0:00

If something is wrong, it's okay to

0:02

feel the pain, it's okay to feel

0:04

alerted. What's not okay is

0:06

the suffering. What's not

0:08

okay is telling yourself the next morning

0:10

to replay the pain. What's not okay

0:12

is to add to the pain. Hello

0:16

everyone, it's Sage. Welcome to the Tony

0:18

Robbins podcast. Tony and I had the

0:20

privilege to sit with a beautiful friend

0:23

and brother, his name is Mo Gaddat,

0:25

at a platinum partnership program that we did

0:27

in Mexico. Gosh, the brilliance

0:30

of this man's mind. He's an

0:32

engineer. He's got the most beautiful

0:34

heart. He's used his life experiences,

0:36

loss of his stun, to create

0:38

an algorithm for happiness and

0:40

just practical, pragmatic ways to apply

0:42

inquiry. He also came up with

0:45

a new book called Unstressable. It's

0:47

one of my favorite episodes. Please tune in

0:49

and join us for Mo. Very

0:53

quick introduction. I'm the luckiest man you will

0:55

ever meet despite the harshness of my life.

0:58

I'm so lucky. I was born and raised in

1:00

Egypt, a public school, public

1:02

university in Egypt, which basically

1:05

means I'm almost uneducated.

1:07

And I went so far

1:09

in life, it really, really was unbelievable.

1:11

It's just so strange that I could

1:14

live a life that took me this

1:16

far. And when I started

1:23

my life, I lived two literally,

1:25

two full lives so far. Okay.

1:28

One of them was the life that

1:30

you saw with the big logos of

1:32

Google and what have you, which

1:36

there was a very defining moment.

1:38

I graduated from university as

1:40

an engineer. I'm a very serious math

1:43

geek. I promise you, I speak mathematics

1:45

and numbers better than I speak English

1:47

by a very large distance. And

1:49

I had to learn to translate

1:52

my view of life, which is highly

1:54

algorithmic into words so that people

1:56

can benefit from it. In each.

2:00

where I was born and raised, this

2:02

is really frowned upon. If

2:05

you don't talk about football and all

2:07

of the stuff that my other fellow

2:09

friends were talking about, you're

2:11

not in a good place to grow up being

2:14

a geek at all. So

2:17

I struggled with that in my early

2:19

life, but then somehow

2:22

as I finished my university, I was at a

2:24

stage in life where I decided, you know what,

2:26

I'm just gonna live whatever I like. And

2:29

I was a very serious carpenter,

2:32

so I started a

2:34

workshop. I

2:38

didn't care, never really cared about money, to be

2:40

honest, which is probably one of the reasons

2:42

why it chases me. And in

2:44

an interesting way, I'm in that carpentry

2:47

workshop and I'm totally in love with

2:50

the woman of my life, now

2:52

my ex-wife, but was still really one of the

2:54

dearest people to me in the world. You

2:57

know, stayed together for 27 years, but

3:00

she was like, look, if we're gonna get

3:02

married, you're gonna have to show up with

3:04

something more than a carpenter to my dad.

3:07

So, you know, do

3:09

something. So I still, you know, through

3:11

sheer luck, I worked at IBM, then

3:14

I worked at Microsoft, then I worked at

3:16

Google. At the time, all

3:18

those companies were completely changing the world.

3:23

Qualifications, I promise you no.

3:27

But somehow, you know, there must have

3:29

been 50,000 people around the

3:31

world that could do this job better than

3:33

me at the height of my career, I

3:35

became Chief Business Officer of Google X. So

3:38

it wasn't just Google, it wasn't just X,

3:40

which is like the best part

3:42

of Google, it was Chief Business Officer of

3:44

a place that was promising to change the

3:46

world. Enormous, enormous privilege.

3:50

That journey, on the other hand, was

3:53

parallel to a very different journey. I

3:58

was the happiest moment in my life. you will

4:00

have ever seen until age 25. Age

4:04

25, I married my college

4:06

sweetheart, who

4:08

I loved dearly, who was a

4:10

gorgeous and wonderful and spiritual and

4:12

smart woman. And

4:15

she gives me this wonderful little child,

4:18

Ali. And Ali,

4:21

like any good father would do, I

4:23

went to the operating the delivery room.

4:26

And the minute this little crumbly thing

4:28

shows up, they're

4:30

really not pretty when they're born. Just let's be very

4:32

clear about that. At least fathers don't see that, even

4:35

if they tell you that they are. And

4:37

I look at that thing and I promise you,

4:39

my entire life flipped upside down. I

4:42

was like, that's it. This thing is never

4:44

gonna need anything ever again. And

4:47

so I put my head down, used my mathematics.

4:50

And from age 25, where all I

4:52

had was my carpentry shop, just

4:54

started working at IBM. I think

4:57

I was paid $29 a month. Age

5:01

29, I promise you, I was printing

5:03

money on demand. Like literally

5:05

my lovely, wonderful

5:07

wife then would tell me, we need to change the

5:10

car. And I would say, so what would you like,

5:12

honey? And she would say, a Range

5:14

Rover. And I'd say, that's gonna have to

5:16

be Wednesday. Because between Monday,

5:18

I can't do it on Monday. And

5:21

I somehow understood mathematics to the point

5:23

where I could literally print money on

5:25

demand in a market before automatic trading

5:28

and all of the stuff that you

5:30

know today. And

5:32

I was miserable. I had

5:34

the most gorgeous woman in my life,

5:37

two wonderful kids, a massive place to

5:39

live, all of the cars that I

5:41

was crazy about, fancy suits, everything

5:44

you can think of. And I was

5:46

clinically depressed. And the

5:48

more life gave me, the more unhappy

5:50

I became. Sounds familiar? You must

5:52

know someone like that. Who's so

5:55

blessed in life and totally

5:57

miserable. a

6:00

defining moment where my wonderful little daughter,

6:02

so I'm unhappy, I'm grumpy all the

6:04

time, it doesn't feel great but you

6:06

know what, Middle Eastern men, we don't

6:09

cry so who cares, who cares about

6:11

happiness, let's just go with it. My

6:14

daughter walks in on a Saturday, I

6:16

am looking at something, crunching

6:18

numbers or looking at an email

6:21

and she's literally jumping up and

6:23

down. So Ali my son was

6:25

born a tiny little Zen monk,

6:29

constantly at peace, Ayah

6:31

my daughter was born as life

6:33

itself, enormous amounts

6:35

of fun and energy

6:37

and playfulness, two beautiful

6:39

gifts. Ayah is jumping

6:41

up and down saying, Papa we're going to

6:43

do this and we're going to play that

6:45

and can we stop and get that ice

6:47

cream on the way and

6:50

I quote, I looked at her so

6:52

grumpy and I said, can we please

6:54

be serious for a minute, okay,

6:57

she was five, right,

7:00

where did that

7:02

come from and I could see with my

7:04

own eyes as my

7:06

daughter's heart broke, okay, she

7:09

literally wet crying,

7:11

ran out of the room and for

7:13

the first time I suddenly realized I

7:16

don't like this person anymore, I

7:19

made a vow that I will not be

7:21

that person, vows

7:23

are not good enough, I

7:25

really struggled. So I remember

7:27

vividly, I walked

7:29

out of that place and did the only

7:31

thing I know how to do, I read

7:33

every book, I watched every documentary, I went

7:35

to every event I could get

7:37

access to and I

7:40

understood absolutely nothing, I

7:43

couldn't get it, what are they talking

7:45

about, why are they meditating, if someone

7:47

said, say, I

7:50

would go mad, don't say I don't want that

7:52

stuff. And

7:55

it was crazy because it wasn't that

7:58

what they were saying was wrong. or

8:00

difficult. It was actually very straightforward and you

8:02

put your mind to it. It was that

8:04

what they were telling me did not match

8:06

my way of looking at things. And

8:09

my way of looking at things was the way

8:11

of an engineer. I'll come back to that in

8:14

a minute, but let me just take you through

8:16

the rest of the story. Somehow

8:19

I found an engineering approach to happiness. You

8:21

may have seen the equation in the video

8:24

and it really worked. It

8:26

was incredibly effective, not because

8:28

it's something genius,

8:32

but because our world has

8:34

moved from the heart to

8:36

the head. So when you start

8:38

to talk to people through the head, somehow

8:41

they get it. Even though

8:44

when you just feel it, it's also the

8:46

same, but it took me a very long

8:48

time to get there. 12 years

8:50

later, I was the happiest person you'll ever meet.

8:53

At the time it was post

8:55

9-11 and I'm

8:57

a Middle Eastern. My actual name is

8:59

Muhammad Ali. Like every second terrorist on

9:01

the planet is Muhammad Ali. And I

9:04

remember vividly at the time I worked

9:06

at Microsoft and I

9:09

had to travel from Dubai to Seattle

9:11

every single month. I did that 37

9:14

times in a row. Every single

9:16

time I would land in JFK and

9:18

they would give me a big red

9:21

envelope and a big guy with a

9:23

big gun would come to me and

9:25

say, sir, do not move. And

9:28

they would walk me to the Homeland

9:30

Security room as a criminal. As

9:33

I walk in because I worked at Microsoft

9:35

at the time, the people behind the counter

9:37

would look at me and say, oh, Mr.

9:40

Gates is back. Come

9:42

to the counter to answer the same 10

9:44

questions you were asked last time. After lots

9:46

of humiliation, an hour and a half of

9:49

suffering and so on and so forth with

9:51

a massive smile on my face, nothing could

9:53

dent my happiness. It

9:55

worked. The model worked. Until

9:57

2014, I'm now Chief of the United States of

9:59

America. business officer of Google X, right?

10:02

You know, it seems that life cannot be any

10:05

better than this. I

10:07

decided to take a vacation in July. I never

10:10

ever did that in my life. My

10:12

daughter was coming to visit us from Canada.

10:14

She studied in Montreal and Concordia. And then

10:16

my son somehow, who

10:18

was a very, you know, artistic,

10:22

excellent bass guitar player, they had a tour,

10:25

they were opening for a band here in

10:27

the US. And he said, and I

10:29

quote, he called us and said, I

10:33

feel compelled to come and see

10:35

you in the next couple of

10:37

weeks. When

10:39

Ali said something, we knew he was serious.

