Former Google Exec on How To Train Your Brain to Beat Stress | Mo Gawdat

Bad news and good news. The bad news is 91% of all of us will get a PTSD inducing traumatic event at least once in our life. PTSD is the top level of trauma, okay, where you suffer post traumatic stress disorders. Right. Good news is 93% would recover within three months. 96.7% would recover within six months. These days, these are data from the people that were in the 911 attacks.

The next person we have is Sage and I is one of our favorite people. And we only got to know him about a year ago, but we really fell in love with this man. And the reason is because most of us have some idea of what the worst experience could possibly be. The experience that we couldn't come back from or people wouldn't come back from. And some don't in these situations. In fact, some of you have heard, you know, you're familiar, some of you, I've told you about it, but others, if you haven't. I just wanted to give you an example. And you've heard it before, remind you of it. So if I asked you what would be the worst thing that could ever happen in life? The number one answer in North America for people say, is if they became a quadriplegic. And if they asked them, what's the best thing could happen, Believe it or not, the number one answer was win the lottery. Right? Those are the two. But what's interesting is there have been studies on people that have won the lottery and studies on people that have become quadriplegics. And the question is, three years after that experience, whether you lost the use of all your limbs or you won the lottery, who was happier, who was happier? What's kind of a setup? You immediately go, it must be the quadriplegic. Hell no. The quadriplegic wasn't happier. What are you thinking of yourself? Nor was the person who won the lottery. Because what happens is our brains adjust. If you don't drug the person who went through the quadriplegic, if they are able to be in their natural system, we have a natural happiness immune system. We adjust. Most people have a set point for their happiness and they get back to it. It's interesting to people, the lottery. Now everybody wants something from you. If you've ever done really well, most of you in this room have done well compared to a lot of people in life. You know what it's like when you really, how many have had something you wanted to give somebody, and then you find out they expect it or demand it, and it took away all the joy. Who knows what I'm talking about here, right? Well, imagine all of a sudden everybody wants something from you who didn't really care before. And those people now start to feel jaded and angry. And the people who can't move, what's interesting about them, if they start to move their finger this much for the first time, they get overjoyed because we all lose our references. Contrast is the most powerful tool I know to keep you balanced on your happiness. So that's why I brought you here where you'll be in total, absolute abundance at every level. And then we'll take you to a portion of India that's 4000 years old where people go to die and who are joyous about dying because they have a different belief than we do. They have a completely different belief. They believe the body is the T shirt. You burn that T shirt, they burn bodies all day long there, as you'll see 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. And the people there are joyous. There's no tears, there's no upset. So our beliefs play such a role. That's why we say, and it's over there on the notes again, is that suffering is not in the fact, right? It's in our perception of the fact that it's our belief about how it's supposed to be, how it isn't that this person shouldn't have died, this shouldn't have happened this way. My child shouldn't be going through this. I shouldn't be having this health problem. But you are and they are. And so that's life. And so what it is, is now we gotta deal with life instead of our perceptions. That's how you get out of suffering. And so this man is made, was an engineer. He's really a genius at what he does, but he's also got a heart of gold. And he experienced something none of us would ever want to go through. But he's turned that around and still demonstrated how happiness is not contingent upon the environment whatsoever. Please stand up and give a big welcome to our dear friend Mo Gawat. Give it up for him.

