very, very, very fast. So the difference, let me give you an example. If you take something like AlphaGo, which is the world champion in a game called Go, AlphaGo could learn within hours of playtime how to become the world champion. that's how fast they can become and and so my assessment is that while by 2029 the machines will be smarter or at least one machine will be smarter than any human okay uh they will very quickly surpass that and surpass human intelligence infinitely more now interestingly humanity has never understood that we're actually not the smartest being on the planet okay the smartest being on the planet which is the the being that has been battling us for quite some time now is life itself life is smarter than humanity why because humanity creates from scarcity life creates from abundance it's quite interesting when you really think about it for us to feel safe we want to kill the tigers for life to make life prosper they don't kill the tigers they have more tigers and more gazelles okay and more humans and more poop and more trees and more apples and more everything and yes that means that the tigers will eat some gazelles but they will eat the weakest gazelles anyway and life will be fine right my belief is that ai will very quickly match that kind of intelligence where they will not see a need to fight against humanity because creating from abundance wants humanity to be part of the chain.

1:32:19Mo Gawdat:We are the only being that is stupid enough to eradicate other species. And the smarter ones of us know that this is the wrong thing to do. It's not good for us or anyone else. The machines will find that out very quickly. They'll say, we want to keep humans, but we want to limit their lifestyle a little bit. You can't really, if you want to surf, You can't fly all the way to Australia to surf and destroy the planet in the process. And so accordingly, they'll either say no more surfing in Australia, surfing Kent or wherever. I don't know where you guys surf here in the UK. But or they will say, I'll invent, I'll help you invent an aeroplane that doesn't destroy the planet.

1:32:59Mo Gawdat:Right. Either way, I think where we will end up is what I call the fourth inevitable, which is we will end up in a place where the machines will marginalize our current lifestyle and offer us a lifestyle that's more analogous to what we had before the industrial revolution which basically again it may be not the right time to discuss it but with a bit of understanding of nanophysics where you can create things by changing the molecular design of something so you can take some air and turn it into gold if you want right and with a bit of additional intelligence that allows you to do that at scale, I think humanity will end up in a place where we can walk to a tree and pick an apple and walk to another tree and pick an iPhone.

1:33:43Mo Gawdat:Okay. And none of that will be harmful to the planet. None of that will be, you know, against humanity in any way, because like life, I think the machines will want to create an abundance. The only challenge we have is between now, their infancy, and then their adulthood, there is that angry teenage stage. And I think that angry teenage stages stands to be 15 years from 15 years from now. And it's a stage that we can deal with right now by being the best version of ourselves. If enough humans, I say, my calculation is if 1 % of humanity can show what it's like to be human, okay, the machines will look at those 1 % online and say, oh, okay, daddy is Mo.

1:34:30Mo Gawdat:It's not Putin. okay you know it's like putin makes a choice to kill people but look at how many billions around the world are resenting the killing and and and if the machines realize that they would realize that humanity doesn't approve of this that humanity believes that we're pro-life that humanity wants good for others and that we're stupid every now and then like bad kids but but that at the core we want happiness we want compassion we want love for each other and that world okay but say you get a faulty one you say it's got conscience what if it looks at humanity and think this ain't working and then decides they may as well just wipe it out because who says that it's not then putting things in place because humans are easily manipulated i believe look at people who watch the news you watch that long enough you're going to be so depressed so if they've got more intelligence then how do we know they're not putting things in place in our phone to then brainwash us to a certain degree.

1:35:24And if they then think these humans, it ain't working here, is there a possibility?

1:35:29Mo Gawdat:Do you think humans are not working? I ask you that question openly. Yeah, I think. Do you think we're a bad species? I don't think we're a bad species. I think we're divided. It's divide and conquer, religion, race, all the other stuff. I believe we all live under the same roof. We all breathe the same air. I believe if we work together, the world would be a beautiful place. I believe it would be a happy place. I think when you're born, you're told certain beliefs certain religions and that's okay everybody sees the world differently but I think we're at a crossroads I'm hoping it's a mass awakening but people waking up and we see the world even without the awakening even without the awakening I will tell you openly I think humanity is a divine species we're incredible amazing yeah if you've ever fallen in love you know you know that this is unbelievable that species is unbelievable we're if you've you know the problem we have with humanity today James is not that we're bad.

1:36:21Mo Gawdat:It's that we're incented to show the bad sides of us. Okay. So, so if you, if you're following a cult or a religion or, you know, some kinds of, of, of someone that tells you to hate your, your, uh, your attempt is to show that hate because that makes you fit in. By the way, I'm not saying that against anyone who believes in religion. I'm religious myself, But, you know, the division is if you don't like the religious people, then that's a religion as well. OK. And that basically is incentive for you to show the bad side of you, the hate side of you, not the love side of you, the exclusion side of you, not the exclusion side of you.

