Have you ever felt like happiness is a puzzle you just can't solve? Join Denise Russo and co-host, Sam Powell, as they journey through Mo Gawdat's enlightening book "Solve for Happy," dissecting the roots of our emotional states from confusion to joy. In our latest episode, we compare thoughts to seeds—each one capable of growing into a strong, resilient tree or a pestilent weed. Sharing from the heart, Sam and I intertwine personal stories of weathering life’s storms, underscoring the importance of a mindset that stands firm in the face of adversity, fostering growth and, ultimately, happiness.
Denise and Sam unravel the intricate web of emotional states that define our lives, using gardening as a metaphor for the cultivation of our mental well-being. As we navigate the spectrum from confusion to joy, we discuss how early experiences shape our adult lives and ponder the ways we can guide ourselves out of states of suffering. The conversation takes us through the thorny path of negative thoughts, which need to be addressed at their root, and the art of growing through adversity instead of seeking distraction in escape.
In their chapter discussion, they leave you with seeds of thought that, once planted, can bloom into a personal model of happiness. I extend heartfelt thanks for the wisdom shared and the perspectives gained. We invite you to engage with the transformative ideas from Mo Gawdat's work, and, as you tend to your own garden of thoughts, may you too find your own version of happiness. Check the show notes for links to "Solve for Happy" and additional resources that can further nourish your journey.
Connect with us on our LinkedIn page School of Thoughts . We also value your reviews, subscribing, and sharing our podcast "What's On Your Bookshelf?" on Apple and Spotify.
Have you ever felt like happiness is a puzzle you just can't solve? Join Denise Russo and co-host, Sam Powell, as they journey through Mo Gawdat's enlightening book "Solve for Happy," dissecting the roots of our emotional states from confusion to joy. In our latest episode, we compare thoughts to seeds—each one capable of growing into a strong, resilient tree or a pestilent weed. Sharing from the heart, Sam and I intertwine personal stories of weathering life’s storms, underscoring the importance of a mindset that stands firm in the face of adversity, fostering growth and, ultimately, happiness.
Denise and Sam unravel the intricate web of emotional states that define our lives, using gardening as a metaphor for the cultivation of our mental well-being. As we navigate the spectrum from confusion to joy, we discuss how early experiences shape our adult lives and ponder the ways we can guide ourselves out of states of suffering. The conversation takes us through the thorny path of negative thoughts, which need to be addressed at their root, and the art of growing through adversity instead of seeking distraction in escape.
In their chapter discussion, they leave you with seeds of thought that, once planted, can bloom into a personal model of happiness. I extend heartfelt thanks for the wisdom shared and the perspectives gained. We invite you to engage with the transformative ideas from Mo Gawdat's work, and, as you tend to your own garden of thoughts, may you too find your own version of happiness. Check the show notes for links to "Solve for Happy" and additional resources that can further nourish your journey.
Connect with us on our LinkedIn page School of Thoughts . We also value your reviews, subscribing, and sharing our podcast "What's On Your Bookshelf?" on Apple and Spotify.
Welcome to what's On your Bookshelf, with your hosts Denise Rousseau and Samantha Powell.
Speaker 2:
Hi friends, welcome back. It's another episode of what's On your Bookshelf. This is a Life in Leadership podcast where we're taking deep dives into the pages of the books on our bookshelves and living those pages out loud. My name is Denise Rousseau. I'm here with my co-host, sam Powell. We are walking through a really awesome book called Solve for Happy by Mo Godat. He's the former Chief Business Officer from Google personal story. Wonderful book around how he took some mathematical equations to solve for happy in a time of extraordinary sadness in his life. Today we are in chapter two of the first part of this book. Sam, tell us a little bit about that.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, so this one's great. So this is the end of the first section of this book. So this is really the. This chapter is the end of the setup to the rest of the book, and the rest of the book really goes into what he calls a model for happiness, like his happiness model, and so that's what the other three sections are are the big pieces of the model, and so this is the setup to that, and so he starts this chapter out talking about you know, right, we've come from this last chapter. We set up the equation.
