Life Changing Lessons From 100 Of The World’s Greatest Minds

Of all the guests I’ve had on, these have been the moments that have impacted me most. I don’t often talk about the moments that I’ve found most personally moving, but I thought I’d share them with you today. I’ve selected six moments, from all the guests we’ve had on, that offer the most life-changing advice. If you’re new to this podcast, this is definitely the place to start. I found these moments the most meaningful, the most enlightening, and the most inspiring. From Elizabeth Day talking about the importance of failure, to Jamil Querishi talking about how you can find consistency, to Matthew Syed on building self-confidence and self-esteem. No matter who you are or where you are in your life, you’re sure to take something from this. We’ve all been on an incredible journey with this podcast, where we hear the stories, the challenges, the highs and lows, of the world's most successful people. These are the moments that have been truest to that vision. These aren’t necessarily the biggest names, but these snippets have meant most to me. I’m sure after listening to this, they’ll mean something special to you too. Episode 61: Jamil Qureshi - https://g2ul0.app.link/9Uurwa5tKkb Episode 77: Elizabeth Day - https://g2ul0.app.link/X3bK9KguKkb Episode 84: Matthew Syed - https://g2ul0.app.link/TsTmXvouKkb Episode 65: Anna Hemmings - https://g2ul0.app.link/v3hqRoEuKkb Episode 96: Steve Peters - https://g2ul0.app.link/BDeUaN5uKkb Episode 101: Mo Gawdat - https://g2ul0.app.link/JuYBFRsvKkb Follow Jamil: LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamil-qureshi Follow Elizabeth: Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/elizabday Follow Matthew: Twitter - https://twitter.com/matthewsyed Follow Anna: https://www.annahemmings.com Follow Steve: https://chimpmanagement.com/professor-steve-peters Follow Mo: Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/mo_gawdat Follow me: https://beacons.ai/diaryofaceo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

• 0:00Steven Bartlett?

  Wow, we've now recorded more than 100 episodes of The Diary of a CEO. And I've had some of the most amazing, inspiring and life-changing conversations with some of the world's most accomplished experts, business people, psychologists, athletes, you name it. So this week, we're going to do something a little different, something many of you have requested for a long time and something I've always wanted to do. This week, we're going to look backwards. This week, I'm going to share with you the key moments, the actionable, life-changing, epiphany-inducing moments from the last 100 episodes that had a lasting impact on me, that changed my life. So without further ado, I'm Steven Bartlett and this is The Diary of a CEO.

• 0:43Steven Bartlett?

  I hope nobody's listening, but if you are, then please keep this to yourself.

• 0:54Steven Bartlett?

  We hear this phrase a lot, which is find your passion.

• 0:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00Steven Bartlett?

  And I almost feel that it's, in many respects, quite harmful because that question is kind of loaded. It assumes a singular passion for a start. It assumes that you can discover it like an Easter egg. And then, and also the context in which that question usually sits in, it implies that once you find it, then it's, you know, then it's the, it's a can of unlimited like happiness and orientation forever. And then that's yours. And I just feel like sometimes language can be harmful because it simplifies very complex things and sometimes multifaceted plural things, you know? So I wondered if that, you know, that phrase, find your, find your passion was something you, you felt similar about?

• 1:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, I do. I mean, yeah, it's true that passion can be a significant multiplier of human potential. So, you know, if people are passionate and engaged in a business, they can direct their energy in a worthwhile and meaningful manner. So, so, so it's worthwhile, but you're right that, you know, there's a big difference between passion, a big difference between happiness and joy. Some are in the moment, at home, I think joy is in the moment. And I think happiness is something that we continually continually adjust towards. You know, passion can be a significant multiplier of human potential, particularly in the workplace. So it does have a place. It is something which is useful to understand. And ultimately, it always comes down to personal introspection and self-awareness for me.

• 2:31Speaker 01

  And I think that we need to work harder at understanding ourselves. And when we are constructing a mindset which is conducive to performance. So we optimize our potential when we're in a particular state of mind. And that state of mind might be passion, it might be relaxation, it might be enthusiasm, it might be enjoyment. But we need to almost get to know ourselves and know that there are certain things which enable us to do others. And once we work backwards and understand what that looks like, maybe we can gain some more consistency. I say to a lot of sports people and to a lot of business people that consistency of mind gives you consistency of play. And I'm convinced of it. And the more consistent we can be in our thinking,

• 3:14Speaker 01

  we understand the building blocks, the component parts to success, you know, the more success we can have.

• 3:20Steven Bartlett?

  And how does one establish consistency of thought? Because I completely agree with that. I completely agree. I've seen that in my own life. When I've been consistent with my thinking, I've managed to, you know, perform the same habits every day. But then sometimes I'll lose consistency in my thoughts because I lose.

• 3:39Steven Bartlett?

  I lose, I guess I lose attachment or sort of my anchor with my why.

• 3:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:43Steven Bartlett?

  And I talk a lot, I've talked a lot on this podcast over the last couple of weeks about this realization I've had this year with the gym, which was every year, February, March, I was incredibly motivated to go. Fired up, trying to look good for summer.

• 3:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:57Steven Bartlett?

  And then obviously, once you look good and summer has ended, it's almost like you've lost your anchor, right? So like you get into September and the why which made you go and to think consistently every day has evaporated and I'm trying, I can't get myself to go to the gym in October.

• 4:14Speaker 01

  Right. Do you know, I mean, I always think that consistency of mind comes from understanding the intrinsic quality. Quality of our decision making processes. And I say that a lot to people in sport and in business. So you can make a good decision and have a really bad outcome, or you can make a bad decision, have a good outcome. And this is why I've worked with leadership teams who have confused luck for genius. They've made a really bad decision, but a great outcome. Markets have changed, competition's done something, something's just worked in their favour. So it's really important for us to not judge our decision making by our outcomes. And we often do. So we'll say this is a good decision because it resulted in this, or this is a bad decision, it resulted in that.

• 4:56Speaker 01

  And we can only understand the outcome retrospectively. So it's wrong to measure our decisions by the outcomes. And then we need to go back to how we made a decision in the first place. Now, once we start to understand the intrinsic quality of our decision making process, we can become more consistent in how we make decisions. And therefore have more control over those outcomes. So I think that, you know, two things. I think that, and I will use you as the example here, Steve, that consistency of mind will come from knowing how we make decisions. And understanding we put our weight into evidence, how much we use prejudice and bias and opinion, whatever it might be. But let's understand how we make decisions. And in that way, we can be consistent in how we apply our logic and thinking and feeling.

