DDeep Dive with Ali Abdaal
← All episodes
Mo Gawdat23 June 2022

The Happiness Expert Making 1 Billion People Happier - Mo Gawdat

5Frameworks
15Insights

Frameworks in this episode

Communication7 steps

Nothing Hidden: Translating the Masculine and Feminine

Read →
Peak Performance5 steps

Realistic Expectation Plus High Ambition

Read →
Self-Mastery6 steps

The 90-Second Reset and Threat-Alert Test

Read →
Strategy6 steps

The Infinite Game Goal Audit

Read →
Self-Mastery5 steps

The Nine Good Things Exercise

Read →

Insights & moments

The myth-busts, hot takes, explainers, and tools worth keeping.

Myth Buster· 1

Myth Buster19:30

Fun is not happiness: the serotonin vs dopamine split

Gawdat argues nobody can sell you happiness, because you were born with it — any child with basic needs met is giggling and playing with its toes. So the modern world sells substitutes he calls weapons of mass destruction: joy, pleasure, fun, entertainment, elation, excitement and a lot of ego. Genuine happiness is the calm and peaceful contentment of being okay with life as it is, the state you feel by a river with no data signal. Biologically he maps it to the parasympathetic state and serotonin, a calmer telling the body everything is safe. Fun, pleasure and excitement are dopamine-driven and excitatory. You can layer fun on top of contentment, but starting from fun is transient — and dopamine actively suppresses the serotonin state.

“genuine happiness is that calm and peaceful contentment you feel when you're okay with life as it is”

Mo Gawdat · 20:30

“the minute you get an injection of dopamine in your blood serotonin is out”

Mo Gawdat · 26:00

Hot Take· 3

Hot Take50:30

Capitalism's problem isn't the system, it's the target

Gawdat defends capitalism as a mechanism — rewards drive effort, execution drives success, and there is a competitive landscape that makes people want to excel. What is broken is what it points at: dollar signs. Change the target to a billion happy people and, in his phrasing, that is the best form of billionaire you will ever need to be. He extends this to how the happiest wealthy people he knows answer the question 'why are you making money': because it enables them to do good things, funding a project that makes a difference and generates more money to fund the next one. Targets focused on yourself are driven by ego and always disappoint; targets focused on others are driven by compassion and always pay out in the feeling of having made a difference.

“the problem with capitalism is not the system the problem with capitalism is the target and the target is dollar signs”

Mo Gawdat · 50:30

“if your target is a billion happy people that's the best form of billionaire you will ever need to be”

Mo Gawdat · 51:00
Hot Take1:23:00

The modern world demonised the feminine — Gandhi and Steve Jobs

Because capitalism rewards doing over being, Gawdat argues, the modern world has demonised the feminine — yet almost everyone who made the world better was operating more in their feminine. Gandhi could have rallied a billion people to fight the British; he chose non-violent resistance, which Gawdat calls one hundred per cent feminine. Steve Jobs is his most provocative case: people assume he succeeded because he was hyper-masculine, obnoxious, pushy and aggressive, but those extremes are what got him removed as CEO. What made Jobs was empathy for user needs, an understanding of colour, beauty, art and calligraphy, and an appreciation of simplicity, play and flow. The masculine is excellent at doing — even when what is being done is stupid, which is how we build technologies that destroy the planet.

“every single person that ever made the world a better place this might sound shocking was more in their feminine in their masculine”

Mo Gawdat · 1:24:00

“what made steve jobs steve jobs is his empathy for the user needs his understanding of color and beauty”

Mo Gawdat · 1:25:00
Hot Take1:29:00

'I'm a Motarian': the case against categorising people

Gawdat's diet has shifted over the years into something no label fits — no chicken, no meat, no eggs, but milk, and fish occasionally though no other seafood. People try to sort him: vegan, then vegetarian, then pescatarian. His answer is that he is a Motarian; he eats what he likes and should not have to fit a category. He extends this to identity generally. He is passionate that everyone should be free to identify however they want, and understands the current phase as teething through an extreme. But his actual dream is a place where nobody needs to identify at all — 'I'm Mo, I live the way I want to live as long as I don't hurt anyone.' That, he says, is the real freedom and the real revolution.