Thank you so much, Honestly, thank you. I counted 25 hugs so far, so that's. This evening is great already. I'll start with a disclaimer. I will make mistakes as I speak because I actually know specifically that when I'm sleep deprived or jet lagged, I am both. My speech processor breaks. So I will have all the right intentions to say the right things. But occasionally the word peacock or I don't know, whatever will come out. Okay. So please ignore that or highlight it to me. I took 18 hours to Brisbane and then stayed 18 hours in Australia and then 18 hours back, showered and jumped here because I absolutely believe this is totally worth it. I had. Thank you. I love Sage and Tony more than I can tell you. I love a lot of you who I met in Mexico. Thank you so much for the warm welcome. Again today I want to talk about a slightly different topic, which, by the way, what I spoke about in Mexico. Tony and Sage put on a podcast, so please do listen to it, about happiness. I want to talk about stress. So you know things like 18 hours and 18 hours back. Yeah, I do that shit. So. But I also had. I mean, I'm among family, so I'll share a little bit. This has no doubt been the toughest year of my life, hands down, January. My sister in law, who truly is the dearest person, she's my sister. We were three brothers and she came into my life when I was around 15 and I truly considered her my sister. She was in the room with my brother who was recovering from a very serious cancer. And there was a bit of a. Anyway, because of the stress, she had a cardiac arrest and we lost her all of a sudden. And of course, as you can imagine, the stress on him, even though he had recovered his cancer, two months later, he left. And then as the stress of them leaving affected my mom, two months later she left. And I have to tell you openly, I never expected that losing my mom will affect me that much. I mean, she was 84. We had a wonderful life together. She was a freaking genius, that woman. She was a force of nature. And for some reason I felt a mega emptiness in my life. I really did. Which has really, if you know my work and you know how I practice what I preach, I really had to stop. Actually, she left right before we published the book Unstressable. So I had to go and be in the tour of the book tour. The book made it to number four. So it was worthwhile. And it comes with a very important mission to take a million people out of stress every year. But then I had to retreat. I retreated for 40 days. I do that every summer of silence. And I reflected on a lot of things I have to say to you openly. Our world is in a lot of stress. I mean, I tell you my story, but there are so many people around the world who are today in war zones, right? Who will lose three loved ones in a year, right? May even lose more. There are so many people who are struggling with an economic crisis that's crushing a lot of people around the world. There are so many people already starting to lose their jobs because of artificial intelligence or other things. It's a very stressful time in our life. And. And I will openly tell you, even though definitely my heart was very badly scarred with this year, and even though sometimes I feel depleted, I'm not stressed. Okay? And I will openly tell you that every single one can live that way. And you know, it's quite interesting that stress is different. Exposed to a stressor is different than actually being stressed. So I want to talk to you very quickly so that we have a lot of time for questions about a model I call the 3434. Your three accountabilities, the four sources of stress, the three reasons we break, and the four modalities in which we interact with stress. So I'll take you through them one by one, but very quickly, I'll tell you that I never intended to write on stress. My 1 billion happy mission was about the idea of I will write about happiness, and then I will write about all of the different reasons we become unhappy. Right? So my second book was called that little voice in your head, which was about how your mind fools you if you want. I was then intending to write about empowering the feminine, which I think is one of the biggest reasons for cumulative unhappiness in the world, is that we have been very unfair to the feminine. And I wrote the book almost entirely. 187 pages were written. And then I decided to write on stress because I met this wonderful young author from the uk, Alice Law, who had actually struggled with every possible sample of what a stressor could be when she was 21. And Alice and I are very different. Alice is very soft, very nurturing, very feminine, if you want. And I am, as some of you may know, I'm a brainiac. I'm a very serious math geek. Don't be fooled by the fact that I can speak full sentences. But in all honesty, I actually truly and honestly see the world in numbers. And it's really weird. I found a way to translate that into English. But that's not how I see the world at all. And so Alice said, let's write about stress. I said, I need to figure that thing out first. I need to understand I'm usually that calm person that could be drained but is not stressed. My reputation at Google was that I'm the one to go to when things are very, very stressful. But I didn't know how I did it. So anyway, the first thing I did is I said, okay, let me understand the mathematics, the algorithm of stress. And she said, there isn't one. And I said, there must be one. Okay? And it's actually shocking how simple it is when you want to think about stress. The easiest place to understand it is in physics. Even if you don't like physics. You may remember in elementary physics that stress on an object was the force applied on the object divided by the cross section, the area of the cross section of the object. Right. It's not that complicated. You know, here in the Middle east when they taught us that, they said, that's why the camel doesn't sink in the sand, because the camel has very big hoofs. The 1 ton weight is distributed across the hooves, so it doesn't sink in the sand because the stress on the sand is not very high. I realized later in life that this wouldn't have been a very valid example in other countries. But anyway, we got it right. So the idea is, in objects, stress is the force divided by the square area. In