• 5:40Speaker 01

  Try and determine some best outcomes. And then the other thing, as you've just positioned, is reframing. Let's stand back and create some time and space to understand, you know, why we do things and why we don't do things. Now, I always say that the people who are most successful, and I've had a pleasure working with six sports people who got to number one in the world. I can guarantee you, the one thing they had in common was that they never made big changes. It was small changes. So I'm a big believer in the one degree of change. If you take two parallel lines and you move one by one degree, it may not seem much at first. But there's a really big difference between where you start and where you end up.

• 6:21Speaker 01

  So everyone's trying to make a dramatic change, I see change from tomorrow, I'm going to be different. I think it's about doing something a little bit more than what we Been doing it at hand a bit more consistently. And then the other thing with these people who obtained, you know, what I call super achievements. So they did really, really well is that they actually worked on their strengths. They started to understand what was good about them and do that some more. So we think to be better as human beings, I think we'd be better as a business or a team of people. We need to fix our weaknesses. I'm not sure that's true. I actually think it's more about understanding our strengths than playing to them. So I've actually worked with teams before in business and in sport. Who have actually weakened the strength by trying to strengthen a weakness.

• 7:07Speaker 01

  And if you think about it, it's ridiculous. And actually weaken the strength by trying to strengthen a weakness. We need to be careful. So I think understanding what's good about us, understanding, you know, where our behaviours come from in regard to the thinking before it. And then reframing some of those words and pictures. And I guess that's what you've done with your gym example is I guess change some of the words and pictures in your head. To therefore feel differently, which is a result of you enacting differently.

• 7:31Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, and I really, you know, I was, I was valuing intensity over consistency. And intensity wasn't sustainable, right? So I was going through the summer like to the gym two times a day. I was starving myself, like eating things that I, I didn't want to necessarily eat. And the consistency came from being a bit more realistic with myself. Being like, you know, if you miss the day of gym, it doesn't matter. You don't have to.

• 7:52Speaker 01

  Perspective, perspective, isn't it? And I think, do you know, it's funny because again, so many sports people I've worked with and business people who will lose perspective. They'll lose a tournament and it's dreadful. You know, win a tournament, I've, I've made it, you know, this is it, this is the turning point for me. Now they win a big contract, you know, in business and you know, this is us now, we're set up. You know, or they, or they lose a contract and life has never been so dreadful. But I think that we need a better perspective on things. So our ability to think more long term, to be more forgiving, you know, to understand with more reality. And what's good and what's not so good is probably the way forwards.

• 8:31Steven Bartlett?

  I want to talk about failure.

• 8:33Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 8:33Steven Bartlett?

  Now, which seems like a good thing to talk about. And in your book Philosophy, you, you list seven failure principles. Number one. Failure just is.

• 8:44Speaker 02

  Failure is a fact. It's inevitable. It's going to happen to all of us. No matter how much we try to avoid it, I guarantee that it will happen. And that can feel scary, but it can also feel liberating because once you've accepted it as a fact, there's no point in trying to avoid it. So you might as well take the risk. So acceptance of failure starts with the observation of it. Failure is a fact, but how you respond to it is within your control. Whether you decide to feel like a failure for many years after the thing that's happened, or whether you think to yourself, okay, well, that's taught me something and I'll do it differently next time.

• 9:19Steven Bartlett?

  I guess the risk there is one bad failure and people stop trying.

• 9:23Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 9:24Steven Bartlett?

  And then I was thinking, this is very similar to confidence in the way that like, if you have one bad failure, your performance, next time you get an opportunity, if you actually don't manage to just avoid it completely, will probably be worse because of nerves and that, you know, the memory of I'm terrible. And then that's going to increase your chances of failing again. And then the kind of like self negative reinforcing cycle kind of continues and your confidence and your sort of, yeah, your guts kind of cascade downwards and can for some people work in the other direction where you have a success, your confidence builds, you walk on stage to do that, you know, public speech next time around with a bit more confidence, you do a better job, which increases your chance of success and it cascades upwards. Is that how failure works from your experience?

• 10:05Speaker 02

  It can work like that. I mean, to take the example you've just given, one of the ways of looking at that, if you're then stuck in a downward cycle and you're failing and you're trying the thing is that you're therefore in the wrong situation. So you're in the wrong workplace, for instance, that, that isn't generous enough to like, make you feel okay after your failures, or doesn't make you feel like you can be your true self. In which case, I would argue, you need to remove yourself from that situation and find the place that does suit you. Or it can be a question of mindset and a question of applying that mindset that we've just talked about, which is, okay, I failed, I'm feeling in a downward spiral. How much of that is fact? That's a very difficult thing to do on your own when you're a very low E B. And that's why I'm a huge advocate of therapy. And again,

• 10:50Speaker 02

  I know that I come from a privileged place where I can afford therapy. But even if it starts with reaching out to your friend and talking about it, or reaching out to your work helpline and talking about it, or texting, shout the mental health charity or calling the Samaritans, that's a really valuable step.

• 11:11Speaker 02

  And the other thing that I would say there is that I'm very aware that my definition of failure, which is what happens when life doesn't go according to plan, has a fatal flaw, which is that sometimes there are failures that are totally cataclysmic, that we couldn't possibly have predicted, that go against any plan whatsoever, like a global pandemic, like a terrible illness that you contract, like the death of a loved one. It would be monstrous for me to sit here and say, those failures are as easily assimilated or learnt from or dealt with as fading your driving test. And so I'm not saying that

• 11:49Speaker 02

  at all. Those kind of failures will require a process of mourning and coming to terms with the thing that you've lost. And that's absolutely right and as it should be. My only thing is, the way that I choose to live my life is, I mourn, but I don't have to constantly relive the pain. I can still feel sadness about something, but I don't need to live in that place of reliving it constantly.

• 12:18Steven Bartlett?

  Becoming a victim?

• 12:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, and becoming defined by that. I can choose to be defined by something else. I can choose to be defined by my response to it. I can choose to find some kind of meaning in something that was meaningless at the time. And that's how I choose to live my life, because that makes it less sad. And I, and I think that that choice is available for most of us.

• 12:43Steven Bartlett?

  So point number two in your book is, you are not your anxious brain. I think you've talked about that.

• 12:48Speaker 02

  Yes, I met this man called Mo Gouda, who used to be the chief business officer of Google X, but he wasn't happy. And he has a lot to say about expectation versus reality. So if we can manage our expectations of life, so if they're equal to or less than our perception of events and how they turn out, then we can be happy or contented. And he was the one who really brought it home to me that we are not our worst thoughts, that our thoughts are produced by our brain as organic matter, in the same way that blood is pumped around our body by our heart, like. We wouldn't think we were defined by our blood. So why would we think that we are our thoughts? Actually, as you know, the premise of all meditation is that you can observe your thoughts.

