The Science Of Happiness: New Insights - Mo Gawdat

why is the modern world so stressful for so many people because we designed it that way we designed it with um a very simple statement that stress is an acceptable tax that we should pay for success in life and um yeah I mean in a very interesting way we tell people that stress is the result of the events that that go on in our life but that's not true at all you know when when I wrote unstress my attempt was to compare stress in humans just as a very Elementary understanding of what stress is to stress in objects uh in as in physics if you want right an an elementary school understanding of physics is that uh an object is not stressed because of the force that's applied to it we are not stressed because only of the challenges that we Face an object is stressed as the force divided by the square uh uh you know the the the square area of the cross-section of the object similarly in humans um we are stressed because of the challenges that we Face divided by our abilities and skills and you know resources that we have to deal with that stress and if you really understand those two concepts one that you are not necessarily supposed to be stressed to succeed in the modern world and two that stress is not just the the subject of the forces that are applied to you but is also a subject subject to the to the way you deal with the events of your life uh then suddenly we don't have to be that stressed anymore we can continue to engage in the modern world but we can choose to be unstressful what would you say to someone who responds by mentioning look that that that sounds wonderful in an idilic world but stress is the price that you pay to do difficult things stress is not a bug it's a feature of the modern world and there is no way that we can get away from it it's baked into reality and this sounds great but in practice it's impossible the the challenges are baked in reality we we we have to absolutely accept that our life is challenging and it comes with a lot of more and more challenges every day the world is becoming a lot more complex almost surpassing the intelligence of the civilization that created it but but that kind of statement almost reminds you of that you know person in a striped suit on Harvard Business Review you know and on the cover saying ah you know people only perform their best when they're stressed and and that statement always always you know drove me mad because how about those who are creative how about those who are in flow how about those who are in harmony with those who are they working with how about amazing teams of innovators and creators and you know stress is not the only way you can achieve as a matter of fact stress is the only way to achieve when you're stressed uh as a almost as a cog in a machine machine right but if you want to allow yourself to do anything beyond just performing the same task over and over and over and being managed to get it done then there are so many different ways to to to uh to succeed as a result of that now the there are lots of studies that will tell you that we are way more productive when we're calm or we're contented when we're focused on what we're uh what we're doing in a way that doesn't take away cycles of stress if you if you understand the deeper reason why we are stressed we are stressed normally the biological machine stresses us to be able to respond to an actual immediate threat uh so that it reconfigures you into a superhuman you know dilates your your pupils sends more glucose to your to to your brain you know U feeds your muscles so you can engage in a fight or flight response but believe it or not the the infamous cortisol that that rushes through your your system to tell you to become superhuman will be completely flushed out of your system within 90 seconds within 90 seconds you have a choice you have a choice to look at the situation with your rational brain with your hpoc compus and and prefrontal cortex and say yes I have a reason to uh stay in the stressed mode and continue to fight for my life if you want or I can actually choose to say no no no no I recognize the situation differently and I'm willing to actually do something different about it now the problem is because we are not designed as a machine to be under stress all the time we're never allowing our parasympathetic nervous system to engage our or our autonomous nervous system to engage in a par parasympathetic state so that we can rest and digest and actually do vital functions digesting your food is a vital function replenishing your muscles is a vital function relaxing you know sleeping properly resting all of that is a vital function for survival because we don't allow that we are not taking the benefit of stress which is a short burst of superhuman capabilities we are we're starting to take the the the the downsides of stress and stress is becoming a pandemic that's killing a lot of us yeah so am I right in saying that a stressful event occurs there is a 90c window that is the cortisol being sent around the body and in 90 seconds it's flushed out therefore if you are stressed for longer than 90 seconds that is only because you yourself are perpetuating it by continuing to trigger another 90 seconds 90 seconds 90 seconds absolutely because you're a you're a best-selling author with a lot of trauma with a lot of drama that creates trauma right so it's quite an interesting way of looking at life uh without an actual immediate threat and yet responding as if there is a tiger in front of you you see the the the original design of stress for for our biological machine was a Tiger shows up an actual threat right that this was triggered in your uh uh igula so literally almost a reptilian response like a lizard right you're not thinking at all the rational brain is supposed to be able to say oh no no no this is not a tiger it's just you know leaves moving because of the wind and when you get that you you can actually get into that negative feedback loop and cancel out the stress the problem is that in the modern world most of our stressors are not triggered by an actual physical event you know other than maybe you're crossing the street and a car is speeding in your direction right otherwise how do we trigger our stress response we trigger it with a thought we trigger it with an emotion you know we we simply go into into stories that we've created within ourselves as a result of events that not not are not immediately stressful upon us okay and because of that when it comes back to that negative feedback loop we allow ourselves to you know your brain will will start with a with a story that you know my partner doesn't love me anymore okay and of course 90 seconds later by by the way we position that as a survival issue like you know that even though breakups never really killed anyone but we will position it as a survival issue and then we will take that survival issue and then basically perpetuate it over and over and over because when you consult your rational brain that created the issue in the first place it will reaffirm it it will say yeah yeah your partner still doesn't love you uh there is no you know physical signal of anything that changed in the real world so my original original thought is true and and as a result of that you will break right so so in unstress we we write that even though a short burst of stress superhuman capability is good for you we break under three conditions right you break either under a trauma which is an intense stress in a very short period of time that exceeds your ability to deal with it right you break under burnout which is repetitive stress in physics it's almost like fatigue you know when you hold a a piece of plastic and you keep bending it over and over and over and over you're not really applying a massive Force to it but just little Force back and forth and back and forth basically breaks it even eventually that's burnout or because of anticipation of stress okay or anticipation of threats that will show up in your life which is basically fear and all of its derivatives so fear worry anxiety and panic right between those if they show up in your life long enough so uh uh of course trauma is outside our control but but believe it or not 93% of the people that get uh exposed to a PTSD inducing like the highest level of trauma 93% will recover within 3 months 96.7% will recover in 6 months and most of those will actually enjoy post- trumatic growth so trauma is not the reason for the epidemic of stress right it's burnout and anticipation of of of threats that that actually ends up uh breaking us the interesting thing is I think a lot of people have shame around stress about their response to stress so we have the event that occurs uh small large consistent or or or acute chronic or acute um then we have the story that we tell ourselves about that the rumination the The Continuous revisiting of whatever that situation is and then we have the story that we tell ourselves about the way that it's affected us and that I think leads to a lot of Shame uh and I certainly know that this does in my life where something affects me and first off I feel like agitated that the things affect me and then I feel ashamed that I felt agitated about the thing affecting me and you think oh God like I not only has this thing occurred but then my response to it has caused me to become my own executioner my own torturer in this way and I'm telling myself this God should you not be more resilient than this how how can it be there something so small how God how how unres ilent how pathetic are you that you couldn't have gotten over this more quickly and then I think I I've certainly noticed in times where that's ended up being chronic because I've been either unable