Revisited: Your Unhappy Brain Needs Some Assistance with Happiness Expert Mo Gawdat

Team Simon here! Thank you for being part of such an incredible year—and for helping us grow the podcast through your support, sharing it with others, and showing up week after week. We love seeing your comments and hearing what resonates with you. A Bit of Optimism returns on January 27, 2026, with brand-new episodes we think you’re really going to enjoy. Until then, we’re revisiting a few of our favorite moments from the past year. We’re kicking things off with one of our most popular episodes—the conversation we filmed in London with Mo Gawdat. As a “Happiness Expert,” Mo teaches us that happiness is a choice, even if it’s not always an easy choice to make. Mo had to face an impossible choice. Before he was a bestselling author and podcast host, Mo worked a lucrative career as Chief Business Officer at Google X. He reached the heights of business influence and amassed a fortune by 29. And yet, he was miserable. It was only after the tragic death of his 21-year-old son Ali that Mo was forced to confront the truth. Mo now dedicates his life, work, and research to figuring out how human beings can be happier, and he’s on a mission to make 1 billion people happy. He shares what he’s learned – that happiness is both a choice and our default setting, how to trick our brains out of survival mode, and why the happiest emotions we feel are rooted in the present, not the past or future. This… is A Bit of Optimism. --------------------------- To learn more about Mo and his work, check out: https://www.mogawdat.com/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Simon Sinek?

  Can you share some of the things that you've learned about this happiness practice?

• 0:04Speaker 01

  If you understand that your default setting is happy, then there is nothing you need to bring from outside you to find happiness. You need to remove shit to be happy. And that negation strategy is quite an interesting one.

• 0:17Simon Sinek?

  Oh, that's good. This is so actionable. I love this, which is it's the reverse of what most people do, which is they make a list of the things that they think will bring them happiness. But what you do is you make the list of the things that are causing you stress, and you go about removing them.

• 0:30Speaker 01

  You remove the unhappiness.

• 0:31Simon Sinek?

  It's a removal process, not an adding process.

• 0:33Speaker 01

  And there is a reason for that.

• 0:34Simon Sinek?

  So good. Being happy is a choice. But that doesn't mean it's an easy choice. Mo Gawdat had to face that choice under the most excruciating of circumstances. After the tragic death of his 21-year-old son, Ali, Mo was forced to contemplate how being happy could even be a possibility. After a meteoric and lucrative career as chief business officer at Google X, he had all the money and all the power, but he was miserable. It sounds strange to say, but it took the death of his son to teach him how to find happiness. Now a bestselling author, Mo has dedicated his work to figuring out where true happiness comes from.

• 1:17Simon Sinek?

  And it starts with a powerful truth. Happiness isn't something we find. It's something we practice by choosing joy, even when life hurts. This is a bit of optimism.

• 1:40Simon Sinek?

  You are living proof at an extreme level that human beings can hold two opposite feelings at the same time.

• 1:49Speaker 01

  Oh, wow. Are we starting that deep? Yes, sorry. That's actually...

• 1:53Simon Sinek?

  Yeah, I shouldn't start that deep, should I? I went straight in. We don't have to start there. We can...

• 1:57Speaker 01

  No, no, we start anywhere. But I was...

• 2:00Simon Sinek?

  When I was learning about you, you know... Yeah, we could talk about tech and how you know, but but at the end of the day, one of the I learned this during lockdown.

• 2:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:10Simon Sinek?

  You know, because my business was thrown into chaos.

• 2:13Speaker 01

  I know.

• 2:14Simon Sinek?

  And secretly, I was loving it because I like I like I like chaos.

• 2:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:20Simon Sinek?

  Because there's creativity in chaos and I was having fun.

• 2:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:23Simon Sinek?

  And I had tremendous guilt that I was having fun and I didn't tell anybody I was having fun because I was also mourning the insanity and the loss and death and fear. And I had I struggled with those opposing feelings, guilt for having fun and yet having real sadness. And I learned during lockdown, during COVID era, I learned that human beings can hold to sometimes opposing feelings.

• 2:52Speaker 01

  It's.

• 2:53Simon Sinek?

  At the same time.

• 2:54Speaker 01

  It's the design of the universe, my friend. It's it is the uncertainty principle at its best. I think the idea of paradoxical existence is is probably one of the least celebrated forms of intelligence, which I I tend to believe is a bit more associated with the feminine. You know, those who associate with the feminine will be a little more comfortable with looking at you in the eyes and say, I love you, but I fucking hate you at the same time. You know that feeling?

• 3:26Simon Sinek?

  I've heard that said to me.

• 3:29Speaker 01

  And it's actually it holds true.

• 3:31Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 3:31Speaker 01

  And and and, you know, and it goes deep into, you know, situations where people would want to believe that one side is right and the other is wrong when everyone is wrong, or that one side is wrong and the other is right when everyone's right. And and, you know, and and it is quite a it's quite a a front upon, let's say, a view in the business world, because you need certainty and data to be able to make a decision and back it up and say, I made it because of this.

• 4:01Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 4:01Speaker 01

  And but it is important because life is not that straightforward.

• 4:05Simon Sinek?

  Yeah. At the risk of going too deep too soon.

• 4:08Speaker 01

  No, go for it.

• 4:09Simon Sinek?

  Um, let's back up a second and because you and I know what we're talking about, but people on the other end may not know what we're talking about. How are you at an extreme level hold two feelings simultaneously? Unbelievable loss and unbelievable discovery.

• 4:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:26Simon Sinek?

  Is that fair to put it that way?

• 4:31Speaker 01

  It would be at the time, it would be quite challenging to call it a loss now, honestly. Yeah. So Ali Habibi, I have Ali and Aya, my son and my daughter. Yeah. And Ali was that one of those people that, you know, sort of overwhelmingly make you love them. Like, it is, you know, those people, it's like, you're trying to find something that sort of like breaks it a little bit. Yeah. But he had, you know, when he was in his, in his early teens, Ali, most of his photographs with his friends. Yeah. He would be standing in the middle and like six girls from this side and two boys and five girls on the other side holding him.

• 5:15Speaker 01

  You know, like literally reaching out. He had this incredible, incredible presence to him. And, and then he leaves and, you know, he, he, he leaves our world because of a, a medical malpractice, basically. Simplest, simplest and, and, and, and, and shock. Because he, he was studying in Northeastern in Boston at the time and he, you know, he had a band. And they were touring the US in summer. Hmm. And then he texts in May and says, hey, guys, I feel obligated, I'm verbatim. Yeah. To come and see you before the tour.

• 5:59Speaker 01

  Uh, and so he said, of course, Habibi will book his tickets. Aya, my daughter, was studying in Canada. I was coming as well. I took a couple of weeks off as if almost I knew, I don't know. And then he gets an appendix inflammation, the simplest surgery ever. And the surgeon does five mistakes in a row. Oh. Every one of them fixable, every one of them avoidable to start. Oh. Uh, and he fixes three of them wrong and. So it's malpractice on top of malpractice. Uh, yeah, I'd, I mean, it took me quite a bit of time not to rage.

• 6:39Speaker 01

  Because also rage wouldn't have brought Ali back, if you think about it. But anyway, four hours later, Ali is no longer with us. And you and I know that, you know, we've.

• 6:52Speaker 01

  You sort of are paid your whole life to fix problems. And so you have that mentality that everything's fixable if you put enough bandwidth to it. Uh, not death, no. And and suddenly you're faced for the very first time with something that really stops you in your tracks. And uh, and uh, my, my daughter and Ali were, Aya and Ali were very close and so uh. What's the age difference? One and a half, one, one and a bit. Oh, so super close. Yeah, one and four months or something like that. And Ali was quite a, yeah, I'm honestly, he was the masculine figure in her life. I was running around like a typical businessman, closing billion dollar deals and, you know, celebrating my ego and.

• 7:37Speaker 01

  And uh, and he, he would call her every single day, literally. So Boston and Montreal not very far. Yeah. Uh, and he would go visit her every, like, really, he was the father figure, if you want. Yeah. Uh, two weeks before he dies, he, he uh, he tells her that he had a dream. Uh, that he was everywhere and part of everyone.

• 8:02Speaker 01

  Which uh.

• 8:05Speaker 01

  Which if you understand spirituality, of course, I understand that now, but you know, if you understand, if you have a spiritual inclination. Being outside space time in your non-physical form gets, lends you the ability to be everywhere and part of everyone. Hmm. Uh, but that's not how I understood it then. I was then chief business officer of Google X. I had previously been the vice president of emerging markets at Google for seven years. So I had basically opened most of Google's businesses worldwide and uh. And and so I knew how to make something everywhere and part of everyone, if you want.

• 8:44Speaker 01

  And so my, the, the, the message in my mind and my heart really was blurred. I heard her say everywhere and part of everyone and I thought of it as a target. And so I basically, seriously, and it's so weird because all I could hear myself saying is of course Habibi consider it done. If that's your wish. It's a business plan. It's a business plan. Yeah. And my devious plan, interestingly, I mean, if you know the story before, I was the typical successful, success story. I was filthy rich by age twenty nine. And I had this very unusual math uh skill and I was a, a, a software developer.

• 9:29Speaker 01

  And like Malcolm Gladwell would, would say the, you know, in, in outliers, right place at the right time. So my, my peak was when the internet started, I coded at the time nineteen ninety six. A bit of a, of a crawler, like the Google crawlers afterwards, where I would go across the internet, find news about stocks. And I would wake up every morning at six AM with buy and sell recommendations and print money on demand. It's really, really successful. And I don't know if I call that success now, but let's call it rich. Yeah, yeah.

• 10:06Speaker 01

  Uh, and, and so the more you succeed and realize that this is not what you want. The more depressed you become. And so I was clinically depressed, everything. I had a beautiful wife, two wonderful kids, you know, massive home, uh, with the garden and swimming pool and, you know, cars and everything you want. And of course, when you're depressed, uh, you try and you're rich, you pour money on the problem. But, you know, money doesn't solve the problem, so you become more desperate if you want. It's like this is not solvable. And at the time, who helped me, Ali Anay. So Ali was this wise little Zen monk.

• 10:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was really, really unbelievable. You would talk to him since maybe age six or seven. And he would literally sit there silently, looking at you, very curious. And then asks you a couple of questions, almost like, you know, to entertain you. It's like, yeah, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm interested, I'm interested. And then eventually says something like, well, you could have asked me, right? And, and then he would repeat what I said, blending a bit of heart in it, which I'm, I'm the, I'm the algorithm guy.

• 11:23Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 11:24Speaker 01

  And, and says it in eight words. And I go like, holy damn, like, this is it. Okay, so through my depression, if you want, I learned quite a bit with Ali. And so when he died, my way of meeting the target, if you want, was I'm gonna take what we discussed and put it in a book. And if I can get to 10 million people, uh, and then 72 years later, through six degrees of separation, my calculation would be that tiny bit of his essence would be everywhere and part of everyone, weird as it sounds.

• 11:59Speaker 01

  And so, so 17 days after he dies, I'm sitting down to write about happiness. And, and.

• 12:08Simon Sinek?

  Do you, do you, do you weep while you're writing about happiness?

• 12:13Speaker 01

  I weep almost once a week now, uh, but then I think I stopped once a week.

• 12:22Speaker 01

  It is, uh, it's not, I, you know, I'm, I think people can recognize from the bald head and the voice and the beard that I'm a manly man, but, uh, you know, I have to say, uh, emotions have been, uh, uh, we, we didn't give them time in, in this very fast-paced, modern world.

• 12:43Simon Sinek?

  I have so many questions. There's so much, he, here's the,

• 12:49Simon Sinek?

  here's the struggle with your message, if I can put it that way, which is.