• 13:30Speaker 02

  Who's doing the observing? That's you. That's you. Why would you need thoughts? Like, you don't need to communicate yourself. So your thoughts are just being produced by your brain constantly. And I found that really helpful, the idea that once you realise that, you can train your brain to think differently and to replace negative thoughts with positive ones as much as you're able. So he gave this incredibly moving example. His son, Ali, died at the age of 21 during a routine operation. And then the aftermath of Ali's death, Mo would wake up every morning with tears streaming down his cheeks and his first thought would be, Ali died.

• 14:10Speaker 02

  And it was an unbelievably oppressive, grief-stricken thought. And after a few more weeks of it, he was like, I just can't live like this. I can't live like this. And so he challenged his brain to come up with a different thought. And each morning he would wake up and he would still think, Ali died, Ali died. And he'd still be crying. But he added something to that sentence and he added, yes, but he also lived. And in that differently expressed sentiment was 21 years of memories of a father and son who were best friends. And that was what enabled him to carry on living. And if he can do that in that situation, I sure as hell can do it when someone criticizes me on Instagram. It was a really helpful lesson.

• 14:53Steven Bartlett?

  Almost everyone feels they have failed in their twenties.

• 14:55Speaker 02

  So I think that a lot of people struggle in their twenties, particularly in this day and age, because of the curse of comparison. And because we live in a culture of curated perfection, where you're constantly comparing yourself to your peers' filtered appearance on Instagram and the life that they seem to be living. So we're comparing our insides with everyone else's projection of their outsides.

• 15:15Steven Bartlett?

  Exactly, yeah.

• 15:16Speaker 02

  And for many people, although I know not you, but for many people, it's the first time that they've come out of full-time education. And come out of a system of exam and reward, exam and reward. And there is no exam that you can sit to show that you're being a good grown up. So you feel quite lost, plus piling on top of that, the pressure to find your passion, to like make a career for yourself, but also to earn enough to pay your rent, living in house shares, like just trying to make your way and trying to forge your identity in this day and age. It's just so hard to do all that at once. And then you're like, oh, and I should be having like a thriving personal life and I should either be in a long term relationship

• 16:00Speaker 02

  or having wine like sounds and making footloose and fancy free and drinking roads. And then at the weekend, making vegan brownies because I got to watch what I eat and all of that sort of stuff. And it's exhausting. And so really what I wanted to say in that failure principle was that so many people come on in podcasts and say that they feel they failed at their twenties. And I think a lot of us fall into the trap, and I did too, of believing that we had to have our life sorted out by then. And actually, your twenties are a decade of transition, of discovering who you are, of grinding up the spices of life in your pestle and mortar. And the older you get, my experience has been, the more you know yourself and the more you know what you want to do.

• 16:39Speaker 02

  And that's where success lies. I've had so many more opportunities after leaving my twenties behind in the rear view mirror.

• 16:47Steven Bartlett?

  Wow. When we choose to share our vulnerabilities is when we feel most satisfaction.

• 16:53Speaker 02

  Most connection, I think, is what I said. Well, I don't.

• 16:56Steven Bartlett?

  Why does it say satisfaction on my list?

• 16:58Speaker 02

  I don't know. I like that too, because you probably do feel personal satisfaction. It's like, but when we choose to be open about our vulnerabilities, that's paradoxically when we find the most strength and the source of the most real connections with other people.

• 17:12Steven Bartlett?

  Amen.

• 17:12Speaker 02

  Yeah. And that's something that I have genuinely learned through the podcast. The first season of the podcast I did, I was very much, I came from a very traditional newspaper journalist background. So for me, it was like, I'm interviewing my guest. I will ask the questions and I will listen and then I will ask another question. And it was only as time went on that I felt more comfortable sharing my own experiences. And whenever I did that, I had such an incredible. Like feedback loop of like just amazing people sharing their stories and their vulnerabilities and also saying that they felt less alone because I shared mine.

• 17:51Speaker 02

  And really, that's what my entire life is about ultimately is connection. And so I really want to encourage people not to be scared of opening up about the things that they perceive as their weaknesses, because so often what you think of as your most personal shame turns out to have most universal resonance. And that was certainly my experience talking about fertility and miscarriage and divorce. Like actually, that's where I've had the greatest impact, I think, and I'm so grateful for that.

• 18:25Steven Bartlett?

  Why do you think that is? Why do you think vulnerable in terms of like, why it has such wide resonance? Why do you think that is?

• 18:32Speaker 02

  Because I think that when we're vulnerable, we're being real and we're letting our masks slip and you'll see a glimpse of who the authentic person is. And there's something just absolutely quintessentially human about that. So it's a human recognizing another human. It's a human recognizing another human beneath the pretense. And I think it also reassures people because as we've been talking about in this culture that we live in, which is so defined by social media and how you appear and the currency of perfection, again, it's such a relief. It makes you feel like you can breathe as someone's like, oh God, I'll tell you about today.

• 19:16Speaker 02

  I sat in bed in my pyjamas, eating hummus direct from the tub because I felt really down. That's an act of singular generosity to someone else who can then have the space to talk about how they're feeling.

• 19:28Steven Bartlett?

  And that brings us to the topic of mindset really nicely. You know, I've, I've heard you talk about having a growth mindset and a fixed mindset. What is the difference between the two?

• 19:36Speaker 03

  So I think for, thank you. I think for what it's worth, I think this contrast is, is so important. I mean, I can talk about it through my own life, but you know, in a fixed mindset, people think that success, however defined, is all about talent, having the gift, having the genetic inheritance and all, you know, having the personality trait in order to excel. A growth mindset is saying, okay, talent obviously matters. It's a factor. But it's not enough. It's what we do with our talents. So people in a fixed mindset have two massive risks. One, they think they're so talented, they don't even need to try. So think of a young person who's just been invited to join the Manchester United academy.

• 20:20Speaker 03

  And they're suddenly getting money into their bank account. They're able to buy the fast car and they think I'm God's gift. And they, and the amount of academy coaches who have come to me and said, we don't understand it. We had this hardworking youngster. We invited them into the academy. And then they just went off the rails. It's a fixed mindset. They think their success is assured, so they stop putting in the hard yards and don't transition into the first team. So that's one danger. The other danger is people who don't think they're God's gift, but what, like me at Goldman Sachs, you make one failure. And you interpret that as meaning, I obviously don't have talent, therefore I'm just going to give up. Do you see what I mean?

• 20:57Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, so that's the negative version of it.