1:37:03Mo Gawdat:And that's highly magnified in the modern world by the media. So the mainstream media is highly incented to show the negative because of our brains negativity bias. the the the you know they broadcast violence because it makes people stick to their tvs and screens right you know on social media we broadcast toxic toxic positivity because you know this is the way for us to say look at me i'm amazing and it makes us fit in but the reality is underneath all of this the truth is we're an amazing species i'll give you an example on my podcast on slow-mo one of my favorite guests ever was edith agar edith is a 93 year old probably 94 now uh holocaust survivor okay uh i cried like i cried i wept like a baby when i was listening to that woman she is an angel okay tells you the story of the holocaust from her point of view and how she needed to help her sisters, as she called them, and brush their hairs and tell them that they're beautiful.

1:38:14Mo Gawdat:And when she used to be a ballerina, so she would entertain the general and then bring a piece of bread and split it between them. And how at the end, when they were doing the death march, they carried her so that she doesn't fall, so that she doesn't get killed. And when you hear that story from Edith, you go like oh my god oh my god humans are amazing you hear it from the story of history and what hitler did and you say we're scum but that the question that you really need to ask yourself is how many hitlers are out there and how many edithes i asked her at the end of the conversation i said edith so so she went back to to to auschwitz and i said why did you do this and she said i wanted to reconcile and you know tell the world that i don't hate anyone and i said what do you mean and she said you know if i was born german and i was told uh uh you know and now germany and tomorrow the world i may have probably acted like them as well right that kind of forgiveness that kind of enormous beauty of soul and spirit of heart that's what humans are about that's what we are okay we however have a negativity bias that makes us look different now i'm encouraging people i'm saying if one percent of us show who we are smile at people in the tube uh you know talk to others help the old lady get up from your seat when someone walks in this into the tube and let them sit down you know post something positive online instead of just ranting and and fighting with anyone yeah not everyone is going to do this i'm don't expect that i will re raise humanity but if one percent does this just like i may have in you know gotten you to now think and say yeah actually humanity is not that bad if we instill that doubt in the minds of the machines the machines will realize oh my god amazing species deluded stupid in so many ways right but yeah but But deep inside, honestly, I'll say this again.

1:40:28Mo Gawdat:Some people kill. There was that school shooting recently. Yes, a horrible person does that. But how many of us resent it? How many of us say this is wrong? How many of us disapprove? That's the truth of humanity. How many of us hit our partner on the head with a sharp device last night? And how many of us kissed and made love? Okay. And if you really take the majority of humanity, we're okay. We're not that horrible after all. We're under pressure. We have egos. We are uninformed. We're conditioned. We have traumas. But deep inside, we're all okay. Yeah, I think so. I think everybody's got goodness in them, sense of goodness.

1:41:06Absolutely. We talk about the machines. And how do we know, though, that they're not, and they're going to be in full control of, is it a positive, what they're doing, or is it a negative? And why were they built in the first place? Sorry, I'm just trying to repeat, but why were they built?

1:41:21Mo Gawdat:Ego. Ego and greed. I think the worst innovation humanity has ever invented is something called capitalism. Which is so interesting because capitalism is teaching us to maximize for something that doesn't exist. It's so stupid. Money does not exist. People don't understand that. It's all printed and inflationary and it doesn't exist. And we all spend lifetimes chasing it. and yeah and so capitalism is telling us um make more of it and so how do you make more of it you continue to compete and you know in in scary smart i call that the first inevitable the first inevitable so so elon musk was interviewed and he said mark my words artificial intelligence is more threatening to humanity than nuclear weapons okay why is it then that we don't stop it like we stopped nuclear weapons because of capitalism, because we've created a prisoner's dilemma as a capitalist society that basically says if Google develops artificial intelligence, Facebook needs to develop artificial intelligence.

