Discover the keys to unlocking true happiness Denise and co-host Samantha Powell, delve into Mo Gawdat's enlightening perspective from "Solve for Happy." Our minds are intricate labyrinths, and it's easy to confuse the tools of our thoughts for the essence of who we are. In a candid chat, Denise and Sam explore this distinctive notion, offering you a fresh outlook on the transient nature of emotions and the illusionary veil that thoughts often cast over our reality. This episode guides you through the maze, detaching from the internal chatter and approaching life with a newfound sense of neutrality that paves the way to joy.
Ever find yourself stuck in a loop of negative thoughts and inaction? We've all been there, but this conversation sheds light on the science behind why our brains get caught in these cycles and, more importantly, how to break free. With insights into the complex network of neurons that shape our thinking patterns, we discuss practical strategies that can help you step out of paralysis and into a world of proactive living. From the 'suffering cycle' to mindfulness, this episode unpacks the emotional tools that lead to a more fulfilling and productive life, featuring an up-close and personal story that brings the theory into the tangible.
Wrapping up our journey, we challenge the myth of multitasking and advocate the art of single-tasking, which can significantly boost your focus and efficiency. The mantra 'shut the duck up' becomes your ally in silencing mental noise, and I share a simple yet powerful mindfulness exercise that cultivates presence and enhances personal productivity. Our discussion on positive thinking, backed by research, might just be the nudge you need to adopt the 'fake it till you make it' mindset. So, tune into this episode for an engaging escape into the realms of the mind—because the pathway to happiness is just a thought away.
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.
Discover the keys to unlocking true happiness Denise and co-host Samantha Powell, delve into Mo Gawdat's enlightening perspective from "Solve for Happy." Our minds are intricate labyrinths, and it's easy to confuse the tools of our thoughts for the essence of who we are. In a candid chat, Denise and Sam explore this distinctive notion, offering you a fresh outlook on the transient nature of emotions and the illusionary veil that thoughts often cast over our reality. This episode guides you through the maze, detaching from the internal chatter and approaching life with a newfound sense of neutrality that paves the way to joy.
Ever find yourself stuck in a loop of negative thoughts and inaction? We've all been there, but this conversation sheds light on the science behind why our brains get caught in these cycles and, more importantly, how to break free. With insights into the complex network of neurons that shape our thinking patterns, we discuss practical strategies that can help you step out of paralysis and into a world of proactive living. From the 'suffering cycle' to mindfulness, this episode unpacks the emotional tools that lead to a more fulfilling and productive life, featuring an up-close and personal story that brings the theory into the tangible.
Wrapping up our journey, we challenge the myth of multitasking and advocate the art of single-tasking, which can significantly boost your focus and efficiency. The mantra 'shut the duck up' becomes your ally in silencing mental noise, and I share a simple yet powerful mindfulness exercise that cultivates presence and enhances personal productivity. Our discussion on positive thinking, backed by research, might just be the nudge you need to adopt the 'fake it till you make it' mindset. So, tune into this episode for an engaging escape into the realms of the mind—because the pathway to happiness is just a thought away.
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 everyone. Welcome back to another episode of what's On your Bookshelf. This is a life and leadership podcast where we are exploring the pages of the books on our shelves and trying our best to live those out loud. We are in the midst of a book right now called Solve for Happy by Mo Godat. He's the former Chief Business Officer of Google. My name's Denise Rousseau. I'm really happy to be here today with my friend, Sam Powell, and we are going to be working through part two of this book. And Sam, how are you doing today? I'm good.
Speaker 1:
I'm good, I'm excited to get into part two, which is the Grand Illusions, which is such a mysterious heading for this. So I'm excited to start talking about this because this was interesting, this first one here.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, super interesting. And if you don't have this book yet, it is called Solve for Happy Engineer your Path to Joy. It's the second book in our series of 2024. We're spending this entire year on a quest for happiness and living a life that is happy and fulfilling and full of joy. This book is really an interesting read and in the show notes, scott will have a link for you if you haven't yet purchased the book, if you'd like to get a copy. So this section is about. I thought it was interesting, sam, because it's not about your thoughts. In a way, it says in this chapter you are not your thoughts and yet we talk time and again, episode after episode, about how everything actually does start in your thoughts. But this chapter is beyond how to train your mind and to solve for happy. So I'm curious what you thought about that.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I think that this is right.