• 20:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, so you've got the, I'm super, talent is everything and I've got it, so therefore I don't need to try. Talent is everything. I don't have it, therefore I should give up. They're both terribly damaging, I think. A growth mindset. It doesn't mean that we think we're all going to be the best speaker in the world. I wasn't the best table tennis player in the world. I never got into the top 20 of the world rankings. But with that attitude, I maximise my own potential.

• 21:22Steven Bartlett?

  I'm very intrigued as to, you know, some certain people in our society are more self believing than others. You see differences in genders and races and backgrounds. And I think a lot of people in my DMs, and this is where the question comes from. I have so many young kids in my, my DMs that are struggling with confidence or lacking self belief. And I wondered if you had any words of wisdom for those in my DMs that can't find confidence and self belief.

• 21:55Speaker 03

  I think for what it's worth that self belief, self esteem, other things of that kind are overrated. And the reason goes back to something we said earlier. I mean, there was a movement in the seventies and eighties in Western education to build self esteem in young people. And the way to do it was to let them succeed all the time. Right? So you might remember this, but you give them easy tests, get them to pass, and give them lots of tests, and then praise them for how super talented they were. They get all this self esteem and they can change the world. People were so worried about undermining self esteem that there were no losers in sports days at some schools. I don't know,

• 22:38Speaker 03

  have you heard of this? Everyone's a winner. Yeah, everyone gets a sticker. And that was all about building. It was called the self esteem movement. Right. But it failed. And the reason it failed is because people would keep succeeding and they'd get all this self esteem. And then they'd be given a difficult test, right? Or they would leave school and they'd actually hit the real world where they would fail. And what happened? All the walls of their world would come crumbling down. Oh my goodness. Never failed before. Right. Self esteem that is fragile. And people would protect their self esteem by not trying new things. Right? And that's a disaster. Self esteem can be very fragile.

• 23:18Speaker 03

  I like to talk much more about resilience. We want people, I want my children to be resilient, to try new things, to mess up, but not to be devastated by it. And that, I think, is a much better course. Now, it may be that when people are talking about confidence, what they really mean is resilience. I want to be able to walk into a room, give it my best shot, things don't go slightly wrong, I'm going to carry on regardless. Every person who's a success has had some really tough, difficult moments. And I just think that's an inevitable part of learning. How do we build resilience in ourselves? Growth mindset's very strongly related to it. So instead of, you know, for parents out there, I don't, you probably have a very young audience, I'm shy of you, but the parents

• 24:03Speaker 03

  out there, it's very easy to praise young people for their talent. You're super talented. They've just drawn a picture. You're super talented. You're the next Picasso. You think they're going to develop all this self esteem? The problem, as I've said, is that, you know, the moment they draw something that isn't Picasso, as soon as they get negative criticism, oh my goodness, I'm no Picasso after all. Much better thing to do is to praise them for the effort or the process. Well, I love the way that picture, the colours fit together. They think, oh, right, if I want to develop as a painter, I have to make the colours fit together in a more sophisticated way. You're aligning their mind and motivation with the journey they need to take to fulfill their potential.

• 24:45Speaker 03

  So it's good experiments praising for effort, praising for process is a much more positive thing than praising for talent and fixed attributes.

• 24:55Steven Bartlett?

  It's interesting because in my company, I came to learn that the most effective way to get my teams to innovate was to praise them for the effort and the process as opposed to the outcome. Because if it became about the outcome, the success or failure of the experiment, then, which is largely actually outside of their control, right? When you're doing, so if I say to my team, right, we're going to build this website and we think it's going to do this. Whether it does that or not, whether this product market fit, whether it's a success or a failure, isn't actually in their control. The bit they can control is starting, doing it and the process of getting to the point where we press go live. And so what I learned in the last year of my business was we would celebrate the conducting the experiment, not the outcome of the experiment.

• 25:37Speaker 03

  Exactly right. I see that is exactly the same thing. And it's interesting that if you look at R and D, you know, have you heard of Six Sigma?

• 25:45Steven Bartlett?

  Yes.

• 25:46Speaker 03

  So one of the things, I mean, one of the big mistakes, I mean, Six Sigma is a great process, you know, like lean manufacturing or

• 25:54Speaker 03

  things of that kind. It's basically squeezing out variation, isn't it? So if you imagine making a car, you know, manufacturing car, all it takes is one component in the engine to be of the wrong size or specification and the whole thing won't work. So Six Sigma is about delivering and executing with no variation.

• 26:14Speaker 03

  But when you're innovating, you need variation. You need to try new things. If you're trying to create a new computer program, a new website, or a new drug, and you don't know which combination of ingredients they're going to create, you need to try lots of combinations. If you penalize people for failure.

• 26:29Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, my God.

• 26:30Speaker 03

  And you're only judging them on the outcome. And it fails, and then they're like stigmatized. They will never try. You need, you know, that's where fail fast. Yeah, you've nailed it. That's exactly the insight that I think is important.

• 26:44Steven Bartlett?

  For some people, that's terrifying.

• 26:45Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 26:45Steven Bartlett?

  The thought of like throwing themselves into that place of uncertainty that they have to travel through before they get to their new self. How do you get someone to come willingly into uncertainty, to leave that job, or to, you know, take on that promotion, or to pivot in their career when they're scared of the unknown? Or, you know, it's like.

• 27:07Speaker 04

  Well, then I would think about what I would think about rather than what I'm afraid of. I'm thinking about what I'm excited about. And so rather than I'm afraid of what I'm going to leave behind, or I'm afraid of what might happen, I'm more about what could happen. And when we focus on what we want and what we could have, and, you know, it's optimism, isn't it? It's about what's possible and what could I achieve? You know, and you asked me earlier about, you know, some of the things about sports psychology and visualization was one was a massive technique.

• 27:35Steven Bartlett?

  Really?

• 27:35Speaker 04

  That I learned from my sports psychologist and employed and still use all the time. And I think when you can start to visualize what that new role, person, identity could be, and when you bring it to life with all of your senses and see it really vividly, then that's exciting. And what could I achieve? And what could this look like? And, and the power of visualization is that your mind does, when it's, when you see it really vividly, your mind doesn't know the difference between a vividly imagined experience and a real life experience.

• 28:12Steven Bartlett?

  What's your process for visualization? And now, is it something that you do actively? You set time aside and do it? Or is it just something that you naturally now do when you're pursuing a goal?

• 28:23Speaker 04

  So a little bit of both. As an athlete, it was definitely something that I would sit down. Usually I'd be lying on my bed. I would have done some relaxation because the more we clear our mind and relax, the easier it is to visualize and to see really clearly. And so I would, it would be a conscious, right? I'm going to spend the next 15 minutes or even two minutes or five minutes, or whatever time I had, visualizing my next race and seeing myself execute that race plan as perfectly as I can and in exactly the right way. And I would visualize everything from, if it was the Olympic discipline and we've got nine boats on a start line, I'm seeing my, I don't know which lane I'm going to be in when it comes to race day. So I'm seeing myself race in every lane. I'm seeing myself with, with the headwind, with the tailwind, with it raining.