• 12:59Simon Sinek?

  We we know these tropes. Money can't buy happiness.

• 13:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:04Simon Sinek?

  We know it. We know the number of wealthy people who come in and say, but you have to understand, it didn't make me happy. We know the importance of feelings even when we try and resist them. Like, a lot of these things are known. And yet, with all that knowledge, people still perceive that money will buy them happinesses and they still pursue riches versus fulfillment or joy. That we still think we can rationalize our way through relationships or explain our way through relationships or business plan our way through our emotions, right?

• 13:47Simon Sinek?

  And, you know, and I guess the question I'm getting at is, you know, how much are you and I preaching to the converted? How much are people listening to this? And it's only the ones who've made the conversion, made the discovery or are predisposed to it. I mean, you talked about these, you said, you said right at the beginning, you know, women are better at nuance. Women are better at holding.

• 14:14Speaker 01

  Paradox.

• 14:15Simon Sinek?

  Paradox and two feelings simultaneously. It's more, quote unquote, traditionally masculine to want exactness and clarity and black and white.

• 14:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. Separation.

• 14:26Simon Sinek?

  Separation. You know, do we find ourselves preaching to the converted? How do we find language that somebody who knows all of the tropes says, okay, you've made me curious at least?

• 14:44Speaker 01

  Well, I think, I think the challenge is it's a lot more nuanced than than the simple slogans. Nothing you and I can explain, or anyone for that matter, is, it can be summed in one sentence. One sentences are made for Instagram, right? You know, while, while money most of the time doesn't buy you happiness, poverty buys you unhappiness. And, you know, the research will tell you that if you're, if you're unable to make ends meet, basically, if your income is less than the average income of the place you live in, then you're, it's hard to find happiness.

• 15:22Simon Sinek?

  Can I, can I question that? I know.

• 15:27Simon Sinek?

  Does poverty buy unhappiness? Is that true? Or is it that we know that up until a certain income, that when you gain money, it actually does buy happiness?

• 15:37Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 15:37Simon Sinek?

  Right. It's not the opposite. It's not that poverty makes...

• 15:40Speaker 01

  I was going to come to that.

• 15:42Simon Sinek?

  Yeah, poverty doesn't necessarily make you unhappy.

• 15:44Speaker 01

  Because, because some of the poorest

• 15:47Simon Sinek?

  Right, yes.

• 15:48Speaker 01

  people in the world are the happiest. You know, travel to South Africa, sorry, to Africa or to South America.

• 15:54Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 15:54Speaker 01

  And man, it's like if we're fat today, we're going to dance and love our heads.

• 15:59Simon Sinek?

  And their lives are difficult. We have to confuse, we cannot confuse struggle and happiness.

• 16:04Speaker 01

  But you see, then you, once again, is our life easy?

• 16:07Simon Sinek?

  Our lives are easy.

• 16:08Speaker 01

  Easy on some fronts, but the mental...

• 16:11Simon Sinek?

  We don't worry about food.

• 16:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 16:13Simon Sinek?

  For the most part.

• 16:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, right. But then what do we do? We create, you know, mental tigers in our heads and we run them over and over until they make us miserable, right? We read too much news. We worry about the stock market. We do, you know, I'm not, what I'm trying to say is there is so many levels of... There is no answer that says money does not buy you happiness or buys your happiness. The answer is very straightforward. What is enough?

• 16:45Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 16:45Speaker 01

  Okay? And, you know, I am, I am today, and it's really, this is where people struggle.

• 16:53Simon Sinek?

  I'm only giggling because literally last night I was having this conversation with a friend where the richer somebody is, the more they're concerned about their taxes.

• 17:02Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 17:03Simon Sinek?

  Right? So like the richest people I know will live in places they don't want to live. And when you ask them, why do you live there? They say taxes. I've never heard of anyone going bankrupt paying taxes. Right?

• 17:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:16Simon Sinek?

  You have to make money to pay taxes. And it's, it's the ungodly rich where if you took away...

• 17:23Simon Sinek?

  By the way, and it's only on income, it's not on assets.

• 17:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:26Simon Sinek?

  Right? So they only pay it once when they get that windfall and that's it, you know? But I just find that funny.

• 17:32Speaker 01

  Because you're hyper optimized, right? And interestingly, of course, I mean, again, for everyone listening, paying taxes is a problem of privilege. So let's not compare that to people who are hungry or in a war zone or whatever, right? But the reality is that for everyone, their problems are as far stretching as they barely can handle. So I'll give you my own example.

• 17:59Simon Sinek?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 18:00Speaker 01

  Because of my eastern upbringing and my traditional spirituality, if you want, and because of a very weird thing that I did in early in my life around what I call the mathematics of the divine, I tend to strongly believe that this is not the end of life, right? That we live here, that, you know, death is the opposite of birth. It's not the opposite of life, right? Right or wrong?

• 18:24Simon Sinek?

  Oh, let's say that again, that's quite profound. Death is the opposite of birth, it is not the opposite of life.

• 18:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, if life was a video game, you come to this level of the game through a portal called birth and you leave this level of the game through a portal called death.

• 18:36Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 18:37Speaker 01

  And the game continues way long before and long after, right? And, you know, we can get into the mathematics of that if you want, but it's irrelevant. For me, that means that the loss of Ali is a tiny bit more tolerable than someone else who doesn't have that belief, right? And so accordingly, when I look at my, you know, my tendency to find certainty, I have absolutely zero certainty that I'll finish this interview. But I have a hundred percent certainty that sooner or later I'll be where he is, right? And if that is my mindset,

• 19:22Speaker 01

  then the weight of the problem is slightly different for me. And it's quite interesting, Ali Habibi, he had a tattoo on his back. That he never showed me. Uh, interesting, he had it when he was sixteen. And he went back to his mom and said, you know, I'm so upset that I used papa's money to to buy to to get it. But, you know, when I get to pay him back, I'll show it to him, right? When it's his. Yeah, so I I I mean, like, why are you so nice, you little? Anyway, uh, anyway, so he he he uh sits up on on the operating table before he walks in.

• 20:02Speaker 01

  Uh, before they push him in and it shows and it says the gravity of the battle means nothing to those at peace. Wow. And it's the very last message. How old was he? He was twenty one and a half when he left. I mean, twenty one and a half to have, and he put that on his body when he was sixteen. When he was sixteen, it's almost as if he was plotting a very complex plan to make us love him. And then, you know, literally. The gravity of the battle means nothing to those who have peace. At peace, yeah, and and and it and it is and and it is quite, you know, quite the message you need when he leaves four hours later. Uh, but it's also almost as if we settled all our debt to each other.

• 20:42Speaker 01

  Now, that concept of those at peace is very different between you and I and everyone. And I I am probably ten percent of how rich I used to be, okay?

• 20:55Speaker 01

  But I'm filthy rich compared to my current needs, which is quite interesting. Because there were times where I had so much money. And I, you know, had to to to to pour it into my depression, okay? Or pour it into places that I was told I need to pour it into. And spend days of my week worrying about those places, right? When in reality, I need, this is, I think now, fourteen dollars or something. I have maybe fourteen of those a year, do the math, right? And, and, and, you know, I still earn shitloads of money that I, you know, I'm not bragging or anything, that I don't spend on myself, okay?

• 21:39Speaker 01

  I spend on so many other people that need it way more than me. And it's an interesting way to find happiness.

• 21:45Simon Sinek?

  Did you, did you do that before or did that come after?

• 21:47Speaker 01

  I did, I did that quite a bit of my life, but I became quite extreme to the point that, you know, business people like you would think of me as completely mad.

• 21:57Simon Sinek?

  First of all, your first mistake is thinking that I'm a business.

• 22:00Speaker 01

  Okay, that's all good.

• 22:03Simon Sinek?

  Your second mistake, thinking that I would think that was mad.

• 22:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:06Simon Sinek?

  I think, I think part of the joy of making money.

• 22:09Speaker 01

  Is to give it away.

• 22:10Simon Sinek?

  Is to share it, is to give it away. And it's really funny, you know, I, I.

• 22:14Speaker 01

  And, and to give it away not for tax purposes.

• 22:16Simon Sinek?

  And not to give it away for tax purposes, right, yeah. The, the, it's a very funny thing, goes back to masculine feminine, it's unavoidable, right? I meet men who have some sort of exit or liquidity event or whatever. The stock price goes up and they find themselves extremely wealthy and they leave their job. And you ask them, what do you do now? And invariably they say, I'm an investor.

• 22:38Speaker 01

  I'm an investor, yeah.

• 22:38Simon Sinek?

  So you made shit tons of money and your goal now is to make more money, right? And.

• 22:44Speaker 01

  It's weird.

• 22:44Simon Sinek?

  And I meet women who have some sort of liquidity event and you ask them, what do you do? And they say, I'm a philanthropist. Now, the philanthropists are of course investing and the investors are of course doing philanthropy. But what's so interesting is where they put the priority. That one puts the priority on the giving and the other one puts the priority on the, on the taking, on the. And I find that fascinating. And, and then I talked to very, I, I had this conversation with somebody who was, who's, who's got more money than any one person needs in multiple lifetimes.

• 23:17Simon Sinek?

  And I was talking to him about philanthropy and he, he almost got angry at some of my questions. He says, you don't understand how difficult it is to give money away. And I'm thinking, I don't know, I could do some damage, you know? And I give money away the way I give to somebody on the street. I put a few dollars in the cup and I go on, I walk on with my day. I don't worry, is he gonna waste it? Is it gonna go to the things that I want it to go to? You take a risk and sometimes it'll go well and sometimes it won't, but it, that's it. You, it's, it's gone.

• 23:57Speaker 01

  It's, it's a portfolio approach.

• 23:58Simon Sinek?

  It's a portfolio approach. And whereas, I think it's, I think it's less than a portfolio approach. It's a trust approach. Whereas this guy, I was talking to him and he was saying, well, you know, you can't just give money. You have to put boundaries and you have to, how do I know they're gonna, not gonna waste it? And he's treating it like, like an investment of some sorts, which is he wants to pour over the, the management of the company and make sure that they're not destroying his investment.

• 24:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:23Simon Sinek?

  And my attitude is if there's a dance company I want to give to, I give them a bunch of money with no restrictions. I don't think they're gonna like run off to Rio and that's it, they're gone. Where the hell are they? They closed the dance company and they're living in Fiji, right? I'm fairly confident that if I'm giving to them, they're gonna wanna make art.

• 24:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:42Simon Sinek?

  And if I'm gonna give to a, you know, a researcher, they're gonna wanna find a cure. Like, and I don't need to put restrictions. And I find, again, the ultra wealthy put all these guardrails and they want reports back. And look, some of it's gonna go badly and some of it's gonna be mismanaged, 100% true. But on balance, if you're giving to good people who are trying to do good things, they'll do good with the money you give them, or at least they'll try really, really hard to do that.

• 25:08Speaker 01

  It, money is just a symbol. It is what it represents to you, right? And, and so you'll find that someone who comes from poverty, for example, if he's, you know, 100 million dollars worth. Those hundred million dollars to him represent a risk, right? And I know many people who are like that. If you come from poverty, there is no way you can stop and tell yourself, uh, am I now safe?

• 25:32Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 25:33Speaker 01

  Okay. Uh, if you come from, um, you know, uh, uh, um, uh, teenage years where you were the slightly chubby, maybe, you know, bullied a little bit, uh, child, hmm, then money to you is in your face.

• 25:49Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 25:49Speaker 01

  Okay. If you're the one that, you know, struggled to, because you were the geek and, you know, the bad boys were getting the girls and, you know, you're, you're, you're now a, a founder of a tech startup, money to you represents more girls.

• 26:02Simon Sinek?

  Right, right.