or unprepared to change whatever the thing is that's that's stressing me or confront whatever it is uh that ends up with me becoming numb to the emotion and I start to switch myself off to that and I think the the Comfortably Numb phase is something that a lot of people are in that they probably don't realize 100% one of my favorite songs of all time comfortably know by Pink Floyd right so so the idea is that we tell our s scripts H uh or or we are the the product of scripts that we accept as the reality and then we play them over and over in your case you know that cycle of uh why did I allow myself to feel that I'm not good enough to to do that and so on Believe It or Not The Other Extreme of this is those who wear stress as a badge it's like look at me I am stressed because I'm busy I'm busy because I'm needed in the world right now the interesting side of all of this is It's a script right and it's a script that is you know my wonderful wife is is an incredible therapist and she teaches me a lot about psychology you know normally normally those scripts are in response to events that are not in your life right now and that are exaggerated because of their size compared to your size when they happened right so so you see the the interesting side of those who develop their abilities the square area as I say in terms of dealing with stress is that things that stressed me when I was 20 freaked me out when I was 20 I dealt with them with a reasonable amount of stress when I was 30 I dealt with them with East when I was 40 and I laugh about them when I'm 50 right and and and and that's is true for all of us huh you you you grow in your resources and skills and abilities uh and then they become easier the only challenge that prevents you from doing that is sort of a fixed mindset of saying but I don't want to grow okay I want to actually look at my script and reapply that script over and over okay and a and a script of shame or a script of ego or a script of you know the most famous script of stress is good for me uh the you know the script of uh it's unavoidable the world applies it to me and I have no choice but to accept it uh all of those scripts I I think are the biggest reason why we're unable to become unstressful the the you know when people ask me what is the very first thing that I need to do to become unstressful I would say make a choice right the first thing you need to do is to choose to become unstressful to choose to prioritize your calm and and and uh and peace over uh your script over your ego over your shame over your uh you know which whatever it is that is telling you no I need to stay in that space talk to me about the difference between prioritizing becoming unstress with words like calm and peace and and a a triaging of yourself over other stuff compared with a more aggressive leaning sort of gripping tightly spitting swust nothing can hurt me type approach you understand what I mean because both of those could be responses that people would have yeah it's it's actually quite so I mean you may of course know a bit about my background Chris so I was Chief business Officer of Google X I ran half of Google before that for around seven years and started more than 103 languages more than 50% of Google's business worldwide that's a very stressful job right but you don't a you don't have to be stressed to achieve you see the the challenge we have in our world is that we from school from our parents uh we are taught to be motivated by the negative it's almost as if uh we need that uh whip okay or that fear or you know to achieve in life the truth is anyone who's ever achieved in life will know that you've achieved because of the actions you've taken right and that if you've taken the right actions whether you were stressed or not the exact same actions will lead to the same exact results now the interesting side of it is that you can do better with your actions if you're not stressed why because you're not wasting Cycles on on handling your stress you're not bursting in the in the face of some of your colleagues you're not you know and so on right so so here's the interesting thing if I gave you 18 hours of work a day let's say you're one of those people who will absolutely smash it right and I gave you the entire 18 hours when you're calm and contented and focused and and and really on it H would that be better for you if or if four hours of those are wasted on your stress now this is the interesting bit the interesting bit is stress is a choice and as a matter of fact sometimes especially for those of us who are so motivated and so driven to achieve we even create synthetic stress because we believe that we need it to continue to achieve now interestingly if you really reflect on this a little bit you would realize that you can be similarly OT moated by the positive right so so you can you can tell yourself uh you know I want to be uh motivated by uh you know create squeezing every possible uh you know uh success and efficiency out of my day okay and I will hate myself if I waste half an hour okay or you can you can also say I'm motivated to squeeze every bit of efficiency out of my day and I will feel very proud if I did didn't waste half an hour it's the it's two sides of the same coin one of them pressures yourself like they did to you in school okay and and the other motivates you and encourages you and excites you which is really the way you should deal with anyone that you love hopefully including yourself okay and and that's my that's been a mega change in my approach to life that do I want to stress myself as the only means of achievement or can I actually achieve by motivating myself more interestingly by the way and I say that and I know a lot of people will uh will not like me for it is that 80% of what you do in your day is useless right uh that 20% of what you do is normally what gets you 90% of the way to your objective and perhaps it's wiser to give up on the 10% extra which you will never achieve by the way okay you may achieve two or three percent percentage points of those 10 you may want to give up on that extra 2 to 3% to gain 80% of your day right so as as a senior uh leader in a in a very large organization my teams would normally come to me with you know and when I worked at Google X that the deal size was massive right billions of dollars so they come with 11 deals and I'm like who wants 11 deals like why are you doing this to yourself if we get two deals that prove the concept and have enough uh you know Revenue in them to for all of us to succeed why why would we want to chase 11 oh just because you know maybe we will lose a few of them it's a portfolio approach let's kill ourselves so that we close all of them and I'm like why if if you choose three that are likely to happen where the customer is committed where everything's working well you're more likely to close those than you are if you focus on 11 right so so there is always that choice of why do we go the extra 80% I I really never understood that why don't you wisely look at pushing yourself as far as you need to get most of the way and you don't and give up on that extra bit win the time and space so that you can become more creative that you can you know become more liked among your colleagues because you're not as stressed as and and hopefully so that you live a little longer uh to enjoy the fruits of what you have achieved I think a lot of the time we are more concerned with how our inputs look than what our outcomes are and people prioritize looking busy over getting work done and in knowledge economy where I don't have a bucket of widgets that are to be done and a bucket of widgets that are done I can't see how much work you are doing but I can see how quickly you reply and slack or I can see how fast you respond to an email or how many different how long the email is or whatever there's a quote from Andy grobes that says there are so many people working so hard and achieving so little and it makes me think about what you mentioned there there's also a concept from Oliver burkeman called productivity debt and he kind of describes the way that he wakes up every morning as if he's overdrawn in some sort of bank account and if he Nails every single moment of the day perfectly he can maybe get himself back to zero he can get himself back to black as opposed to being in the red but as you said there there's no rule that says upon waking every morning you are indebted to the universe and only way that you can fix this is to flagellate yourself whipping yourself through through your workload and your to-do list and then by the end of the day think oh thank God I didn't waste that much of it as opposed to look at all of the time that I used which was productive and uh it's a simple reframe but I do wonder how much of that comes from school and comes from the way that we're sort of disciplined into it so when it comes to the Machinery of stress can you explain what stress is what what's happening in our mind in our body the human system yeah so so you you just to comment very quickly on what you on what you just said so so the the idea there is that you know I always I always say you wake up every morning and you have a limited number of heartbeats right and and you know you can use those heartbeats which is so stupid which is what most people do you can use those heartbeats to collect coins that you keep so that you can enjoy future Heartbeats right or you can use those heartbeats to collect enough coins and then enjoy the rest of the heartbeats live the rest of the heartbeats and I and I think most people don't recognize that that future moment where you're going to spend the coins never comes and that for most of us who succeeded in life you you you know as soon as you achieve