humans, stress is the external challenge divided by your square area, by your resources, your abilities, your skills, your connections, which actually is quite interesting. It's mathematical. The stress that you feel is not just the stressor, it's the stressor divided by the resources you have to deal with it. And it doesn't require mass to understand this. You can easily understand it because things that freaked me out when I was 20, I managed to deal with when I was 30, I dealt with, with ease in my 40s and then in my 50s. I laugh about them. Right. And you know, Jason, for example, as a CEO, the more you become a CEO, the more you start to respond to things differently. Okay. And so on. And so it's actually valid that the more skills, the more square area you have, the more you become capable of dealing with the external stressors. But that equation gives you. Once you have an algorithm, you can easily understand how things work, how the machine works. But the number one thing to underline from that mathematical side of it is you're accountable. Listen to that. So while the stressors may not always be within your control, the square area is within your control. You're actually accountable. It's not the events of your life that stress you, it's the way you deal with them that does. Okay? So let's remember that it's not the event of your life that stresses you, it's the way you deal with them that actually turn the challenge into stress, okay? The same challenge could be taken without the stress. So when it comes to accountabilities, I'll start with the first three, okay? Which in the book we call the three L's, your three accountabilities, which are three L's. Learn, limit and listen. Okay? Learn is very obvious. Learn is what is the square area? It's the denominator of the equation. If you grow the denominator, your ability to deal with the stress increases and so your feelings of stress decrease. So we're going to talk about a lot of learning, but the first thing to say is do not assume that stress has to happen. Assume that if you can actually learn the skills, you're going to take the stress away. Now let's talk about the numerator, right? The number of stressors that come into your life. And it's quite interesting because when you really think about the stressors that come into our life, they're not all from outside you. Do you realize that? Okay, so some things happen outside you and a lot of things happen inside you, triggered by things outside, but they happen inside you, okay? Also, not all of them are big enough to break you. So some are major and some are minor. So if you can imagine a four quadrant chart, minor and major stressors outside and inside you, triggering from outside or from inside you, you'll find four quadrants that we term as ton of stress. T O, N, N. Okay? T is major stress coming from outside you, which is trauma. Right? O is major stress coming from inside you, which is obsession. Obsession are those beliefs, those scripts that you tell yourself that you will obsess about for years, after years after years, and that will eventually get you right. The first N is happening from within you. But it is, you know, a small thing like me walking out of the of the door, looking at the window, at the mirror and going like, little belly. No, no little belly, right? And we do that all the time. It's just those little nagging comments that you give yourself all the time. None of them will really break you. But they're noise. That N is called noise, okay? And then finally there are nuisances. And nuisances are stressors that are sub trauma. They're not big enough to break you, right? But there are so many of them. So many of them, starting from your alarm in the morning, jolting you out of bed with a massive noise, all the way to a relationship that you need to break up from or you need to fix or whatever. When you think about T O N n Trauma. I'll come back to it and talk about it in a minute. But trauma is not within our control. The others, interestingly, are. We are accountable, okay? Because obsessions and nuisances happen within you, there are techniques we can remove those. And because the noise is actually quite easy to limit. Right? So remember, the three accountabilities were learn, limit, and listen, your accountability is called limit. This is actually something I'd love for you to do before the end of this trip. Okay? I'd love you to take a paper. Write down everything that stressed you that can come to your mind. In the last month, a comment from a friend, a social media post, something happened at work, your partner said something, everything. Write every one of them down, everyone, everything that stressed you. Okay? And then we're going to limit them. And in one of two techniques, either you're going to scratch them out completely and say, this is never going to happen in my life again. I don't like that, friend. I'm going to tell them I don't want them in my life, or social media is killing me when it goes beyond 30 minutes. I'm not going to go beyond 30 minutes and so on. Or if it's something you cannot change, you're going to reduce its intensity, right? So if you have a commute that is 50 minutes going and 50 minutes back every day and you have to take that commute, you can either take it at a different time so it becomes 30 minutes, or you can take it as 50 minutes, but make the best cup of coffee and listen to good music, right? And then you're limiting your exposure to stress. Now I'll talk about the obsessions and the nuisances because you can limit those as well. Especially, sorry, the noise. Especially the noise, Right? To limit the noise is simply an observation of why am I talking to myself this way? And removing the things that hurt from the language that you use. But I'll talk about those because they come from within us a little later in my conversation. Right? So we spoke about two of the three accountabilities. Learn and listen. Sorry, Learn and limit. We spoke about the four sources of stress, which are the T O n N. Now let's talk about the biggest myth about stress, right? You heard Tony say a bit of stress works for you. A lot of it works against you. Stress within context is good. Stress out of context is not. Right. Now, this is really important to understand why, because everyone here