10:42

So we said, sure, Habibi, we'd love to

10:44

have you. I as here, it would

10:46

be wonderful. He arrives four

10:48

days later, he has a belly

10:50

pain. He goes to a hospital,

10:52

they diagnose him with an inflamed

10:54

appendix, which is really, really the

10:56

simplest surgical procedure known to humanity.

11:00

And, and somehow the

11:02

surgeon does five mistakes in a row,

11:04

every single one of them is preventable,

11:06

every single one of them is fixable.

11:08

It's when you do five and you

11:10

fix them wrong. Four hours later,

11:12

Ali was gone. And

11:17

I must have spoken about this probably thousands of times

11:19

and it hurts. It really, it's

11:22

the most painful thing I

11:24

believe that a human could

11:26

ever feel losing a child is very, very,

11:30

very, very unlike our nature as

11:32

humans. And

11:34

yet somehow, four days after Ali died, I decided

11:37

I needed to, to do something. Okay.

11:39

My, my daughter walked in

11:41

and she said,

11:46

Papa Ali had a dream and his dream,

11:48

he only told her his dream and

11:52

his dream was that

11:54

he was going to

11:57

be every single one of them. And I was like, okay, I'm going to do

11:59

this. and part of everyone. And

12:05

I later I understood by the way

12:07

that in some spiritual teachings everywhere and

12:09

part of everyone is the definition of

12:11

that. But

12:13

he said that I felt so good that I

12:16

didn't want to go back to my body. Now

12:19

remember at the time I'm chief business officer

12:21

of Google X. Before that I was vice

12:23

president of Google. I opened half of Google's

12:25

offices globally and reached

12:28

four billion people with the internet. And

12:31

so I heard this she

12:33

said everywhere and part of everyone in

12:35

my blurry mind of the pain of

12:37

a father losing his child I heard

12:40

it as if Ali was saying here

12:43

is your quota okay here

12:45

is your target okay I promise

12:47

you you know Aya will

12:49

tell me you answered the weirdest answer.

12:52

So I was sitting I was standing in

12:54

front of her I found myself falling on

12:57

the on the on the living room couch

12:59

sofa and and basically saying of course happy

13:01

be considered done okay and

13:03

in my brain I was like yeah I know

13:06

how to reach billions of people I've done that

13:08

before I'm just gonna have to take whatever he

13:10

taught me about happiness and put it in a

13:12

book and at the time we had a very

13:14

simple mission 10 million happy.

13:17

I said through six degrees of separation in

13:19

70 years if I reach 10 million

13:21

you know in 70 years it will

13:25

a part of his essence will be everywhere and part

13:27

of everyone. I'll come back to that at the

13:29

end but but the idea

13:32

here is what Tony mentioned a few times

13:34

the idea of I could

13:36

if you have seen Ali once I

13:38

promise you he was tall handsome so

13:40

wise so kind

13:42

so loving at

13:44

the peak of his success and

13:48

you know if you hugged him he

13:50

had that amazing amazing energy to him

13:53

and you know if I had decided to

13:55

spend the rest of my life crying I

13:58

don't think you would have blamed me honestly nobody

14:00

would have blamed me for that. But

14:02

somehow, somehow in that situation,

14:05

I actually found a way

14:08

to make me happier by making

14:10

others happy and hopefully if you

14:12

believe, if you

14:14

understand this the way I understand this, make

14:17

him happy. Okay, so

14:20

let's go back to that happiness thing because

14:22

we spoke about this quite a lot and

14:26

as I said, I will probably not tell

14:28

you anything new but I'll try to organize

14:30

it to you in a very, very logical

14:32

way of the modern world. Any questions by

14:35

the way, midway, just jump in and we'll

14:37

have a conversation. Okay. This

14:40

happiness thing, as Estonia

14:43

and Sage actually said, everyone has a

14:45

different definition for happiness. I

14:48

don't. I'm a freaking engineer. I don't take

14:50

it that way. Okay. To me, if you

14:53

say, if you give me a problem to

14:55

solve, I need

14:57

to know what the problem definition

14:59

is. Every engineer you'll

15:01

ever meet will tell you, I can't solve it until you

15:03

give me a problem definition. And so

15:05

I'm struggling there, causing

15:08

pain for my family and very

15:10

grumpy, very unhappy and I need

15:12

to solve that thing. And

15:14

I then found myself asking, but I don't

15:16

know what happiness is. I don't understand it

15:19

and I got stuck really for four years

15:21

trying to understand what is it that I'm

15:23

searching for. Until one day

15:25

I was in a cafe

15:27

in Seattle. I remember the

15:31

time it was 4 p.m. I was

15:33

in a cafe in Seattle and I was

15:35

playing music on the 10 megabyte iPod. Do

15:38

you remember those? We were so happy with

15:40

them. Like they were amazing, right? And,

15:43

you know, a band called

15:45

Supertramp. Anyone knows Supertramp? Oh,

15:48

there you go. That's a good crowd. What's wrong

15:50

with the others? Hold on. So

15:52

anyway, Supertramp is an old British band

15:54

that played a song called the Logical

15:57

Song. Okay. starts

16:00

with, for those who remember it, when

16:03

I was young, it seemed that

16:05

life was so wonderful. All

16:07

the birds on the trees were singing

16:09

so happily, right? Again,

16:11

Sage and Tony spoke

16:14

about this, how a little

16:16

child is always happy. I

16:18

mean, of course, sometimes they fuss and cry, but

16:21

that's because there is a reason to be

16:23

unhappy. Do you understand that? The idea

16:26

is, if

16:28

you give a child love, safety,

16:31

care, feed them, make them warm,

16:33

give them their

16:36

basic needs for survival, what

16:39

is their state? They're lying on their back,

16:41

playing with their toes and giggling. If

16:44

I give you your basic needs for survival, would

16:46

you lie on your back and play with your

16:49

toes and giggling? Probably

16:51

not. I think that's

16:53

the whole point. The whole point is, suddenly,

16:56

when I heard that song, I

17:00

started to ask myself, that's actually

17:04

true. That's the story of my

17:06

life. When I was young, everything was

17:09

easy, everything was fun, everything was

17:11

playful, happiness did not seem to

17:13

be a difficult thing to reach

17:16

at all. It was accessible all

17:18

the time. Then the

17:21

song continues to say, and then they sent me

17:23

a way to teach me how to be cynical,

17:26

logical, responsible, practical,

17:30

clinical, and so on and so forth. That,

17:32

too, is the story of your life.

17:35

They send you to school or you

17:37

have a couple of demanding parents

17:39

or whatever that is, and your

17:41

situation suddenly goes from, I'm happy

17:43

all the time, all I need is

17:45

to be given my basic needs for

17:47

survival, to, no,

17:50

no, hold on, hold on, I'm unhappy all

17:52

the time, everything seems to be wrong. Think

17:56

about it. That whole

17:58

idea, that difference, are

18:01

two very important assumptions, two very,

18:03

very important things that they never

18:05

talk to us when they talk

18:07

about happiness. One of them

18:09

is we're born happy.

18:12

There's nothing to look for. There's

18:14

nowhere to go. There's nothing to seek. It's

18:18

actually already within us. And

18:21

that completely flipped my mind because remember,

18:23

at the time I was

18:25

printing money on demand, grumpy like

18:27

F, and literally

18:29

bombarding myself with things. Every

18:33

time I felt unhappy, I bought something or

18:35

I went on a vacation or I dressed

18:37

in a more expensive way or I whatever.

18:40

In my first book, if

18:44

you read it, I mentioned a time where I

18:46

was literally so empty that I

18:49

was on eBay looking at two

18:51

classic Rolls Royces, didn't know which one of

18:53

them is going to make me happier. So

18:55

I literally clicked twice, bought two

18:58

Rolls Royces, tick, tick. Not

19:01

even bidding. It's like what's

19:03

your price, tick, tick. They

19:06

arrived two months later in Dubai. I

19:08

promise you, I was happy for seven minutes.

19:11

I looked at them and I was like, oh

19:14

wow, that's amazing. What is this? Little

19:16

scratch. Why is this? I

19:19

should have bought a different color. But

19:21

this one is not. Whatever. Seven

19:24

minutes. And when you

19:26

start to think about this, I

19:28

was bombarding myself with what the world

19:31

was telling me is going to make

19:33

me happy. Sage spoke about this many

19:35

times, the idea of external things. We

19:38

need external things to be in certain

19:41

scenarios or setups to be happy.

19:43

But they never work. They never

19:45

work. When

19:47

in reality, I was happy

19:50

as a child. I was happy until

19:52

the moment very openly

19:54

that Ali was born, until that

19:56

delivery room when I decided, you

19:58

know what? attack a life

20:00

head on. And as I started

20:02

to attack a life head on, nothing

20:05

made sense anymore. Everything I looked at

20:07

was not as good as I wanted

20:09

it to be. The Rolls Royce Corniche

20:13

with beautiful silver and blue

20:15

and what have you, yeah,

20:17

the tiny bit of the leather

20:19

was not what I liked. And

20:22

then you look at that and you see that and

20:24

you forget the whole thing. You forget

20:26

that you're, you know, healthy

20:28

enough to actually look for a car that

20:30

you have, wealthy enough to find the car

20:33

that you actually did get the car and

20:35

that the car has so many things that

20:37

you love about it. You just remember the

20:39

one thing that you hate. Right.

20:42

Now let's go back to the assumptions.

20:44

I am born happy as

20:46

a child. I don't ask for

20:48

Instagram likes. I don't ask for

20:51

Xboxes. I don't ask for cars.

20:53

I don't want anyone to like

20:55

my crumbly little bum. Nobody cares.

20:57

Right. Children are happy. Right.

21:00

Then the interesting second assumption which

21:03

truly blew me away was

21:05

the second one was the idea

21:07

that happiness is the absence

21:10

of unhappiness. So you look at the child.

21:12

The child is unhappy when

21:15

there is a reason to be unhappy.

21:17

A diaper gets wet. The child will

21:19

cry. You change the diaper. The child

21:21

goes back to happiness. OK.

21:24

I promise you this is the case for you

21:26

too. If you wake

21:28

up tomorrow at 7 a.m. you're feeling

21:30

nice and healthy. You're sitting on the

21:32

beach. Your partner didn't say anything stupid

21:35

so far. You know, life is no

21:37

reason to be unhappy. Your state is

21:39

happy. You're OK. Right.