a goal the goal posts will move and you keep going and you keep going and you keep going and you stress yourself and you wonder why you're doing it because it's really not getting you anywhere that you want to be interestingly because you don't know where you want to be it's just the that constant quest for more right and I think stopping somewhere to reflect and say how much of this do I need how much of this do I that makes me a better person and how much of this should I live I think that's really really important you you asked me about the stress Machinery so uh as I said stress starts with to to understand stress properly you have to understand it in context and in context stress is a response that triggers fight or flight truly and honestly in its biological form it was the survival Machinery that was making us either fight or run away right now the when you really think about that you you you realize that most of the tuning of stress is actually very physical it you know it it sends more sugar to your brain so that you're able to focus it dilates your pupil so pupil so that you're aware of danger it really feeds your muscles more so you can run away and so on and so forth fantastic right you can use that same Machinery to focus on a presentation on Thursday little bit of a you know of of cortisol and adrenaline before the presentation you're focused you're you know you're pushing yourself harder to practice and to rehearse and you nail it great uh um Robert sski you know wrote that incredible book why zebras don't have ulcers which was entirely about what happens post stress so so you take that response and you're supposed to be within it for as long as the threat is there if if you're eaten by the tiger well done you don't need to be stressed anymore if you're not eaten by the tiger well done chill right the problem is we are we we we keep re-triggering that as I said post the 90 seconds rule but we also keep um layering that right so so it's never one stressor so you know I I one of my um dear friends um is a um an not a nature photographer Jimmy Nelson he he basically goes to indigenous tribes uh that have really rarely ever had any in interaction with humanity and he would go and photograph them in their environment right he was telling me about that one night where uh you know he first of all he spends months and weeks with them to get to know them and then he takes them to the place that represents them the most and they're in their best gear and they're supposed to get to that waterfall that tribe so that he takes that one photograph on film that's its entire Focus one photo on film and how stressful is that and then by the time they get there the light is not perfect so he says we can't take the photo now we have to take it tomorrow so they sleep behind the waterfall right it's incredibly noisy it's extremely wet and it's very cold says best night of sleep in my life and I was like how and and and the idea is that when we're in our habitat as humans the original design Believe It or Not somehow we end up not feeling as stressed as we are in the concrete jungle okay you know in the Concrete Jungle everything is is a stress being late to a meeting is stressful you know com the train is late your stressed you know the commute is a little congested your stressed every little thing becomes a a stressful trigger and we layer them we layer them and we never resolve them so we you you get one of them that basically says my commute is killing me and by the time you arrive that topic is over you're going to deal with it only on the way back okay and you keep doing this day after day after day after day after day and you never really stop to tell yourself can I limit this right and so when when we when when we looked at uh we my my co-author Alice law and and myself when we looked at stress and unstress we wanted to to go down and say how can you stop doing this and we came up with this model that was we call the Three L's you know to limit learn and listen so so the idea is before you even start to say I'm stressed by the modern world the modern world is killing me stop the layering stop the layering meaning you know take a a Sunday morning take a piece of paper say sit down and write down everything that stressed you last week it's not a difficult exercise just tell your brain what was stressful last week and your brain will go mad yeah let me tell you right and you'll write as many as as many lists as many items on the list as you want and then ask yourself openly how many of those are necessary right how many of those can you do without starting from the simplest things like you know the the the alarm that wakes you up in the morning does it really have to be that annoying and jolt you out of bed as if you know the world is about to end uh can you make it a little quieter maybe calmer maybe start a little quieter and then become a you know uh um more audible after a while can you by the way which I a lot of people hate me again when I say this I I rarely ever wake up to an alarm if I need to wake up at 9:00 a.m. I'll sleep before 1:00 a.m. I mean how difficult is that eight hours of sleep h and and I you know rarely ever need to wake up if I need to wake up at 7 a.m. I'll sleep at 11:00 p.m. at 8 hours of sleep most of the time I'll wake up before my alarm right a tiny shift in your in your life you know that friend that annoys you do you really need them in their in your life can you limit all of that and remove it and if you start to to take charge so that that stress Machinery is not engaged all the time the the the problem becomes that because stress is for fight or or flight responses it's engaging that part of your system that's using those resources all the time but it's ignoring your kidneys it's ignoring your digestive system it's ignoring your liver it's ignoring every other part that is parasympathetic which by the way is also a survival mechanism right you cannot survive when you're you know completely not directing blood to your kidneys and starting to struggle as a result of that so so the trick is how much of that stress should I accept and when do I stop when do I tell myself no no no this is the price for this is too high I need to remove those things from my life the Assumption we have about stress being baked into the fabric of of existence continues to come up I think so many people just believe well no that's that's that's the price you PID that's what that's how it's supposed to be or it's supposed to be hard it's supposed to be stressful and trying to come up with a different way uh I think upends a degree of attachment that people have es even people like me like I I like being able to work hard I like being able to to um overcome difficult things but there's a difference between something being difficult and unnecessary suffering so I think trying to bate those two is is pretty important let's take a simple example commute right Mo most of us will have to struggle with a commute you know several times a week some of us several times a day right first question is can I limit that can I you know work from home twice a week so that I don't have to go to the you know to the office and and suffer the commute not all of us have that ability can I uh maybe consider in the next year or so to move closer to the office right maybe not all of us have that ability can I choose to make the E commute more enjoyable can I align with a friend so that we go together or can I listen to an amazing uh you know modern wisdom podcast on the way can I uh you know have take a cup of coffee with me uh and sip it slowly I I I always remember the story when I worked at Google X we had a project with with the New York office so I went and spend a little bit of time in the the New York office and if you've ever been in Manhattan it's Mayhem like it's just unbelievably fast for my abilities to deal with the world and I don't know if that's true but it felt that there was this Green Wave of uh of you know cross uh Crossings so the The Pedestrian lights so if you walked like a maniac you would catch all of them green but if you're less than a maniac you would be stopped uh in in a in a red uh traffic uh Crossing you know pedestrian Crossing and so from where I stayed to the Google office because I love to walk took me a 40 minutes walk when I walked like a maniac I came to the office completely breathless right then one morning I asked myself and I said um what if I missed a few of them like what would happen so I somehow allowed myself to leave 15 minutes early bought myself a coffee and walked slower so every third uh light I would miss and stop in the in the in the red pedestrian light and I would have to tell you I enjoyed that stop very much because I looked at the New Yorkers running around like headless chicken honestly right and it was funny because I was sitting standing there sipping my coffee slowly and everyone is like mad I arrived 7 minutes late so instead of 40 it was 47 minutes and you have to ask yourself H are those S minutes really going to make the difference okay or are we really overdoing it are we are we serving a script in our heads that basically says that life has to squeeze out those seven minutes now of course someone will tell me oh but hold on you know I have the school run and I have to do this and I have to do that yeah wake up seven minutes early wake up 17 minutes early seriously okay and ask yourself are those extra uh uh you know minutes or less minutes in sleep are they good for your stress can you have them at the end of the night not in you know in early in the morning and and that's my point my point is the stressors of Life are endless okay they will keep coming at you and yes absolutely they are the price that you pay for engaging