Speaker 1:
It took me a minute I think that's how I feel about all these great illusions is like it takes me a minute to really grasp what he's getting at here, but I think what he's really trying to teach us, right and this is the illusion of thoughts, this is the first of the six illusions, and I think what he's really trying to teach us here is that you are not your thoughts, right, you are not your thoughts and you are separate from them, and so I don't think that it negates a lot of, especially what you talk about all the time on.
Speaker 1:
Things start with your thoughts and they do right, and that's why this is the first of the illusions that we talk about here is because so much of what we do and how we live does start with our thoughts that we often confuse those thoughts with our actual you know, with who we are, with our actual self, and that's really what this chapter is exploring is that your thoughts are your thoughts, but you are not your thoughts, and you've really got to separate those two concepts and those two ideas, and you've got to separate yourself from your thoughts to really strive towards joy here.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I was wondering if it's like not all of your thoughts are illusions. Of course, all of your thoughts are real, but what I got from this chapter is that sometimes the illusions appear to be real and then they just serve to confuse us. And so this is about that little voice that we have in our head that tells us stuff like you're not good enough, you're never going to get this, or who do you think you are to have that, etc. And so it's sort of like I learned this in positive intelligence, which is a really good class, and you're talking to this and you're a coach and you've never yet taken the positive intelligence classes from Shri Zad Shameen. Reach out to me because he often offers an eight week course.
Speaker 2:
That's free, it's amazing, but it talks about these illusions and it comes from being like you have a saboteur on one side and a sage on the other, or you know, when we were little, we would have think about it like it was a little devil on your shoulder and an angel on your shoulder, kind of a thing. But this little voice in our head is scientifically how our brain works, and we learned a lot about that in the last book that we studied about our brain, and it's about how to consciously manage our thoughts so that we have good ones and happy ones and positive ones, because there's always this dialogue that's going on in our head. So today we're talking about chapter three, which is that little voice that sits inside of our head, and if we're not our thoughts, but those thoughts exist to serve us. What did that make you think about, sam?
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I mean for me. I think I already thought this, like this was already a conscious thing for me. But it's the idea that, right, like my thoughts can come and go just because something goes through my head, just because there's a little voice inside my head telling me something that's not me, that's just a thought, like I feel the same way about emotions. At the end of the day, to write, like emotions come and go, there's no good or bad, like there's not necessarily good or bad thoughts you know there are in some spaces, but like there's, they just are, they just exist. They're very like, you know, it's like taking this big step back and taking a very neutral approach to your thoughts.
Speaker 1:
And I do the same thing with emotions. Right, those things come through, they're here to serve me, they're here because my brain is trying to work through something that's going to help me, you know, survive or fit in or you know whatever it is that my brain is trying to work through in that space. So, for me, this like it took me a minute to understand what he was trying to say that you are not your thoughts, but what he's really trying to say is that you know those thoughts and you as a being are separate and you're just the observer of those thoughts, right? And so I think for me like that, that resonated with me a lot, because I already think that and I don't know, so it felt it took me a minute.
Speaker 1:
But then we got there then we got there and it felt I felt validated and just how I, you know, have approached this I was. I was thought like, oh, you know, I feel like I'm kind of existential and this, like I sit outside of myself. But in reality I think that that's everybody's like that to an extent. But the more you bring that into consciousness, the more you control the thoughts that you have, the more you're able to really sit in that space. And that you know, and that's a skill that I think anybody can learn and he goes through. This is the first time I've ever seen somebody go through an actual process for it, which is awesome.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, it is awesome, I think, for me, I like the science of it, you like the math of it, I like the science of it, and so one of the things that may help some of the listeners is to just think about the fact that, even though you have this little pink blob sitting up in your skull, it's like a supercomputer. It is the most complex machine that even scientists say exists on the planet, and in the book it says that your brain is made up of 200 billion neurons and hundreds of trillions of connections among them, which I think makes it why it's so hard when we have conflicting thoughts in our mind, and so one of the things that resonated with me from this chapter is that he talks about how there are actually three types of thoughts that we have. One is called insightful thinking, which is problem solving. So you have a challenge or an opportunity and you want to solve that challenge or opportunity with insightful thinking. The second thing he talked about was experiential thoughts, and experiential thoughts are like you have a task at hand, like I need to do this thing, and this is the experience of doing something. That's a task oriented thing.
Speaker 2:
And then the third one he talked about was called narrative.