• 26:03Speaker 01

  And, and, and, and the whole idea is that for most people, as I said, you, you, we struggle to find, to, to define the context.

• 26:12Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 26:12Speaker 01

  Uh, and specifically when, when the seasons change.

• 26:15Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 26:15Speaker 01

  Right? So, so, you know, the, when, when you're running and your method of acquiring money is being very precise about every calculation and every cent, uh, you know, you may become a multi-zillionaire and still go to the supermarket and go like, oh, they're ripping me off on two cents, I'm gonna walk to the next one, right? While some others would simply say, well, you know what, uh, two cents is not a big deal for me, but also, by the way, next time I'll go to the next one.

• 26:43Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 26:44Speaker 01

  Right? And while others will simply say, hey, you know what, I don't care. Uh, I'm so rich and famous now, I don't care about the, the two cents. And is, uh, each of those approaches, it can be judged by us because we're not them.

• 26:58Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 26:58Speaker 01

  Right? But the trick is to ask yourself, where am I? Hmm? Where, where am I in terms of why do I do what I want to do? And I think I, I learned this in a, in a, in my MBA, I had a, a professor of, um, operations management. Who worked at Chrysler in the seventies.

• 27:19Simon Sinek?

  Back in the day.

• 27:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, and and he basically was, you know, talking about operations and when the Japanese entered the American market and how, you know, they started to optimize everything like, you know, instead of the this not unbolt having four turns to be locked, let's make it three turns. And, you know, now we've shaved off a quarter of a second and right. And then he basically would would go like, but then the Japanese replaced the the the bolt with a clip. And so it doesn't even take a fraction of a second. Okay. And and and and he started to talk about why were we doing the things that we were doing. Okay. And I think that applies to life in such a massive way.

• 28:02Speaker 01

  Each and every one of us, if we really sit down, and I do that on Saturdays, to observe the seasons of your life, that you're not that teenager that was bullied anymore, or that you're not that, you know, young businessman that was, you know, trying to prove as you were quickly acquiring and learning the three letter acronyms in the company when you walked in to try and appear that you know more than you don't, more than you actually do. And I and I think that the the trick is you fail, you fail to observe that something has changed.

• 28:34Simon Sinek?

  This is good. You're talking about going to the cause rather than the symptom, right? I mean, that's

• 28:37Speaker 01

  Hundred percent.

• 28:37Simon Sinek?

  That's what this is. I mean, I mean, you you might know this story. Again, it goes back to the sort of the when the Japanese started sort of overtaking the American market and the Toyota Way. And of course, just as a quick aside, the Americans completely misunderstood the Toyota Way. First of all, we called it lean. No, no, it's not about efficiency, it's about improvement. Those are not the same things.

• 29:00Speaker 01

  Correct, yeah.

• 29:00Simon Sinek?

  The Jet, the Toyota Way is about constant improvement.

• 29:02Speaker 01

  Was always constant improvement.

• 29:03Simon Sinek?

  And we made it about efficiency. And that's why lean doesn't really work in America, because we don't really get it. We think it's a calculation.

• 29:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:10Simon Sinek?

  And it's about process, as you as your as your point, it's about root. And there's this, one of the stories that I love is some American car executives went and toured a Japanese car factory. And, you know, cars are basically made the same way. And at the end. The Americans were confused because on the American assembly line, there's a guy at the very end with a little rubber mallet who just makes sure the doors.

• 29:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, this guy is not at the end.

• 29:35Simon Sinek?

  Right? And there's no mallet guy. And the Americans say, where's the guy with the mallet? And the Japanese are like, what do you mean the guy with the mallet? Like, well, how do you make sure the doors fit? And the Japanese say, we designed them to fit. Like, if they didn't fit, it's not the problem for the end. It's the problem for the beginning.

• 29:50Speaker 01

  Hundred percent.

• 29:51Simon Sinek?

  You know?

• 29:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:52Simon Sinek?

  And that's exactly what you're talking about, which is when we are struggling with something, we so often treat the symptoms, which is why we throw money at things or why we are become hedonists or whatever the thing is, right? We throw, we treat the superficial. And yet, and I love this, I want to learn more about the Saturday practice you have, where you sit, it sounds like you sit and go to the beginning and say, what's the root cause of this? Let me deal with that. And maybe that root cause is me, you know, which is I was, whatever it is, the chubby kid who was bullied in school. I have to deal with my issues.

• 30:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:26Simon Sinek?

  It's me.

• 30:26Speaker 01

  Hundred percent.

• 30:28Simon Sinek?

  So what is your Saturday practice?

• 30:29Speaker 01

  Saturday really matters, believe it or not. So most Saturdays, my alarm clock is set to 2 P M. Doesn't matter when I wake up, but I am in reflection mode until 2 P M, right? And I reflect on a lot of things like simple exercises.

• 30:45Simon Sinek?

  Are you alone?

• 30:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, hundred percent.

• 30:47Simon Sinek?

  So you're a little bit walled up until 2 o'clock?

• 30:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I'm completely alone, no interaction, interaction with timepieces. So I don't know what time it is. No interaction with the internet, no interaction with news. You know, I'm not checking my WhatsApp. I'm completely with my little remarkable or paper and pen and, you know, and basically thinking, okay? And there are lots of things that I do repetitively.

• 31:10Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 31:10Speaker 01

  Okay, for example, I do a stress, you know, stock taking, basically. I write down everything that stressed me the week before. And I basically scratch out the shit that I don't want to stress me the next week.

• 31:24Simon Sinek?

  For example?

• 31:25Speaker 01

  You know, this annoying friend that's constantly negative will probably receive a text saying, hey, can we make our interactions a little more positive or maybe make them less?

• 31:35Simon Sinek?

  So you're going through the things that are causing you stress and you address them?

• 31:38Speaker 01

  Address them one by one, right? And again, you know, we think that life should be stressful, especially busy ones, because you know, it's a trophy and you know, and unstressable my.

• 31:47Simon Sinek?

  How else if we don't suffer stress? How else will we become obsessed with our whoops and our longevity practice?

• 31:52Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly, exactly. And then we measure everything, right? You know, you have, I used to have all of those measurement devices, right? I see you still have.

• 32:03Simon Sinek?

  No, I don't. No, no, it hasn't been charged for two years.

• 32:06Speaker 01

  Is that true?

• 32:07Simon Sinek?

  It's, it's, it was given to me as a gift and I, it's more sentimental than anything else, but the.

• 32:14Speaker 01

  So you see, you see, that's the whole point.

• 32:15Simon Sinek?

  My ring, yeah, I know I wear it and the people from Aura, it's embarrassing. You know, they reached out and said, oh, we see Simon wears an Aura ring and, and we were like, yeah, don't know, don't, don't know. But you see, I can't help.

• 32:29Speaker 01

  Exactly. You know, how do I speak about this?

• 32:32Simon Sinek?

  It's dead. I don't even know where the charger is.

• 32:33Speaker 01

  I think so. I know, I know the guys from Whoop very well, right? And I think there is a use to it.

• 32:40Speaker 01

  You know, in terms of learning things about yourself that you may not be aware of.

• 32:44Simon Sinek?

  They're fun for a week, but I think they're really fun for the first week.

• 32:47Speaker 01

  And, and or, or as long as they're needed.

• 32:49Simon Sinek?

  Or as long as they're needed, but then they become an obsession.

• 32:51Speaker 01

  You need to notice the context change. It's like, you know, I used to use something called my fitness pad, obsessively measuring every calorie that I eat, right? After a while, you sort of know that this is a bit too much, this is a bit too little, you know? And after a while, you know, you're much younger than I am, but after a while you go like, and that little belly, it's cute. I'm happy with this, right? And, and honestly, and you see, once again, when I was in my teens, twenties, I was obsessed with my shape and my, right? When I was in my twenties, I started to be more obsessed with the health of my brain and how much I read every day, right? And then when I'm in my fifties, I'm really obsessed about, I'm, I'm actually undergoing

• 33:36Speaker 01

  a season change as we speak, right? So, you know, we said Saturday practice, stress is part of it, but also that reflection of what do I want?

• 33:47Speaker 01

  What do I want is so interesting.

• 33:50Simon Sinek?

  It goes back to the question I was asking before. Why does it take loss? Why does it take tragedy? Why does it take sadness? Why does it take age for us to come to these conclusions? Why can't people in their twenties and thirties live the life?

• 34:04Simon Sinek?

  Ali did.

• 34:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:06Simon Sinek?

  That's the irony of this.

• 34:07Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 34:07Simon Sinek?

  This magical little child. He did. What did he have from six, from, from, as a, his, his whole life? It sounds like his whole short life.

• 34:17Speaker 01

  His whole life.

• 34:18Simon Sinek?

  He lived the life that you have learned to live in your fifties. That took tragedy to get you here.

• 34:23Speaker 01

  Tragedy is an interesting one. You, you have to, you know, you have to make an.

• 34:28Simon Sinek?

  Or pain, pain.

• 34:30Speaker 01

  I, I call it a nudge.

• 34:32Simon Sinek?

  A nudge.

• 34:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, a nudge is, you know, when you, when you, you're half American, half British. So you know both, right? In, in, you know, in, in America, if, if a road is a little sloping upwards, right? And you're walking that road, that basically is what needs what America is so celebratory of grit. Right? You need to try harder. Okay. You come into the UK and it's all roundabouts, right? And, and, and the idea is you get into a roundabout. And sometimes you, you get in and you want to go out on the third exit, but life closes that exit.

• 35:09Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 35:09Speaker 01

  Right? And so you keep turning in the roundabout insisting to hit the third exit. But life is telling you, hey, you know, the force is open. Can you try that? And you keep saying, no, I'm going to, you know, go around and around and around until the third one is open for me. Because you're so stubbornly preoccupied by your current season, right? Life is telling you change of season, new exit, new life, new exploration, new experiences. Right? And it's so interesting that when we continue to resist, life goes like force. Do you want to go from the force, like see force? And you don't. So it nudges the hell out of you. It gives you, it literally shoulders you out through a loss.

• 35:54Simon Sinek?

  But again.

• 35:54Speaker 01

  Pain, through depression, through burnout, through, right?

• 35:58Simon Sinek?

  I love all of this. And you're talking about serendipity. You're talking about. Open mindedness, you're talking about what happens when the plan doesn't go according to plan, which is, by the way, always.

• 36:09Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 36:10Simon Sinek?

  You know, what's the joke, you know, if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.

• 36:13Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 36:14Simon Sinek?

  You know, what, I, I, I'm with you, but I'll go back to the original question, which is, why does it take loss, heartache, pain, hurt, age, time to learn these lessons? And we, we know that that's not empirical, because we knew that, we know that Ali didn't have any of those things to come to his magical disposition.

• 36:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:40Simon Sinek?

  What was it about this teenager, who had such clarity of life and a calmness that was so attractive to people, it made him so loved and lovable? What, what is it? Why does it take? You see what I'm trying to get to, which is, how can young people learn the lessons? That we, that, like, look, there's a good, you wrote a book about happiness, because I have to believe in some part of you, you said, I don't want other people to go through what I've gone through to learn the lessons I've learned.

• 37:11Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 37:12Simon Sinek?

  So I'm going to write them down so you can learn the lessons without.

• 37:14Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 37:15Simon Sinek?

  There's a, there's a.

• 37:16Speaker 01

  But, but, but the question I get most, believe it or not, is why is your mission one billion happy, not seven billion happy, or eight billion happy? Interesting question, right? Honestly, because when you really think about it, and simply because I find that happiness is a choice.

• 37:30Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 37:31Speaker 01

  Okay, you know, I, I can, you know, I can tell you what works.

• 37:34Simon Sinek?

  You can lead the horse to water.