in the modern world the way you deal with them is a choice the way you deal with with the stressors that come into your life is always a choice and it's always a choice that if you prioritize stress you would make differently if you prioritize being unstressed you would make those differently right so so you know I I'll give you an example we we we when we talk about the listen part of of unstress we say that a human is made up of four elements you're made up of your mind your heart your body and your spirit your spirit here not in a religious form but sort of your uh your purpose Your nonphysical Existence if you want uh on mental stress uh you know by the way every one of the speaks to you in a different language and you have to understand the language and you have to respond in that language if you were to be not mentally stressed or not physically stressed okay uh when it comes to mental stress uh you know how it is you go to the gym and you know uh basically you tear your muscles in exercise and then you feed your muscles and rest and you'll become stronger the way that happens inside our heads in our logical machine that's called the brain is through neuroplasticity so with neuroplasticity you sort of almost exactly the same way you use your brain to do a task that is a little difficult for it it builds the neural Pathways to make that task easier and easier over time so what you use grows and what you don't use shrinks right most of us uh especially the ones that love to to stress themselves will go to the gym five times a week at least right and and you know four to five times a week you're really focused on your physical health physical fitness if you want you know in unstress we write about the mental Fitness right so we we write something that we call the mind gy and gy is G gy 6m right which are exercises that you can do regularly you it's not going to show on your six-pack and your shoulder muscles right but it's going to make you much more mentally fit to deal with stress right first of all of course gratitude is the G we we know that for a fact to recognize the actual reality of your life rather than be critical all the time of what's wrong in your life is a massive massive machine that requires practice if if you're trained by the modern world to excel you're training your brain to always look for that missing bit or the bit that's wrong so that you can fix it right but then by training your brain to do that so that you succeed in the modern world you forgot you forget to be grateful and if you be if you if you forget to be grateful every becomes stressful because life has no flavor in it what is your favorite framework for a gratitude practice so I actually did so of course the let's say that the the absolute uh uh commonly discussed one of writing down what you're grateful for before you go to bed is useful okay as a matter of fact to find moments in your day so think about it this way you can do it at the end of the day you can also do it at the beginning of the day because that sets your day okay uh but you can also do it several times a day so so the idea of stopping I I used to have what I called uh more time in you know in my very busy Google uh schedule and if you've ever been to the Google X building all of the offices were made of glass right so I would have a 15 minutes more time where I'm sitting in one of those glass offices but I have no video conferences in front of me I have no computer in front of me I have no uh uh phone in my hand I'm just sitting there and people would go like is he mad either meditating or reflecting or finding what I'm grateful for or simply taking a breath believe it or not that that 15 minutes I did that twice a day just twice a day flipped my day upside down right so a gratitude practice that reminds you three times a day to stop and say what happened don't don't call it gratitude anything you enjoyed in the last couple of hours simple question H I went the other way I actually so so you know in my first book s for happy I I attempted to statistically try to show for you and I I mean people who are not in a war zone or who are in extreme po poverty and so on for the typical person that has a device to listen to this wonderful podcast and you know is busy engaged trying to make himself better for that typical person if you count the norm of Life Chris the norm of life is good right the the reason why we recognize when we're sick is because the norm the Baseline is we're normally healthy right most people would you know think that an earthquake is a mega disaster because they've seen it on TV but they've never actually experienced one I mean if you live in California you may have experienced a few but if if you live in you know in Norway you may have never experienced one right and most of your life even for those those who experienced a few most of life you're on Solid Ground the truth is most of Life Is Good most of life is okay and and the reason you know if you want proof for that the proof is if you have the brain bandwidth and Cycles to be able to contemplate something in the future or you know reflect on something in the past then that by definition means now is okay right if if there was a tiger in front of you right now you wouldn't be thinking about the meeting tomorrow right you wouldn't be thinking about that bully that you know hurt you in school you you wouldn't be able to look at past and future right so the reality is that if you take every moment of your life most of the moments there is no tiger out there so using that I started a very unusual uh uh gratitude practice I basically started to recognize the negative thoughts in my head okay and when my brain gave me a negative thought I made a simple assumption H that if 50% of life is okay then there must be a a a positive thought associated with it so every time my brain told me something negative I'd say so but what's good about it right and when you get good at this you can push it to a j Master Level honestly which is to say but 90% of life is okay right so next time your brain gives you a a negative thought ask for nine positive ones do that often enough and your brain will shut the F up will stop complaining and will actually start to learn because you're building those neural networks that are training to look for the positive so those neural networks will simply say when your brain starts to look for something negative it will also by definition because it knows you're going to ask it for positive ones it will remember the positive ones too and they are plenty they're plenty like you know today it's now 11:45 5:00 p.m. in Dubai okay and I could complain and say why am I stand staying up late and I'm supposed to be unstressful or I am I could tell myself oh my God I'm talking to Chris someone that I know the work of and appreciate and respect so much such a wonderful opportunity and hopefully together we're going to make five people unstressful or maybe 50,000 people unstress amazing right it's the same exact coin you just need to turn it and you need to tell your brain because your brain as a survival mechanism is not interested in telling you what's good you know what's good doesn't doesn't represent a threat to you it's very very interested in telling you what's wrong so you have to shortcut that machine and say hold on hold on I heard you okay I heard you complaining I heard you alerting me to AB and c I heard you what is good about this and if you make that your gratitude practice you'll become grateful a lot more of okay that's G what about y are we going to go all through all of them why is the yield and yielding is a very very difficult skill especially in the modern world of fast-paced success right yielding is to recognize when the world has when when when life has forced your hand okay and I always try to tell people to to to to try and differentiate between two Sensations you know of course there are so many incredible pieces of work you know grit for example is an incred book about the idea of no don't ever give up keep going keep going keep going and I try to say differentiate between two Sensations one sensation is you're walking on a flat surface and then it ramps up okay that's when you need grit when life becomes harder yeah try keep trying but picture yourself which is what I call the nudge picture yourself driving into a roundabout I know in America you don't have many of those right but driving into a roundabout and as you drive in exit two where you were where you wanted to go out is closed three is closed four is closed and five is open right you can go around that roundabout with grit for the rest of your life you can go about around it for the rest of your life huh with grit but you're never going to get anywhere and the smarter ones of all of us will yield will say okay you know what where I want to go the exit is Clos closed I'm going to go out of five and figure out my way out of there right there is a big difference between ramping up it's it requires more effort so stay the course or it's it's really changing you and when life forces you to change it's one of for one of two reasons only one of two reasons one is to change direction or the other is to learn and heal okay and so once life forces your hand ask yourself which one of those which one of those does want does life want to direct my attention to is is there something I can learn here is there something that's within me that I need to change and heal is there something that I need to change direction and maybe go another way because I'm needed in another place because by the way the story of life is not just you you're one in a massive form of being that's called all of us and your presence in a different place might actually lead you to a different place or