Speaker 1:
We talked about how it's our thoughts that really guide us to unhappiness or happiness, depending on, really, our perception and our expectations and things like that. And so he's saying that, you know, depending on the kind of thoughts that we entertain and we're experiencing, we fall into a spectrum of states, and so he's got five states listed out there's a state of confusion, a state of suffering, a state of escape, a state of happiness and a state of joy, and so that's what this chapter is really about, is talking about these different states that we fall into depending on the thoughts that we have. And that'll lead us to the end of this chapter, which is really about the model that he has set up. That we'll dive deep into in the upcoming episodes. So what, Denise, when you were reading this chapter and you were going through these five states like from a pulled back perspective, what did you think about the five of these overall, because I know we'll dive into each one specifically?
Speaker 2:
The first thing I thought about was that thoughts we believe them whether or not they're true, and yet we can control them. That has everything to do with shifting our mindset. We often think about things that are just like the tactics around things, so when I was thinking about all of these states, the first thing I thought of was what can I do about it, not what should I be thinking about it. And so what I loved was that he started the chapter by saying that seeds of thoughts grow and grow. But what it really got me thinking about was plants, and what I mean by that is if you think about when you plant something that's intended to produce good fruit, you want those roots to go deep and wide so that it holds the stability of that plant, to flourish, to get the nutrients that it needs, to have stable ground in case the winds blow, to be able to sprout up so that when the rain comes it can grow more. But sometimes, if a plant isn't deeply rooted, it will die. I had a lemon tree a couple of years ago and it grew and grew some fruit, and then we had a hurricane I live in Florida had a hurricane and the plant died, and the tree was like, maybe, like I would say, teenager age. It was a good size tree but it couldn't withstand the storm. Then the next year I went on Arbor Day to go buy some more fruit trees which I do every Arbor Day and so I bought another lemon tree and also bought a grapefruit tree. Now, funny thing about those two trees where I planted them in buckets and put them on my back porch because I thought, oh, I can keep them safe there, they won't have the storms come, I can move them if I need to move them. But what ended up happening for that poor little grapefruit tree was it grew a grapefruit which was delicious, by the way and then almost as soon as I picked that fruit off the tree, the tree died Again.
Speaker 2:
I literally clearly have no green thumb, but I realized when I saw that little branch that was dead. It easily plopped out of the dirt in this bucket. It wasn't planted in a place where it could thrive and grow best. It had no way to grow deep roots and wide roots.
Speaker 2:
Flip side of that, right outside the other side of my back porch, is this humongous, thriving, growing dandelion weed of some sort, like the type if you touch it. You prick your fingers and the little prickers get into your hands, and it's so annoying because you can't get them out, this darn thing. Every time I cut this thing down, it grows back more fierce, and so what I'm realizing is weeds will grow fast and deep and wide, and if you cut them off at the stem, they just come back stronger. You have to get to the root of the weed to pull it out of the ground, and so, long story long, I suppose what I got from this is that your states of thought have to be healthy roots, not strangled by the weeds that can kill the healthiness of the different roots. And so that's what I thought, because I for sure thought in each of these states of things that started in my mind as weeds before I could transition my mind into being healthy. That's interesting. That's interesting.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, and I didn't think about the depth of thoughts or sitting there, I think I kept my thoughts more surface level on going through this, but that's super interesting. So, for those of you not looking at the book, just envision this as a vertical spectrum of states that you can be in based on your thoughts. And so the lowest of those is a state of confusion. Above that is a state of suffering. Right above that, which is in the middle, is a state of escape. Above that is a state of happiness and above that is the state of joy. So it goes from confusion to suffering, to escape, to happiness, to joy, kind of up this vertical spectrum. And so, denise, I like what you're saying about the depth of these thoughts, because people can get stuck in one of these areas that they don't want to be stuck in, or they can be deeply planted in happiness or joy and thrive there for a very long time. And so really understanding these states, I think, is important.
Speaker 1:
So this first state of confusion that we can all find ourselves sitting in with our thoughts is he says that our confusion is caused by illusions that we all learn to accept early in childhood, and you mentioned this at some point about how we really connect with our thoughts. But our thoughts aren't necessarily reality, they're just our thoughts. Sometimes what he's saying is that we're in this bottom state, this very bottom of the spectrum, in confusion. It's because we are trapped in illusions that are not real. These are probably things that are ingrained in us. Like I have these negative thoughts about myself or about how my relationships or other people, and those are usually caused by something early on in life or early experiences and things like that. When we're so caught up, we can't even deal with the happiness equation because we're so confused. We can't even get to a state of trying to solve for happy because we're living in a world of illusion that doesn't really exist and we're confused in it. You've got to get yourself out of that state.