• 37:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:36Simon Sinek?

  You can lead the horse to water, but they're gonna have to choose it. And it's foolhardy to say everybody.

• 37:39Speaker 01

  And, and it's so arrogant to believe that everyone would make that choice. I mean, when I go and speak in France, or in Poland.

• 37:46Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 37:47Speaker 01

  I kid you not, the first question I get at the end of the session is, well, we, we, we get, we get the, the, the logic is, is works, you know, but, why, why happiness? And I'm like, seriously? Seriously, people go like happiness is a sign of weakness. We're supposed to be here, you know, fighting it out. Okay, and and I, you know, I it's. But you don't question that. You don't argue with them. It's their choice. If you if they. You shrug your shoulders and say. They can't make the choice. Live your life. Yeah, I you know, I simply. You're not there to convince anybody. Exactly. I simply say, well, if, you know, I'm I'm here to teach the technique if you so choose. Right, but that also applies to management and leadership. Yeah. Okay, it also applies to war and peace. Hmm.

• 38:32Speaker 01

  Unfortunately, there are, there is, you know, for some of us, there is one, a an arrogance that what you know is is is true. And two, a refusal to uh to to to see the world from any other perspective. Okay, and and, you know, three, interestingly, the drive to live based on that lack of awareness. Okay, I don't remember who was it, Jack Welch or someone that used to say, you know, you hire people for three things, their passion and and their energy and their uh intentions or something like that. If the third is wrong, the first two will kill you. Hmm.

• 39:14Speaker 01

  Right, uh, you know, basically, basically, if people have the intention to walk into a company, and I hired people like that in my life before, where their only objective is I'm going to play politics and backstab everyone and go up the ladder, right? And their. With energy and passion. And and they're very intelligent and energetic and passionate and and so on. They'll use their intelligence and their passion and and, you know, not benefit anyone at all. Okay, and I think what we humans do in life is we do that to ourselves. We we are told at a point in time that a lot of money and a Ferrari is something that you need to have. Right? And and some of us, you know, get to question that like Ali, okay?

• 39:57Speaker 01

  Who's very reflective and, you know, who would look at things and go like, I I really don't want a Ferrari. And I actually, you know, when Ali graduated, I I was a freaking spoiled, rich brat.

• 40:09Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 40:09Speaker 01

  And I love that boy. So I said, Habibi, would you want the car to to to go to university? And, you know, I have many, pick anyone you want, or why don't I buy you a Porsche nine eleven?

• 40:20Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 40:20Speaker 01

  Right? And I, you know, I I don't regret saying that now because I I matured, right? But I love him and I have the money, so why not?

• 40:28Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 40:28Speaker 01

  And he would go like, Papa, but how would my friends feel about that?

• 40:31Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 40:32Speaker 01

  But I I'm, you know, it's not something I'm passionate about.

• 40:35Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 40:35Speaker 01

  But it's not something that represents me. You maybe if you're so generous, maybe I can take one of the four by four so I can put the band gear in it, right? And and it is quite interesting that he had the awareness of who he is.

• 40:51Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 40:51Speaker 01

  Okay. And he had the willingness, when I insisted many times for him to drive my fancy cars, okay? To to to and and and and take his friends along.

• 41:02Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 41:03Speaker 01

  And then his friends would go like, oh, my God. And he goes like, I just didn't feel any difference, right? He had the willingness to to to to sit with himself and say, this is not what I want from life. And and the season I'm going through now.

• 41:16Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 41:16Speaker 01

  After fifty eight years of success, okay? Takes you quite a bit of courage to say, yeah, I have done a few things. And there are a few things I've never experienced, and there are a few things I'd love to enjoy. And there are a few things that I need to learn.

• 41:32Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 41:32Speaker 01

  Right? And and and unless you sit down and find that, you're going to be the same until you're gone.

• 41:39Simon Sinek?

  There's a guest I had on the podcast named Angela Trinbur. We haven't aired her episode yet. But she one of the things she talks about is absolutely amazing. She had breast cancer.

• 41:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:51Simon Sinek?

  And it was treated.

• 41:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:53Simon Sinek?

  And and everybody who had breast cancer, the other women who had it, who came to and said, it it comes back in two years. And so she suddenly had this horrible fear that. It's going to come back in two years. And she talks about it as this kind of magical gift. Because you know, when you're told you've got, you know, three months to live, you go bucket list, you empty the bank account, you travel the world, you go full bucket list, right? If you're told you have five years to live, 10 years to live, you're like, eh, I'll put it off. I got, I got time.

• 42:29Speaker 01

  Let's see, yeah.

• 42:30Simon Sinek?

  You know, we'll see. But two years was sort of this magical period because it was not enough that she could be complacent, but it was enough that there was some urgency, but not bucket list urgency. The responsible urgency.

• 42:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:44Simon Sinek?

  And she's, she's, she just had this assumption that it's going to come back and she's going to die in two years. And she started making choices, the way that we she started living her life is I've only got two years to live.

• 42:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:54Simon Sinek?

  What, do I want to do this or that?

• 42:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:56Simon Sinek?

  And it gave her a confidence and a direction in life. It never came back. But she continues to live her life with this idea that two years. And I thought that was such an amazing number. You know, because people like, live your life like it's your last day. No, don't do that. Don't, don't, don't, don't do that.

• 43:13Speaker 01

  I call that compartment too. Live it like it's your last day and live it like you have 10 years to go.

• 43:19Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 43:19Speaker 01

  I, it's interesting. Last year was a very challenging year for me. January, I lost my sister. And then my sister in law, but she really is my sister. And you know, I met her for the first time when I was a young teen. And she really truly was a sister to me. Then, you know, she had a heart attack next to my brother's bed, who was suffering with cancer. Two months later, he was cured from cancer, but still left, left our world. He had an unexpected ulcer. And then two months later, I lost my mom.

• 43:58Speaker 01

  Which, you know, you sort of, you sort of think that you've now, you know, become strong enough after losing Ali and then life goes like, no, hold on, I can. I'll prove you wrong. I can show you, I can show you variety, right? And so I'm sitting with my, one of my best friends Alexandra and Alexandra is Serbian, so she's very direct. Yeah. Okay, wonderful young lady who is so honest, so kind. You know, we love each other for, you know, thirteen years friends and so on. And so I'm sitting there with my philosophical face on saying, you see how vulnerable life is? And she goes like, you're gonna be fine, you're not gonna die. And I'm like, what? And she goes like, you're doing good in the world, the world benefits from you, you're probably gonna live a little longer.

• 44:42Speaker 01

  It's like, Alex, you don't know that. And as I'm trying to explain if you know or you don't with my philosophical face, she says, but I can guarantee you, you have a few, you know, you have very few good years in you. I was like, what? And she said, you know those road trips that you always talk to me about? Well, I can tell you, you have seven to nine years where you can take a long one in whichever car you want. And if you wanna take it in a sports car, probably three years. So chop, chop.

• 45:12Speaker 01

  Very, very eye opening. I'll tell you, I'll tell you that. I mean, the truth is, I, I was, I, I lived so many lives, Simon, it's just scary when you really think about it. But, you know, I'm Egyptian, born and raised in Egypt, public school, public university in Egypt. You know, I shouldn't have become the, the, the chief business officer of Google X. If you take any mathematical probabilities, it's close to impossible.

• 45:40Speaker 01

  And yet I lived and I lived a rich life and I lived a simple life and I've, you know, I've, I've lived months of my year, years of my, my life were at the end of the month. You know, we, we could barely make ends meet and, you know, it's, it is, I lived.

• 45:57Speaker 01

  And, and somehow, in all of those lives, if you, if you remember, the only thing that you, we started the conversation with was when life was interestingly engaging. I don't wanna call it challenging. It's interestingly engaging where you sit down and you go like, how can I make this go the furthest for me? And those are that I love. Okay? And, and I think the challenge is. With experience over the years, fewer and fewer and fewer and fewer things stress you, fewer and fewer and fewer things challenge you, okay? You know, just because you've been, you've, it's familiar. You've learned it, right? Yeah, like, like, oh, this again, I know this one.

• 46:40Speaker 01

  I have seen this one, you know, this one is different, but it's the same fabric. At least I know how to manage my emotions about it and so on and so forth. Yeah.

• 46:51Speaker 01

  And, and, and the trick is, when it doesn't become challenges in a challenging, you start to get into those mind-generated, you know, depression-causing. Yes, not chemical, it's sort of self-imposed. It's, it's, it's incessant thinking. Mind racing, yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and your incessant thoughts start to take you into, you know, all those sorts of scenarios that actually have no bound anymore, because they're not even bound by the physical rules anymore, right? Yeah. And, and, and it, and that, that kind of, of experience is what I call a problem of privilege. Hmm. Right?

• 47:33Speaker 01

  And, and when you have problems of privilege, that actually is the sign that tells you, hold on, you know, life is actually really good. Yeah. I am really blessed. What do I want with my life? What, what do I want the next five years to look like? Do I want to do more of the same, get more of the same greenback that I don't even know, it's just sitting in the bank somewhere, that I will never spend just to tell my friends that I made another deal? Hmm. Okay? Do I want to give it away to people and see the joy? I mean, just for everyone listening to us, huh? Your coffee can feed a family in Africa, right? I'm not talking about the very famous and rich who spend, you know,

• 48:17Speaker 01

  a few hundred thousand on their vacation, right? That few hundred thousand can save a village in Africa. And yes, I know, actually, one of the things I've started to see recently, you know, I know that it's actually very difficult for us to imagine that those in Africa. Humans too, or those in the Middle East are humans too, or those in Russia, Ukraine are humans, humans too, right? And and because we are so used to our own life, getting into our cars in the morning and just going through what we believe is life. Okay, and and one of the things I've started to see that is really thrilling my heart. Is finally, the Middle East is starting to show beautiful dances and music instead of angry, save us.

• 49:02Speaker 01

  Okay, so in the, you know, I don't know if you've seen in the last few days. The Lebanese posts are all about the the rockets flying overhead. While they're dancing in parties and laughing and, you know, saying life is is amazing, right? They've been bombed themselves a few days back and they're like, yeah, it's, you know, some of us are lost, some of us are not. And we will live, right? And I think that idea of can we look at each other and say.

• 49:31Speaker 01

  Honestly, another Ferrari is not going to be a big deal.

• 49:33Simon Sinek?

  I I but we're we're still circling the wagons here, which is that they it's they have been bombed and they have had to face their own mortality. For them to say, but let us let us dance, right? And so again, I'm going back and maybe the answer is no, right? Maybe the answer is you can learn some from reading a book, you can learn some from listening to a podcast. Maybe a friend will say something to you that will give you a new perspective that'll, but but maybe you have to be punched in the face.

• 50:00Speaker 01

  All I can guarantee you is if you don't. If you don't wait until you're punched in the face and you change.

• 50:07Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 50:07Speaker 01

  You may not be punched.

• 50:08Simon Sinek?

  You may not be punched, so it's it's like insurance.

• 50:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I I I remember that I wanted to write Soul for Happy, my first book. I wanted to write it in two thousand eleven, okay?

• 50:17Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 50:18Speaker 01

  But but I was chief business officer of Google.

• 50:19Simon Sinek?

  Too busy.

• 50:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you know, I I sit down and I start writing on a flight and then I go, I I land on the other side and I have. All of those deals and all of those clients and all of those meetings and all, right? And I delay it and delay it and delay it and life keeps saying, write it, it's a good book, write it, it's a good book, write it, it's a good book. Until I, you know, I don't, I'm circling the roundabout. So it goes like, okay, you know what, Ali is leaving, you know?

• 50:42Simon Sinek?

  Now write the book.

• 50:43Speaker 01

  Now now write the fricking book.