might lead someone else to a different place I I met my wife and the love of my life simply because I had to be a little late so I miss a train and then you know I arrive you know in the later train around the corner we literally bump into each other I could stand entirely on that whole whole train journey complaining about life okay or I could tell myself the nudge is taking me to a place where I should be the line between I'm giving up because I'm not trying fully hard or I am letting go of something because this isn't right for me or I'm pushing to the point of break or or injury um is a delicate one and I think that there's an art form to learning how to do that and it's one that I've struggled with for an awfully long time you know I don't want to feel like things are out of my control but I also don't want to push myself so hard that I snap yeah I i' I'd encourage you so I I mean let's be uh uh Fair huh I lived a very long portion of my life killing myself right I'm you know I remember vividly uh Karina my uh my um assistant in Google X uh Stanford MBA incredibly intelligent woman you know she comes joins my team the first thing I say is okay look here are my travel guidelines uh you know when I go from here to here I want this I don't want the red eye on those trips I want there and she smiles and looks at me and says yeah no sure no problem yeah sure no problem right comes back to me a week later with a PowerPoint presentation that with the tit title of the presentation is you're killing yourself okay so I said okay that's quite interesting and she flips through Slide by slide of my history of travel okay showing me how many hours I actually were in the air how many hours I actually were in transit and how other path is how our other ways of doing this those trips could have actually worked differently and she came up with two very simple rules she said um uh one hour uh of one one night of sleep for every uh hour of time zone difference okay which doesn't really work very well when you're from California to New York if you want but works really well when you go to Singapore right and then suddenly she started to say and by the way we're just going to tell people up front that you're going to be in Asia for seven days or 9 days or whatever and so they can line up your meetings my God my life flipped upside down like truly and honestly she she showed me a a a trip where I went from California to Taiwan from Taiwan to China from China to Russia to the UK back to California in five working days tell me tell me that we're not Maniacs okay that is absolutely absolutely wrong H and and when you really start to think about it where is the line where is the line where you can actually start to do things with Joy by the way I achieve so much more now by simply telling myself no I'm not going to treat myself that way anymore it's really quite interesting and what ends up happening is that 90% the only reason you're talking to me Chris by the way is that I managed to give myself enough breaks in life to sit down and write because you know what I can whip myself to write and it's not going to happen I need to have inspiration I need to have organized thoughts I need to have my notes you know written down when I'm sitting sipping a coffee somewhere slowly right and I need to have my structure of what I want to write about how I want to write about it it doesn't happen with stress it you you you yes you you know proper author authors will sit down and write for two to three hours a day hm but I can't push myself and say and by the way you can write eight hours eight pages a day so if you write seven and a half you failed today doesn't work that way we've spoken about the issues that you encounter the line for me between mental and emotional problems a very difficult a very difficult to to split apart because our emotions manifest in the body they make us feel a particular way but then we start to tell ourselves a story correct about what that means to us corre so talk to me about the things that people might be feeling that they're not aware of which can cause them to be emotionally stressed but b b big big big lie in the modern world H uh that is driven in my no no scientific proof for what I'm about to say but I believe it started with the Industrial Revolution right that we were told uh we can't handle your unpredict ability and irrationality and emotions emotions are just too fluffy to deal with right so you don't bring your your emotions to school don't bring them to to work uh you know when you're here don't cry right and and what a disaster what a disaster for two reasons one is we still feel them or or we they they're still within us sometimes we numb them okay but they're still within us uh and two is you're you've you've never felt alive without emot okay so you know even even negative emotions are are really the the the memory thread of your life is made of of emotional moments not of facts you know nobody remembers remembers the algebra equation that they solved when they were in third grade okay they remember that they solved a difficult equation and their you know teacher was proud of them the emotion okay here's the trick the trick is um all of those layers mental physical emotional and spiritual interact with each other so you know you can feel an emotion that triggers a thought or you can have a thought that triggers an emotion okay and then the emotion will trigger more thought that will trigger more emotions that will reflect in your body which will make you feel uh you know stressed and and aches and pains that will make you think a negative thought that will trigger an emotion and so on right so take fear we we we spoke spoke about fear and all of its derivative fear is quite algorithmic as as irrational as as it may appear to be fear is a moment in the future is less safe than this moment okay so fear basically is related to you know your amount of safety at t0 minus your amount of safety at T1 and and it's it's a it's an algorithmic uh uh response but it gets highly exaggerated and it gets Blended and then it gets suppressed so so let me explain that fear in itself as an emotion is a very exaggerated emotion you know the heart of a mother would tell her husband your son's been sick all winter because the the child had the flu three days and then six weeks later another three days right but to a to the to the heart of a mother this is way too much not to act upon it so you exaggerate fear exaggerates the situation so that you actually start to act number two is we are taught to suppress our emotions we are they're they're very subtle and Blended so if I asked you how do you feel right now it's impossible to to to tell me like a laser sharp I feel uh jealous it doesn't work that way you can you can feel jealous and a little bit of envy and a bit of anger and the constipation and whatever right a million a million things come together to create that blend that wheel of emotion of how you feel right so it actually takes a lot of attention to understand how you feel and and in the in in unstress we try to explain that the way to do that is to look for the physical signatures of every emotion okay so you know anxiety for example is felt in your stomach in your digestive system um the third is after all of that they tell us and don't feel it don't don't they they are saying don't show it and as a result we tell ourselves I cannot not show it if I feel it it just takes me over it's irrational I'm afraid of it so I'm not going to feel it I'm not going to acknowledge it to myself and what ends up happening is that those emotions will will will stay the body keeps the score remember the book right so so basically they will stay within you and they will build and build and build until uh um you know uh you know eventually they'll either burn out burst out uh so uh you know basically you'll find yourself crying for no reason or you'll they'll kill you they'll eat you out from the inside now how how do you deal with this we said that each of the four modalities you know mental emotional uh physical and spiritual has a language it speaks to you in a different language your emotions are trying to take get your attention believe it or not for a positive reason even the the the uncomfortable emotions I don't want to call them negative and positive right the uncomfortable emotions fear is uncomfortable but it's trying to alert you that something might not be safe Envy is uncomfortable but it's trying to to alert you that there is something in the world that you want but don't have right and you can go on huh you know boredom the biggest emotion of the modern world while we're swiping all the time okay is uncomfortable but it's originally designed because if you're underwhelmed with with the world you would try to make it better so when you were born bored in the cave you were chipping stones and chipping Stones was helping all of us now when you're bored you go to Instagram or Tik Tok right and and and so interestingly the first step to acknowledging your emotions is to acknowledge the value of emotions that there a very I in computer science I call them batch processing so if I if I gave you uh clear information and data to analyze and come come back with an answer this is what me what we do mentally the our emotional and spiritual engagements you know connecting to the non-physical side of you so that you can actually listen to your intuition those are crunching a massive amount of information that you cannot scrunch in your brain including the body language of the person including what you felt about this including this including a million little things and telling you I don't feel comfortable or I feel worried or I feel that's incredible intelligence if you allow yourself