Speaker 2:
I felt that way, sam, when our jobs were eliminated. I felt that state of confusion because there was something about it that just didn't make sense to me. It didn't make sense to me how somebody as smart and talented and vibrant and value-adding and just spectacular as you would find yourself in a position where, a half hour after me, our jobs no longer existed. I was confused. I went through every emotion. I'll be honest if you're listening to this and you've been in that position, you already know what I'm saying to probably be a similar situation for you. I went from feeling confused to the next one, which was a state of suffering. But now I will say with confidence, because we've gone through this now for over a year and a half since that experience, I live in a state of happiness and joy. But I had to first go through this first stage in order to get to where I am now.
Speaker 2:
One of the things he says in the state of confusion section is that sometimes an example to help illustrate why things go wrong for us is the illusion of time. We're constantly stressed by time's elusive nature. We run out of it, we waste it, we feel it ticking faster each day, eating away at our stressful lives, while unable to slow it down or stop it. He goes into more detail on that, but I am in the midst of writing a book right now about how we capture and use time in our life, because you've heard the saying that time is money.
Speaker 2:
Time is money. It isn't. With money, you can waste it, you can spend it or you can invest it. The hope is that you invest it and it grows over time. But with money, you can always get more of it even if you lose it. But with time, you also can waste it, spend it or invest it, but you never get more of it back. So what good was it for me, during those early days of having our jobs eliminated, to sit in a state of confusion until I got to the point of realizing we didn't lose our jobs. Our job lost us. This one's what struck me there.
Speaker 1:
That's an interesting, creative time, because I think it speaks to what he's saying about the illusion, part of it. You were so confused and I went through a little bit of this too confused in that moment of how on earth could our roles be eliminated? Because we're under the illusion that the people who are making these decisions, new York, cared about us and they did it right. That's not. That wasn't the reality of it. Right. It with the reality of it was they cut budget, they cut numbers. We were those numbers, they got cut right. That's, that's the actual, the actuality of what happened.
Speaker 1:
Nothing to do with your work, my work and people in layoffs all the time. It is the same thing over over again. It's not the people, the individuals, right and so. But if we sit there and we think all this illusion that this should be fair, that you know the work that we put in should mean that we're protected, that's an illusion. That's not how you know the corporate world really operates at the moment, and so I see a lot of people sitting in confusion and then anger.
Speaker 1:
You know in those states, and you have to accept that that that's not process, not reality you think you're living in isn't reality, it's. It's an illusion and you've got to escape the illusions to get into a state of, get out of the state of confusion, because you can't get the happiness when you're confused. You can't even attempt to look at the equation when you're sitting in a state of confusion due to, you know, incorrect realities do it due to illusions that you think are happening that really aren't. And this is interesting because I think you know we move from confusion as the bottom two suffering. I actually would have thought like I would have picking words, I would have thought these would have Like suffering would have been the bottom and then confusion. But it's so interesting that suffering is is actually up one on the list, right, I keep thinking of this as like a hot sauce list, like joy is, like the spiciest of all and like.
Speaker 1:
confusion is like ultra mild, no spice, like I mean, for some reason. That's what stuck in my head. So like, right, if you move up the spiciness scale, you get into suffering like that's. I don't know. What do you think?
Speaker 2:
about that. This one was tricky for me because it's about those imaginary perceptions or we can call them the saboteurs that sit on our shoulder About missing our expectations. Go back to that formula right expectations and the events have to have a certain combination to bring us happiness. And so if we missed our expectations, but it's because our imaginary perceptions of what the expectation should be. In the example of the job, we didn't expect Our job to be eliminated, but the suffering comes from things like false scenarios. I lost my job, so therefore I'm not talented, I'm not qualified, I'm not going to get another job, nobody's ever going to hire me, I'm going to lose my house, I'm going to die, like.