“i'm a mortarian right i eat what i want what i like do i have to fit within a category”

Mo Gawdat · 1:29:30

“my dream is to end up in a place where i don't need to identify at all”

Mo Gawdat · 1:30:00

Explainer· 4

Explainer10:30

Why 'happiness is a choice' costs him 8% of readers

Gawdat wrote the first Solve for Happy like software — a beta on Google Docs, 270 invited readers editing his words live. Because it was on Docs he could see exactly where people stopped, and eight per cent of readers dropped on page eleven: the page where he says happiness is a choice. His explanation is that being the victim has genuine utility. As a two-year-old, pretending to cry brought your mother running. The adult version is that if life is responsible for my unhappiness, I have no homework to do — no work on fitness, on relationships, on my own state. It is a comfortable position, and it is not true.

“and i lost eight percent of my readers on page 11”

Mo Gawdat · 11:30

“i'm the victim which means i have no responsibility for my unhappiness”

Mo Gawdat · 13:00
Explainer24:30

Dopamine escalation and why lockdown hurt so much

Two things happen when you keep hitting yourself with rewards, Gawdat explains. First, the brain's dopamine receptors downregulate — it accepts the high baseline and starts looking for more, which is why people escalate from a party to a wilder party, from the treadmill to jumping out of an airplane. Second, dopamine depletes fast, so running out makes you want more, like a drug addict. His reading of lockdown follows directly: people suffered so much partly because we cut off their dopamine supply and told them they could no longer drown unhappiness in parties, fun and distractions. Forced to sit with themselves and hear their brain saying something is wrong, they experienced genuine withdrawal symptoms.

“that's why you see people go from a party to a wilder party go from running on the treadmill to jumping out of an airplane”

Mo Gawdat · 25:00

“one of the biggest reasons why people suffered so much in in lockdown is because we deprived them of their dopamine supply”

Mo Gawdat · 25:30
Explainer58:30

Simulate suffering: what 20 days of Ramadan teaches

Gawdat points out that the Stoics and most religious and spiritual traditions converge on the same practice: deliberately simulate suffering so you notice what you already have. He describes himself as multi-faith spiritual and fasts during Ramadan. On day one you register that some people live without food and water. By day twenty you feel like the most blessed person on the planet, because people live that way continuously — and the next cup of tea tastes extraordinary. Done in your head or in practice, the simulation flips attention from what is missing to what is present, and from there you can reconsider how you want to spend your remaining minutes.

“the stoics have always taught you and most most religious and spiritual teachings have always taught you to simulate suffering”

Mo Gawdat · 58:30

“by simulating suffering whether in your head or in practice to say i am so blessed”

Mo Gawdat · 59:30
Explainer1:04:30

Life's tests: learn something or change direction

Gawdat describes a pattern he takes from spiritual teachings: your test is always calibrated slightly beyond your current capabilities — never within them, because that would not be a test, and never so far beyond that you break. Life challenges you for one of two reasons: to make you learn something, or to make you change direction. Until you do one of them, the same test repeats — three bad boyfriends in a row is the same exam, until you change direction and the next, different challenge appears. Applied to himself: he had so much money he did not know how much, and losing all of it would not have made him blink. The only event that could have redirected him from Google X to teaching happiness was Ali leaving. Each person's test is built for them.

“your test is always a tiny lit and tiny little bit more stretching than your capabilities”

Mo Gawdat · 1:05:00

“so life either wants you to learn or wants you to change direction”

Mo Gawdat · 1:07:00

Story· 3

Story04:30

Losing Ali: 'yes ali died but ali also lived'

Gawdat's son Ali died at 21 from five errors during a routine appendectomy. Four hours before, he had hugged him — the highest point of his life. About a year later came the reframe that changed everything: the typical human mind asks how life could take his son, and forgets to ask how life could have given him his son in the first place. Offered the choice between the pain and never having had him, he says he would take the pain ten times over. The pain, he adds, never fully goes; peace and contentment are available, but a tiny bit of pain always remains.

“yes ali died but ali also lived”

Mo Gawdat · 04:30

“if i would avoid the pain by not having him absolutely not i'll take the pain 10 times”

Mo Gawdat · 05:30
Story52:00

16 cars in the garage and forgetting which one he was driving

Gawdat had sixteen cars. The eye-opening moment came at 10pm after a trip, driving one of them in the dark, needing to pee — and for a second he genuinely could not remember which car he was in. Because when you drive, you look at the road, and all cars look the same from the road, especially now that quality is high across the board. If they are all the same, why have two, let alone sixteen? He applies the same test everywhere: how many houses can a rich man have, how many beds can he sleep in, how many meals can he eat. A five-pound Indian restaurant is as delicious as a five-hundred-pound one; the only difference is ego. Today he wears four-dollar t-shirts and gives most of his money away.