Speaker 2:
That's the chatter, that's the stuff that takes up residence in the front of our mind. That probably is what either drives us or prevents us from doing things like when we're ever talking about how, in your outcomes in life, if you want to do something different, it's about your actions or your inactions. That's what the narrative stems from. So the narrative is what tells us I believe I can do this, or I believe I can't do this, or I should do this, or I shouldn't do that, and so your brain is constantly, always thinking, and so One of the things that he talked about that I kind of struggled a little bit as well in this chapter was that, after he talked about those three types of thinking, he started talking about something called the suffering cycle and how you can disrupt that, and you and I talked about this. I don't know if it was off off the mic or if it was in another episode, but I remember having a conversation with you about this concept of suffering and curious what you thought about this part.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I like to this. So, like the diagram looks like one of those recycling symbols, right, like the triangle. That's just like a, you know, reduce, reuse, but it's thought, suffering and inaction. So he calls this the suffering cycle. But it's our in, our inability to take action triggers the recall of the thought over and over again in this endless suffering.
Speaker 1:
So it's like the fact that we don't act Brings us back into this thought process that brings us into suffering, like I feel, like this to me really resonated, like I think about any time of procrastinated and people are like, oh, you're not progress, like procrastination isn't like laziness, procrastination is some kind of thought that's in your way, right, it's a blocker to something and because you're not acting on the thing, right, that's the procrastination is the inaction of something you know you're supposed to be doing, and then there's this thought and then you suffer because of it and then you don't act, and then you think about it and then you suffer, and then you don't act and then you do, you know, whatever. So I like, I liked the visual, because I like thinking about it as this process, because one of my favorite quotes is the antidote to fear is action. Really, like you can take it a step further. The antidote to suffering is action. Right. If it's, the inaction is doing it. And that's why we always suggest people that you just start right, that's just do one thing right.
Speaker 1:
If your dishes are overwhelming, you go wash one dish, just one, right. It'll break this cycle. Enough to unblock you to go finish the dishes Eventually. Right same thing with, like, your laundry piles up, you know, like all these mundane tasks that nobody wants to do, and we suffer because it's like oh my god, the piles of laundry. I have to do any to fold any to put things away, and it's like well, just lower the bar, take one step, and it breaks that cycle. And so I just I loved that visual because I know the, I know that that to be true, but to see it laid out so clearly is like, yep, that's it, that's the, this is the visual, this is what's happening.
Speaker 2:
I really like how you describe that. I have a client right now, a coaching client, who's really struggling with a, let's say, a challenging conversation they have to have with someone, and so they're spinning in this thought of well, if, if I say this, then this might happen, and if I say this, this might happen and I? And so we're talking about how well, what if that doesn't happen? So there's this really cool exercise that we use in coaching where you can sort of step outside of your Own mind and kind of watch the scenario play out like a movie and get realistic about. Is that really going to happen? Do you think that really would be the result that you would have and, if so, what can you do to change that?
Speaker 2:
And so he talks about that in the book, about observing this dialogue that's in your mind. And if you could step outside of it and sort of watch it, like this concept of watching your scenario or your life as a movie, what would you do to change the scene? And so I really liked that part of the book because it's about observing. As you were saying, your thoughts are a part of you, but they are not you. So if you can observe the thoughts, then what can you do to bring yourself the better thoughts?
Speaker 2:
And so he then pivots and talks about where you can prime your brain because you have infinite choices. I recall this is gotta be, oh my gosh. Years ago there used to be this movie I wish I could remember the name of it, but it was a movie where, when you were watching it, you could pick the way you wanted the next chapter to go. I'm talking about I wish I could remember that what that was, because it was a really kind of cool concept of having interactive Filming. And so if you can frame your brain, that your prime your brain that was a tongue twister prime your brain that you have infinite choices for some different kind of an outcome, then you can prime your brain for happy thoughts.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, absolutely, and it gives us this nice process to walk through to do that. And, like I said, the first one is the observation of the dialogue. Right, like, think about what's just running through your head. Right, and this is like this reminded me a lot of like mindfulness. Right, like you just let the thoughts run, you're not judging them, you're not doing anything with them, you're just observing what's going through your mind. Because just stepping that, like you said, stepping outside the scene and watching it play out, is the first step to really controlling the dialogue, so that you can again the whole point of this is working towards joy, working towards happiness, and so that first step is what you're saying, right, like, let's just observe what's happening here, let's watch the movie play out, let's see what's happening, and then he takes us over to I love the way he phrased it of observing the drama.
Speaker 1:
And so this is the like why am I feeling? Right, like this thought enters my brain and then I get this emotion with it. Right, like this goes from here to here and it's very dramatic. Right, and so it's. Why is that happening? Right, Like, what is it about this thought or about my experience around this thought that is driving the drama and I loved that thought process because we do this all, I do this all the time with coaching clients too is they're like oh, I'm, you know, they've got limiting thoughts, they've got limiting beliefs on something, and then it's well, why do you feel that way? Right, like what is it about this situation that's driving that emotion you're telling me about? But again, you have to observe and then you have to watch the drama that's unfolding with your emotions.