• 50:44Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 50:45Speaker 01

  Right?

• 50:45Simon Sinek?

  What else do you need?

• 50:46Speaker 01

  And and and I, you know, I know for a fact in my heart. That maybe if I had written it, he wouldn't have had to leave. Okay.

• 50:54Simon Sinek?

  Because you wouldn't have had to learn the lesson.

• 50:55Speaker 01

  Because you wouldn't have, and that's very arrogant, by the way, because it's his life, not mine.

• 51:00Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 51:01Speaker 01

  But I can, I can tell you that, again, it's quite complicated. I've, I've had a very enlightening experience when I was twenty six. I had a near death experience, right? Went all the way through that same exact description that I've never read before, but went all the way through the tunnel, if you want, the light.

• 51:20Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 51:20Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 51:22Speaker 01

  Found myself in that peace and tranquility and truly, and you know, as, as, as the, the, the kind souls, as they describe in near death experiences, were walking in my direction, I was like, yeah, right? They brought me back and I was really angry with the doctor. I was really angry, like, why? This is so lovely over there, right? And, and, and, you know, it seems to me, in my unproven philosophy from that experience, that we sort of always, all of us get asked if it's time to leave.

• 51:54Simon Sinek?

  But you didn't learn your lesson.

• 51:56Speaker 01

  I, something about me changed, but I didn't learn my lesson, right?

• 52:02Simon Sinek?

  Can you share some of the things that you've learned about this happiness practice? That people can implement?

• 52:09Speaker 01

  Look, happiness to me is-

• 52:11Simon Sinek?

  I like the, I mean, I think, look, you, you said it, which is happiness is a choice. So number one is you have to choose that you want to be happy, right?

• 52:18Speaker 01

  So happiness is a choice and happiness is your default setting is the most important to assumptions, if you wanna look at them that way. So, so I understand this, every child is born happy, right? So your, your, your default operating system is happy, of course. You know, some children may be exposed to violence when they're in the womb.

• 52:37Simon Sinek?

  Sure, sure.

• 52:38Speaker 01

  So, so, but if, if you're-

• 52:40Simon Sinek?

  All things being equal.

• 52:40Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, exactly. If you're just coming out of the box, you know, unboxing a child, the child's default setting is happy, right?

• 52:49Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 52:49Speaker 01

  It, it cries when it has a reason to cry.

• 52:53Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 52:53Speaker 01

  Okay? Feed it and it will go back to happy, you know, playing with their toes, looking at the ceiling and that's it, right? You were that child too. And then, and then as you went on through life, do you remember Supertramp?

• 53:09Simon Sinek?

  Of course.

• 53:09Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. In English.

• 53:12Simon Sinek?

  Oh, I know Supertramp.

• 53:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:13Simon Sinek?

  Breakfast in America is one of the great all time songs.

• 53:17Speaker 01

  Hundred percent, hundred percent. And Roger Hodgson is an amazing artist. So they had the logical song, remember the logical song?

• 53:25Simon Sinek?

  Yeah, of course.

• 53:26Speaker 01

  When I was young, it seemed that life was so wonderful.

• 53:28Simon Sinek?

  When I was young, it seemed that life was so wonderful.

• 53:30Speaker 01

  There you go, yeah. And so basically, when in my, in the depths of my depression years, I'm sitting in a cafe in Seattle. I remember vividly, I was working at Microsoft at the time. And, and you know, must have been on a Walkman or like a Discman or something. And I'm listening and then this song comes along and it comes on. And it says, when I was young, it seemed that life was so wonderful. All the birds on the trees were singing so happily, you know. And then they sent me away to teach me how to be sensible, logical, responsible, practical, cynical, critical, and so on. Right? And, and that's the story of your life, right? Basically, life as a child, when you don't overthink things, you're happy. Okay?

• 54:14Speaker 01

  And then you start to become cynical and critical. And you sort of learn to succeed in life and we humans are very capable. You tell me the target is to succeed, then go like, yeah, absolutely. And most of us remember that, huh? That you probably into your twenties, you were not that upset with anything. This generation is because of the amount of negativity we pour on them. So if you understand that your default setting is happy, then there is nothing you need to bring from outside you to find happiness. You need to remove shit to be happy. Okay? And, and that negation strategy is quite an interesting one.

• 54:53Simon Sinek?

  Oh, that's good.

• 54:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I'm, I'm sitting there. I, you know, I basically take the rest of the day off. And I start to look back at the things that, you know, I, I'm like, yeah, when I was young, it seemed that life was so wonderful. So, so I keep going back. When I was eighteen, I was happy. When I was sixteen, I was happy. When I was four, I was happy. When I was two. I was happy, right? There were things that upset that happiness, but I went back to.

• 55:19Simon Sinek?

  But this goes back to, I love this, right? And this is so actionable, I love this, which is it's the reverse of what most people do, which is they make a list of the things that they think will bring them happiness. But what you do.

• 55:30Speaker 01

  Is remove the.

• 55:31Simon Sinek?

  Is you make the list of the things that are causing you stress and you go about removing them.

• 55:34Speaker 01

  You remove the.

• 55:35Simon Sinek?

  It's a removal process, not an adding.

• 55:37Speaker 01

  And there is a reason for that.

• 55:38Simon Sinek?

  So good.

• 55:38Speaker 01

  There is a reason for that, okay? Nothing ever from outside you, this is, you know, rule number two or assumption number two, huh? Nothing from outside you will bring you happiness. Why? Because nothing has an inherent value of happiness within it.

• 55:52Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 55:52Speaker 01

  Right? Take anything in, in life, you know? Rain, okay? Rain cannot make you happy or unhappy.

• 55:59Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 56:00Speaker 01

  Right? If it's your ex-girlfriend's wedding, it makes you happy.

• 56:03Simon Sinek?

  There's no, there's no such thing as bad weather, just inappropriate clothing.

• 56:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, and no inappropriate intention, desires, right? So if, you know, if you, if you want a classic car, I love to restore classics and I lose money on them all the time. You know, if you want a classic car to make money on it. You're gonna be unhappy all the time. If you want a classic car because you love, love the art of restoring it, you'll be happy, right? If you, if you, if you want a classic car because you want to drive all the time without braking, you'll be unhappy, right? And, and, and, and, and everything else, huh? If you want rain, rain makes you happy.

• 56:44Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 56:44Speaker 01

  If you don't want rain, rain makes you unhappy. So mathematically, that means the equation is not one parameter. It's not what life gives you.

• 56:52Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 56:52Speaker 01

  Okay? It's what life gives you in comparison to what you want life to give you.

• 56:56Simon Sinek?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 56:57Speaker 01

  And so I wrote that in Solve for Happy very clear, straightforward. I said, your happiness is equal to or greater than the difference between the events of your life and your expectations of how life should be.

• 57:06Simon Sinek?

  Say that again slowly.

• 57:07Speaker 01

  Your happiness is equal to or greater than the difference between the events of your life.

• 57:12Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 57:13Speaker 01

  Or, or, or more accurately, your perception of the events of your life.

• 57:17Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 57:18Speaker 01

  And your hopes and desires and wishes of how life should be.

• 57:23Simon Sinek?

  Oh, so good.

• 57:24Speaker 01

  Right? Now, take that and apply it to every moment in your life you felt unhappy.

• 57:28Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 57:29Speaker 01

  Okay, it wasn't because life was wrong. It was because life was not what you wanted to be. You know what that is?

• 57:34Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 57:35Speaker 01

  That's a six-year-old behavior. Okay, like mommy, I want ice cream, right? It's not the right time for ice cream. Mommy doesn't have the time, or you didn't have lunch yet, or whatever, right? But you want ice cream. And for some reason, when you cried enough as a child, when you, when you were miserable enough as a child, ice cream showed up, or mommy tapped you on the back and said, come on, baby, right? And we continue to do this, somehow expecting that life, when we are upset, is going to go like, yeah, okay, fine, here's your ice cream, right? Now, here's the trick, life doesn't give a shit about you, okay?

• 58:14Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 58:15Speaker 01

  Life simply is there to say, look, there will be a multiple, you know, a series of events. Some of them are easy, some of them are tough, some of them are enjoyable, some of them you, you learn from, okay? And it's your choice how to react to every one of them. It's your, it's your choice to, to choose your perception of the event, and it's your choice to set your expectations realistically. So you get stuck in traffic. You can choose a perception that says, I hate this, this is annoying, this is wasting two of my precious moments, okay? I will be late to my event, everything is, is, you know, is, is miserable. Or you can say, oh, my God, I'm in a car. Oh, my God, I'm in a city.

• 58:59Speaker 01

  Oh, my God, there are no bombs on top of me. Oh, my God, I'm not starving to death. Oh, my God, I'm, you know, I am.

• 59:05Simon Sinek?

  This is the worst thing that's happening to me? Life is good.

• 59:07Speaker 01

  Hundred percent.

• 59:09Simon Sinek?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 59:09Speaker 01

  Hundred percent. If this is the worst that's happening to me, okay? You know.

• 59:14Simon Sinek?

  It's, it's a nice little, it's a, it's a hack. Because I know that when things go wrong for me, like somebody, I'm in a restaurant that bring me the wrong meal, I mean, you know, whatever it is, stupid shit, right? I know, like, you know, and because we're all assholes to some degree. You know, the, the, the, the blood starts to boil over stupid stuff. And I say out loud to the person who's very often apologetic or something, don't worry, you know, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry. And I always say, if this is the worst thing that happens to me all week, I'm way ahead of the game.

• 59:41Speaker 01

  Hundred percent.

• 59:42Simon Sinek?

  Your hotel room's not ready. I mean, who gives a shit, right? The stuff that drives us nuts. Saying it out loud to someone, it's not really for them, it's for you. If this is the worst thing that happens to me all week, I'm ahead of the game, you know?

• 59:53Speaker 01

  And, and, and.

• 59:54Simon Sinek?

  And immediately, immediately, you relax.

• 59:57Speaker 01

  And by the way, and by the way, it is, it is a, it's a, it's a, it's a very actionable meaning. You know, if you hear your brain saying, this is shit.

• 1:00:07Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:08Speaker 01

  Okay, ask your, this is by the way, your brain's tendency, because your brain is a survival machine. We, we use it to invent iPhones, right? But, but it is first and foremost a survival machine. It wants to know what's wrong with life so that it can work on it, right? Because what's wrong is what makes you unsafe, right? So when your brain tells you, as per its nature, you know, this, uh, uh, uh, you know, the, the, the traffic is shit. Okay, ask it and say, what's good about the traffic, right? What is good about this?

• 1:00:38Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:38Speaker 01

  And it will comply. First it will say, uh, yeah, and London taxis are annoying. Now I asked you what is good about this.

• 1:00:46Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:47Speaker 01

  Okay, and if you insist, so my, my practices, I used to.

• 1:00:50Simon Sinek?

  I can listen to Supertramp.

• 1:00:52Speaker 01

  Exactly, a lot of, a lot of, or I can sing it in my head. My practice used to be, you know, for every negative thing that my brain gives me.

• 1:00:59Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:00Speaker 01

  Okay, it is obliged to give me a good one.

• 1:01:03Simon Sinek?

  So you play the game, it's like, okay.

• 1:01:04Speaker 01

  Hundred percent.

• 1:01:05Simon Sinek?

  It's a zero sum. If you're giving me negative, I want positive, play.

• 1:01:07Speaker 01

  Hundred percent. Now, but then I realized that my brain is quite a coward, right? So I started to, for every negative thing that it gives me, asking for nine.

• 1:01:18Simon Sinek?

  Nine good.

• 1:01:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, but because that's the nature of life. By the way, if you take the mathematics of life.

• 1:01:24Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:25Speaker 01

  How often do we suffer earthquakes as compared to how often do we walk on solid grounds?