• 29:09Speaker 04

  I'm seeing myself cock up the start because that might happen. But then I just going to recover from it and I'm going to see myself recover and I'm going to see myself win from behind. I'm going to see myself win from the front. I'm going to see, imagine, you know, the start being delayed or it's a false start, you know, all these eventualities so that when it comes to the event, I'm prepared and it can just all unfold and I'm not phased by anything that happens. But, but most importantly, I've seen it happen the way I want it to happen. And then I believe that it can happen. And what visualization also does is when we, when we're visualizing a goal, for example, it starts to activate the subconscious to generate creative ideas about how we can

• 29:54Speaker 04

  achieve our goal. It's, it's, it's my, I don't know how it works and why it works, but it's mind blowing and it does work. And it, and it starts to get your brain to perceive and recognize the different resources that you need. To achieve your goal. It's like the law of attraction and it starts to activate that in your life and bring in the people, the resources, the environment, the circumstances that you need to achieve your goal. And so now, what do I do? I probably, I do spend some time consciously going, right, I'm just going to spend two or three minutes visualizing my goal. I'm seeing it happen. I'm seeing it realize. But then other times, I'm probably

• 30:39Speaker 04

  just, you know, driving in my car and subconsciously, you know, like daydreaming almost. But I think the conscious, right, I'm going to visualize now is really powerful because then you start to really, it starts to ingrain in the subconscious.

• 30:58Steven Bartlett?

  Professor Steve Peters. Steve's invented this groundbreaking concept called the chimp model. And it focuses on how there's these kind of three parts to our brain. The first part is called the chimp, which is our sort of desire to be impulsive and irrational and emotional and short term. The second part is what he calls the human, and you'll hear him talk about this, which is logical and rational and thinks in terms of facts and thinks things through in the long term. And the third part is what he calls the computer, which is our set of core values and beliefs. I wanted to talk about exactly that topic, which is like managing your emotional reactions across different facets of life. And I think, let me just give you an example of a situation that I went through that I read about in my book. So I'm just going to be completely

• 31:43Steven Bartlett?

  honest, because that's what I tend to do on this podcast. I broke up with a girl and like two days later, I found out that she'd slept with somebody else. And when I, even though I'd broken up with her, when I, when I read the message that she'd slept with somebody else, my brain, revenge, message her, destroy her life. That's what my brain said to me. But I And I'm at a place in my life where I feel quite secure in my self-image, let's say. I don't feel particularly insecure, I'm a confident person. But even I couldn't seem to get a grip of my own desire to react emotionally in that situation. And really interestingly as well, it was actually my friend calling me.

• 32:27Steven Bartlett?

  I went to the gym, I thought maybe I'll go to the gym and that'll like clear my head. It was my friend calling me and this, I don't know where this fits in psychiatry, but my friend said to me, Steve, just remember you broke up with her. She's probably doing this to make herself feel better and to rebound or whatever. But that was one of those key moments where I was like, God, like the damage you can do if you don't know how to control that like primitive urge to just.

• 32:53Steve Peters?

  Okay, you've covered a lot of ground there. That could be an hour's work here. So I'm going to take it back and try and go very steadily to try and drive home. There's a lot of areas. One is first of all, what would you expect somebody's mind to do confronted with the same situation? What would you expect them to do?

• 33:11Steven Bartlett?

  Probably the same.

• 33:12Steve Peters?

  Exactly. So nothing abnormal happened. There wasn't a problem.

• 33:15Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 33:15Steve Peters?

  You're saying this is absolutely healthy and normal, but maybe not helpful.

• 33:20Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 33:20Steve Peters?

  And what you really said, because you've told me this, if it wasn't a problem to you, you wouldn't have mentioned it. So clearly your human brain is saying, I don't want to get revenge. That's not what I want. What I want is to just be calm and collected, accept the reality of it and move on. Unfortunately, we have to learn now how the mind works. So it's like saying you went to the gym, so therefore you're a fitness man. If I said to you, right, I've never been to a gym for 30 years. I'm going to go tonight and at the end of the day, I'm going to be super fit. And you laugh because you know, that's ridiculous. It's not the way the body works. So we have to now look at another aspect. So now we know it's normal. How does the mind work when we get a really nasty shock and something which is devastating?

• 34:03Steve Peters?

  So the reason that chimp is there and the reason we're here. It's for us to be safe and present the next generation to the world. That's what the chimp's agenda is. So what happened there is the generation that you thought you were gonna get was taken away from you. So this is devastating. So we expect you to be devastated. We also expect you to accept the mind is gonna now grieve and it'll take approximately three months, give or take. You're talking about heartbreak here. Yeah, you've got to grieve. Yeah. So the the mind has a rule on the way it deals and processes grief. I can't speed that up. So if some, like if I met you that night and I say, right, I'm gonna get you out of it, I'm gonna fail. Because you have to go through these ripples and and work it through.

• 34:46Steve Peters?

  So your your human brain can do it in seconds, because that's logic. She's gone, she was dishonest, it's a good thing, she's gone now, no more wasted time. Yep, that's easy, but our, the emotional chimp brain has got to process it, it cannot do it overnight. So you've got to now allow around a 12 week process and you're gonna go through various stages of grief in the loss of what is a very significant relationship. And on top of that, there was another insult. It wasn't just, she said, it's not for me, she slept with someone else. So that is really gonna get your chimp, you know? We expect it now to be devastated and your chimps reaction, some people wouldn't, but it's common that it wants revenge. It wants to say, right, if you did this to me, you're gonna suffer now.

• 35:32Steve Peters?

  In reality, what you've just said by your nodding is, that's not what I want. I just wanna move on and accept it wasn't for me. She did what she did, that's her problem, not yours. And what your friend did is start to try and turn it around with some facts to calm your chimp down and say, because it always looks to the computer, let's look at reality. And the reality is, if I said to you, uh, this girl is gonna come back into your life and they'll bring all that pleasure you used to have, but she's gonna have affairs every few weeks. Is that what you want? No. Oh, so you did break it off. Yeah, you know, so you you just try and look at it in a different way and say, let's look at the reality and the facts of the situation, but you cannot stop the grieving. You can't stop the yearning or the bargaining, because guys in your position often go back and plead.

• 36:16Steve Peters?