Speaker 2:
Speaking of drama, so I have had an experience lately that I've been sharing with you, sam. That is pretty dramatic, and it is a strange experience or encounter that I've been having with speaking with this one person that has been talking with me about some work, and One of the things that struck me was in the book it says happiness is always found on the positive side of Every concept and that you can reframe your thoughts. And this experience, without you know Telling too much detail, has been extraordinarily dramatic. But I found it to almost be that when I separate myself from the thoughts around the experience, it's sort of become funny and it's sort of become this experience where I'm at peace with having these really strange Conversations with this one person and it's the in the book he talks about. It's the likeness of saying is my glass half-full or is my glass half-empty? It's both, but it's about how you want to look at this situation, and so I was talking with my cousin recently, who knows about this situation as well. We just have the most hilarious Conversations around this situation and we we always end up talking about how well you know what, despite this weird stuff, it's really Great on the flip side, that the part that's full in the glass is really causing us to not only have these laughterous Conversations, but we're also finding happiness, despite some pretty dysfunctional Experiences with the conversation, and so I think that that that's what resonated for me here, but that you also have all these thoughts going on in the midst, right, so I can recall talking to this one person that I'm talking about, and my brain, in the middle of talking to the person, is in All kinds of different directions, like I can't believe that person actually said that, or why would that person say that? Or how do I answer this person when they're asking me this type of a question?
Speaker 2:
And so Mo goes into this even further, which is how our brain is Multitasking at all the time. But that multitasking in itself is a myth. I don't know if you ever took this class with me, sam, but there was a class years ago that I took with our friend Michelle. She was an instructor for the class and she was talking about how Most people think in work that you could be effective Multitasking, but the reality is, your brain can't function Optimally and most effectively if you are multitasking. It's called switch tasking, so if you're thinking about one thing while you're thinking about something else at the same time. Your brain can't switch those Thinking patterns like that, and so he calls this part of the chapter learn to shut the duck up.
Speaker 1:
So I thought that was kind of Talk about yes and the part you were talking about right before this, because I definitely want to talk about the multitasking thing was it's the third kind of step in the process. It's to bring me a better thought. So it's hey if the glasses half empty or half full, like it. Just it's both things. But let's focus on what's in the full, half right. So it's the. I'm observing my thought, I'm observing the drama along with it, but then it's hey, brain, bring me something positive to think about here, get me in a happy state, which reminded me of, like the very last of the 12 Activities from Saul. For happy, yeah, because there was this whole part where she was like you just fake it till you make it, you just pretend to be happy and you actually, you know, based on the research, end up happier, and so it's, I think positively, I think happy, and then I end up being more happy. So it was the same kind of thing, but that's the third thing. And then Shut the duck up. So, and that's coming, because he's saying you've got a duck in your head, always quacking. It's just constantly going, constantly going, constantly going, which we have, and I, I loved that.
Speaker 1:
He, you know, called out that multitasking isn't a thing. I tell people that all the time I was like your brain cannot actually do it. They're like, oh, I'm a great multitasker. I'm like, no, you are not a great multitasker, multitasker is fault. Like multitasking doesn't exist. What that means is you've honed a skill where you flip back and forth and back and forth. Like you said, like switch Tasking, like you switch, you switch, we switch, which is your switch. It's not effective. You know, even if you want to think it's effective, right, like that's you Trying to pretend that that's an effective thing to do was more effective is focusing on a thing at a time, because your brain can't, it can't think about two things at once.
Speaker 1:
It's not possible. The only thing your brain can do at the same time as thinking about something is like, just keep your body going right, breathing and beating your heart and running all your systems like, oh, they can't actually think two things. And so I think that that's a you know, that's a great thing. And so he's tell you know, he's encouraging us to you know, find ways to Shut it out. And I love this. And this reminded me of an exercise you taught me about Focusing about something away. So what are you saying is that if you want to shut off that incessant like black, black, black, black black going on in your head, focus on something physical, right, whether it's sensations in your body Like this is where you know some people will focus on breathing, like what does it feel like going in and out of your nose, but you don't gave us an exercise about focusing away, and it's that's what he's basically saying to do here.