21:42

If there is no reason for unhappiness,

21:44

we feel happy. Now here's the

21:46

challenge. There are so many

21:48

things that piss us off

21:51

in life. OK.

21:53

It's like literally buying a new phone.

21:56

You know that experience. You buy a new phone. The

21:58

default state of the phone is happy. working really

22:00

well. And then you start to install

22:02

weird apps on it. All

22:04

of that weird stuff that you install, right?

22:07

And then the phone doesn't work anymore. This

22:09

is what we're doing to ourselves. Now

22:12

any human being that gets to that

22:14

conclusion, happiness is the absence of unhappiness,

22:16

would simply do a list, but not

22:18

engineers like, you know, okay, I'm unhappy

22:20

about this, I'm gonna change it unhappy

22:23

about that, gonna change it, not software

22:25

engineers at the time crazy as it

22:27

sounds, what I did is I decided,

22:29

you know what, there must be an

22:31

algorithm, there must be a way where

22:33

I can actually program that into my

22:35

computer so that it spits out all

22:37

of the possible situations that I will

22:40

ever feel unhappy in the future. And

22:42

then I can scratch them out once and for all

22:44

and we're done with that code. Okay,

22:47

crazy. Yes. But

22:49

it worked. And this actually

22:51

really flipped my life. When

22:54

I was looking for the happiness

22:56

algorithm, I was basically saying, what

22:59

is common, you know how sometimes

23:01

scientists will draw random points of

23:03

an experiment on a chart, and

23:06

they're trying to find the fitting line between

23:08

them. If you find that fitting line, the

23:10

equation that describes this line is how that

23:12

machine behaves. Okay, so I

23:15

simply did that I took all of

23:17

the moments in my life that I

23:19

felt happy. And I started to plot

23:21

them against charts of my age, my

23:23

weight, my the amount of hair on

23:25

my head, whatever, okay, my love life,

23:27

trying to find the trend line couldn't

23:29

find any until I

23:31

found a very interesting one, which

23:34

I believe is my definition of happiness. Okay,

23:37

you may have another one, but I can

23:39

promise you if we agree this definition, I

23:41

can deliver it for you. And

23:44

my definition of happiness is very, very

23:46

interesting. You remember when COVID

23:48

happened, and for some of us, it

23:51

was a disaster for the others,

23:54

it was a celebration. Okay,

23:56

you remember when COVID happened, and they locked us

23:58

down and, and for some For some of us

24:00

it was a disaster one day and a celebration

24:02

the next and then a disaster again and there's

24:04

a right It seems that

24:07

no event ever has

24:09

the consistency the inherent Happiness

24:12

value in it. No rain doesn't always

24:14

make you happy or unhappy. Do you

24:16

understand that? Right rain makes

24:18

you very happy if it rains on

24:20

your ex-boyfriend's wedding. It's amazing, right? It's

24:22

like we love it Right if it

24:25

if it rains when we're gonna be

24:27

outside then on the pool to you

24:29

know tomorrow It's gonna make you very

24:31

unhappy you understand rain

24:33

has no inherent happiness value in it

24:36

now What

24:38

what makes us sometimes happy in

24:40

rain or why are we always

24:42

happy in nature is really the

24:44

equation Your

24:46

happiness is not a result of the events of

24:48

your life As

24:51

a matter of fact the events of your life

24:54

are almost irrelevant Okay,

24:56

your happiness is a result of a

24:58

comparison that happens in your brain Remember

25:02

it is in your brain It's not

25:04

out there in the real world between

25:06

what the event is and

25:08

what you want the event to be If

25:11

it's your ex-boyfriend's wedding you want

25:13

rain and so when it rains you're

25:15

happy Do you understand that

25:17

why are we always happy in nature? I

25:19

actually I woke up at 4 a.m. Today

25:21

so anything I say now by the way

25:24

shouldn't be taken against me But I woke

25:26

up at 4 a.m. Today I sat on

25:28

the beach and I was

25:30

in such a calm state and

25:32

I don't know why the waves were so loud Hmm,

25:36

but I didn't complain about that I

25:39

didn't say can I please keep the

25:41

view and mute the sound nobody does

25:43

that in nature Right you go out

25:45

in nature and you know nothing is

25:47

really properly hedged. No tree is really

25:49

properly vertical Okay, when you're

25:52

out in nature, you don't expect

25:54

nature to be that you want nature

25:56

to be chaotic And so you look at the

25:58

tree that is crooked and you go oh my

26:00

god, that's so beautiful. You're not

26:02

a German engineer, you don't like, you know, you

26:04

don't want this tree to be vertical, right? And

26:07

so and so the idea of nature

26:09

is, it's always going to

26:11

meet the happiness equation. Events,

26:14

the event, chaotic nature of

26:16

nature, okay, always meets

26:18

your expectation of chaotic nature, chaotic

26:20

nature of nature. It's very simple.

26:24

Everything in your life that you ever

26:26

felt unhappy about, like Tony was saying,

26:28

is an event that missed your expectation.

26:31

Okay, now I'm going to say something

26:33

that might make a few of us

26:35

upset. So if you're upset, please raise

26:38

your hand and let's discuss it. If

26:41

it is happening as a

26:44

comparison between your perception of the

26:46

event and your hopes and

26:48

wishes and expectations of how life should be, then

26:51

happiness is 100% a choice. Okay, it's 100% a choice,

26:59

because your perception of the event

27:01

is informed by you. By

27:04

the way, your brain, I'm sorry to

27:07

say this, has never ever, ever, ever

27:09

once in your life ever told you

27:11

the truth, ever. Take

27:14

that from me as

27:16

a brainiac. Okay, your brain

27:18

tells you what it thinks is the

27:20

truth. So

27:23

we can go through an economic crisis

27:25

in the next few years. And

27:27

some of us will have their brains tell them,

27:30

I'm going to be homeless. Okay,

27:33

I'm going to be homeless is not the truth.

27:36

All future looking statements are not the truth. Okay,

27:39

the only truth is, it is

27:41

difficult right now. That's a truth. Right.

27:44

But if your brain doesn't tell you the

27:46

truth, that event actually is

27:49

your choice to see it in different ways.

27:52

If your brain doesn't always

27:54

set realistic expectations, then

27:57

it's your choice to set realistic

27:59

expectations. And

28:01

if you do that right, I'll tell you

28:03

something amazing. Are you okay

28:06

with that? Happiness is

28:08

a choice. Life

28:10

can take away your son

28:12

and you can make a choice. Most

28:15

people will tell you when you lose a child,

28:17

you have one choice, which is to grieve for

28:19

the rest of your life. Okay?

28:22

No, I had two. I

28:25

had one of them where I felt a lot of pain and

28:27

I could grieve for the rest of my life, and

28:29

the other where I felt a lot of pain and I

28:32

could do something about it. I could

28:34

do something to make my life better. Okay? It doesn't

28:36

bring him back. I'll come back to that

28:38

at the end. It doesn't bring him back. But

28:41

it's a choice. Do we understand that? So

28:44

the happiness equation is events minus expectations.

28:46

Every moment in your life where you

28:48

felt unhappy was a comparison in your

28:51

head, event minus expectations. If

28:54

life meets or beats expectations, you're happy. If

28:56

life misses your expectations, you're unhappy.

29:00

So let's have a few definitions. I told you I

29:02

have a definition of happiness. Okay? In

29:05

that equation, the definition of happiness

29:07

is very straightforward. It's a

29:10

moment where you feel that life has met or

29:12

beat your expectations, which

29:14

means it's a moment where you

29:16

are calm and peaceful and contented

29:18

and okay with life as it

29:20

is. Doesn't mean

29:22

life is amazing. It just

29:25

means I'm okay with life as it is.

29:28

Okay? If I'm okay with life as it is,

29:30

I get that calm and peace in me that

29:34

makes me want to spend the rest of my life in

29:36

that moment because I'm okay with it. Okay?

29:40

Physiologically, when you are in that

29:42

state, you're getting a flood

29:45

of serotonin in your body. Serotonin

29:48

is a calmer. It's a calming

29:50

hormone that basically is indicating to

29:52

your body I

29:54

scanned the world around me. There doesn't seem

29:56

to be any tigers. You can rest. You

29:58

can digest your food. food, you can have a

30:01

snack, you can close your eyes and

30:03

reflect and sleep and replenish your muscles and

30:05

so on. Believe it or

30:07

not, that state which is rarely

30:09

spoken about is more

30:11

important for your survival than

30:14

the adrenaline rush of fight,

30:16

flight or freeze. Fight,

30:19

flight or freeze is the exceptional

30:21

case that we need to run

30:23

away from danger. If

30:25

there is a genuine danger,

30:28

when you're in that state, you're

30:30

literally depriving your liver, your kidneys,

30:32

your digestive system, most of your

30:35

vital organs are not being fed.

30:38

And serotonin is that hormone that comes

30:41

in and says, hey, everything's

30:43

okay, chill. Sit

30:46

back, relax, let's take care of

30:48

our body. So

30:51

that's happiness, calm and peaceful contentment when

30:53

we're okay with life as it is.

30:56

Happiness in the modern world is badly

30:58

mixed up with another state that

31:00

is also very positive. Fun,

31:03

elation, excitement, all positive

31:05

emotions, optimism, all positive

31:07

emotions. But those emotions

31:09

are not happiness and

31:11

there is a very

31:13

vital difference. Those

31:16

emotions, let me

31:19

give you an example. You have a

31:21

tough week at work, it's very,

31:23

very difficult. So you go on

31:26

Friday night to a few friends' places or

31:28

you go to a party, a couple of

31:30

drinks, loud music, you dance. What

31:32

do you feel? You think

31:34

you feel happy but what you actually

31:37

feel could be elated, could be joyful,

31:40

could be other positive emotions.

31:42

Now, those positive emotions, they

31:44

sort of numb your brain

31:47

long enough so

31:49

that you don't actually analyze the situation

31:51

that is annoying you. You're not solving

31:53

your happiness equation. So your default state

31:55

as a child with nothing nagging in

31:57

your head is happy. If

32:00

your brain doesn't tell you, remember,

32:02

we're born happy as a default,

32:04

we need a reason in our

32:06

head to find unhappiness. So

32:10

if your brain is not telling you that something is

32:12

wrong, you're happy. You

32:14

think you're happy. And

32:17

the problem with this, by the way, nothing wrong

32:19

with fun. So fun,

32:21

pleasure, joy, all of those things.

