ON GRIEF… With Mo Gawdat and Bonnie Tyler

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0:51Welcome to your now twice weekly dose of how to fail. Don't say I never spoil you. You're welcome. With a brilliant back catalogue and years worth of content and conversations, I wanted to revisit some of the most meaningful and powerful conversations. I know that these episodes have resonated with you because I hear from you all of the time about how certain insights or moments have really shaped how you see life and have made you feel less alone. And it felt to me that maybe the best way of doing this was by theming the episodes and exploring different topics. So this week we're exploring a big one.

1:29We're exploring grief. First, we hear from one of our favourite guests of all time, the incredible Mo Gaudat, who talks in the most inspiring way about how he managed to reframe his mindset around his son Ali's death. Secondly, Bonnie Tyler speaks about her mum losing her daughter, Bonnie's sister. these stories are raw moving unflinching and in their own ways beautifully uplifting i hope they resonate with you as much as they did and do with me now here's the trick if you had a friend i apologize if anyone listening to us is called becky i call my brain becky okay if you have a friend in school becky who was so annoying She showed up every seven minutes, told you awful things about yourself, made you feel horrible, and then left with no positive impact whatsoever on your life.

2:30Would you wake up the next morning, go to school and say, I miss Becky? Would you listen to Becky when she speaks? What would you do with Becky when she starts to do that? You'll say, no, Becky, please don't do this to me. If Becky starts to tell you weird lies, you'll say, Becky, do you have any evidence to back this up? Right? If Becky doesn't, Becky's a third party, huh? you would say, Becky, this is crap. You don't have the right to waste my life on crap. And that's exactly what our brains do. I stop in the middle of a conversation. I say to myself, Becky, what did you just say? Now, here's the interesting thing.

3:05It's not you talking to you. It's a biological organ talking to you. As horrible as that sounds, it's a three pound lump of meat. Okay. The other interesting side of this is the following. If I give you a Ferrari, Ferraris are horrible cars. If I give you a really good car, okay, and, you know, I tell you to go around the track with that car and you don't know how to drive, you're going to kill yourself and everyone else. Understand how that brain works. Now, we think there is one type of thought. As a matter of fact, there are three types of thought. The type of thought that makes us unhappy is incessant thinking.

3:38Incessant thinking is basically your brain sounding the siren. Something's wrong. Something's wrong. Something's wrong. that incessant thinking doesn't lead to anything doesn't change anything in the real world it happens in the midline areas of your brain there are two other types of thoughts that are useful one of them is insightful thinking and the other is experiential thinking insightful thinking is when you solve a problem experiential thinking is when you observe the world as it is okay those happen mostly on the right hand side of the brain some in the prefrontal cortex some in the insula and so on those kinds of thoughts are the thoughts you should allow your brain to give you and by the way, that's the attitude we use at work.

4:17If someone walks into my office and complains, I don't let them complain incessantly. Midway, I say, is there any information we're missing about this? Should we look at this differently? This is insightful thinking, okay? And experiential thinking. This is basically looking at the world as it is. Then I ask, what can we do about it? And that's exactly what I do with my brain. Ali, my son, leaves our world, okay? People think that I'm not given a choice. I am given two choices. One of them is to cry for the rest of my life. And then 27 years later, when I'm on my deathbed, Ali will still not be there.

4:51Is that a wise choice? The other is to do something about it. That doesn't bring him back. Nothing's going to bring him back. It's the truth. He left. Right. But what I can do is I at least can make my life a little better and his life and the life of a billion people a little better than the day he left. Isn't that a better way of doing it? Now, of course, I feel pain. I miss him tremendously. But pain doesn't dictate how my brain tortures me. Pain is different than suffering. Pain is I remember him. I feel that I miss him. Suffering is my brain telling me you should have driven him to another hospital.