Speaker 2:
I love this exercise because you can do it even if you're in the midst of a challenging conversation with someone or a challenging experience, and it's so simple. You could do this yourself at home, if you're listening. It takes anywhere from 30 seconds to two minutes. You could go longer than that, but I personally get distracted after two minutes. But all you basically do is you Take your gaze away from where it is at that moment. Whether you're looking at a person or a thing or an object or whatever, you look at something else and you, with intention, look at something that you're not going to take your gaze away from. So, for example, right now I could look outside my window and I could notice that the thing that I'm looking at right now is that, well, I probably need to pressure wash my gutters on my house. But for that two minutes, all I'm going to do is focus my eyes on this one thing, and what then you'll notice is deeper, because what it's doing is emptying your brain out. So I'm looking at the gutter. Oh, I notice it needs to be pressure wash. That's interesting on the corner of the gutter. I can see a Bird sitting on the corner of the gutter. Oh, how beautiful the feathers are on this bird. Well, each thing I'm noticing about this thing I wasn't planning to focus on has now Allowed my brain to not be distracted by all those stories that are going on, and it's a form of mindfulness, and so I love to use this exercise with my coaching clients. I like to do it either at the beginning or end of a session, but I also love to use this exercise with my leadership development cohorts, because it makes it so much more simple for us to Maintain focus in the moment, because have you ever thought like at work, you go from this meeting to the next meeting, to the next meeting, to the next meeting, to the next meeting. You never take a pause, yeah, to process when did you just come from, where are you now and where was that going to take you? So I do love that, that exercise.
Speaker 2:
And he talks a little bit about focus as well in this chapter, where he mentions the movie the Matrix, which I thought was a really interesting way for him to sort of summarize this. And he says that in the movie. If you've never seen it, it actually is a really good movie, especially if you look at the movie for the context of what's behind the movie, as opposed to just watching the movie for the entertainment factor, and so he shares that. This skill level, like what happened in the movie with the key Characters, was they were able to capture and control the illusions of their mind, and so so much of your happiness depends not on the conditions of the world around you but on the thoughts that you create About them. Which then leads me to think about another movie that's so good. It's called inside out by Disney Pixar.
Speaker 2:
Of course I had to throw in at least one Disney Disney movie, and this part two is getting ready to come out in theaters, in fact, hopefully.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I don't know exactly when it comes out, maybe it'll have already come out before this episode airs. But this movie is entirely based around the way this little girl thinks and that all of these thoughts, they live in her mind as emotions, and so whichever emotion is getting the highest real estate is the one that's front and center in those scenes in the movie, but that in the end of all of it, you can control all of that if you have the tools. So what I love about this book is that you have the tools, whether it's from the how of happiness this book, or even the books that are to come, about how to solve for this, and so next time we're going to be talking about who are you? That's the title of the next chapter, so I'm looking forward to diving into that. If there was one thing before we go today, sam, that you would share about this chapter, or that resonated that we didn't yet cover, what would that be?
Speaker 1:
I think it's where he changed Renee Ducartis famous Quote, that is, I think, therefore I am, and he says that you know, if you're really understanding that you are not your thoughts, he would flip that around to say I am, therefore I think, and he would even take it a step farther To say I am, therefore my brain thinks right. And to me it was that important distinction. Like I always Talk about, this is my son right? We're learning emotions. So it's not. It's not I am mad, it's I feel bad, right, like it's I'm experiencing anger. You know, it's that separation between feeling and self, and that's really, to me, the heart of this chapter is there's this you have to separate. If you really want to Get to joy, get to happiness, you have to separate the fact that you are not the thoughts that go through your head. You are, therefore Thoughts happen right, and I think that that, to me, was the really nice summary and that's probably the thing I'll carry with me, rent free in my brain for the rest of my life. Yeah yep.
Speaker 2:
So here we are, ending this chapter, the beginning of the grand allusions. You are not the voices in your head. You have voices in there. You are not them, you're in control of them. Now is the time to learn about how you can observe them, you can change them, you can control them and you can focus on being happy. So, once again, sam, I always learned so much just talking with you each time. I love that we have already read this book. Now we're talking about the book together. We're living it out loud and I hope for you as listeners, that the same is for you.
Speaker 2:
Thanks for being with us today. My name is Denise. I've been here with my friend, sam. This is our podcast what's on your bookshelf. Please share it with others. We hope that this will be a book on your bookshelf Until next time. Thank you for joining us today for another episode of what's on your bookshelf, and thank you so much to Scott Miller for being an outstanding producer and helping us to bring these episodes out For others to listen and to experience. We'll see you next week. Bye, bye, for now, you.