Solve For Happy: Engineer Your Path to Joy

by Mo Gawdat

You will be fully present once you remove the connection with time.

Be aware of the journey. This is where all of life happens.

Whatever you do, give it your undivided attention.

Live your life in the here and now, not inside your head.

No effort is needed to keep any system at its equilibrium. When everything you do feels effortless, you’ll have found your path.

Let everything seek its natural balance.

In Chinese philosophy, the duo yin and yang describes how apparently opposite forces are actually complementary, interconnected, and interdependent. Everything has both a yin, the feminine or negative principle (characterized by darkness, wetness, cold, passivity, disintegration, etc.), and a yang, the masculine or positive principle (characterized by light, warmth, dryness, activity, etc.).

To find a balanced life, one should embrace both sides and avoid the extremes of either.

Live on the line where the yin meets the yang.

We often throw ourselves into a fight against life, but in any fight more is lost than won. We’re then inclined to complain that life is tough.

Seek the path of least resistance.

Live on the Path.

But as we obsessively compare, we set ourselves up for disappointment because there will always be someone who’s gone farther or done better.

Only when we look down do we realize how fortunate we really are!

Gratitude is a sure path to happiness.

Instead of feeling resentful that he died, I feel grateful that he lived.

Look down!

Love—true love—is real. All other emotions are temporary. They appear when a reason triggers them, and they disappear when that reason goes away.

Unconditional love is real. It’s the only emotion that’s not generated by a thought in your head.

True love is always felt, every second of every day. Time is not a condition for a love that needs no conditions.

“No expectation” never turns into a missed expectation.

The true joy of true love is in giving it.

The more love you give, the more you get back.

Love never goes to waste. The more you give it away, the more loved you will feel.

Love Everything and Everyone

Gently remove the mask of ego and love what you see underneath.

Love yourself for doing your best.

What you just said made me feel bad about myself, and I don’t like being around people who make me feel bad, so, don’t do it again.

You make me feel bad about myself. I deserve better!

You—apart from your ego—are truly lovable.

Treat everyone as you would like to be treated.

To love is to give all you can.

Let life flow. Keep what you use and give the rest away.

Giving never takes away from the sack. More always comes back.

money can indeed buy you happiness—if you give it away.

Giving is the good side of selfish! It makes the giver happy.

Choose to be kind instead of right!

Love is all you need.

We die a little every day.

Without death, there wouldn’t be life.

Like it or not, death has already booked an appointment with each of us. It just hasn’t told us when it is. Perhaps this is what allows us to enjoy our time being alive.

Sooner or later, we all become ready to die.

As Woody Allen said, “I’m not afraid to die. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” He won’t. When it’s our time to die, none of us will be there.

Death will never hurt you.

There’s no cheating death. We all go someday!

After the big bang, it took nine billion years for our planet Earth to coalesce, and then more than four billion more years for life-forms to inhabit it. And here we are.

relativity of time means that you and I can have a very different concept of time depending on our speed, location, vantage point, and various other parameters. Accordingly, the absence of absolute time makes each of our perceptions of the beginning and end of any specific event different.

When you put together those three monumental theories—quantum, Big Bang, and relativity—you find that life, which encompasses the continuum of all possible observers, came first.

Life always is.

but please remember: the physical self is an illusion; life is not the body that is subject to the limitations of space-time. When you think of yourself as the observer, think of the real you, not the physical form that represents you. That’s what life really is.