5:33And my brain did, by the way. Okay, I allow my brain only two types of thought. One is useful thinking, and the other is joyful thinking. Anything else I say, Becky, stop, behave. Useful thinking. If my brain tells me you should have driven him to another hospital, I basically say to my brain, I cannot do this right now. Do you have something you want to tell me that I can do. I wish I could, but I cannot. Give me a useful thought. So my brain says, why don't we write the happiness model we learned with him, share it with 10 million people was the original target, and make 10 million people remember him and love him and send him a happy wish.

6:12That would be a good way to honor him. Great. That's a great idea, brain. Thank you. That's how we should think, right? Or a joyful thought. Until today, I promise you, three to four times a week, I wake up in the morning or I go to bed at night and the only thought that comes to my head is Ali died. He's part of my heart. It's just I feel that part of me is missing, right? I answer in a very simple way and I say, yes brain, but Ali also lived. Do you understand that? Ali died is a horribly painful thought. Ali lived is the same thought, but it's a beautiful thought. It's 21 years of joy, of wisdom, of learning, of insightful discoveries, of memories of him taking care of Aya, taking care of me, taking care of his mother that I wouldn't replace for anything.

7:04Honestly, even if you tell me, we'll take away your pain for losing your son, I wouldn't say, no, no, no, hold on. I want him. I want the 21 years. don't lie to me brain don't lie to me but think about those because when I say Ali lived I start to get memories that are all happy all joyful all things that we did together that's me being the boss that's me telling my brain to take charge so that if there is something we can do we do it if there isn't then don't torture me because there is no point to torture me if there is nothing I can do about it. Mary that is so beautiful thank you so much for expressing that with such eloquence and passion.

7:55You say you have three sisters and two brothers. Yeah. There was another sister. Oh, yes. Pauline. Yeah, Pauline was stillborn. My mother never, ever got over Pauline dying, you know. She was full term, you know. nine months I can't do you know the thing you see when you're young and you're told that you would have had another sister but she was still born it doesn't sink in what actually my mother actually must have gone through carrying a baby for all those nine months and then nothing at the end of it it must have been traumatic but she never really showed us her pain but it must have been terrible for her but she never did get over it man she always whenever people said how many children do you have and she always counted Pauline you know and actually in 2020 my brother my eldest brother died Lynn he was so proud he was you know he was wonderful and he wasn't ready to go he was enjoying his life You know, he loved life.

9:10He loved his kids. He loved his grandkids. And he just died in his sleep. I'm so sorry. And now it was awful shock. Awful shock. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. Oh, well, you know, he had a wonderful life and I know he's in a good place. But it was a terrible shock. Yes. And so you could relate, presumably, even more to what your mother must have been through. Yeah. Yeah. You know, because at least he's with my mother and father now and Pauline and, you know. Will you tell me the story of the father Christmas napkin? Oh, right. Oh, gosh. I'm sorry. I read it and it was so beautiful. Yeah, I know. But my mother, she died of Alzheimer's, bless her.

10:05And shortly before she... We don't have to talk about it. I'll be all right now. Okay. So, shortly before she, you know, got really bad with Alzheimer's, she was at my house and it was near Christmas, I suppose, because I had these placemats on the table that they had like a Father Christmas on them and like a pocket where you put the napkin in. And it was very Christmassy, you know. and she folded it up all the way into like a little triangle. It was a linen placemat that you put over a placemat, you know. And she folded it up into like a little triangle and she kind of gave it to me in my hand and she said, When I go, please put this in my coffin, right?

11:20I said, Mom, don't talk like that. You know, I want you to put it in my coffin, she said, because I want to give Pauline something when I get there, she said. Oh, God. Anyway, so I did it, along with us all putting little things in the coffin, you know, photographs, lectures, as you do, you know. But she wanted me to do that, so I did it. And I still got one. You had a tea as well. I've still got one in my house. Thank you. Oh, thank you. That's a tissue. I'm so sorry oh my gosh oh I had the best mother in the world though I know we all say we got the best mother but I did yeah she was an angel

12:19please do follow How To Fail to get new episodes as they land on Apple Podcasts Spotify Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts please tell all your friends this is an Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment original podcast thank you so much for listening Thank you.