• 1:01:32Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 1:01:32Speaker 01

  Okay, how often do you get sick as compared to, you know, unfortunately, some of us are maybe chronically sick for a long time. But for the majority of humanity.

• 1:01:42Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 1:01:43Speaker 01

  How long, how often are we sick as compared to how often are we, are we healthy?

• 1:01:48Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 1:01:48Speaker 01

  Right, in reality, it's not even one to nine, it's one to probably ninety-nine.

• 1:01:53Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 1:01:53Speaker 01

  Okay, and, and then that's irrelevant, by the way, which strata of the society you're in.

• 1:01:58Simon Sinek?

  Yeah, that's everyone.

• 1:01:59Speaker 01

  Okay, it's everyone. If you're, if, I'll, I'll tell you a very interesting thought process to understand. If, if life is a survival, is all about a survival approach. And you're able to sit in that car and tell yourself, you know, I'm gonna be late for my event, so a future event and and and torture yourself with it. Or sit in that car and say, I'm stupid to live in this city, or I should have left 10 minutes earlier. So I passed the event to to torture yourself with.

• 1:02:29Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:29Speaker 01

  You know what that means?

• 1:02:30Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:31Speaker 01

  It means from a survival mechanism point of view, there is no tiger attacking you.

• 1:02:35Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:35Speaker 01

  Okay, because if there was an actual threat, if there was actually something wrong with this moment.

• 1:02:41Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:41Speaker 01

  That in itself would take your mind away from all of those stupid thoughts.

• 1:02:46Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:46Speaker 01

  You would focus on the tiger. So so the fact that you're thinking those negative thoughts is in itself evidence.

• 1:02:52Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:53Speaker 01

  That now is right now is okay.

• 1:02:55Simon Sinek?

  How do little things factor in? Because I know one of the things that I do is I I do this consciously, which is I try and I try and pay attention to little things and I and it's to the point now where it's almost automatic. And when I say little things, I mean, like, you have no idea how small, right? Like, making breakfast in the morning, right? The the sounds of putting the coffee in the coffee pot and filling up the jug and putting it on the coffee machine and the clinks and the clanks and the drags and the and the swishes. I'm really present and attuned that I'm not just going through the motions of making coffee, but I'm paying attention as if it's a choreography, as if it's a piece of dance.

• 1:03:33Speaker 01

  You have found the secret to life.

• 1:03:36Simon Sinek?

  And and these, I mean, I'm making coffee in the morning, something I do every single day. And I find joy in the, not every day, because then it'll become mundane, right? Because I'm trying to avoid the mundane. But every now and then, I'll pay so much attention and I smile. It I smile.

• 1:03:53Speaker 01

  You have found the secret to life. Do you have the same coffee every day?

• 1:03:56Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:57Speaker 01

  No, I never have, I never do that.

• 1:03:59Simon Sinek?

  You mix it up?

• 1:04:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, so every morning before I make coffee, I spend 10 minutes trying to feel what I feel today and accordingly which coffee I want.

• 1:04:06Simon Sinek?

  I make coffee, coffee, I don't, I have the same coffee every day. I have optimism coffee because I love it.

• 1:04:14Simon Sinek?

  And I made it. But I

• 1:04:19Simon Sinek?

  I make it differently.

• 1:04:22Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 1:04:22Simon Sinek?

  So it'll be the same coffee, but sometimes I'll put it in the drip coffee. Sometimes I'll sort of let it.

• 1:04:26Speaker 01

  All right.

• 1:04:27Simon Sinek?

  Sometimes I'll.

• 1:04:27Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:04:28Simon Sinek?

  So I have different.

• 1:04:29Speaker 01

  Same beans.

• 1:04:29Simon Sinek?

  A cafe press.

• 1:04:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:32Simon Sinek?

  And I don't know why it tastes slightly different.

• 1:04:34Speaker 01

  It does.

• 1:04:34Simon Sinek?

  But but sometimes it's just the thing that I feel like making doing.

• 1:04:39Speaker 01

  Hundred percent now. So I say you found the secret to life. Why? Because

• 1:04:46Speaker 01

  think about it this way. We said now is always amazing. The problem with our most of our unhappiness comes from that incessant thinking.

• 1:04:53Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:54Speaker 01

  Okay. That idea of living in the past or the future. Now.

• 1:04:56Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:57Speaker 01

  There is an interesting exercise people need to think about.

• 1:05:02Speaker 01

  Take any emotion and it's a very good exercise to reflect on with yourself. Take any emotion, you feel the emotion right now, but the emotion has a temporal anchor. Right? The regret, for example, is anchored in the past. It's about something that happened in the past.

• 1:05:17Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 1:05:18Speaker 01

  Right? Fear or anxiety is about anchored in the future.

• 1:05:21Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 1:05:22Speaker 01

  If you write them all down, you'll find that the majority of the emotions that make you feel negative are anchored in the past and the future.

• 1:05:29Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 1:05:30Speaker 01

  And the majority of the emotions that make you feel positive are in the present.

• 1:05:33Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 1:05:33Speaker 01

  Right? Calm is in the present. You know, excitement is in the present and so on and so forth.

• 1:05:38Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 1:05:38Speaker 01

  Right? Now, it's quite interesting because past and future don't exist.

• 1:05:43Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 1:05:44Speaker 01

  Past and future are neural constructs that you create within your own head. You cannot give them life.

• 1:05:51Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 1:05:52Speaker 01

  Unless you create them inside your own head. Okay. When yesterday happened, you called it today. When tomorrow eventually happens, you're gonna call it today. You're always in.

• 1:06:02Simon Sinek?

  You're always now.

• 1:06:03Speaker 01

  Right? Now, here's the trick. The trick is if you get yourself to that presence, to be here and now, here and now, most of the time, there's absolutely nothing wrong. Unless you're in a war zone, unless you have a chronic pain, unless you have a, you know, you're going through a tough period of your time physically or whatever. Most of the time.

• 1:06:24Simon Sinek?

  And even in those periods, there's moments of rest and respite.

• 1:06:27Speaker 01

  Hundred percent, okay? And I'll come to that in a minute. But but think about it this way. Now is always amazing. The idea of bringing yourself to the now is always bringing yourself away from the incessant thinking that's creating madness within your head.

• 1:06:42Simon Sinek?

  It's really important also, which is you're not saying this takes, you know, we're not, you're not saying you need a meditation practice. And you're not even advocating that somebody spend every Saturday until 2 P M. You know, you're not advocating any of that. You know, I mean, it help, it's helpful.

• 1:06:56Speaker 01

  Meditation is.

• 1:06:58Simon Sinek?

  Like, all of these things are are helpful, but for anybody who rolls their eyes and be like, oh, I don't have time. You don't, it's okay. It's okay, it's fine.

• 1:07:04Speaker 01

  Look, if you don't have time, then you probably need the meditation to learn to do it, right? But but but the trick is this, that and I, you know, because of my work, many of the top meditation teachers and Buddhist monks and so on are my friends.

• 1:07:19Simon Sinek?

  Sure.

• 1:07:19Speaker 01

  And they will always tell you meditation is like going to the gym. It's not like carrying something heavy. This is you prepare by going to the gym so that your mind learns how to focus on the present moment.

• 1:07:32Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:33Speaker 01

  But meditation is not the objective in itself, it's the practice.

• 1:07:35Simon Sinek?

  It's the practice, right?

• 1:07:36Speaker 01

  But but here's the trick. Have you ever felt that, oh shit, it's June?

• 1:07:42Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:43Speaker 01

  Right?

• 1:07:43Simon Sinek?

  Like, and then we say, my God, this year is going fast.

• 1:07:45Speaker 01

  My God.

• 1:07:46Simon Sinek?

  It's nearly over.

• 1:07:47Speaker 01

  Have you ever thought why that is?

• 1:07:49Simon Sinek?

  I guess because I'm too busy.

• 1:07:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, correct. No, too busy is is a very interesting explanation. So I found, and I did that, 2018 was I, when I was, when I started to see this and I apply it. And I can guarantee you, the last seven years of my life have been way longer than the previous 51.

• 1:08:08Simon Sinek?

  Because you're.

• 1:08:09Speaker 01

  Because the, because you have to understand that.

• 1:08:12Simon Sinek?

  You're slowing down.

• 1:08:13Speaker 01

  You're only aware of the time you live.

• 1:08:16Simon Sinek?

  And if your day is filled with a calendar that's back to back to back to back.

• 1:08:21Speaker 01

  And you're always.

• 1:08:21Simon Sinek?

  And the day is over.

• 1:08:22Speaker 01

  And you're always in your head. So even if your day is filled with a calendar that's back to back. But this conversation I will remember forever. Right. Because I'm fully present in it. I'm listening to you. You're contributing. I are listening to me. You know, the sensations of being a little hot outside, but we're still okay. And if you completely bring yourself to this, time continues to stretch. So every minute that you live fully, okay, is a minute that registers as a moment of life. Every minute you live inside your head is a moment you'll never remember.

• 1:08:56Simon Sinek?

  One of the things that's really helped me is, and it took a while to shed the guilt of wanting time to myself. Right. Because we're in a hyper productive, you know, you've got to, if you're not using your time to make something, do something, achieve something. Hit some sort of, then you're a loser. Right. And, and I would sometimes wake up pretty early on a weekend. And I would sit in bed till noon. And I'm, I mean, like, so I maybe woke up at eight. So and I'm talking about like, maybe I read the newspaper, maybe I played a game, did the crossword puzzle, played some games, maybe I made a phone call. I would sometimes go downstairs, get a cup of coffee and get back into bed. And when people be like, what'd you do today? Because it was like two o'clock and I met somebody for, you know, for brunch or something.

• 1:09:39Simon Sinek?

  I'm like, and I was, I'd be like, I sat in bed. And they're like, what a waste of a day, they would say to me.

• 1:09:47Speaker 01

  Seriously.

• 1:09:48Simon Sinek?

  I know. And, and then I got to the, and I would have this guilt. And I got to the point where I was like, you know what? It's my life. It's my morning. It's my weekend. I'm allowed to do whatever I want. And if I choose to sit in bed all morning and do something completely that the world would judge as unproductive, so be it. And I gotta tell you, I love sitting in bed.

• 1:10:12Speaker 01

  Doing nothing.

• 1:10:12Simon Sinek?

  All morning. I love, I love it.

• 1:10:15Speaker 01

  I'll give you.

• 1:10:15Simon Sinek?

  And so what? Or I could go do something, but it's like, my activity is to be in bed.

• 1:10:23Speaker 01

  What is that song? Today I'm just not doing anything, right?

• 1:10:28Simon Sinek?

  The activity of doing.

• 1:10:29Speaker 01

  Nothing.

• 1:10:30Simon Sinek?

  Well, where nothing is the thing.

• 1:10:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I do 40 days of silence every year. So I just go somewhere.

• 1:10:36Simon Sinek?

  All in a row?

• 1:10:39Simon Sinek?

  Because I could probably do 40 days of silence if you added up my whole life. So I'm amortized over the course of my life. I've definitely.

• 1:10:47Speaker 01

  I dare you.

• 1:10:48Simon Sinek?

  I'm dearly about like twenty seven days.

• 1:10:49Speaker 01

  I dare you if you try it. Don't do the monk thing. Don't go to a monastery where they wake you up at four AM. I go to a beautiful nature place, you know, a converted barn somewhere in, you know, whatever. Right. And I'm not very strict about it. I listen to music. I don't listen to lyrics. Right. I don't follow up on the internet and I allow myself paper and pen and I write. Okay. Believe it or not, almost every single year I've done the whole forty days, I wrote at least seven chapters of a book. Okay. And it happens in a very unusual way. The first week.

• 1:11:24Simon Sinek?