32:23

Nothing wrong with them. I have more fun than

32:25

all of you combined. Now

32:28

here's the interesting thing. When you're

32:30

having a fun,

32:32

joyful experience, a playful

32:34

experience, what you get

32:37

in your body is dopamine. And

32:40

dopamine is normally mixed up on

32:42

the internet as another happiness hormone. Dopamine

32:45

is a reward hormone. It's

32:48

basically telling your body, I like this

32:50

so much, do more of it. When

32:54

we're making love, we feel an amazing

32:56

pleasure because that's very important for the

32:58

species. So

33:00

your dopamine is basically saying, do more

33:02

of this. I want more of this.

33:06

When you win a deal, it's good for your

33:08

business, good for your family, your body tells you,

33:10

your dopamine tells you, I want more of this.

33:13

Here's the problem with dopamine. Dopamine

33:15

is highly, highly, highly

33:18

addictive. So

33:20

what happens is the more dopamine you have

33:22

in your system, the more your brain receptors

33:25

that detect dopamine down regulate. So

33:27

if you have one unit of

33:29

dopamine in your blood, to feel

33:31

the rush again, and you get another

33:34

one unit, your receptors don't feel

33:36

it. You need 1.2 units. And

33:39

then now it's 1.2, then you need 1.4 and 1.6. And

33:42

so this is why you find that

33:44

people who are addicted to fun, when

33:48

they're unable to find their happiness in calm

33:50

and peace and contentment, they go from a

33:52

party to a wilder party to a wilder

33:55

party. They go from the gym to

33:57

rush to jumping out of airplanes to, you

33:59

know, to do whatever crazy stuff that we

34:01

do. Why? Because

34:03

you need enough dopamine to numb the

34:05

brain so you stop thinking about your

34:07

problems. Now, as

34:11

I said, there is nothing wrong with that. Nothing

34:13

wrong with that positivity. If you found your happiness

34:15

first, let me try to make this very clear.

34:18

If you're having fun to escape

34:20

your unhappiness, you're basically taking a

34:23

painkiller. You're popping in

34:25

a couple of Panadol or Advils or

34:27

whatever. You have a headache. You're not

34:29

treating the reason for the headache. You're

34:31

just taking a painkiller. The fun

34:33

numbs your unhappiness for a while, and then

34:35

you go back four hours later and you

34:37

need to pop in two more pills and

34:39

two more, and then you go from normal

34:41

strength to maximum strength and so on. So

34:45

that's the addictive nature of dopamine. By

34:47

the way, one of the main reasons

34:49

why people, when we were locked down,

34:51

were so depressed in the first lockdown

34:53

is that people depended

34:56

so much on that external stimulation

34:58

to find their happiness that when

35:00

you deprived them of it, they

35:02

could not produce serotonin

35:05

that quickly. The

35:08

right way to use dopamine is to

35:10

find happiness already, to be calm and

35:13

peaceful and contented, and then add fun

35:15

in your life as a supplement. I'm

35:18

already healthy and I'm going to enjoy

35:20

life on top of my state

35:23

of happiness so that I

35:26

can have that joy that makes life even better.

35:30

So the game is very straightforward.

35:32

If you're escaping your unhappiness, don't

35:35

revert to fun. If you're

35:37

already calm and peaceful and contented, flood

35:39

yourself with fun and joy and pleasure.

35:43

Now, these are two interesting definitions. The

35:45

third definition is the definition that matters

35:47

most. And the most important definition,

35:49

we said happiness is the absence of unhappiness.

35:51

So what is unhappiness? Unhappiness

35:54

in the happiness equation, events minus

35:56

expectations means a moment in your life

35:59

where an event. missed your expectation.

36:02

You know what that means? It means

36:04

that unhappiness is a survival mechanism.

36:08

It's your brain telling you I scanned

36:10

the world around me and there is

36:12

something that doesn't seem right. And

36:16

because it doesn't seem right and your brain

36:18

is just chattering away all day and you

36:20

never really listen, it needs to

36:22

alert you in the form of an emotion. Now,

36:26

if it's a survival mechanism, then

36:29

quite interestingly, we

36:31

should probably react to it as

36:33

we react to other survival mechanisms.

36:37

Think about it. Cutting your

36:39

finger, the pain is a survival

36:41

mechanism. You wouldn't

36:43

actually want to get rid of the pain

36:45

even if you could because that pain is

36:47

what makes you pull your hand away and

36:49

save your hand. But

36:52

here's an interesting thing. That pain

36:55

of cutting your finger can

36:58

only be felt in

37:00

the state where your hand is at risk.

37:03

You can never go back, if you

37:05

want to try to do it now, and close your

37:07

eyes and say, I want to feel how it felt

37:09

when I cut my finger two weeks ago. You

37:12

can't do that. You can't regenerate it on

37:14

demand. Emotional pain, however,

37:17

you can. Your

37:19

boyfriend says something annoying on

37:21

Friday. What do you do

37:23

on Saturday? You wake up and say,

37:25

that clip from 4 p.m. yesterday, play

37:28

that again and torture me. Right?

37:33

It's like the Netflix of unhappiness. Unhappiness

37:35

on demand. Like, I love that horror

37:37

movie so much. The event is over.

37:41

The words were harsh. They hurt you. But it's

37:43

done. But you have the ability

37:45

to play it over and over again. You

37:48

also have the creativity to make it

37:50

not really the truth. So your boyfriend

37:52

or girlfriend said, hey, baby, can you

37:54

leave me alone right now? That's the

37:56

fact. On Saturday, it's

37:58

not he said or she said. she said, oh

38:00

baby, can you leave me alone right now?

38:02

It is he or she doesn't love me

38:04

anymore. On Monday

38:07

it is because I'm not lovable. On

38:09

Wednesday it is I'm going to spend the rest

38:12

of my life alone. We

38:14

have that creativity through the

38:16

Netflix of unhappiness to add

38:18

our own scenarios of

38:21

creativity to torture ourselves, which

38:24

is quite interesting. Now,

38:28

if, as I said, unhappiness is a

38:30

survival mechanism, let's compare it

38:32

to other survival mechanisms. The

38:35

one that I like to compare it to most is a fire alarm.

38:39

If the fire alarm goes off in this place, what will

38:41

we do? Anyone

38:43

here will choose to sit and listen to

38:45

it? No, right?

38:47

Most of us will just walk out away from

38:49

the noise, we will do something about it. We

38:52

will verify if there is a fire and then

38:54

we'll take action. That's not what

38:56

we do with happiness, okay? That's not what we

38:58

do with unhappiness. When we feel

39:00

unhappy, we not only sit in

39:02

the fire alarm, okay, as

39:04

a matter of fact, when the fire alarm switches off,

39:07

we put a lighter next to it and

39:09

light it again. Interesting,

39:11

right? Which actually

39:13

means, and I'll finish with

39:15

two techniques and then we open for questions,

39:17

which actually means there is a way to

39:20

come out of unhappiness. Now, Tony

39:23

asked the question, who here

39:25

is happy all the time? I

39:28

have a very, very successful podcast in

39:30

the wellbeing space and

39:32

I host tons of world

39:35

renowned monks

39:37

and practitioners and so on. One of

39:39

them was Matthew Ricard. Matthew

39:41

was known in the media for a long

39:43

time as the world happiest man. He had

39:45

60,000 hours of lifetime meditation that

39:49

reconfigured his brain in a way that

39:52

basically allows him to always be happier

39:54

than the rest of us. And

39:56

I asked him, Matthew is a good friend, and

39:58

I said, Matthew, so. they say you're

40:00

the world happiest man, does that mean you're happy

40:03

all the time? And he

40:05

laughed like really out loud in his

40:07

very French accent and said, what

40:09

are you talking about? I'm always pissed off.

40:12

Okay. And that's the

40:14

truth. The truth is we are

40:16

always pissed off. Don't deny

40:19

that because it's a survival

40:21

mechanism. If something is

40:23

wrong, it's okay to feel the pain. It's

40:25

okay to feel alerted. What's

40:28

not okay is the suffering. What's

40:30

not okay is telling yourself the

40:33

next morning to replay the pain. What's not

40:35

okay is to add to the pain. So

40:38

happiness practitioners literally

40:41

measure not if they're happy all the

40:43

time, but how quickly, and I

40:45

probably think this is what you meant, how

40:48

quickly can you overcome that initial

40:50

jolt of unhappiness? Okay.

40:52

Now I'm dedicating

40:55

the rest of my life to making a billion

40:57

people happy. So to do that,

40:59

I need to be the Olympic champion of the

41:01

sport. But I'm also

41:03

an engineer, so annoying like hell. So I measure,

41:06

I actually measure how long it takes

41:08

me to bounce back from unhappiness to

41:10

happiness. And by the way, I feel

41:12

unhappy hundreds of times a day. Okay.

41:14

I get stuck in traffic. There is

41:16

a jolt of unhappiness. I get a

41:20

little worried about me speaking to you, and

41:22

I'm jet lagged a jolt of unhappiness. Right?

41:26

Between that jolt and the time I get

41:28

back to happiness, I promise you I'm not

41:30

bragging. You can do it too. It's

41:32

seven seconds. That's my average

41:34

time from unhappy to happy, other than

41:37

four or five times a year, sometimes

41:39

it gets to a day or an

41:41

hour or whatever. Okay. Seven

41:43

seconds because I follow a flow

41:45

chart, engineers. Right? So I

41:48

follow a flow chart. I don't even think.

41:50

Right? When something happens in

41:52

my heart, and I feel unhappy, by the

41:55

way, the first thing is acknowledge it. The

41:57

first thing is, what? What

42:00

is that feeling? That's not calm and peaceful

42:02

contentment. Something is not right. Okay?

42:05

And if you don't acknowledge that, you're never going

42:07

to do anything about it. So the

42:09

first thing you do is acknowledge it. Okay?

42:12

And then tell yourself, what's the trigger? What

42:15

is triggering my unhappiness? And

42:17

what's triggering your unhappiness, by the way,

42:19

is not an event. If

42:22

you're unhappy about the current situation in the

42:24

world, it's not

42:27

the current situation because you're safe, you're okay,

42:29

you're absolutely fine. Nothing is wrong

42:31

with your life today, as it

42:33

is today, even with the Ukraine

42:35

war. Nothing is wrong with

42:37

the food that you ate today, as

42:40

compared to yesterday, with the economic crisis.