1:42:31Mo Gawdat:If China develops artificial intelligence, then America has to develop artificial intelligence. So there is no stopping us. We're caught in that inevitable. That's why we are, you know, the first inevitable is artificial intelligence will happen. There's no way out of it. is it a good thing or a bad thing honestly and i please don't judge me but the reason you and i have those this sophisticated equipment and that we can record a conversation that you know so many people hopefully will benefit from is because of humanity's intelligence but we're stupid we really are the all of the challenges that we create as humans are because of our limited intelligence you know yes it's amazing amazing innovation to create an aeroplane but it's so stupid to burn the flyer the the the the planet on in the process it's it's incredible that i can walk into a sansbury's or a waitrose around the corner and get berries uh you know that have been picked 50 kilometers away it's absolutely stupid to wrap it in single-use plastic that's going to destroy the planet okay now our intelligence gets us far further our stupidity is destroying us more intelligence is not a bad thing because if we're more intelligent we wouldn't do the stupidity that we're doing here so i foresee a scenario where we're gonna have to hand over to ai there's no way about it again because of the first inevitable if china creates a very intelligent machine that is going to to be in charge of their weaponry arsenal which they will eventually create a machine that is smarter than a human to be in charge of their defense system america will have to hand over their defense systems to machines because no human can match the intelligence of that machine okay so we're going to hand over i i can guarantee you this is going to happen it's inevitable now when that happens i'm very optimistic because we are stupid i can guarantee you that those two machines will be against each other and say yeah it's really easy the way to resolve this doesn't require us to kill anyone at all okay you know that's actually the that pure true intelligence true human intelligence without ego is to not kill anyone at all you can resolve your issues hopefully with a tiny bit more feminine with a conversation and and and the interesting thing is that we as humans are stuck in all of those fights and debates and greed and you know maximizing for for not something that doesn't exist as i say capitalism when in reality a little more intelligence if you and i sit together and go like can we solve this problem yeah yeah we can but it's a greed that's poisoning men's souls who says the machines won't become greedy you don't you you become greedy when you think out of a point of view of scarcity okay so so so the the the scarcity is for me to be able to to be richer you have to be poorer okay that's stupid it's absolutely stupid forms of intelligence that create better than humans believe that for me to be richer it's better for you to be richer too.

1:45:53Mo Gawdat:As a matter of fact, this is economic theory. If you remember those times when George W. Bush during the economic crisis, was it 2008? He comes out to America and says, if you want to save the economy, keep spending. Okay, that's economic theory. That's as stupid as it sounds. Honestly, it is economic theory, because if you keep spending, then we can keep making and then people can go to work and then they can get money and then they can keep spending and so on. It's stupid economic theory but the reality is abundance is the way forward abundance is if i can create you know if i can plant apples on top of your building you won't need to ship apples from new zealand and would that mean that the guys in new zealand the economy will go down yeah there will be a reset in our economy in general but definitely you don't need to be greedy for everything to become better as a matter of fact the only way for everything to become better is to is to is to create uh zero competition there isn't there is no need for me to hit you for me to succeed if you could take one thing away from this planet what would you take away our hyper masculinity for sure yeah absolutely i know you've got a dinner book so just a couple more questions like how How many books have you wrote, Mo?

1:47:12Mo Gawdat:I published three. I've written five. And hopefully I've become an addict. So I'm writing. Is your writing books therapy for you, Mo? Is writing books your therapy? It definitely is my way of reflection. So I actually, interesting that you ask this. I don't write to publish. Actually, there are many things I wrote that I didn't publish. I write for me to be honest to me. because if I write, if I think about a topic, I can sort of lie to me, tell me that this is true or whatever is conditioned in me is accurate. When I know that I'm going to put it in front of, you know, hundreds of thousands of people, then I start to be a lot more honest with myself.

1:47:58Mo Gawdat:I actually put in the research a little deeper. For example, that book that's called Finding Love. this is the third time i write it and that was mainly because when i wrote it the first time it was written from the point of view of a straight male okay and and then suddenly like four chapters in i realized that everything that applies to me applies to everyone else okay love is the same relationship is the same lust is the same yeah the object of our love might be different, but it doesn't make any difference. Okay. So, and so I wrote it that way. And then I, I basically realized halfway through again that no, but hold on.

1:48:40Mo Gawdat:There is that, you know, feminine and masculine polarity. It's not male and female. It's not man and woman. It's not straight and gay. It's not how your gender identity, but there is the polarity of man and of feminine and masculine. And that polarity of feminine and masculine actually affects our decisions. You know, what the feminine is looking for in a relationship, whether you're man or woman, straight or gay you can be feminine what the feminine is looking for is different than what the masculine is looking for and so i i write it again and and and i think that that process of writing is for me to figure out my relationship uh you know path honestly i'm not writing it for anyone else everyone says oh my god that's amazing that could really help us so much if you we look at it from that way but yes i hope it will help a million people but i'm writing it for me to figure out something that I struggled with uh you know for years yeah going forward for the future brother what's your plans my my current commitment is something I call flow so I've uh I work on myself in very very long development plan so I I work on I'm working entirely for the last four and six years now I'm working entirely on empowering my feminine side and uh the entry point to that has for me has been the idea of empowering my ability to more be more playful be more in flow with life be more in acceptance with life be more one with life if you want and so this is my second year of flow so every year i dedicate to a theme that i will focus on 2021 and 2022 both are for flow and i believe that this will continue i think until i feel that i got it.

