Solve for Happy: Engineer Your Path to Joy

by Mo Gawdat

When you commit to a moonshot, you fall in love with the problem, not the product.

Parental or societal pressure, belief systems, and unwarranted expectations come along and overwrite some of the original programming.

Unhappiness happens when your reality does not match your hopes and expectations.

Once the pain is no longer needed, it naturally fades away. But that’s not the case with suffering.

All the thinking in the world, until converted into action, has no impact on the reality of our lives. It does not change the events in any way. The only impact it has is inside us, in the form of needless suffering and sadness.

• Allow your thoughts to be affected by illusions and you’ll be stuck in the state of confusion. • Think negative thoughts and you’ll end up in the state of suffering (unhappiness). • Suspend your thoughts by having fun and you’ll find yourself in the state of escape. • Think positive thoughts and agree with the events of life and you’ll reach the state of happiness. • Rise above the clutter of thought, grasp life for what it truly is, and you’ll perpetually live in a state of joy.

If fun suspends your thoughts, and happiness arises when your brain agrees with the events of your life, then joy is when thoughts are no longer even needed because the analysis has ended, and the equation has permanently been solved.

Taking the best possible action, regardless of the result, is an obvious way to disrupt the cycle. Once an action is taken, our minds focus on the executional elements of what needs to be done, a different part of our brains is engaged, and our thoughts shift to monitor the result of the action rather than incessantly focusing on the same thought.

Happy thoughts. If you could prime your brain with any thought you wanted to, why would you ever prime it with anything else?

So much of your happiness depends not on the conditions of the world around you but on the thoughts you create about them.

You are none of what you just observed. You are the observer. You are the one aware of all that is happening around you. I know it may sound disappointing, but you have never seen you. You are not to be seen. You are the one who sees.

You’ll never please everyone. Find those who like the real you and invite them closer. All others don’t matter to you.

Be yourself no matter what they say.

You live in a complex web of connections. Every single day, every step you take and every move you make impacts—even if in small ways—the life of everyone around you and perhaps occasionally the life of everything on this planet. This happens while every step any of them takes might affect you.

Get real. You are not the star of the movie. Most of what happens

around you isn’t about you at all. There are infinite numbers of other movies. In those, if you feature at all, you’re just a supporting actor. It would really help your happiness if you started to look at your life that way. Look at the night sky and remember that its beauty resides in its billions of sparkling stars. Of those billions, you are but one.

mechanical time is purely a human construct.

All the devices we’ve invented so far are working away to tell us what time it is, but no one really knows what we’re actually measuring.

next moment is more important than the one we’re in. On the other hand, the moment that already passed by is more familiar—and therefore perhaps more comfortable—than this one right now. These biases of the brain are what move us all too easily into a state of confusion, ruminating on the past or bracing for an imagined future while neglecting to pause and live in the present, even though the present is all there really is.

There’s no drama until we throw in the past and the future.

Which has to leave you thinking: is there anything ever under our total control? Yes, two things are: your actions and your attitude.

There is nothing wrong with planning and trying to assume control. The way we react when something unexpected happens is where we go off track. When things change, we react by trying to exert more control in an attempt to get back on track. What we should do instead is look at the current situation with an open, fresh perspective and attempt to use the new events in our favor, despite their having taken place beyond our control.

Ample research has shown that we tend to think negative—self-critical, pessimistic, and fearful—thoughts more often than positive thoughts. Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi uses the term “psychic entropy” to indicate that worrying is the brain’s default position.

Gloria Steinem’s warning: The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.

follow Golden Rule for Happiness: Choose to believe in the side that makes you happy. That side is more likely closer to the truth.

Always carry something with you that reminds you that it’s time to be aware. It shouldn’t be a useful everyday object, but something that’s odd enough to serve as a reminder every time you see it. Something simple like a stone with interesting colors, or a spin top, or a yo-yo. Every time you see it, you’ll remember that it’s time to be still for a short while. When you take your totem out, interact with it. Slow down the pace of your racing brain and be present.

Make a totem

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.

Dying is an integral part of the process of living. The minute we’re born is the minute we start to die. You are dying as we speak.