42:42

You're still driving your same car. Nothing

42:44

has changed. Right?

42:46

Your now is absolutely perfect.

42:50

But when we are unhappy,

42:52

what triggers our unhappiness is a thought.

42:55

And the thought is not the event. It's

43:00

a description of the event offered by your

43:02

brain, as modified by your conditioning and traumas

43:04

and assumptions and what your neighbor is telling

43:06

you and what the news media is telling

43:09

you and so on. So

43:11

if the thought is, we're

43:13

going through tough times, we're going through

43:15

winter, like Tony said, okay? It's

43:18

a great thought. It's a great thought.

43:20

If the thought is, I'm going to be homeless,

43:23

that's a worthless thought. So

43:25

the first step of the flowchart is

43:27

I asked myself a question, which is,

43:30

is this true? Is

43:32

this true? Okay? I

43:35

love my daughter to bits. I think you know that

43:37

by now. One day we had

43:39

an argument. So I said, baby, I'm going to

43:42

go out to a coffee shop, have a coffee,

43:44

calm down, and we come and talk about it

43:46

again. The minute I walk out of her

43:49

apartment, she had called me in in the

43:51

morning, made me breakfast, hugged me when I

43:54

came in. The minute I walk out, my

43:56

brain says, Aya doesn't love you anymore. It

43:59

was in Montreal. I promise you I stopped

44:01

in the middle of the street and I said what

44:03

the fuck did you just say? Okay,

44:06

in Montreal it's okay we're all you know like

44:08

that right? But seriously

44:10

what the fuck did you just say? How can

44:12

you give yourself the privilege to destroy

44:15

my life by telling me that

44:17

my daughter doesn't love me? Where

44:20

did you get that from? Do you have

44:22

evidence of this? Okay?

44:25

Is that true number one? Okay?

44:28

If it is true, sorry if it

44:30

isn't true drop it. Why would

44:32

you ever be unhappy about something that's not true? If

44:34

you're not going to be homeless or you're

44:36

probably citizen number seven billion in the world

44:38

that's going to become homeless, there are 699

44:40

whatever right that are going to become homeless

44:45

before you, then wait be unhappy then.

44:48

Okay? Right? But

44:50

if it is true there is

44:52

a winter coming then question number

44:55

two. What can I

44:57

do about it? Okay?

44:59

Question number two is very straightforward. What can

45:01

I do to fix this? By

45:05

the way there is nothing you can do

45:07

about the winter coming. There is nothing you

45:09

can do. We'll come to that in question three. But

45:12

there you know if the thought in your

45:14

head is my business is going to decline

45:16

because of the winter that's coming right?

45:19

That's an easy question to ask. What can

45:21

I do about it? Can

45:23

I cut expenses? Can I find new clients?

45:25

Can I find new lines of business? Can

45:28

I whatever? What can I do about it?

45:30

And when you ask that question two

45:33

things happen. One is

45:35

you make the world better. You actually

45:37

solve the problem instead of sitting in a corner

45:39

and complaining about it. Okay?

45:42

And the second most interesting thing is you move the thought

45:45

from your incessant part

45:47

of the brain the

45:49

default mode network as they call it to

45:51

the problem solving area of the brain. And

45:54

interestingly our brains cannot do two things at the same time.

45:57

So if you ask yourself the question what can I

45:59

do about it? And immediately your brain stops

46:01

complaining. Your brain is now

46:03

in the positive mode of what can I actually do to

46:05

make things better. If there is something you can do about

46:07

it, do it. If

46:10

there is something, if there is nothing you can do about

46:12

it, then it's question number three. And

46:14

question number three is what I call the jadai master

46:16

level of happiness. Truly, this is

46:18

the ultimate level of happiness. What

46:20

can I do about the things that I

46:22

cannot change? Including

46:25

a winter coming, including losing a child, including

46:27

being stuck in traffic. Well

46:29

as that, if you're stuck in traffic, there is

46:31

nothing you can do to change the layout

46:35

of the city within a second so that the

46:37

traffic starts to move again. It's impossible.

46:41

So question number three is can I

46:43

accept and commit? What

46:45

can I do now to make my life

46:47

better despite the presence of that problem?

46:52

What can I do? Will not fix the

46:54

problem, but what can I do to

46:56

make my life better despite the problem?

47:00

And when you start to think about it this way, you

47:03

suddenly realize that there are lots of things

47:05

you can do. I

47:07

sat down and I wrote a book

47:09

and it's reached 600,000 people and then

47:11

my videos are like hundreds of millions

47:13

of people and part of my wonderful

47:15

son Ali is everywhere and

47:17

part of everyone. At least it's heading

47:20

there. It doesn't solve the problem. Thank

47:29

you. It doesn't bring him

47:31

back. Do you understand that? It does not bring

47:33

him back, but it makes my

47:35

life and the lives of tens of millions

47:37

of people better despite the pain

47:39

that I continue to feel. The pain doesn't

47:41

go away. Understand

47:44

that. And so what can I

47:46

do? Can I accept life as

47:49

it is, not as a sign

47:51

of weakness, as a sign of absolute strength.

47:53

The strongest of all of us are the

47:55

ones that looks at adversity and say, okay,

47:57

I get it. don't

48:00

like that move life, it was really not

48:03

my favorite move, but I can deal with this.

48:06

What can I do to make life better

48:08

despite its presence? So I

48:10

summarize all of this in

48:13

another agreement. So this, by the way, is again

48:16

a homework that I would ask you to

48:18

do repeatedly. The next time

48:20

you feel something changing, take

48:23

your piece of paper out, is

48:25

it true, what can I do to fix

48:27

it, can I accept and do something to

48:29

make my life and the life of others

48:31

better despite its presence? So

48:34

this is the practice. When you do this

48:37

enough, I ended up signing a contract with

48:39

my brain. Literally

48:41

in my third book, it is

48:43

a signed contract with, I call

48:45

my brain Becky for very interesting

48:47

reasons. Because it's a third party,

48:50

it's not me. Do you

48:52

understand that? You have to understand this. One

48:54

of the biggest challenges in the modern world

48:56

is that we think that the voice in

48:58

your head talking to you is you. It's

49:01

not. If it was you talking to you,

49:03

why would it need to talk? Okay,

49:06

there was an MIT study, actually,

49:10

it's really so intuitive. But there was a study

49:12

actually in MIT in 2007, they put people in

49:15

MRI machines, they

49:17

give them word puzzles, and they measure the

49:20

activity in their brain and the problem-solving areas

49:22

of the brain would light up for

49:25

whatever, as long as it is needed

49:27

to solve the problem. And then when

49:29

the answer is found, listen to this,

49:31

the verbal association area of the brain, the

49:34

same area I'm using to talk to you

49:36

right now starts to light up for up

49:38

to eight seconds. And then

49:40

the participant would know the answer. Your

49:42

brain finds the answer, and then it's freaking talking

49:44

to you. Okay, it turns the

49:47

answer into words so that you understand it. Your

49:49

brain is a biological function. Okay,

49:52

nobody wakes up in the morning and says,

49:54

I go to the bathroom, therefore I am.

49:57

Right? It's, you know, it's another biological.

50:00

function but for some reason we say I think

50:02

therefore I am. I don't

50:04

understand that bit. So that

50:06

brain I have a deal with it. Becky

50:09

signed an agreement and the agreement is

50:12

this. There are only two types

50:14

of thoughts allowed in my brain. This is

50:16

going to be intermediary so we're going to

50:18

try that next week. But

50:22

the agreement is as follows. My brain

50:24

is allowed a useful thought if it's

50:26

going to hurt me or

50:29

a joyful thought. Simple as that.

50:32

So when Ali left

50:34

the world Habibian,

50:37

one of the struggles of losing a child

50:39

is that your ego as a father attacks

50:42

you very heavily because your ego is to

50:44

protect him. And

50:46

so my ego started to attack me

50:49

severely, like viciously, telling me you should

50:51

have driven him to another hospital. So

50:53

the four hours after Ali left, the

50:56

only thought in my head was you should have driven

50:58

him to another hospital. Constantly. Until

51:01

I told my brain openly I heard

51:03

you. I can't go back

51:06

in time and drive him to another hospital. Can

51:08

you give me something I can do? A

51:12

useful thought. A useful thought.

51:15

Until Aya came and said hey he had that

51:18

dream and then I had the idea of writing

51:20

his model and so on and so forth. So

51:23

that's a useful thought. I'm going to sit down,

51:25

I'm going to write what he taught me, I'm

51:27

going to share it with the world. It's a

51:29

useful thought. The other part of the

51:31

agreement, so I said two thoughts. One is useful and

51:33

the other is a joyful thought. And

51:35

I'll close with this and then we take questions.

51:38

No lying. No lying. Look

51:40

at me, beard, bald, manly.

51:43

I cry once

51:45

or twice a week. There is a specific

51:47

pain right here, bottom

51:50

right side of my heart

51:54

that I always feel when I miss him. It

51:57

just doesn't go away. It doesn't go away. Every

52:00

time I feel that pain, my brain is

52:02

telling me Ali died. Very

52:05

painful thought. When

52:07

I think Ali died, I think of what

52:09

happened, I think of how unfair, I think

52:11

of the last moment where I hugged him

52:13

in the intensive care table and so on.

52:17

And I learned very quickly to say, yeah brain,

52:20

you told me that around 16,700 times before, but

52:22

Ali also lived. It's

52:29

a thought from the same canvas. Ali,

52:32

by the way, we didn't plan for Ali. I

52:36

was given 21 and a

52:38

half years of absolute bliss.

52:42

A blessing that I didn't ask for.

52:45

As a matter of fact, if I had been asked,

52:47

I would have told my wife, let's delay a little

52:49

bit. And

52:51

then shows up this beautiful angel in my

52:54

life for 21 and a half years that

52:56

makes me the person that I am. And

53:01

my brain chooses to say, Ali died. No

53:04

brain. Ali absolutely lived. We

53:06

played video games together, we laughed

53:08

together, we hugged, he taught

53:11

me things, we had an amazing,

53:13

amazing journey. Amazing

53:15

journey. And that's what I choose to

53:17

remember. A joyful thought. If

53:19

it's not going to be useful, don't

53:21

hurt me. That's the agreement with Becky.