“i had 16 cars in my garage”

Mo Gawdat · 52:30

“the only difference between them is ego”

Mo Gawdat · 54:00
Story1:09:00

Choosing the mission over a traditional relationship

Gawdat married his college sweetheart, spent 27 years together raising two children, and separated seven years ago. Since then he has concluded that there is no single model — dating apps and wider acceptance of how people choose to live have made that obvious — and that relationships are a question of context. What settled it for him was interviewing Matthieu Ricard, who explained that a monk stays celibate because it would be unfair to a partner and children to keep leaving for his teachers and his reflection. Gawdat is not a monk, but he realised about a year ago that he is more committed to the one-billion-happy mission than to a traditional relationship, and that his seasons do not look like a normal person's. He states it openly, expecting judgement, because honesty is what makes it work.

“i'm much more committed and i'm much more interested in the success of my one billion happy mission than i am in having another traditional…”

Mo Gawdat · 1:11:00

Q&A· 3

Q&A16:00

Is 'happiness is a choice' fair to say to a depressed person?

Ali raises the standard objection: what about abuse, depression, clinical anxiety, PTSD? Gawdat concedes immediately that absolute happiness is not a choice and nobody is ever always happy — he cites Matthieu Ricard, with sixty thousand hours of meditation, saying he is always pissed off, because compassion for the state of the world produces negative emotions. What is a choice is the relative move. From his new baseline after Ali's death, he can stay there or make it slightly better, and slightly better again. He may never return to the old high point, but that incremental bit is within the hands of every one of us — and taking it is the wise choice, because the loss was bad enough already.

“absolute happiness is not a choice nobody's ever always happy”

Mo Gawdat · 16:30

“and that incremental bit is within the hands of every one of us”

Mo Gawdat · 18:30
Q&A26:30

Should Ali go back to video games? Painkiller vs supplement

Ali describes playing World of Warcraft three and a half hours a day for around 185 days of playtime as a teenager — some of the happiest times he remembers. Returning to it in fifth year of medical school to 'relax' left him drained, theorycrafting optimal warlock rotations during lectures. Gawdat's diagnosis: there is nothing inherently wrong with fun, it depends on what it sits on. If your mind is not calm and you play to escape, fun is a painkiller — the effect wears off and everything you were avoiding is still there. If you are already peaceful and content and add fun on top, it is a supplement, like a vitamin on a stable foundation. He also warns Ali that as a serious gamer himself, he will be the one killing him.

“you're using fun as a painkiller”

Mo Gawdat · 28:30

“if you're already peaceful and calm and you found that state of contentment and then you add fun to it it's like a supplement”

Mo Gawdat · 29:00
Q&A1:01:30

Is solving for happy a luxury of the privileged?

Ali raises a comment he received on a video about habits that made him a millionaire: a viewer in a village in Yemen who struggles for food and water saying it is easy for him to say. Gawdat's answer has two parts. First, between Ali and that man sit hundreds of millions of people who are unhappy while privileged. Second, if the man had a device and ten minutes of safety to watch the video, there are seven million others in Yemen less privileged than him. He links this to Viktor Frankl and to a concept from Solve for Happy he calls 'look down' — we habitually compare upward, from bus to Mercedes to Ferrari, when relative gratitude runs the other way.

“there is always someone that is less privileged than you”

Mo Gawdat · 1:03:30

“part of my work in seoul for happy was a concept that i call look down”

Mo Gawdat · 1:04:00

Takeaway· 1

Takeaway57:00

You are born a millionaire: 30 million minutes

Gawdat reframes wealth in time. Each of us is born with roughly 500,000 hours of active life, which is 30 million minutes — so you are already a millionaire, and those minutes are your only real asset. Every minute you spend is exchanged for something else. The 2,000 minutes he spent recording this podcast are assessed by return to well-being, connection and values, not by cash. Earning a hundred pounds is a good thing, but if it costs 2,000 minutes that could have bought something better, maybe it is not. In his analysis only two kinds of minute genuinely pay: a minute of connection — to a person, an animal, the environment — and a minute of giving. He notes giving is deeply selfish, because the joy it produces is enormous.

“you are born a millionaire okay each and every one of us is born with somewhere around 500 000 hours of life”

Mo Gawdat · 57:00

“your asset your only asset is 30 million minutes”

Mo Gawdat · 57:30