to listen to it so step number one is acknowledge that they come for a reason and that even if they're uncomfortable that reason is is is a good reason for you and two celebrate them because I hosted uh on my podcast I hosted um Aron Gandhi Aron is the grandson of Mahatma Gandhi and he uh wrote a book called The Gift of anger and so first question I asked him I I was like Aron how can anger be a gift like seriously and he said what do you mean Mo I mean anger is an energy like any other energy you can use it to punch someone in the face or you can use it to stand up and make a speech that changes the world anger itself is positive in its amplitude but has no polarity you can use it whichever way to you want and that's step number two of familiarizing yourself with your emotions to is to tell yourself by the way no emotion is bad if I use the energy the right way it will be good for me now you got yourself logically believe it or not Alice by the way my co-author would talk about this very differently I'm the you know the Brainiac right so so so the now that you got yourself to accept that one you will always feel two that that that your emotions are for a good reason three that they have no polarity you can use them in your favor then sit down and identify them sit down and identify them like l Lally sit with yourself and say how am I feeling today how am I feeling and and you know what shocks me Chris is that if you get a tiny bit of a sore throat you will stop immediately you go like something's wrong I I need to do something about this a bit more vitamin maybe I rest soup I don't know if you feel almost at the verge of burnout some of us will not stop again going back to that assumption we discussed at the beginning that it's the price I have to pay that's absolutely wrong now start by acknowledging them write them down I feel jealous I feel inadequate I feel I feel I think it was Bren Brown that wrote uh um you know 87 different emotions read them okay and and just tell yourself yes I feel this yes I feel this yes when Jenny shows up I feel that when you know and so on H and then take the ones that are are the most significant not the most painful not the most joyful but the most significant what does significant mean significant is they are contributing to a big part of where you are in life they're contributing to a lot of your brain cycles and incessant thinking they're contributing to to to sort of slowing slowing you down and you know preventing you from engaging fully so you you you know I I'll I'll tell you from my work sadly sadly because of school inadequacy I'm not good enough okay is an enormously P epidemic emotion in our world today loneliness is an epidemic emotion in our world today and somehow If You're Lonely by the way that is literally constant stress because remember Humanity didn't didn't survive because of of how we are we survived because we were part of the tribe the tribe could work together if you're with seven people in the jungle you're you feel a lot safer than if you're alone in the Streets of London and and and I think the reality is that when you're lonely this is literally one of the top signals of a stress response I I can't be safe I I cannot relax because I don't know if everything is safe now those emotions are very significant in terms of of how they impact you in life how they impact your engagement with with the world how they impact your work and so on and so forth pick those pick one pick one and talk to it almost like a maniac say like loneliness why are you showing up why do I feel lonely the answer will be very interesting the answer will be because you would be better if you're with others I'm encouraging you H to feel uncomfortable about sitting alone swiping so that you become motivated to go outside and meet someone okay and believe it or not if you understand that emotion so so when I talk about digital uh detoxing for example the number one step is to understand psychological discomfort to understand that boredom is telling you the emotion is telling you I am underwhelmed with life okay this life doesn't excite me the response is not Netflix the response is how can I make my life more exciting right and and once you get that answer you can now sit logically and say okay boredom I get it I'm going to find a few things that will actually make my life more exciting not numb my brain so that I don't feel the over the the underwhelmed life what else haven't we said about ways that people can heal emotional stress tactics habits connection human connection okay so you know uh uh Bhutan uh measures this gross domestic happiness uh interesting idea I don't know how effectively they do it but what what blew me away was a study I don't remember the name I I again I hosted the the the professor on my uh podcast I don't remember his name but he did a study in Bhutan to find the happiest people in bhan okay and uh and and then he measured he basic basically tried to find what was common across all of them the happiest people in a place that is so you know placing so much importance on happiness were those who had a support network of five people or more that they felt they can call on if they were in need okay and so basically that connection if you're emotionally overwhelmed if you feel that there are people in your life that you can connect to that you can rely on that there will be that will be there for you okay uh uh you know you'll feel a lot less overwhelmed the most interesting part of that study is that he took the names of the five people that were in that Network and went to them okay and they each had five people that they felt were part of their Inner Circle that they can count on okay and and it's quite interesting so you know uh we believe because of the way the world has set us up that we are now supposed to sit Al Lo in our rooms looking at screens okay and we believe that this is how it is like we believe that stress is the tax we pay okay that we believe that we now should be lonely interestingly if we all agree that this is okay then there are enough people out there that actually don't want to be lonely and believe it or not I you know I'm an ultimate introvert so I I I you know even though my work requires me to stand in front of tens of thousands of of people and you know spend days and days and days hugging and talking to people and so on if you let if you leave me alone I'll spend the rest of my life alone I I re-energize when I'm alone when I'm reflecting when I'm thinking when I'm learning and so on when when I started to uh to to try and become extroverted and actually make friends and get to know people I traveled so much in my life so I needed to make friends very frequently okay I started with a book that was by Larry King if you remember Larry King uh about how to speak to anyone and not the not a great book but he had one tip that really flipped my life which was start with low stake conversations okay and and basically that means you know talk to the to to the you know person in front of you in the in the in the you know line in front of the Barista or talk to the person in you know opening the door in the building the security car person and so on and why are they low stake you know if if if you're a a man like me you know you don't go and talk to the most gorgeous woman in the room that's very pressuring very stressful okay but if in front of you there is a a lovely old lady in the supermarket line you can definitely learn to practice that idea of not being lonely by talking to them and you'll be amazed how silly like in the in the coffee line you can simply say something like like oh my God so many choices what are you having today just a silly conversation right you know in in the in the in when you get to the top of the line just speak to the Barista I do that every time you know especially in New York City huh they get shocked it's like the Barista will mechanically look at me and say uh so what can I get for you today and I'm like uh Hi how are you are you okay she says sorry I didn't get your order and I'm like like no that wasn't an order I I just was saying how are you today are you okay okay and most of them would stop for a second and feel very awkward and then smile like oh my God someone noticed me and it was for them as much as it was for me to be able to teach myself to go out and talk to people I would probably feel that for the younger generations of our world today loneliness is one of the top reasons for stress okay it's probably one of the top reasons for suicide and I I would tend to believe that if we can force ourself to have physical like face-to-face connections to humans and just start with silly coners conversations a lot of that would go away I think one of the problems people face when it comes to admitting loneliness plays a role in how they feel is that they know they can't fix it just themselves it's not something it requires you to be in relation with somebody else and there is a especially among guys there is a desire to not be reliant on anybody or anything except for yourself it's a protectionist strategy the world out there is unsafe untrustworthy I don't know if I can put my faith in it so I'm just going to go monk mode it's me and a barbell and some books and some breath work and and screw the world and I think that are like the most difficult paths are probably the ones that are going to yield the greatest return to you and for a lot of people it involves facing up to maybe I need to actually work with someone else here as opposed to just on my own yeah the most uncomfortable bit is normally the highest te right we know that from the gym anyway talk to me about the role of physical stress how does that play physical stress so so in unstress uh we we attempt to