53:25

And believe it or not, every single

53:27

one of us has that choice. Every

53:29

single one of us is able

53:32

to stand firm with your Becky

53:34

and say, that's it.

53:36

That's it. Don't destroy my life. This

53:38

is stupid. Don't waste my life.

53:41

Either give me something I can do

53:43

or give me something I can

53:45

think about with joy. I'm

53:48

actually perfectly on time. We have 15 minutes

53:50

for questions. First

53:54

off, thank you. Thank you, Ali.

53:56

That touched me very much. Very

54:00

deeply and my question is how long

54:02

did it take you to train your

54:05

brain? Oh great question to

54:07

go to the seven seconds. Great

54:09

question. Great question So my third

54:11

book was entirely my third

54:13

book was an analogy between neuroscience

54:16

and computer science geek right

54:19

in neuroscience the most important Property

54:22

of our brain for happiness is

54:24

neuroplasticity Okay, and

54:26

neuroplasticity is actually a very interesting character of

54:29

the brain We didn't think that the brain

54:31

changes until the 1970s 1980s We

54:34

thought that you get a brain it grows

54:36

until 24 and then it's what you're left

54:38

with for the rest of your life Not true at all your

54:40

brain behaves exactly like your muscles behave when you

54:43

go to the gym Right if

54:45

you go to the gym every day and lift

54:47

weights You're gonna look like a triangle if you

54:49

go to the gym every day and squat you're gonna look

54:51

like a pair Right as simple

54:53

as that right and the truth is Your

54:57

brain is exactly the same if you wake

54:59

up every morning and watch the news You're

55:01

gonna become very good at believing that the

55:03

world is gonna end You're literally

55:05

training your brain for that if

55:08

you wake up every morning and say oh

55:10

my god I have so much amazing stuff

55:12

in my life. You're gonna be training your

55:14

brain for gratitude and so

55:17

scientists will say that Neurons

55:20

that fire together wire together So basically

55:22

think of it as the old times

55:24

where you had the switchboard Before

55:27

the telecom industry became so, you

55:30

know automated There was an operator where you

55:32

dialed and said I want to talk to

55:35

Jonathan and so she would patch you to

55:37

Jonathan Okay, after a while,

55:39

you know three days later. She realizes you

55:41

only talk to Jonathan So she basically keeps

55:43

a permanent wire between you and John that's

55:46

neuroplasticity If you if part of

55:48

your brain is used frequently, it becomes

55:51

a permanent configuration of your brain Unhappiness

55:54

is the biggest training we've given

55:56

ourselves in in the modern

55:58

world. We're so good at finding things to be

56:00

unhappy about. Scientists will say it will

56:03

take you 21 days to

56:05

remove a bit of the wiring and to feel

56:07

a difference. And then

56:09

in my case, sometimes it took up to 4

56:11

and 1,000 years. But

56:14

you have already made 80% of the progress to get to 100%.

56:18

And I'll tell you my biggest trick. That

56:21

idea of Becky, of my brain

56:23

not being me, was a major,

56:25

major game changer for me. I

56:28

learned it from Eckhart Tolle, a

56:30

new earth. So he

56:32

calls it that voice in your head, the thinker. And

56:36

I don't know if you've heard of Eckhart Tolle's

56:38

work. He's an incredible

56:40

teacher, but he speaks

56:43

very slowly.

56:47

So I think a new earth was 17

56:50

hours long. I don't remember, but it definitely

56:52

felt like 17 hours long. So

56:55

every time my brain would hijack me and try

56:57

to convince me that it is me and I

56:59

should listen to it, I promise you

57:01

what I did was I listened to a new earth

57:03

again from start to finish.

57:07

Normal speed. And

57:11

about seven or eight times in, my brain was

57:13

like, that's it. I'm never going to do that

57:15

again. I'm not you.

57:17

I am Becky. I am a horrible

57:20

Becky. I'm never going to do that again. So

57:22

the game is this. I always

57:24

tell people it's an 80-20 rule. 80%

57:29

of your unhappiness is probably due to

57:31

one reason. It could be the

57:33

illusion of control. It could be ego. Ego

57:36

is not in a bad way, not arrogance. It's the

57:39

way you want to be seen in the world. It

57:41

could be your fear. It

57:43

could be whatever. And

57:45

my advice to people is find that

57:47

one thing and make it your

57:49

next 21 days. Find

57:52

that one thing and consistently work on

57:54

it until you rewire that

57:57

thing. With 80% of the problems

57:59

removed, The rest is so easy.

58:01

So I've been having the time of my life for

58:03

the last 12 years. Like every

58:05

two and a half years, I find a new

58:07

thing and I go like, wouldn't it be nice

58:09

if we painted this metallic and this and that,

58:11

you know, in my brain? And because

58:13

the major problems are no longer there.

58:15

Now, again, I'm not bragging. But

58:18

the incessant thoughts in our brain that make

58:20

us unhappy are one of

58:22

the biggest reasons why we're constantly thinking about

58:24

the negatives. When I was writing

58:27

Soul for Happy, I spoke about the idea

58:29

of incessant thinking and so on. And so

58:31

my my editor, which was

58:33

a great editor, Peter Guzardi, basically texted

58:35

me one day and said, you know,

58:37

this incessant thinking thing that's really good.

58:39

The reader wants to know about this.

58:41

Can you give us a few examples?

58:44

And I promise you, I'm not making this up. I

58:47

couldn't come up with one. My

58:49

brain had not thought incessantly for so

58:52

long that I couldn't think of any. I

58:54

had to call my friends and eventually the

58:56

actual example in the book is about Peter's

58:59

daughter, teenage daughter and

59:01

how his teenage daughter is causing him

59:04

incessant thinking. OK, that's

59:06

how far neuroplasticity can go. And

59:09

I did I don't think, by the way,

59:11

I learned that as a happiness practitioner. I

59:13

learned that as a business executive. When

59:15

I was a business executive, 90 percent

59:17

of my job was people walking into complaint.

59:20

OK, so I basically learned very, very quickly

59:22

to not allow the incessant complaint to take

59:25

more than 10 minutes of the meeting. So

59:28

every time someone walked into the meeting

59:30

and just complained, complained, complained, I would

59:32

give them 10 minutes. I would even,

59:34

you know, pour some fuel

59:36

on the fire so that they rage

59:38

even more. And then I would go

59:40

like, OK, OK, is there anything

59:42

good about that relationship? For example, if they're complaining

59:44

about the guys in legal when they are in

59:46

sales, I go like, is there anything good? So

59:49

trying to see the whole truth. Is this true?

59:51

Question. OK, can we do something about

59:53

it the last 10 minutes? And that

59:56

process very quickly made me learn to

59:58

stop the incessant thoughts. It's

1:00:00

like let's not just ramble in our

1:00:03

heads about shit that doesn't do anything.

1:00:05

Okay? Let's just let's literally when we've

1:00:07

heard the brain, let's put

1:00:10

our heads down and just get start to

1:00:12

do something about that's how far neuroplasticity can

1:00:14

go. More? Thank

1:00:20

you for your presentation. You're doing

1:00:22

amazing. My question is

1:00:24

about meditation. Oh, yeah. How do you

1:00:26

use meditation to get to the happiness state?

1:00:30

So meditation is quite misunderstood in many

1:00:32

ways. So I meditated. I have not

1:00:34

missed a day for the last eight

1:00:36

hundred and twenty eight days. And I

1:00:39

measured. Okay. Not a day.

1:00:42

Why? Because of neuroplasticity, by the way,

1:00:44

because it's neuroplasticity is not about meditating

1:00:46

for four hours one day and then

1:00:48

stopping the next day. It's about meditating

1:00:51

every single day. Now, meditation,

1:00:53

if done right, will flip

1:00:55

your life upside down, upside

1:00:57

down. Why? Because it's basically

1:01:00

firing the correct neurons that allow

1:01:02

you to take control of your

1:01:04

of your own brain. So when

1:01:06

your brain tries to wander, you

1:01:08

can bring it back and say,

1:01:10

calm down. We want to focus on our

1:01:12

breathing or we want to focus on this or we want to focus on that.

1:01:15

And that ability is incredibly

1:01:17

valuable in times where your

1:01:20

brain starts to chatter. Okay.

1:01:22

You can then use that same ability.

1:01:25

Basically, you're literally people who meditate

1:01:27

frequently. They have a bigger prefrontal

1:01:29

cortex and a bigger insula. So

1:01:32

the brain literally reconfigures itself. Okay.

1:01:35

With that ability, when your brain starts to wander,

1:01:37

you go like, hold on, hold on. Let's

1:01:39

focus. We don't want to think about this. We

1:01:41

want to think about that. Now, the challenge

1:01:44

with meditation and why it's not done correctly

1:01:46

is to fall. Fold number one

1:01:48

is that people do not do it regularly

1:01:51

enough as we do going to the

1:01:53

gym. Okay. It has

1:01:55

to be a regular practice that is

1:01:57

constantly, you know, happening every single day.

1:02:00

single day so that neuroplasticity starts to take

1:02:02

place. The second is we

1:02:04

think that meditation is about calming the

1:02:06

brain. One of my favorite

1:02:08

guests on the podcast was a monk

1:02:11

called Galen Tupton. Galen Tupton

1:02:13

is the top monk in the UK. And

1:02:15

he basically was saying, no, no, no, no,

1:02:17

it's all about your brain wandering. The

1:02:20

idea is if you go to the gym, your

1:02:22

success is not to carry an

1:02:24

empty bar 100 times. Your

1:02:26

success is that the bar is difficult

1:02:29

enough for you to actually practice, you

1:02:31

know, use the muscle. And

1:02:33

so that mind wandering, that idea of your

1:02:35

brain actually going out of focus and then

1:02:37

you call in the calling it back to

1:02:39

silence, that calling it back to

1:02:42

silence is what meditation is all about. And

1:02:44

if your mind doesn't wander, you wouldn't do

1:02:46

that move that's so good for you. And

1:02:49

so when people, most people who give up

1:02:51

on meditation, they give up because they say,

1:02:53

I can't do it. I can't focus. Right?