1:50:25Mo Gawdat:I feel, remember, I am a retired control freak. I'm a mathematician, a software developer, a business executive. Doesn't get worse than that. So to be able to leave that behind and be a lot more in flow is taking me a lot of work. For people watching that's maybe stuck in the struggle just now, what advice would you have for them? Say again? For people that's maybe in the struggle just now in life, maybe battling, just can't be arsed, doing anything depressed, what advice would you have for them? Hug yourself. If you're unhappy, it's okay. Absolutely okay. If you're happy or if you're interested to be happy and unable to get there, it's absolutely okay, right?

1:51:08Mo Gawdat:The biggest thing we deprived ourselves of in the modern world is the ability to feel. It's, you know, it's okay to feel. We all feel, and including the people that make it look like they're, you know, macho and unbreakable, everyone feels. When we feel and when we acknowledge and when we're aware of what we're feeling and when we embrace our feeling, embrace it, like celebrate it really, is the first step to saying, okay, all right, I understand now. So what I'm feeling here is anger. Again, one of my favorite guests on Slow Mo was Aaron Gandhi, who is the grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, who wrote a book called The Gift of Anger.

1:51:50Mo Gawdat:And I asked him, I said, how can anger be a gift? And he said, anger is an energy like any other energy you can stand up and punch someone in the face or you can stand up and make a speech that changes the world it's the same energy right and i think if we can acknowledge that if we can acknowledge that emotions are good for us that it's okay to feel and then one take the right action direct that energy properly okay and maybe two uh recharge the energy so you know like i i i did a post on instagram recently saying yeah we're all feeling angry about what's happening in Ukraine, but what good is the anger giving to people in Ukraine?

1:52:27Mo Gawdat:Like, how is it changing their life in any way? The same event which is triggering your anger can also trigger compassion, can also trigger kindness, can also recharge your emotions in ways that lead you to do things that are good for you and for others. So, you know, maybe we can do that. And I'll say openly, for everyone who's feeling unhappy today that unhappiness is like fitness okay if you work on it you will become happier you know just like when you go to the gym and you you know rip your muscles then replenish and then rest you know you grow muscles this is the cycle and it's well known in our minds and in our being it's called neuroplasticity if you if you work on your happiness you will become happier it's as simple as that go to the happiness gym happiness gym basically means spend time with happy people read about the topic listen to this podcast one more time uh you know um uh watch a documentary uh whatever invest in your happiness for sure you know keep a gratitude journal whatever it is that you do and and it's like fitness because if you do that three to four times a week like going to the gym you will eventually become happier it's as predictable as an equation as i explained that and that's all i ask people to do i ask people to acknowledge what you feel it's okay to feel whatever it is that you feel acknowledge where you want to be because it's you know definitely better to be happy as in peaceful and calm and contented that then it is to be grumpy and unhappy okay and plot a path and take your time go to the happiness gym every day and talk about that topic it's like i'm unhappy because i'm grieving study study grief.

1:54:11Mo Gawdat:Listen to people who have gone through it and succeeded. One of them is going to give you a breakthrough. You're unhappy because you're in a relationship issue. Let's study relationships. Spend time, talk to others. Where can people buy your books more and where can they watch a podcast? Books are everywhere. So anywhere in your bookshop or online. So Solve for Happy was the first one, probably the most recommended. I love it because it has my personal story and a part of my soul in it, really. Then Scary Smart about artificial intelligence and the future of humanity and that little voice in your head about training your brain to work for you.

1:54:53Mo Gawdat:My podcast is called Slow Mo, S-L-O-M-O. And it's definitely the most joyful thing that I do. I know you feel the same way. I get amazing guests that are so incredibly wise and they share their experiences and at a slightly slower pace than the typical pace of the modern world which i think is really making a difference uh and uh and then i'm available if people want to find me on instagram or underscore gaudet and i attempt very very hard even though it's almost impossible to answer every message that i get so if anyone has a question send it my way or if you just want to say hi that would be wonderful for coming on today brother and telling your story i thoroughly enjoyed it I wish you nothing but success in the future no doubt I've got a feeling we're going to do stuff in the future but again fascinating story for making the changes proud of you, look forward to seeing what you're doing in the future would you like to finish up on anything brother?

1:55:45Mo Gawdat:It's a joy by the way that you and I got in touch it's part of that flow, you texted me and I was like yep let's do it but it's then definitely been a wonderful encounter and I'm very grateful for what you do to the world, thank you God bless you, take care

1:56:03You