help people understand where they stand by having a quiz actually called the unstress quiz so it's available for free anyone who wants to take it unstress of.com quiz and when we uh when we tested it Alice and I my co-author and I uh I scored horribly on physical stress horribly like and and the way we wrote the book together Alice and I are literally yin and yang right so so we're almost opposite in our approach in everything even though we're aligned on the target she's very feminine very you know spiritual very raiky type and so on and I'm very like you can see I'm a brainiac algorithms equations and so on uh so when we decided to write we' align the on the structure and then we would write each chapter and review each other's works and complement it and so on so she wrote physical stress and I read it to edit it uh on my silent Retreat uh right before my silent retreat 2022 and I texted her and I said Alice every single symptom every single practice that you mentioned in that book is within me like that chapter is describing me it's like are you are you you know teasing me here okay so she said yeah I mean I told you many times so I said what do I do and she said inflammation oh my God Chris flipped my life upside down so I was entering into my 40 days silent Retreat okay which normally is in nature and so you de-stress a lot but I on on walking in I went online and I ordered a food plan an anti-inflammatory food plan and stuck to it for 40 days all aches all pains all headaches all digestive issues all everything on a on day eight started to go away and then it started to uh to to uh I mean it never came back to be honest I mean I still of course overdo it with travel and so on so I would feel tired and exhausted and so on but so much has been reversed just by working on inflammation now the the thing is this your body will speak to you in a language that is simply written in aches pains and discomforts okay uh it is basically trying to tell you uh you're about to kill me can you please stop okay and for most of us us especially the athletic ones uh we will end up saying shut up let me push you a little harder right I'm can see you laughing right so so this is exactly how how we get our so there are sometimes by the way of course going to the gym uh is incredibly valuable sometimes a hit exercise is really really valuable for you Movement by the way is the natural response that cortisol wants from you so if you're stressed H your your body wants to fight or flight so it actually wants movement sometimes just to burn out your cortisol a good head hit exercise and it's done but if if the stress is physical and you keep pressuring your body to go through more and more and more physical stress you're getting inflammation and you're getting chronic issues you're getting chronic issues like you know if your muscles are fatigued you can recover but if your joints are starting to become rough and and not as good as they used to be because you're Trea eating them like crap that's not very recoverable not as easily recoverable and sometimes it's not recoverable at all and so here's the trick the trick is I tell people and I know it sounds really really simple I tell people give yourself one weekend where you're going to intermittent fast you're going to eat very healthy you're going to hydrate incredibly well you're going to rest rest rest rest rest okay you're going to sleep well you're going to be in the sun if you can and so on and so forth and then by the end of that Sunday take a marker tell yourself this is how a rested relaxed healthy body feels like okay and just like that sore throat anytime you deviate from that it's a signal okay anytime you deviate from that because your neck and your back are hurting uh you know and your shoulders are hurting it's it means you've been overworking on your computer okay anytime you get fatigued in your wrists and your uh you know your palms and so on it's because you've been swiping too much on your phone and so on and so forth right now the trick is um physical stress is not like emotional stress at all it's not Blended it's not subtle uh it is in your face yeah right in your face all you need to do is to make a decision to tell yourself when I get a s a sore throat I stop when I get a physical pain or ache or you know most of the time you don't even need to go to a doctor you really know what's going on constant headaches you know IBS uh um um back pains neck pains they're clearly stressed symptoms clearly stressed symptoms most of the time you know you you of course if if you feel that you need a physici to look at it just tell them the truth about how stressed you are so that they don't just diagnose your you know your physical symptoms but also your what could be the reason behind those physical symptoms and and and basically take a stand how difficult is it eat healthy anti-inflammatory right not you know you want we can complicate it but the least is take all intolerances out of your body even if you like them okay you know attempt to reduce or stop sugar at least all processed sugar we don't need a massive study anymore to tell us how INF you know inflammatory that is okay uh gluten and lactose for most of us maybe not any one individual listener but for most of us they're not the most comfortable things for us to eat so test so that you know right otherwise eat healthy that's number one rest that's number two okay and rest is a ritual so so sleep is a ritual that starts at 10 10:00 a.m. every morning so for you to to sleep well your last caffeinated drink should not be later than 101 a.m. right and your your your sort of day is winding down so your day needs to have that slope to it uh much earlier than we think you can't get to bed at 10: and expect to turn switch everything off and and sleep at 10 past 10 right you you you need to to you know gradually slope back into less light less engagement less Pace less less everything until you're in that rested state so eat healthy rest and listen to the signals that your body tells you it's not it's really not that complicated if you're in pain something's wrong it needs your attention yeah I uh speaking of the pushing yourself too hard we did breath work at a birthday in Miami over the weekend and I I managed to even push doing breath work too hard something which isn't a competition and I managed to make I managed to make myself pass out doing breath holds during breath work way yes yeah it was very impressive it's the second time that I've done it it's just like the classic Jim bro type A approach if doing it for two minutes is good doing it for four minutes is twice as good um and yeah I very very impressively came back I was having a a wonderful dream about being on a gondola uh so I'm there maybe going through Venice I think as something like that and then I come back too and the breath work practitioner lady has got a hand on my neck looking slightly concerned concerned yeah yeah sh but look it's I'm true to form on that so the fourth type of stress that you have is spiritual stress yes I'm not even sure I understand what spiritual stress is like what what what does that mean are you a spiritual person to start so you know I think the most important thing not to alienate anyone is that spirituality is very different than religion so so you know I am a very scientific person uh the scientific method is responsible to help us understand everything that's physical right so the scientific method will tell you if I cannot physically observe it and measure it repeatedly it's not a concern of science okay what is it a concern of then so so you know things like love love cannot be measured physically cannot be observed repeatedly it's it's really not part of the scientific method you know things like your non-physical being so some of us can relate very clearly that I'm not just made of my physical self there is a non-physical site to me call it Consciousness if you want uh or if you're a religious person call it a spirit if you want right but but how do we how do we study that and the two disciplines for that are spirituality and uh philosophy right now in that case spirituality becomes relating to the non-physical side of you okay and the non-physical side of you if call it Consciousness for the ease of the conversation sees the universe very differently sees the universe very differently because it's not physical so it's not subject to the physical limitations of the physical world such as space and time okay so it sees the world differently it is a lot less stressed by the physical world but it is very much more stressed by purpose so basically you're if you're engaged in the physical existence ignoring the purpose for which you're here your spirit will attempt your Consciousness will attempt to talk to you not through your brain but through your intuition so you'll basically be able to feel that this is not right you don't know why you feel that way because you're analytical brain is not catching up yet okay but somehow your intuition will tell you no maybe I shouldn't invest in that deal maybe I should ask about this maybe this is not the right partner for Me Maybe This maybe that right and when when it it speaks to you in the form of intuition that language believe it or not is not subtle but is completely shut down by most of us why because the logical uh you know the the high productivity world that we live in demands that we provide data and evidence for everything that we speak about even even things that we speak about to ourselves so I normally do what I call the Arbitrage test uh I basically take any of the four four modalities take any three of the four modalities and see if they align right so if you take your intuition your emotion and your logic okay or you take