1:02:56

Yeah, you're doing it. That's the absolute best

1:02:58

thing you can do is to get out

1:03:00

of it and then pull yourself back even if

1:03:02

it takes you five minutes to pull back or, you

1:03:05

know, you spend the whole day and you don't

1:03:07

pull back. But tomorrow you pull back that pull

1:03:09

back is the muscle movement that creates that neuroplasticity

1:03:12

that makes us more focused. Now I'll

1:03:14

say this with openness. I

1:03:17

have a very loved person in my life. And

1:03:21

again, in my work, in my third book,

1:03:23

I talk about something I call deliberate attention.

1:03:26

Okay, deliberate attention is a sort

1:03:28

of not to upset the

1:03:31

psychologists and psychiatrists and so on is

1:03:33

basically the idea of being able to

1:03:35

take control of your brain. Now

1:03:38

the lack of deliberate attention, believe

1:03:40

it or not, is highly associated

1:03:42

with almost all mental illnesses. Everything

1:03:46

from ADD, ADHD

1:03:48

to substance abuse to

1:03:50

addiction to depression and so on

1:03:52

and so forth is associated with

1:03:55

a lack of ability to regulate the functions of the

1:03:57

brain, that wandering brain.

1:04:00

And I had a very loved person

1:04:02

in my life that was highly ADD

1:04:04

and as a result of that was

1:04:07

constantly breath. And my

1:04:09

advice was simply, all I ask for is

1:04:11

five minutes a day. I use a device to

1:04:13

measure so that you can actually know how well

1:04:16

you're doing and when you're mind wandering you can

1:04:18

go back quicker. And

1:04:20

I asked the person to use that

1:04:22

and in no time at all. Like

1:04:25

literally in four weeks their life flipped

1:04:27

upside down. Ten minutes a day, that

1:04:29

was all. So it's

1:04:31

invaluable if you do it correctly. If

1:04:33

you don't do it as a regular

1:04:36

practice then you're fooling yourself because

1:04:38

you feel amazing during the meditation and

1:04:40

then you're not building the brain circuitry

1:04:42

so when you leave it you're no longer

1:04:44

able to use that. More questions,

1:04:46

so I'll move quicker. Topics.

1:04:50

One question is, first of all I practice

1:04:52

meditation, I practice happiness, everything that you're saying

1:04:54

is really dear to my heart and it's

1:04:57

very easy for me to get happy. Great.

1:05:00

However, how

1:05:03

do you, I

1:05:06

don't want to say make somebody else

1:05:08

happy, but somebody to become

1:05:10

happy. Attend to

1:05:12

yourself first before you help others. Remember when you

1:05:14

go on the plane and they say put the

1:05:17

mask on yourself first. So I write in a

1:05:19

very strange way. I write like a software engineer.

1:05:21

So my books are actually produced

1:05:23

in a beta version and then I put

1:05:25

them online and literally I asked 300 people

1:05:28

to go in and edit the book. So

1:05:30

in my first book, 300 people

1:05:32

filled a survey of their state of happiness. 8%

1:05:35

of them were actually depressed. So

1:05:38

they wrote openly, I'm suffering depression. All

1:05:41

8% without exception, every single one

1:05:43

of them dropped out on page 11.

1:05:46

Okay? Because on page 11 I wrote happiness

1:05:49

is a choice. Right?

1:05:51

And that's really, really eye-opening. When

1:05:53

someone has decided they want

1:05:55

to be unhappy, all the tools

1:05:58

in the world, all of your attention, all of your... time

1:06:00

is not going to change a thing. The

1:06:02

only thing that will change them, believe it

1:06:04

or not, and I know that to work

1:06:06

really, really every single time, is to pour

1:06:09

love on them. Okay,

1:06:11

the only thing that works is

1:06:13

when someone is unhappy, don't

1:06:15

tell them, why are you like that? Don't tell them,

1:06:18

I wish you were different. Don't tell them, all of

1:06:20

that is making them unhappier. Again,

1:06:22

one of my favorite conversations at my

1:06:25

point in time is a British psychologist

1:06:27

and TV star that was called Ruby

1:06:29

Wax. And Ruby suffered many episodes

1:06:31

in her life of depression. And she will

1:06:34

tell you, I don't know. When I am

1:06:36

depressed, it's like someone cut my head, my

1:06:38

skull open and filled my entire head and

1:06:40

body with concrete. Can't do anything. Okay,

1:06:43

so if you tell me to be happy and you give

1:06:45

me advice, I can't do anything about it. Now,

1:06:47

the trick here is, give

1:06:49

them a reason to want to be happy. And

1:06:52

the only reason that always gets to

1:06:54

every single one of us is love. Pour

1:06:56

love on them and be very deliberate in it.

1:06:59

So write down a list of memories you share

1:07:01

with them, write down a list of experience you'd

1:07:03

like to share with them and text them every

1:07:05

now and then and say, hey, by the way,

1:07:07

I passed by this ice cream shop. It was

1:07:09

so wonderful when we went here last time. I

1:07:11

love you very much. Let's do it again. Okay,

1:07:14

the next day you say, hey, by the way, you

1:07:16

know, I remember the time when

1:07:18

you did this and that I'm so grateful for

1:07:20

what you did for me. I love you very

1:07:22

much. I hope to see you soon. Never bringing

1:07:24

up that they're unhappy and never asking them to

1:07:26

change until they come to you and say, I'm

1:07:29

so upset with

1:07:31

myself for you being so loving and

1:07:33

kind. And I'm always grumpy. What can

1:07:35

I do? That's when you bombard them

1:07:37

with advice. Right. That's

1:07:40

the time. Yeah. All right. More questions.

1:07:46

So, thank you. I mean, this is absolutely

1:07:48

all respect to Tony. We know what he

1:07:50

brings. But if I came here just for

1:07:52

this, I mean, oh my God. So thank

1:07:54

you. Thank you. Thank you. So, seeing

1:07:58

this is something, you know, very important. for

1:08:00

me and I look at Tony's,

1:08:02

what are your hierarchy above needs and that

1:08:04

type of thing. Growth has always been my

1:08:07

number one. And so, but

1:08:09

it's a tricky thing, growth, because

1:08:11

when you're always focused on growth, then-

1:08:13

I'm gonna have to go to the present. Well,

1:08:15

yeah, because then, and

1:08:18

then you can adjust your definition of growth

1:08:20

and that's what I've been doing. But looking

1:08:22

at those two questions that you're asking yourself

1:08:25

when you find yourself with

1:08:27

those thoughts that you don't. So I sometimes

1:08:30

get caught up in that number one, where

1:08:33

something useful. So, okay,

1:08:35

maybe I'm trying to dissect a situation or

1:08:37

I'm trying to dissect what I could have

1:08:39

done better, what I could do better next

1:08:41

time, or is it, do I offer an

1:08:43

apology or do I adjust this aspect? And

1:08:45

then that becomes a thing that, you can't

1:08:48

get out of easily. And

1:08:50

so my question is, when

1:08:52

there's so many things that you can do, then

1:08:55

how do you let go of that at some

1:08:57

point? Okay, so there

1:09:00

are two layers to this question. So I'm gonna

1:09:02

answer a layer you may not have asked first,

1:09:04

if you don't mind me saying. We

1:09:07

are taught to be motivated

1:09:10

by the negative. It's our schooling system,

1:09:12

it's our parenting system, it's everything that

1:09:14

we've learned as young children, is

1:09:17

go to school so you

1:09:19

don't fail in life, okay?

1:09:22

Or score a higher score in mathematics

1:09:24

so that you don't miss the opportunity

1:09:27

to go to university or

1:09:29

whatever, okay? We're always telling ourselves to do

1:09:31

things so that we avoid the negative. And

1:09:33

that's by the way, again, Tony spoke about

1:09:35

that very openly, it's the

1:09:37

negativity bias of the brain. The

1:09:39

brain doesn't want to talk about

1:09:41

anything positive, it just wants to

1:09:43

talk about what could go wrong,

1:09:45

okay? It captures our attention when

1:09:47

we tell our colleagues or

1:09:51

employees or whatever, when we tell them,

1:09:53

hey, if we don't achieve this, this is gonna be the

1:09:55

case. We are

1:09:57

equally as capable. as

1:10:00

humans to be motivated by the positive. To

1:10:03

be motivated by the positive allows

1:10:06

us to say, I'm going to do

1:10:08

this because achieving it is going to

1:10:10

be amazing. So to take the concept

1:10:12

of growth,

1:10:15

growth can be motivated by I want

1:10:17

to grow because now is not good

1:10:20

enough. Or it could

1:10:22

be, now is amazing, but

1:10:24

there is potential for more. So

1:10:26

my advice to people is always find

1:10:28

a way to motivate yourself with the positive. Love,

1:10:31

by the way, as a motivator is

1:10:33

a very positive thing to motivate

1:10:36

us with. Now, when

1:10:38

it comes to solutions

1:10:45

and ideas that we can take in terms of

1:10:47

what can I do about it, I

1:10:49

tend to, it's

1:10:51

not my best field to answer you, but

1:10:54

my approach is I tend to do it

1:10:56

like a software engineer. And

1:10:59

software engineers never find the right

1:11:01

answer. No code I have ever

1:11:03

written in my life was perfect. There was never

1:11:05

a way to make it perfect. And

1:11:08

no code that you've ever used in

1:11:10

your life, including things that are highly

1:11:12

established like iOS or Android or whatever

1:11:14

is perfect. Never perfect. What we

1:11:16

do as software engineers is what we

1:11:18

call is basically an

1:11:21

iterative approach with A-B testing. So we try

1:11:23

something and then we modify it and modify

1:11:25

it and modify it and modify it. So

1:11:27

my normal approach is

1:11:30

I actually allow my brain, if

1:11:32

I'm sitting down to solve a

1:11:34

problem, I will actually start

1:11:36

an egg timer. So a lot of the

1:11:38

things I do, I start a timer and

1:11:40

I say within seven minutes or 10 or

1:11:43

15, depending on the complexity of the problem

1:11:45

and the analysis I need to do, I'm

1:11:47

going to identify the easiest,

1:11:50

most effective solution I can find right now.