  And then she'll say, I made a mistake and and then you have to make a decision, you know? And then they'll bargain again. And then if you go through that, you go into disorganized stage. But this can all be circumvented. If you suddenly met somebody new, your chimp might recover very quickly.

• 36:31Steven Bartlett?

  Is that what tends to happen?

• 36:32Steve Peters?

  Well, we know this is the rebound.

• 36:34Steven Bartlett?

  Right.

• 36:34Steve Peters?

  So this is never a good thing.

• 36:35Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 36:35Steve Peters?

  I'm sure some of your listeners are going, I married the person I met on a rebound. So of course, it's all probabilities, but generally speaking, you need time to get over this. Gather yourself so you're in a good place when you do meet somebody else to have a good relationship.

• 36:49Steven Bartlett?

  That's interesting.

• 36:50Steve Peters?

  So it's quite complex, the whole thing. So yes, rationally, we can pull you along, but we've got to give you a lot of TLC and not actually go through grieving. Don't be harsh on yourself. And what your experiences are totally natural, unhelpful, but natural.

• 37:03Steven Bartlett?

  So many people are going through a grieving process in, it could be a significant life event, it could be the loss of a partner, the death or whatever. Is there anything in psychiatry from your experience that can, okay, that process is unavoidable, but is there anything that I can do to help that process be easier?

• 37:20Steve Peters?

  Yes, there is. I mean, one is understanding it. As you say, if you start to go through this and say to people like, this is how your mind has to do this. And like you tell me with the gym, you laugh, I can't do it in the night. Well, how long? And you say, well, it's a bit of a piece of string, but roughly speaking, if you keep going regularly, two, three times a week, maybe three months, six months, you're going to see a difference for sure. And it's the same with me explaining the mind. I would explain to people that we go through a grieving process. You are likely to experience the following emotions or stages in the grief process, but you are unique and everybody grieves individually. So it's very important, as I said earlier, I don't have a process, you know, like a recipe and say, this is what we're going to do. I work with you as you grieve, but I want you to

• 38:02Steve Peters?

  get insights. That's the key. So the work I do is giving understanding and insight and then applying this. So you learn the skill of managing your emotions and the skill of understanding, the skill of mind management. That's what I'm about, teaching a skill base so you can be independent of me, but use me as a fallback.

• 38:21Steven Bartlett?

  On that, on the point of rejection, which we talked about a second ago, is it the stories that I then tell myself about myself, which impact my self-image that really hold, that hurt me the most? Because it feels like when you go through emotional, sorry, romantic rejection or heartbreak, it feels like, even if you, it's not at the sort of like front of your mind, the fact that someone didn't want you, or they were, they wanted someone else, makes yourself tell yourself that you are not good enough, not pretty enough, not smart enough, you weren't enough. And it feels like so much of the hurt and the pain lives inside that story you're telling yourself about yourself.

• 38:59Steve Peters?

  And again, if you stop and we look at what you've said there, are these factual statements, or are they impressions and feelings?

• 39:07Steven Bartlett?

  Impressions and feelings.

• 39:08Steve Peters?

  So we know that the chimp brain is in full flow now.

• 39:11Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 39:11Steve Peters?

  So what we're saying is, don't quench that, it's not wrong, it's expressing. And it's like, as I said earlier, you've got this best friend. So if this happens to me, I now say, what is it you're telling me? And he'll go through all this, you know, it's the end of the world and, you know, clearly no one's ever going to love you. And, and then we start to counter it by saying, well, let's look at that. So we start to rationalise, and that can help the grieving process. Because we start saying, well, let's not just sit there with these falsehoods, let's challenge them and let's replace them with truths. Not brainwash, it's no good saying, for example, say, I'm your best mate and you've just fallen apart and you say, it's because I'm ugly. It's no good me saying, no, you're really handsome. That's not, that's an impression again from me. What I'd be saying is, let's

• 39:54Steve Peters?

  look at facts. If we look at people in relationships, do people find a partner eventually? And the answer is, most people, yes. So the chances are very high. And if you can get through this, will you eventually get back on your feet? Is there a future?

• 40:09Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 40:10Steve Peters?

  Yet there always is a future, there always is a future, even for people in a much more serious situation where they become suicidal. And obviously, it's part of my work, you can tell them with honesty, there is always a future. And things do change, and feelings do move. So when you start giving these facts and rationalising the facts of the situation, that is going to be powerful for starting to settle your emotions.

• 40:34Steven Bartlett?

  Hmm.

• 40:35Steve Peters?

  But giving falsehoods, you know, I know you can do it, or you're, that's not going to settle your chimp the streetwise.

• 40:42Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 40:42Steve Peters?

  So it'll just keep agitating. Whereas if we talk facts, then it'll settle. But again, there's a key point here. We have to find the facts that resonate with you as facts. Because if I said like I just did, will you find another partner? What's, what's the general rule? If you said to me, yeah, but I don't believe that everybody does. There's no point me forcing this truth on to you. I'd have to look for others that might resonate with you.

• 41:06Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 41:07Steve Peters?

  Such as if I go out and I actually start socializing when I'm ready, then the chances are I'll increase my probability. So that gives me a bit of hope. You might work with that.

• 41:17Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 41:18Steve Peters?

  So you've got to find what resonates with the person. And again, that's why I don't have this recipe. I'm saying discover them, but think around, but you can offer common things.

• 41:28Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah. Super interesting. And again, it perfectly explains why in that moment, for some bizarre reason, my friend telling me, being very sort of rational with me, things that I genuinely did accept to be true, just completely diffused my brain.

• 41:42Steve Peters?

  Because he's acting effectively as your human.

• 41:44Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 41:45Steve Peters?

  That's what he's doing. He's coming in rationally and stepping back and saying, let's look at the facts here. And he's hit some nails on the head where you think, oh, that's settled me down a bit.

• 41:53Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 41:54Steve Peters?

  So, but what tends to happen is you tend to isolate yourself. Most people do this after this has happened and they go within themselves and they engage these emotions, which generates more and more falsehoods and distorted ways of perceiving themselves and the world. Instead of being able to, which is not easy, talk to themselves rationally and preempting things like, you know, let's work with reality. It's not easy to do that. So when you can't do it, it's not a failure. You turn to your best friends and they'll do it for you.

• 42:25Steven Bartlett?

  So what is the cause of unhappiness as you see it? Especially if you're building sort of machine learning applications that are gonna, you know, solve, you know, make people arrive at contentment or happiness in a personalized way. We must be able to know what's causing this lack of happiness.

• 42:40Steve Peters?

  Allow me a bit of time to explain it because it's, it's simple when we get it, but it's not simple to get to it. So, so happiness is very predictable. Okay. If you look back at any point in your life where you ever felt happy, there is one commonality across all of those moments that can actually be documented in a mathematical equation. Okay.