Speaker 2:
There's probably that far spectrum of what people think in their imaginary minds. As opposed to thinking, this could very well be the very best thing that ever happened to me, but it isn't until you step back and can see the quilt that's being crafted in your life, where all of the experience of where you were, who you were, with what you did and how you grew and how you lived your life, how you added value to other people's lives, really matter. And so for me, this is about worst case scenario. It's the threat. It's the things that we hold on to because we're afraid, because this thing happened to us, instead of thinking this thing is happening through us. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:
I like that. And he says that the state of suffering really comes from our most basic ancestral thought process. Right, it's safer to mark something as a threat until we're sure that it's not. And so when we're in the state of suffering, what we really are doing is sitting in just survival mode, like I think of the hierarchy of needs, right, like if you're in that bottom thing, it's like I'm just surviving, I'm just getting through, I'm marking everything as threats, so I am suffering, I haven't moved beyond that, right.
Speaker 1:
So when I like that it took me a minute, but I'm like, okay, if you're in a state of confusion, like delusion on what reality is, you really don't have no idea what's going on. Like you're not even really on the scale, right, like you're not a chicken wing in hot sauce, you're a french fry. Like you don't know what's happening here, right so. But when you move into suffering, you know what's happening, but you're perceiving everything negatively, you're perceiving everything as a threat, and that, again, is not true, and it's not you know, and that can be helpful when you're navigating unsafe waters, of being like, oh, this seems risky, right?
Speaker 1:
Like, maybe not, but this isn't a state to stay in. This isn't a state you dip down into it depending on thought sometimes, but if you stay here, you are just creating suffering for yourself because you're just sitting in survival mode instead of elevating that thought process out into something beyond. How much is getting through the day?
Speaker 2:
But you don't escape from this thing. You grow through the thing. So the next one is the state of escape, and some people fall trapped to this, which is oh, this bad thing happened to me, so now I need to escape it and ease the pain of it. And people do that in many ways. They either do it by drinking, eating excessive shopping, compulsive sex, spending money, whatever it might be. That gives you the ease of the suffering that came from this painful experience that caused you the confusion. And so he says in here that fun is an effective painkiller because it mimics happiness by switching off the incessant thinking that overwhelms our brains, but it's only for a while.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I think so many people in today's world are stuck in the state of escape, which is in the middle, right on this on the hot sauce scale that we're working on, right, it's in the middle, you know it's.
Speaker 1:
And he says that you know, this is a state where you said, like we'll miss the distinction between happiness and fun, we'll chase fun, thinking that that's giving us happiness, but it's giving these little bursts, it's nothing sustained, it's not really doing anything for us besides distraction. Right, the state of escape is when you are trying to distract, you're trying to use a painkiller and I think about this with technology all the time. How many of us, instead of doing the things we need to be doing, or doing the things that would make us happy, or scrolling through our phone, right, or playing a game or doing whatever, and that's okay here and there, right, yeah? And he says that, like you're okay, like resorting to fun as an escape is okay, as like it's an wise as an emergency off switch, right, Like I found this a lot like in the early days of grief with my son. I would get just crushed under the weight of it, and so I had some little easy things that would be.
Speaker 1:
They were healthy, they weren't anything bad, but it was like, okay, I'm going to go read a book because I need to completely escape from my mind right now, and as long as that was in little bursts and as long as that was controlled and I knew what I was doing, that's fine. That's effective. It's an effective way to bring you back to zero, right? Hey, I'm going to scroll my social media for five minutes and maybe social media is not the good thing but like I'm, just going to go do something fun for five minutes.
Speaker 1:
Play this game on my phone for five minutes right, it's an escape, it's that, but it's. It's not a state to stay in, it's not a state that you can live in for forever. And it's easy to get confused, yes, and confused that these fun, these good times, are happiness and they're not happiness. They're just fun, they're pain killers.
Speaker 2:
He calls it a happiness supplement versus a numbing pain killer. So maybe that will give you a visual in your mind about the difference between vitamins as supplements versus drugs as pain killers, and that if you can think of the things that supplement your happiness but don't destroy your happiness because they're only there for these short term bursts, then you get to the state of happiness. Now I thought this part was interesting, sam, as the next level on your chicken wing scale, because this isn't the pinnacle, this is what you would think is the pinnacle, right? This book is called Solved for Happy, and yet the state of happiness isn't the top state. So I'm curious what you thought about that.