1:11:52

And I'm going to put that into

1:11:54

action. And

1:11:56

then I'm going to review again in an

1:11:59

hour, in a day. in five days, whatever that

1:12:01

is, depending on the solution I found, and I'm

1:12:03

going to do the process again. Now

1:12:06

most people will tell you that no

1:12:08

decision ever will destroy your life. The

1:12:11

only thing that will destroy your life

1:12:13

is indecision. So

1:12:15

the idea of I'm going to find something that

1:12:17

seems reasonable right now and review it again in

1:12:19

a couple of hours time or in a week's

1:12:22

time is a very effective way because life as

1:12:24

a matter of fact is always going to

1:12:27

make you do this. One of the things I

1:12:29

always say is that life and every experience and

1:12:31

it is never a journey. You've

1:12:33

never walked the same path twice. You

1:12:36

understand that even if you're commuting from home to

1:12:38

work, every single day it was never the same

1:12:40

path. It always changes. So

1:12:42

the idea is life is a quest. It's

1:12:47

not a journey. A quest is I

1:12:49

don't know what's going to happen in an

1:12:51

hour's time. So I'm constantly taking one step

1:12:53

and then looking less than right and then

1:12:55

taking another step and then maybe going back

1:12:57

a step and so on. So instead of

1:13:00

wasting time trying to look for the perfect

1:13:02

solution and the most optimum way of doing

1:13:04

anything, just find the

1:13:06

best and easiest. Easiest

1:13:08

by the way is not the means of

1:13:10

a perfectionist. So

1:13:13

sometimes we will tell you ourselves

1:13:15

there is solution A that's going to cost me 100

1:13:18

units of effort and going to get me to 110

1:13:20

units of success and there is solution B that's going

1:13:26

to cost me 10% of efforts and going to

1:13:28

get me 80% of the way. That

1:13:31

10% of effort, 80% of the way, even if it's

1:13:33

not perfect, it's not 100%, is a much better

1:13:36

choice because it saves your effort until

1:13:38

you review later and maybe take it to

1:13:42

So kind of making an agreement with your

1:13:44

brain so to speak. I'm going to sit here.

1:13:46

I'm going to think about what is the most

1:13:49

reasonable solution or what I can put into practice

1:13:52

for next time but then once that's arrived

1:13:54

at then making the agreement with your brain,

1:13:57

okay. I'm off the hook. I'm off

1:13:59

the hook. We're absolutely going for it, we're

1:14:01

going to do it, and we're gonna review again in

1:14:03

an hour's time if we need to, but it's gonna

1:14:05

be done right now. And if it comes back, you

1:14:07

just remind the brain. Do it better and better. The

1:14:10

only thing I would caution you on this is

1:14:13

the emotions of others. So if

1:14:16

the decision you're taking is gonna affect

1:14:18

another, my only ask

1:14:21

of you is find a way, put five minutes

1:14:23

more to deliver what you're going to deliver kindly

1:14:25

and lovingly, okay? By

1:14:27

the way, it doesn't matter what you're gonna deliver.

1:14:29

You can actually go and tell them, we're gonna

1:14:31

break up with you, or we're gonna fire you,

1:14:33

or we're gonna do this, or we're gonna do that.

1:14:35

As long as you do it respectfully, kindly, and lovingly,

1:14:38

it's okay, it's a good solution, and you can work

1:14:40

on that. How are we doing on time? What's the

1:14:42

time? One more, one more. Yes.

1:14:46

I listened to your book about 18 months ago

1:14:50

and prescribed it for all of my

1:14:52

employees to listen to. Thank you. And

1:14:54

it really impacted the culture of our team. And

1:14:57

the question I have for you is, how

1:14:59

do you suggest that we utilize what you're

1:15:01

teaching with our youth? I

1:15:03

have a 12 and a nine-year-old son, and I'm

1:15:05

taking my 12-year-old son to unleash the power of

1:15:08

thin, and he went last year. But

1:15:10

I'm already noticing that the negative

1:15:12

self-talk with social media and just

1:15:15

other things with school

1:15:17

and such, I wanna be able to influence him

1:15:19

more as a young age. And

1:15:22

if you have any suggestions or books or the formula,

1:15:24

knowing that they're so young, that would be really

1:15:27

appreciative. I'm actually finally ready

1:15:29

with five children's books, but for younger

1:15:31

children than that. But it's been

1:15:33

a very difficult responsibility for me. Believe

1:15:36

it or not, children know what I

1:15:38

told you more than we do as adults because

1:15:40

they're not as spoiled as we are. But

1:15:43

our children of today, I can

1:15:45

promise you, we have not seen suffering

1:15:47

as compared to what they have to

1:15:49

go through. They are constantly

1:15:51

bombarded with choices, which is really

1:15:53

crippling in a very interesting way.

1:15:55

More choices are more difficult. We've

1:15:57

left them a horrible world. lots

1:16:00

of issues, okay, and lots of them are

1:16:03

struggling with what is what's my life going

1:16:05

to be like. And you

1:16:07

can see that in the numbers. Teen suicide

1:16:09

is at an all time high. Now,

1:16:13

there are two things I

1:16:15

will say. One thing is,

1:16:17

is your children will

1:16:20

never do what you tell them they will do what

1:16:22

you do. Okay. And I

1:16:24

think that's the challenge that most parents don't actually

1:16:26

think enough about. And so, the number one responsibility,

1:16:28

if we want to change anyone around us, most

1:16:30

importantly, our kids is to actually be the example

1:16:32

we want them to be. And a really good

1:16:34

parent would bond around those issues. I'll give you

1:16:36

a very simple example. I used to, I had

1:16:39

a very simple agreement with my kids. Which

1:16:49

again goes back to pouring love on them. I had

1:16:51

two wonderful kids in many, many ways, but your kids

1:16:53

are never perfect if you're a

1:16:55

parent. Like they always want them to be better.

1:16:57

And so at age I was 13, Ali was 14, I sat them down

1:17:00

and I said, I'm going to retire parenthood. Okay. Of course, Ali, you

1:17:02

know, I'm going to retire. Okay.

1:17:10

Of course, Ali, in his very, in her

1:17:13

very lively way said, what, what does that

1:17:15

mean? I don't have curfew anymore. Ali,

1:17:18

of course, in his very wise way said, can

1:17:20

you elaborate on that? Right. And, and basically, the

1:17:22

conversation was about there are a few things that I

1:17:24

want you to pay attention to literally three things. Okay.

1:17:34

And everything else is okay. I'm going to

1:17:36

pour love on you unconditionally, whatever you do

1:17:38

other than those three things, where I will

1:17:40

still love you unconditionally, but we're

1:17:42

going to have a very tough conversation.

1:17:45

Okay. One of those three things, believe

1:17:47

it or not, was I asked them

1:17:49

to bring love on you unconditionally. Their

1:18:00

friends over for a barbecue every

1:18:02

single months. Once a month I

1:18:05

was going to Grill for. Ten.

1:18:07

Friends of Alleys and then friends of as

1:18:09

they overlapped quite often. And

1:18:12

my only thing was when they

1:18:14

showed up I engaged in the

1:18:17

reality. I. Actually understood what

1:18:19

they were going through on. I promise

1:18:21

you, the life of a teenager is

1:18:23

so difficult. For. Her when I

1:18:25

heard it from their friends. oh you know

1:18:27

this person is doing this and that happened

1:18:29

and you know that band said this and

1:18:31

you don't know all of that stuff So

1:18:33

you managed to really engage. I actually became

1:18:36

i don't know if you are as if

1:18:38

you if you guys know this but and

1:18:40

you have you are playing Halo. I'm.

1:18:42

The one that kids you yesterday. Okay

1:18:44

so I I I am I I'm

1:18:46

a little litter the I am an

1:18:48

Olympic champion level video gamer. Got because

1:18:50

I played with Ali I had to

1:18:52

sit next to him for hours and

1:18:55

hours and hours playing with him listening

1:18:57

to him. Okay by I I I

1:18:59

am my my it and the love

1:19:01

of my life. Any time I me

1:19:03

and a out in the same place

1:19:05

I will literally see up my entire

1:19:07

day and great Whatever is the queen

1:19:09

of and have no more but to

1:19:11

the that. The King of England out once

1:19:13

time with me I'm not gonna go is

1:19:15

a oh once me. And

1:19:18

I think as parents. There's. Nothing

1:19:20

you can teach them but dissing them

1:19:22

again, pouring love on them and giving

1:19:24

them allow a lot of your attention.

1:19:27

And showing them an exam. And

1:19:30

example, that doesn't asked them to change

1:19:32

the doesn't minimize what they're going through

1:19:34

because they're going through A. Okay,

1:19:37

but that's simply goes in that sits next

1:19:39

to them. and when when they say. You.

1:19:41

Know I don't believe in this or this is

1:19:44

not working for your. this is making me

1:19:46

unhappy. Hug them. And. Say.

1:19:49

That do nothing. Just be happy.

1:19:51

You're sense that they're okay. Rights.

1:19:54

And I think that constant process did

1:19:56

one thing that slipped our relationship with

1:19:58

our kids, which is the. Came back

1:20:00

to us over and over and over when

1:20:02

times were tough. That is

1:20:04

absolutely no way. I believe in our

1:20:06

current world where we can equip them for

1:20:09

the challenges that they're coming up against. The.

1:20:11

Only thing we can equip them with is a

1:20:14

level of tests. That. They will come

1:20:16

back to us when things are tough and say

1:20:18

papa. I dated a boy and he turned out

1:20:20

to be a horrible boy. And

1:20:23

his if if I if I can be

1:20:25

the one that she comes back to when

1:20:27

that happens I can be her spawns for

1:20:29

unhappiness. I can seek out on happiness and

1:20:31

been in meat. And. For my

1:20:34

love on her to he'll have. That's.

1:20:36

What You want with your kids and

1:20:38

specially a teenage, You want them to

1:20:40

consider you that best friend. No longer

1:20:42

that parents. That. You to you

1:20:44

retire Neat that at But Parenthood you absolutely

1:20:46

he retired. he just hug them, say that

1:20:48

you trust them and be there for them

1:20:50

in a way that makes them keep coming

1:20:52

back Seat. Okay, I'm here

1:20:55

for the entire up five days or other

1:20:57

than the last half a day so is

1:20:59

any question at all or or any hugs

1:21:01

I'm available think your own so much a

1:21:03

few minutes the know. It's

1:21:13

we wrote. His podcast is inspired

1:21:15

and directed by Tony Robinson.

1:21:17

His teachings is produced by

1:21:20

Us Seem Tony Copyrights, Robbins

1:21:22

Research International.