• 42:59Mo Gawdat?

  You've never felt happy because of a specific event in your life. Okay, take for example rain. Rain doesn't make you happy or unhappy. There is no inherent value of happiness in rain. Okay, rain makes you happy when you want to water your plants, and it makes you unhappy when you want a sunbath, right? And so it's not just the event, rain. It's the comparison between the event and an expectation in your mind of how life should be. Okay, if you're worried about your plants, then life should be generous to me and get me rain so I can water the plants. And if life does that, then life meets your expectations and you're happy. Okay, and so happiness in that sense becomes equal to or greater than, so it's really mathematics,

• 43:44Mo Gawdat?

  that your perception of the events of your life minus your expectations of how life should be. Okay, and apply that to anything. Apply that to anything. So, you know, my favorite example is nature. We're all happy in nature. Why are we all happy in nature? I mean, you go out there and there are ants and there are flies and, you know, trees are crooked and there are, you know, shrubs everywhere and bushes and it's just really not that hedged and organized. But that's what we expect. So, you know, nature's chaos is what we expect nature to be, and so we feel happy. You know, nobody ever sits in front of the ocean and says, "I like the view, but please mute the sound." Okay, you just take it.

• 44:28Mo Gawdat?

  You know, it's the monotonous sound and the view and the wind and the sun and the whole experience, right? And because of that,

• 44:38Mo Gawdat?

  happiness becomes very different than what was defined to us. Okay, what was defined to us is that happiness is found in

• 44:49Mo Gawdat?

  gathering at the pub or a party or, you know, an activity or some kind of pleasure or fun or elation or whatever that is. That's not at all true. These, I call these the state of escape. Okay, happiness, as per the definition of the happiness equation, is events equal to or beating expectations, life going my way. Okay, and so basically happiness is that calm and peacefulness you feel when you're okay with life as it is. It doesn't really matter what life is. Okay, what matters is that you can be okay with it. Right, so, so you take, you know, the, any example, if your boss is annoying, and your expectation is, yeah, bosses are annoying, this is what life is about, they become bosses because they're annoying, right?

• 45:34Mo Gawdat?

  And, and so if, if that's your expectation, you're gonna look at it and go like, yeah, I need to learn the skill of managing annoying bosses, okay? And if that's the case, then you're not gonna be upset about it. Hmm? Uh, uh, uh, similarly, anything else, if you look at it, then it's not just the event. Hmm? It's your perception of the event, so you have a, a, something to influence. It's not just the event, huh? Your partner might say something hurtful on Friday at 4 P M. That's the event. My partner said something hurtful. At Sunday morning, you tell yourself, he or she doesn't love me anymore. Okay? That's your perception of the event. That's not actually the event. The event is, something hurtful was said.

• 46:17Mo Gawdat?

  But your perception of the event is your work, is your, is your brain adding color to it. And then you compare that to your expectations, right? You compared, my boss is annoying, to, my boss shouldn't be annoying. Where did you get that from? Right? So, we blur the happiness equation, we break the happiness equation because of what I call the six and seven. Okay? Six grand illusions and seven blind spots. Hmm? Which are, the six grand illusions are basically, uh, call them pathways that the modern world teaches us to navigate the modern world, that are illusions, are not true. Okay? Uh, take for example, control. Everyone knows that to succeed in the modern world, you have to learn to control certain events. Right?

• 47:02Mo Gawdat?

  So you start to believe that the way to succeed in life is to control everything. But the truth is, even if you go down to the basics of physics, that we never are in control. That the absolute design of nature itself, of the universe itself, is entropy and chaos. Right? That's the actual design. And so if you try to control it, you're bound to be disappointed. A lot of events are gonna miss your expectations. Okay? And yes, I'm not saying don't control anything at all, but start to understand that you're gonna be selective, because you have a finite amount of effort. And by the way, even if you're selective and you try to control everything, sometimes things will fall out of control. If you live your life through the illusion of control,

• 47:47Mo Gawdat?

  good luck finding happiness. So six grand illusions: the illusion of thought, the illusion of self, the illusion of knowledge, the illusion of time, control, and fear. Okay? Now, that's one side. And that disrupts your entire view of what to expect from life, because you're expecting life to behave through a lens of an illusion. The other side of it is what I call seven blind spots. Okay? And the seven blind spots are not really defects in your brain. As a matter of fact, they are the very design of your brain. Okay? Your brain is designed to tell you what's wrong. Okay? It's not designed to, you know, if a tiger shows up right here now,

• 48:30Mo Gawdat?

  my brain has no use whatsoever in telling me, "Oh my god, look how majestic that animal is." Right? Yeah, it's a beautiful animal, but my brain will say, "We're gonna die." Okay? And "we're gonna die" is the idea that basically makes our our brain constantly look for what's wrong, blur the events of life. You ask a mother, and she will say, "Oh, my daughter's been sick all winter." You know, she just had two episodes of flu, three days each. But to the caring heart of a mother, that needs to be exaggerated to... The exaggeration is one of the blind spots. Your brain is trying to get you to take action, so it pushes you. It pushes you by exaggerating the event a little bit,

• 49:15Mo Gawdat?

  so that you jump in and take action. And accordingly, the event you're comparing to... You're comparing the wrong event to the wrong expectation, and the happiness equation falls apart.

• 49:25Steven Bartlett?

  Under all of this, you're inferring something which I think will annoy a lot of people. And that is that happiness is a choice.

• 49:31Mo Gawdat?

  Oh, totally.

• 49:32Steven Bartlett?

  And that you can choose to be happy.

• 49:35Mo Gawdat?

  Totally.

• 49:35Steven Bartlett?

  And that if you're unhappy, and really, for many circumstances in our life, day to day, in work, in love, in relationships, personal responsibility is the answer.

• 49:45Mo Gawdat?

  Unfairly on you.

• 49:47Steven Bartlett?

  And a lack thereof is the cause.

• 49:48Mo Gawdat?

  Absolutely. You know what you just did? You've just lost us eighty, eight percent of the audience. To tell someone it's your responsibility to get yourself out of this horrible place that you're in is quite disturbing, because we like the idea of saying, no, no, hold on, no, no, it's not me. Life is treating me really badly. That's why I'm not happy. Okay? I can't do anything about it. Life took my son. You know, life took my son. I have the right to be unhappy. Yes, life took your son. That's true. And you have the right to be unhappy. But you're never gonna get out of unhappiness if you wait for life to bring him back or you wait for life to correct its action. Okay? The only way you can come out of unhappiness is if you choose and say, okay,

• 50:31Mo Gawdat?

  it's gonna be a long journey. It's gonna take a lot of time. Okay? And I'm gonna try and try and try, but I'll get there. And neuroplasticity proves that. Neuroplasticity basically tells you that if you just run a happiness kind of activity once a day, every day your brain will be better at it. And I mean, please don't get me wrong, but what do most of us do every day? We watch negative news. We swipe on toxic positivity. And we're just drowning ourselves in negativity. And then what happens? What happens is we become really good at being negative. We become really good at finding what's wrong with life. Become very good at, you know, getting pissed off with the prime minister, right? Because it's an activity we do on daily basis.