your logic your emotions and your actions for example and they don't align then you're not balanced around your purpose you're not balanced for what why you're here or or the best optimum way for you to be here you know if you if you um um tell yourself I need to work harder okay and you know and you're actually working harder that's your your mind and your body but your heart is telling you I can't take this anymore or your intuition is telling you no I there is some different place that I need to be okay that Arbitrage broke so some something is not right and what I normally tell to people is if you feel that refer to your Intuition or your emotions they're more honest than your thoughts and your body your body is driven to just execute your thoughts are highly highly programmed with scripts okay so refer to your heart and and or your intuition and and try to to find out what they're telling you H and try to ask yourself is there a way to include their perception within my actions and my thoughts okay spiritual stress is simply a a purposeless life okay you know your your spirit is not stressed it is stressed that you're not catching up for to to where you need to be and and it's stressed that you're that you're unable to listen to All of the message is that it keeps telling you and most of the time it will nudge you most of the time if you keep uh uh straying away from that purpose eventually life itself will give you a shoulder and say you know what I told you many times nicely and you're not taking that like in my situation in my story I wrote soul for happy my first book I wrote the notes for s for happy 2011 okay uh you know I I'd been my story very quickly is I was very successful since my late 20s multi-millionaire every and I come from a very simple upbringing okay and and and then miserable so I had everything that you can think of and I was miserable and I started then to work on happiness with my very unusual engineering approach with the help of my wonderful son who was truly the heart the wisdom of my life okay and eventually we ended up with something that works I was you know calm all the time you could not Dent my happiness and I wrote the notes I said this is something that really needs to be shared with the world 2011 did nothing about it nothing about it my intuition was saying write it release it it's a good book did nothing about it right was busy closing more Billion Dollar Deals was busy excited about technology my work at Google X and so on and so forth until I lost Ali okay so 2014 my son leaves the world I I believe he's in a good place but his departure completely shook me to the core to the point where I suddenly realized that you know a couple of weeks before he died he had a dream and he told his sister he was everywhere and part of everyone just so shocking because when you really understand spiritual teachings like Sufism and so on this means to die everywhere and every part of everyone is to is to sort of relieve the limitations of the physical world right so anyway when his sister told me that dream I found myself saying oh my God I can do this for you Habibi I'm you know I'm a very senior executive at Google I know how to reach billions of people I'm going to write your essence what you taught me in a book and try to get it to reach 10 million people who will then tell others and through 70 you know years and Six Degrees of Separation you'll be part of his Essence will be everywhere and part of everyone and that's what happened uh my my my my intuition was kept telling me right right right right right right right and I kept delaying delaying delaying delaying so the world nudges you right and once the world nudges you and you go back on track believe it or not I lost the one person in life that I loved the most Ali and a my daughters my daughter is is what I love the most in life I lost one of them and yet I've never never been happier I have never been more positive I've never been more aligned with my purpose I've never more felt more right even though he's no longer in my life so the the thing that I beg everyone when I speak about this is to say don't wait until life nudges you don't wait when when you get that nagging intuition just follow just give it a try just take a a a short you know week off and and try to see if you can write it or if you can you know do whatever it is that you get that intuition to do I think this truly is uh uh the most stressful for anyone who's trying to make a difference to the world or to himself or to someone that he loves or she loves is to not listen to our intuition it's not to follow our our spiritual purpose what would you say to someone who's heard everything you've said today and goes Mo that sounds fantastic but it's just not really for me I don't think that I can change I feel like stress is just baked into my life and uh I'm worried I'm scared that this is going to kind of just be me from now until the grave what would you say to that person I i' I'd say m you know of course if they're interested in feeling better or living an a a um you know a better life because living stress is not living really you know I I'd say take one tiny thing just change one tiny thing take the easiest on the path or take the most significant on the past okay don't even eliminate your commute just make your commute a little more enjoyable don't even you know uh remove 80% of your work just remove 1% 2% don't uh uh you know free up your time from stress just take that one friend that is really annoying like really annoying and tell them no just don't go out for coffee with them again okay and and I think one thing you know you see one of my major concepts of life and in the book is something I call committed acceptance and committed acceptance is not to accept life as it is and then die you know lay down and die and that's it I this is my life forever but to accept life as it is and commit to make life a tiny bit better just that so that tomorrow is a tiny bit better than today and after tomorrow is a tiny bit better than tomorrow and I think most of us fail because we don't have that consistency of vision okay it it's it's so easy I I um I love for example nature so I love gardening and I love uh fish aquariums and so on you know how it is H you you start those things and they always mess up when you you know when I mve to my new apartment it's so difficult to start because the environment is different and so on well tomorrow I'll just make it a tiny bit better and the day after all they make a tiny bit better right until they stabilize and everything works and that's all I tell people I I tell people that you know when I graduated from University a long time ago I'm an old man now uh I noticed that I was regularly going to the gym four to five times a week investing in my body okay and then I woke up one morning and I said okay that's it University is over does that mean I'm not investing in my mind anymore okay so I decided to add an hour a day literally just like I go to the gym I added an hour a day at the time to read a book to watch a documentary you know now to watch a YouTube video to listen to your podcast and so on and so forth right an hour a day now here's the interesting thing if you're aware of Malcolm gladwell's work of uh you know on um outliers 10,000 hours is what you need to make a massive difference to yourself okay an hour a day over the as many years as I've lived since I made that decision massive change massive change a comparison between me and my friends who spent an hour a day watching football okay I am in a very very different place I then I I told myself and maybe an hour a day in my spiritual reflection and and and seeking okay it's just to understand things that are not scientific for my brain and again I mean I nobody's ever further than anyone else in spiritual seeking but interestingly I have so much to consider and to reflect on and to maybe feel a little more lost in because that's the beauty of a spiritual seeking is to feel lost and if you've studied I've studied Sufism and then I studied Islam and then I studied Christianity and then I studied Juda Judaism and I studed Hinduism and Buddhism and so on and I studied atheism okay and I love every single one of them every single one of them enriches you it's that whole idea of what can I dedicate an hour of my day to so that tomorrow becomes a tiny bit better than today that's all I ask people to do is to not accept where you are today even if it's good just make tomorrow a little better than today Mo got that ladies and gentlemen Mo I really appreciate your work I think that this uh reframing of stress is something that people don't realize is is annihilating their enjoyment of life and I think that digging into it in the way that you have is something that probably everybody should benefit from where should people go they want to keep to up to date with all of the stuff that you're doing unstress decom is definitely the place for uh for stress and MOA that.com is the the place for everything else uh I try to to answer every social media message that I get Believe It or Not which is impossible impossible I try to so I don't promise to but if people want to send me feedback can create a human connection even though it's digital uh that would be wonderful as well and yeah I ask people to just recognize that it's not the stress it's not the events of the of their life that stress them that's it's the way they deal with it and so perhaps if people make it a priority they we can become a little more unstressed hell yeah no I appreciate you thank you thank you so much if you enjoyed that episode you will love a selection of the best clips from the podcast over the last couple of months and it's ail able right here go on give him a watch