Speaker 1:
I also thought that was interesting. Right, we moved from this state of escape right, where we're pretending we're happy, right, we're pain killing it for a moment. But once we realize what we're really doing and we do think about using that as more of a supplement, and we move into the next state, the fourth one up. I would have expected that to be something different, but it was happiness, and it's only like a paragraph in the book. It's this little, tiny, tiny little blurb. I was super surprised.
Speaker 2:
And he says basically, happiness is all in a thought, the right thought, one that aligns with reality and solves the happiness equation positively and truly. It's maybe I'm not counting really quickly here, but it's less than 10 sentences of this entire book says that. Yet this book is about solving for that small part of the book that leads us to the ultimate pinnacle, the number five on the scale of your hot sauce. I think. It must just be time for lunch, I think. But I love the example. Maybe next week we bring in some hot sauce and chicken wings. Those seem to be getting a lot of attention on social media these days. But the next one is the state of joy. It says those who reach joy are not only accepting of life as it actually is, but they're utterly immersed in it.
Speaker 1:
I love that. It's rising above the confusion. Right, Because this is a vertical scale, this isn't a horizontal scale. So I keep thinking of it like they're utterly immersed and they're accepting life what it really is. Right, They've risen out of the confusion and the negative thoughts to really accept life for what it is. They've risen above this state of distraction and this state where, oh, I need to supplement happiness because I'm not really fully immersed in it. Right, They've gone into happiness and they've moved even beyond that. They're actively pursuing something like to me in this state of joy. This is when you've got activities from the how of happiness as habits that are happening all the time. You're fully immersed in what you're doing, acting, how you're behaving, the actions you're taking really purposefully. So I love that thought process. I love that this is self for happy, but we don't even like. Happiness is the goal, Joy is the goal. Beyond that.
Speaker 2:
Joy is the goal, and he distinctly says happiness is not equivalent to joy. The way he describes joy is it's uninterrupted calmness, inner peace, stillness. Those are all closely related, different from happiness, symbiotic. The most top pinnacle of these states Now, true joy is to be in harmony with life exactly as it is. That is the equation of this book, no matter what's happening to you, through you, around you, outside of you. The point is that how do you find harmony with the life exactly as it is? He talks about this being a model for happiness and that you should never settle for anything less than joy. So we're almost out of time, sam, why don't you share with our listeners just what, the formula, what does the 675 mean, so that we understand what we're going to do next time? Sure.
Speaker 1:
So his model for happiness, and we'll dive into the 6, because this chapter is called 675. We'll dive into the 6 because it's the next part of the book. But what he says is that in this model for happiness that he's built in order to solve, the equation that's there is that you have to put it all together and you have the happiness bottle, which is bust, the six grand illusions, getting out of illusions, rising up out of that state, fix the seven blind spots and hang on to the five ultimate truths. He says training starts tomorrow and for us training starts next week on the episode. So we'll start with the six grand illusions.
Speaker 2:
Yes, think about this as your holistic wellness toward happiness. If you think of your body as mind, body and soul type of a thing, busting the grand illusions, that's all in your mind. We talked about how this all starts in your thoughts. We're going to start first with our thoughts, fixing the blind spots If you think of a blind spot that comes from the things you see. So we're going to talk about our eyes there and hanging on to the ultimate truths. Our truths come from our heart. That's going to be where we close out the book, but next time we're going to bust grand illusions of mind by talking through that little voice in your head. So I'm looking forward to seeing what that's all about. This has been another really great time together sharing with you. Sam, thank you so much for being here with me on this.
Speaker 1:
I loved it. This was great. I can't wait to get even deeper.
Speaker 2:
Friends. If you've enjoyed it, please subscribe to our podcast. Share it with friends. Let us know what you're thinking, because this has got to be changing some of your thinking around the way you view happiness. Don't forget to get a copy of the book If you don't have one already. Scott has links in the chat or not in the chat in the show notes where you can get a copy of this book Solved for Happy for yourself, as well as some deeper dives, directly from Mo Godette's websites. My name is Denise Russo. I've been here today with my friend Sam Powell. This has yet again been another episode of what's On your Bookshelf.