• 51:14Mo Gawdat?

  So your brain goes like, this must be important for her or him. Okay, I'm just gonna make sure I have the neurons aligned around that. And so you're basically, we're basically configuring our brains to be unhappy. And that is the kind of neuroplasticity that we need to shift. You know, if you go to the gym and lift weights every day, you're gonna look like a triangle. If you squat every day, you're gonna look like a pear. Okay? The same is happening inside your brain. You just don't see it. If you're constantly watching, you know, news media, right? You're literally building your muscles that are concerned and are, you know, critical and are worried about the world when in reality, most of the time, you can't do anything about it.

• 51:59Steven Bartlett?

  There's something in there which is clearly a theme in, I think, three topics we've touched on, which is this theme of like radical acceptance.

• 52:05Mo Gawdat?

  Oh, absolutely. I mean, this is what I call the Jedi Master level of happiness. So there are three levels of happiness, right? I call it the happiness flow chart. Events are gonna piss you off. It's just the truth. If you can manage to acknowledge your emotion and say, oh my God, I feel, am I angry? Is this anger? I mean, is this, is this what I'm feeling? And then, and then you take that feeling and you say to yourself, okay, interesting. I am angry. I need to do something about it. I will give you three steps. Okay? The beginner's level is ask yourself if what you're thinking is true. Your partner said something hurtful on Friday. Your thought is he or she doesn't love me anymore. Okay?

• 52:46Mo Gawdat?

  Ask yourself if that thought is true. If it isn't, drop it. There is no point to be unhappy. If it is, then let's go to the black belt level of unhappiness, which is can I do something about it? That's the second question. Is it true is question one. Can I do something about it is question two, right? And honestly, by the way, it doesn't take more than two seconds to feel the emotion, ask yourself if it's true and then go to, to, to, to, can I do something about it? And if yes, then do it. What are you waiting for? Text him or text her and say, baby, can we please talk over dinner? What you said on Friday hurt me. Okay? Instead of just banging your head against the table, hoping that they will find out and come and say, oh, I'm so sorry. You know, I, I, I was teaching, this story really hurts me.

• 53:31Mo Gawdat?

  I, I was teaching, you know, when, before lockdown, I, I taught a lot of people in workshops and seminars, more than 20,000 people. One, one day, one of them comes to me in the first break and says, what are you talking about? What do you mean happiness is a choice? You have no idea what happened to me. Okay? And I said, okay. And she said, when I was 17. She was 74 at the time. Can you believe that? 57 years of holding on to one thought hitting her head against the wall. Right? And I hugged her. I hugged her. I cried. And I said, did it work? Did all of that work? Or was the better thought? Hmm? Okay, it was horrible. But can I do something about it? Okay?

• 54:16Mo Gawdat?

  And that's question number two. That's black belt. Sometimes, however, there's nothing you can do about it. Whatever she experienced could be irreversible. What I have experienced, the loss of Ali, is irreversible. There is nothing you can do about it. Okay? And I'm not asking everyone to get there quickly. But the Jedi Master level of happiness is to say, "Okay. It happened, and I have no choice to change it. There is nothing I can do to fix it. So can I accept it? But not surrender and lie down and, you know, and die. Accept it and then start to do something to make my life better despite its presence? Or maybe because of its presence? Okay? Can I accept that Ali died? Hmm? And start to spread his message?

• 55:01Mo Gawdat?

  So that my life and the life of others become better? Can I do that? I call that committed acceptance. Okay? And it's very simple. If you commit and accept to... If you accept things you can't change and commit to make your life better despite of or because of their presence, nothing can beat you. Nothing can beat you. And yeah, does it... Is it horrible that I actually managed to move on and, you know, not hit my head against the wall for 27 years? Does that say I don't love Ali? What are you talking about? I adore Ali. I cry about missing him still today. Right? It's not that... There is nothing to prove in that. Hmm? What I can prove is I love him so much

• 55:46Mo Gawdat?

  that I actually dedicate my life to spreading his message. That's so much better than sitting there and saying, "Ah, life hit me. I don't like life." Right? That's a six-year-old attitude, honestly. Okay? Adults will say, "Okay." And especially business people, I mean, your audiences, huh? The market changes all the time. Do you sit down and go like, "Ah, I lost another deal"? Or do you just get up and say, "Why did we lose this deal? What can we do about it?" Right? And if there is something wrong with the product, can we change the product? Right?

• 56:20Steven Bartlett?

  Well, you talked to there about business in particular rings very, very true because in business and you've been, you know, very successful entrepreneur yourself and worked with teams, you'll get people who are high in defaulting to logic in moments of chaos and also default to personal responsibility and those that don't.

• 56:39Mo Gawdat?

  Yeah.

• 56:39Steven Bartlett?

  And the outcomes of both groups are quite predictable.

• 56:42Mo Gawdat?

  Very different, very different. And actually, this, this approach of is it true? Can I do something about it? Can I accept it and, and, and commit? I learned that in business and it's a very simple business approach. Now, most of us do that in business, but when it comes to our personal life, we don't do that. And interestingly, most of us, by the way, who do that in business are very successful in business and most of us who do that in life are very successful in life. It's not just happy. It makes us, it makes us successful because it doesn't waste our cycles on things that are not necessary. So if you can do it at work, do it at home, do it in your life, do it in your relationships. So really a very straightforward flow chart.

• 57:27Steven Bartlett?

  I hope you enjoyed that look back at my life changing moments from my first 100 episodes. I've got to say November, December, January, we're publishing the best podcasts we've ever published. When I saw the guest lineup, I genuinely was like, I looked at the list and thought, how, how is it possible that my idols, world exclusives, people I've wanted on this podcast since it began many years ago, have all decided to come in the same month? And honestly, November and the guests we're recording with within that month, which will be published over the next three months, is the reason I started this podcast and it's a real sign of where it's going and the platform it's become. So thank you for sticking with me. It's going to be one hell of a last quarter. I know that's going to change my life for good, that's for sure.

• 58:12Steven Bartlett?

  And I can't wait to bring you more people's diaries. Have a wonderful week.