  But most people can't take forty days off of life.

• 1:11:27Speaker 01

  Everyone can.

• 1:11:28Simon Sinek?

  No, everyone can.

• 1:11:30Speaker 01

  Everyone can, but not in the same.

• 1:11:32Simon Sinek?

  They could take a weekend, maybe.

• 1:11:34Speaker 01

  No, exactly. I was going to say, not in the same consecutive way.

• 1:11:39Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 1:11:39Speaker 01

  Okay. So, so, you know, people almost.

• 1:11:41Simon Sinek?

  Fair.

• 1:11:41Speaker 01

  Always dare me and say, I'm so busy. Okay. I'm really sorry, I'm so busy. And I go like, but Coldplay is going to be available next week. Do you want tickets? And they'll go like, yeah, totally. No problem whatsoever. Okay.

• 1:11:54Simon Sinek?

  It goes back to intention.

• 1:11:55Speaker 01

  It's like, yeah.

• 1:11:56Simon Sinek?

  I have no time until I want to make time.

• 1:11:58Speaker 01

  Exactly. Hundred percent.

• 1:11:59Simon Sinek?

  Okay. So what you're saying is find a reasonable amount of time that is reasonable for whatever the life.

• 1:12:03Speaker 01

  So I suggest to people, I suggest to people what I call the mini silent retreats, which is my Saturdays.

• 1:12:09Simon Sinek?

  Okay.

• 1:12:09Speaker 01

  Perfect. You set, you set your alarm until two or three PM and you have a half a day to yourself.

• 1:12:15Simon Sinek?

  Totally legit, because that scares a lot of people to hear. I have to be quiet and talk, not engage with anybody from the time I wake up till two PM.

• 1:12:22Speaker 01

  The minute you do that, you engage with who? Your brain.

• 1:12:24Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 1:12:25Speaker 01

  And your brain attacks you. Right. And the whole idea is, I call it meet Becky. So, so one of, one of my famous techniques is I, I call my brain a third, a third party name.

• 1:12:36Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:36Speaker 01

  Right. So Becky was the most annoying girl in school. Right. So, so, so literally, you know, you know, those people that walk to you all the time and just say annoying things.

• 1:12:44Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:45Speaker 01

  And then walk away with no solutions.

• 1:12:46Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:47Speaker 01

  Right. That's your brain. It's like, it's just, ah, by the way, you're fat. Why brain? Why did you say this? Right. And, and the trick here is. When you restrict Becky, when you restrict your brain, your brain pushes harder. It's a bit like that friend that takes you at seven AM and goes like, hey, I have this great idea. Call me and you're asleep at seven, right?

• 1:13:09Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:10Speaker 01

  Or you're doing something and then by nine AM, they've texted you sixty times.

• 1:13:14Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:15Speaker 01

  And you go like, hey, I'm walking to a meeting. Can I text you back at ten thirty?

• 1:13:20Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:20Speaker 01

  And they say, yeah, fine, no problem whatsoever.

• 1:13:22Simon Sinek?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:13:23Speaker 01

  That's your brain. So what I do is I go to my brain and I go like, hey, by the way, part of Saturday, tell me all the shit that's going on. Tell me everything that's going on up there.

• 1:13:33Simon Sinek?

  I just love this practice.

• 1:13:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:35Simon Sinek?

  I I've tried it in a mini way. So I heard Matt Walker, who's the sleep expert.

• 1:13:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:40Simon Sinek?

  And when he talks about, because I I struggle with my brain racing at like, I'm totally relaxed, not thinking about anything. The minute I turn out the lights and my head is on the pillow, okay, game on, right?

• 1:13:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:50Simon Sinek?

  And I can lie awake for hours and and just over and over. And I know like, don't worry, you'll deal with this tomorrow. You can't fix it now. It doesn't matter, I can't turn it off. Then I heard him say, and I tried it, which is just write it down.

• 1:14:04Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:14:05Simon Sinek?

  And and so like I keep a little red flashlight that next to my bed so I don't ruin my night vision. And I have a little pad and pen and all of the thoughts, whatever they are, I just write them down. And it is incredible how well it works. It all just stops.

• 1:14:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:18Simon Sinek?

  It all just stops. And and I even like tried to trick myself where I wrote them down then and tried to force myself to think of those same things again, and it couldn't.

• 1:14:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:26Simon Sinek?

  The brain couldn't do it.

• 1:14:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:27Simon Sinek?

  The minute they were written down and I realized it's spinning, not because I'm actually thinking, it's spinning because it wants to me to remember these things.

• 1:14:35Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 1:14:35Simon Sinek?

  But if I write them down, it it says, I'm good.

• 1:14:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:39Simon Sinek?

  Go ahead and go ahead and get some sleep.

• 1:14:40Speaker 01

  I go even further.

• 1:14:41Simon Sinek?

  And so the fact that you're doing this.

• 1:14:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:44Simon Sinek?

  I've done it in a mini practice. You're doing a much larger. It it works so well.

• 1:14:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, and and it's funny. So so so there are two rules to me, Becky. Rule number one is. You take every thought that your brain tells you, okay? You write it down and you dismiss it. Basically, you, you know, hey, um, um, you, you know, you sit down and you go like, okay, go ahead, tell me, and it will say, yeah, I don't believe that thing that Simon said. And you go like, okay, you don't believe this that Simon said. What else? And you keep asking the question, what else? With one rule, that no idea is repeated twice. Okay, so you know, twenty five ideas later, your brain goes, and by the way, I don't agree with what Simon said. Brain, you said that before.

• 1:15:26Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 1:15:26Speaker 01

  Right? And I guarantee you, so I do, I normally do that practice for twenty minutes, again, on a timer. Timers are very useful to tell you, not just when something ends, but by when it will end, so that you don't end it before.

• 1:15:41Simon Sinek?

  Oh, you have, you have to fill the time?

• 1:15:43Speaker 01

  You have to fill the time. So you can set the timer of like twenty, thirty minutes.

• 1:15:46Simon Sinek?

  I understand.

• 1:15:46Speaker 01

  And, and you're not getting up. I do that when I write. So when I write, I write in forty four minutes and eleven second sessions. I don't know why, but I love those numbers. And so I set forty four minutes on my timer, and as long as I, as the alarm didn't go off, I will not get up, even if I'm not writing.

• 1:16:03Simon Sinek?

  Right, so it's right, I understand that. It's a time to tell you to stop, it's also a time to tell you when not, that you have to keep going.

• 1:16:08Speaker 01

  You have to keep going, right?

• 1:16:10Simon Sinek?

  It's clever, yeah.

• 1:16:10Speaker 01

  So you set your timer to twenty minutes, and you, and you get your brain to tell you, hey, uh, uh, I don't like what Simon said, I like what Jackie said, I, you know, you're fat, uh, you're, you're short, whatever, okay? And it keeps telling you that stuff, and you just take it one by one, until it starts to repeat itself. So when you call it out on repeating itself, I guarantee you, just try it once, normally around minute eleven or so. You go like, so what else? And your brain goes like, um, that's it, really? And it completely runs out of ideas. Okay? I promise you, this is as close to heaven as you'll ever get. Total silence. It's not you're trying to stop your brain through meditation.

• 1:16:52Simon Sinek?

  It's got nothing else.

• 1:16:52Speaker 01

  It said everything, and you have now a rule that it cannot say them again.

• 1:16:56Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 1:16:57Speaker 01

  Okay? My God, it is heaven. Right?

• 1:17:00Simon Sinek?

  Oh, I'm doing it.

• 1:17:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, and, and then suddenly, a few minutes later, it starts to tell you nice things. Like, oh, that's really nice.

• 1:17:09Simon Sinek?

  It's run out of crap, so.

• 1:17:10Speaker 01

  Ran out of crap. It basically is struggling for your attention. Okay. And you're not doing anything about its thoughts. So it's afraid you're gonna die. So it just constantly tries to tell you, give me more of that. Okay. Give me more airtime, give me more attention, give me. I'm telling you, you know, they're gonna kill all of us. It's, oh, fine. They are going to kill all of us. Okay. Now, the rest of the practice is actually quite interesting. So I normally spend the next twenty minutes looking at what I wrote down. And you will laugh out loud, like literally, you look at some of those and go like, that is ridiculous. Like, how can you even think this? And you, you know, you visibly scratch it out.

• 1:17:49Simon Sinek?

  And so you get the dopamine hit of accomplishment by scratching out the negativity as well.

• 1:17:53Speaker 01

  And also you remind your brain so that when it brings it up again, you go like, but we scratched that one out.

• 1:17:57Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 1:17:58Speaker 01

  Right? And then the ones that you need to do something about, put an action plan next to it.

• 1:18:03Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 1:18:03Speaker 01

  And somehow that one, yeah, that one practice, if you do that once every Saturday.

• 1:18:08Simon Sinek?

  I love this.

• 1:18:09Speaker 01

  It really changes everything.

• 1:18:10Simon Sinek?

  I'm doing it.

• 1:18:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, a hundred percent.

• 1:18:11Simon Sinek?

  I'm doing it.

• 1:18:12Speaker 01

  But you see, again, it goes back to that whole.

• 1:18:14Simon Sinek?

  I'll be in bed all morning. I got plenty of time to do it.

• 1:18:18Speaker 01

  What I was trying to say with my silent retreats is really interesting. You become more productive with silence sometimes.

• 1:18:24Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:25Speaker 01

  You become more productive by doing nothing sometimes. Okay.

• 1:18:28Simon Sinek?

  Well, also, I, I, I learned the, the, the value of negative space. And as a creative person.

• 1:18:34Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:18:34Simon Sinek?

  But this is everybody. It's not just creative people, it's everybody, which is, you know, I, I learned this a million years ago, which is our conscious brains have access to the equivalent of about three feet of information around us. And our subconscious brains have the equivalent, have access to the equivalent of about eleven acres of information around us. So when we engage our rational brains, when we, when we weigh the pros and cons, when we access our expertise and we quote unquote, think about a problem, we've got three feet of information.

• 1:19:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:00Simon Sinek?

  But when you quote unquote, let go, your mind wanders. Now, you're not quote unquote, thinking, but your mind is ruminating, your subconscious brain is ruminating, which is why we find solutions in the shower, when we go for a run, when we're driving in the car, and we go for a walk. When you're, you're not actively thinking. And so the value of the brainstorming session is not to solve the problem, it's to ask the question.

• 1:19:19Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 1:19:20Simon Sinek?

  And so, but the problem is, is we've eliminated negative space. So when you're sitting on the subway going to work, I'm on the phone.

• 1:19:26Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 1:19:27Simon Sinek?

  When I'm sitting on the toilet, I'm on the phone.

• 1:19:29Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 1:19:29Simon Sinek?

  When I'm walking from here to there.

• 1:19:31Speaker 01

  I want to see, but yes.

• 1:19:32Simon Sinek?

  I mean, but we're all guilty of it, right? When one is sitting on the toilet.

• 1:19:36Speaker 01

  It's not me.

• 1:19:38Simon Sinek?

  Like, I mean, and I catch myself doing it. I'm walking from here to there down the street. And I'm looking down and it occurred to me just today, coming to the studio. I like walked a full block without looking up. I'm like, I could have walked into a fricking pole and I wouldn't have known.

• 1:19:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:50Simon Sinek?

  You know, but the point is, is I now work to add negative space.

• 1:19:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:56Simon Sinek?

  So I'll put in my calendar, do nothing.

• 1:19:59Speaker 01

  I used to have that, that was very well known about me in Google X. Because we had, all of our offices were glass, basically.

• 1:20:05Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:05Speaker 01

  So people would walk by me and I'm sitting in that glass cube. No phone, nothing on the screen, not talking to anyone.

• 1:20:13Simon Sinek?

  And do nothing doesn't literally mean do nothing.

• 1:20:15Speaker 01

  It's your.

• 1:20:15Simon Sinek?

  I could go for a walk, I could watch a movie.

• 1:20:17Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:20:17Simon Sinek?

  I can watch TV. The point is, it's, it's scheduled quote unquote, unproductive time as other people would define productivity.

• 1:20:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is the most.

• 1:20:26Simon Sinek?

  And so, and what I'm just allowing my brain to do is wonder.

• 1:20:29Speaker 01

  Hundred percent.

• 1:20:29Simon Sinek?

  W A and W O. To wonder and to wonder.

• 1:20:33Speaker 01

  Hundred percent.

• 1:20:34Simon Sinek?

  You know?

• 1:20:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:35Simon Sinek?

  And because I, as a, as a person who loves ideas, I won't have ideas if I'm thinking the whole time.

• 1:20:41Speaker 01

  And, and, and there are, and there are, exactly. So I, as a creative person.

• 1:20:46Simon Sinek?

  Which is ironic.

• 1:20:46Speaker 01

  Okay, as a creative, so I, I finished Google X 2018. That Soul for Happy is now an international best seller, like by then it was half a million copies or something.

• 1:20:55Simon Sinek?

  Amazing.

• 1:20:56Speaker 01

  And, and, and now I'm like running my one billion happy mission, literally like an executive. Like, of course.

• 1:21:02Simon Sinek?

  But that's not a good thing, is it?

• 1:21:03Speaker 01

  It's not at all, right? And then someday, sometime in 2019, I text my team and I go like, guys, the season has changed, right? I'm not an executive anymore. I'm now a creative person that wakes up frequently at 3am, inspired to write something.

• 1:21:18Simon Sinek?

  But this is interesting, right? Which is, which is you're now on the, on the, the happiness mission, except you're treating it like an executive. And I know people who, you know, they run businesses about, you know. Meditation or and yet they're stressed out. And like the irony of all of these people I keep meeting who have these missions and yet they are feeling the opposite of what they're espousing.

• 1:21:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:43Simon Sinek?

  And so how can you run your business more like a philosophical practice and rather like than a business because you yourself know.

• 1:21:53Speaker 01

  It's a it's an interesting thought.

• 1:21:56Speaker 01

  Which is more which moves the macro target to a micro target. So think about this, huh? I can only do the absolute best that I can do every day. And if I directionally know where I'm heading by adding those days up, I'll get as far as I can.

• 1:22:13Simon Sinek?

  So can I push you a little bit?

• 1:22:14Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 1:22:14Simon Sinek?

  What if there's no target?

• 1:22:16Speaker 01

  There is no target. There is an inspiration. Inspiration, meaning one billion happy is I'm not gonna I'm never gonna make.

• 1:22:22Simon Sinek?

  And you're not really counting because there's no way to count.

• 1:22:24Speaker 01

  There are ways to count because the mission is actually determined very clearly. And we don't we're not measuring video views, we would have achieved a billion happy a long time ago. We're measuring people that get the message and then take an action, an action that is.

• 1:22:37Simon Sinek?

  You can't calculate that number.

• 1:22:38Speaker 01

  You can estimate, right? You can they either take an action by going and watching other videos. So I convinced you that you need to be happy. So you start to look for other videos about happiness or you take an action by watching the video and forwarding it so you believe others will be happy. Right? Not not great, right?

• 1:22:55Simon Sinek?

  I mean forwarding it, boy, this guy's an idiot. And you calculated that as a win.

• 1:23:00Speaker 01

  Maybe I I did not go to that level of integrity and probably quite a few of them. But but here's the trick, I don't measure that anymore.

• 1:23:10Simon Sinek?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:23:10Speaker 01

  Why? Because for a fact, I know that I'm not going to get to a billion happy.

• 1:23:16Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:16Speaker 01

  But that a billion happy might happen after I die.

• 1:23:19Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:19Speaker 01

  Right? And the trick here is what if I can generate one more piece of content today or I can if I can.

• 1:23:25Simon Sinek?

  It's about momentum, not about targets.

• 1:23:27Speaker 01

  Exactly. It's about constantly moving in the right direction at the best of your capabilities.

• 1:23:32Simon Sinek?

  I mean, there's so many little things that I've been learning of. So, you know, I think of business more like exercise than I do like a project.

• 1:23:39Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:23:40Simon Sinek?

  You know, which is you trust in the process and you'll get into shape.

• 1:23:42Speaker 01

  Hundred percent.

• 1:23:43Simon Sinek?

  Just keep doing it and you'll get into shape.

• 1:23:44Speaker 01

  Hundred percent.

• 1:23:45Simon Sinek?

  Don't worry about it.

• 1:23:45Speaker 01

  Hundred percent.

• 1:23:46Simon Sinek?

  Hundred percent.

• 1:23:46Speaker 01

  And you may get into shape a week later.

• 1:23:48Simon Sinek?

  And it might be quick, it might be slow. And sometimes you go, and sometimes it goes in. But you just, you just keep your head down and just keep doing the thing. You know, and John Burke, who was on our, was a guest, who's the CEO of Trek Bicycles. He talks about Nick Saban's, just play the, play the play to perfection.

• 1:24:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:04Simon Sinek?

  Just do the thing you've been practicing and do it really well and the score will take care of itself.

• 1:24:08Speaker 01

  And, and what you need to do is occasionally, frequently, if you can, sit down and review the direction. Am I doing this right? You know, am I putting my effort? That's it, right? So, for example, I-

• 1:24:20Simon Sinek?

  The score, the score to me is something that you look up every now and then, as you said, directionally, it's like, am I heading, like the periscope?

• 1:24:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:25Simon Sinek?

  You know, because if a submarine's under the, under the ocean and the captain says, go due north, a submarine doesn't go due north.

• 1:24:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:31Simon Sinek?

  It zigzags.

• 1:24:32Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 1:24:32Simon Sinek?

  But every now and then they have to look at some sort of navigational aid or pop up with a periscope and be like, yeah, we're basically in course, keep going.

• 1:24:38Speaker 01

  And, and by the way, ask the captain if north is still where we want to go.

• 1:24:41Simon Sinek?

  Right, right.

• 1:24:42Speaker 01

  And, and I think that's the trick. Like you take my social media presence, for example.

• 1:24:45Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:46Speaker 01

  At, at the beginning, I'm a very introverted person. I don't want to be seen on social media, ignored it completely. Then someone said, you're never going to achieve anything unless you're on social media. So I put my head behind it and I get to a few hundred thousand followers and then suddenly I realized, I really hate this shit. Okay? And honestly, and, and I'm, you know, I'm very open with myself. I hate this shit.

• 1:25:07Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:07Speaker 01

  Okay? And so if I do this and it drains me.

• 1:25:11Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:12Speaker 01

  That's not good for the mission. So I realized at the point, I'm around 2020, I said, look, I'm going to be on Simon's platform.

• 1:25:20Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:20Speaker 01

  Okay? And interestingly, I have maybe total of 400,000 followers on all platforms. Okay? Big number, by the way, I should celebrate, but I get tens of millions of videos, video views on your platform, on, you know, Stevens, I know you met Steven, right? You know, on others. And I'm there delivering the message.

• 1:25:38Simon Sinek?

  Sure.

• 1:25:38Speaker 01

  Not to my credit, not to my, like, I'm not going to make ad monies on it. I'm never, I was never about ad monies anyway.

• 1:25:45Simon Sinek?

  Sure, sure.

• 1:25:45Speaker 01

  Okay? And I think that constant change of direction, telling yourself, I'm putting half a day, you know, of every day behind social media, I'm going to change that.

• 1:25:55Simon Sinek?

  The difference is you've moved from being target driven to mission driven.

• 1:25:58Speaker 01

  It's a massive difference.

• 1:25:59Simon Sinek?

  I mean, that's basically what's happened.

• 1:26:01Speaker 01

  But but shouldn't we all be?

• 1:26:02Simon Sinek?

  I mean, I can't, yes. I've kind of made a career out of that.

• 1:26:09Speaker 01

  A hundred percent. That is so mind boggling that people think that by focusing on making a little more money next month, you're going to be successful. Larry Page used to tell, you call it the the

• 1:26:21Simon Sinek?

  The founder of Google.

• 1:26:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, the toothbrush test. And you would go to Larry and you would go like, look, if you if you find a problem and solve it really well and keep doing it over and over and over, you're going to make a lot of money. That's this, it's the, it's not making money that is the target, or it's not the promotion that's the target. It's it's, I am doing the absolute best I can. And it's eventually going to pay out.

• 1:26:44Simon Sinek?

  Yeah. Well, I could talk to you forever.

• 1:26:48Simon Sinek?

  But we have to, I have to stop, which is a shame. Can we just go, let's go for lunch or something?

• 1:26:52Speaker 01

  Hundred percent.

• 1:26:53Simon Sinek?

  The I wish I had got to meet Ali.

• 1:26:58Speaker 01

  Oh. Thank you. You have by saying that. Send him a happy wish, please. You would have loved him, honestly.

• 1:27:06Simon Sinek?

  I mean, I'm struck by a sixteen year old getting that tattoo. I'm struck by a teenager saying, I don't want the thing. I'm struck by

• 1:27:19Simon Sinek?

  I think you knew all the lessons before he left this earth. And it they, he already taught you everything before, it sounds like.

• 1:27:31Speaker 01

  It's quite weird, actually.

• 1:27:35Speaker 01

  So you, we used to play video games together.

• 1:27:39Speaker 01

  And Ali, of course, was legendary. I'm now quite serious, but at the time I was sort of like heroic, if you want. And and he would teach me, he would go like, no, no, no, no, no, dude, you don't, you know that trick and so on. But then sometimes during a mission, Ali would go, you know, sometimes you're in a mission and it's so difficult that one of us has to walk in, you know, kill eighty percent of the enemies, but get shot. And then the other one, the silly one, would walk in and do the easy job. I think that's exactly what happened. He came, he taught me. And then at a point in time, he had to leave for the mission to actually be finished. And sometimes I think about how, you know, when you asked me at the very beginning,

• 1:28:24Speaker 01

  you said, is, you know, you said this tragic loss and I, and I said, I'm not sure I can call it a loss anymore. Because there was a point in time where I realized that if you knew Ali, then, you know, if he was walking into the intensive care room or the operating room or whatever, and I had told him, Ali, by the way, if you choose to live, we will have amazing times together. If you choose to die, 50 million people will find happiness. He would have said, kill me right now. And with the certainty that both of us are meeting again, I have to say, this has been a hell of a game. One that's worthwhile, if you ask me.

• 1:29:08Simon Sinek?

  We have a word in English for the person who runs into, take care of 80% of what that needs to be done, knowing that the person gets the glory on the other end, you know, who finishes the mission. We have a word for the hero.

• 1:29:22Speaker 01

  Oh, absolutely. Yes, absolutely. Abs- unsung. I, I, I, I hope to get no credit at all, as a matter of fact. One, one billion happy as the, as the, we are a tiny team, four people. The, the, the mission is, statement is very clear. We want to get a million people to champion a billion happy.

• 1:29:43Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:44Speaker 01

  I want to spend every dollar I've ever earned, and then we want to be completely forgotten.

• 1:29:48Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:49Speaker 01

  Okay. Which I think is the most difficult part of the, of the strategy, if you ask me. This is why we're trying not to be on our own social media, we're trying to be everywhere else. And, and imagine if I finish my life a billionaire. Imagine if Ali, Ali's already finished his life a millionaire, multimillionaire. Unbelievable.

• 1:30:09Simon Sinek?

  Well, thanks for coming on. I so appreciate it.

• 1:30:13Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me. It's wonderful to meet you finally.