is a successful business person, right? As a successful person, it means that you have, you know, approached life with Courage with perseverance. And you did something, which basically means that by definition, you faced some stressors in life, okay? When, you know, when, when you learn about how to face those things, you normally get that guy on the COVID of Harvard Business Review, you know, striped suit, dark red tie. People perform their best when they're stressed, okay? And I usually looked at this and I was like, in my younger career, I was like, yeah, yeah, let's stress the hell out of them, right? And then I was like, this is actually stupid. I actually, honestly, I believe that people perform their best when they are in flow, when they're working better in teams, when they are taking care of their health and well being, when they are creative. I mean, of course, if it's Charlie Chaplin, remember that movie when he was on the production line and they moved the production line faster, right? It's basically, if your people are gears in a machine, a little bit of stress increases 5%. If you are a gear in a machine, a little bit of stress increases 5%. But if the task is anything other than being a gear in a machine, then stress is definitely not the best way you can perform. Now, stress is the best way to perform within context. And the context is the following. The biological machinery of stress was a bit like the Hulk. Did you see the movie? Right. Yeah. You get in a certain situation that pumps enough cortisol in your blood so that you reconfigure the machine theoretically, to run away from a tiger. Right. In the modern world, when was the last time you were attacked by a tiger? Never. Right. It's normally an email. Okay? Correct. Right. And so? And so, and so the problem is the machinery works. The same machinery works. You get cortisol in your blood, you're in fight or flight mode. Right. But it's completely out of context. The more interesting side of this is what I call the 90 seconds rule. So stress, even when it was a tiger, basically happens in your amygdala. It's completely unconscious. Right. You don't even have time to think. You jump out of your seat, you start to run, right? And then within 90 seconds. This is the work of Jbalti Taylor, one of my favorite neuroscientists. Within 90 seconds, the cortisol is flushed out of your system completely. Okay? And that's when you call on your prefrontal cortex on your rational brain, for your rational brain to actually suspect if there is a tiger or not, if there is a threat or not. Okay? And then if, if there is, you renew the lease for another 90 seconds and another 90 seconds and another 90 seconds. So if you've been stressed for the last 90 days, you need to start asking yourself, how many times have you renewed the lease? Right? And the problem, of course, is out of context. When you look back at the email with your rational brain, the email is still there, right? And so we stress ourselves over and over again. But I will go again and say a bit of stress works. I have a presentation on Thursday. It's good for me to respond to that with a little bit of stress so that I perform my best. Right. However, used out of context, stress will break you, and it will break you in three different ways. One is what we spoke about called trauma. Capital T trauma. Okay? Losing a loved one, losing my mom does break me, right? You know, being in an accident, being in a war zone, whatever. Big, big, big events. Trauma is a massive amount of stress in a very short period of time that exceeds your ability as an object if you want to carry the load. Right? Bad news and good news. The bad news is 91% of all of us will get a PTSD inducing traumatic event at least once in our life. PTSD is the top level of trauma, okay. Where you suffer post traumatic stress disorders. Good news is 93% will recover within three months. 96.7% would recover within six months. These are data from the people that were in the 911 attacks. Okay? They were in that zone. Okay. And 93% recovered within three months. 96.7% recovered within six months. Three and six months. What does that mean? It means that while trauma will almost certainly break you, okay, you'll get put back together, and for most of us, we will actually enjoy post traumatic growth. Okay? So in an interesting way, trauma is not the reason for the pandemic of stress that we have in our lives today. The reason are the other two breaking points, if you want. There are other breaking points, but these I think are the most important. One is burnout, and the other is what I call the anticipation of a threat. Let's talk about them quickly. Burnout, mathematically, if you want, is when the sum of all the stressors multiplied by the intensity of each of them, multiplied by the. The duration of its application, multiplied by the frequency of its application exceeds your ability to carry the load. So it's not one big stressor, it's a million little stressors. And you add them all up, and then if the load is too much, you break. Okay? Now again, that goes back to your second accountability, which is limit. Remove the stressors that you don't need to deal with, with. Okay. Completely within your hands, by the way. And, and as I said, when you write that list, there will be some big decisions. Okay? Jane is annoying you. Jane goes. Okay? It's as simple as that, right? Any Jane's here? None. No Janes. Great, right? Pick the right name one. Anyway, I'm very serious. So there are big decisions, there are decisions that you have to make if you want to live a stress free life. Now the second reason we break, by the way, when we get to burnout, we break because of a very unexpected reason. Your partner wakes up and goes like, hey baby, good morning. And you go like, don't good morning me. I don't want to hear it because you're so stressed with everything else. It's just that one little last straw. Okay? The other one is quite interesting. I call it the anticipation of a threat. So remember, cortisol is pumped into your blood because there is a tiger. In the modern world, we create the tiger in our heads. There is going to be a tiger. And a tiger means that the moment where the tiger shows up is less safe than this moment right now. Do you understand that? So it's quite interesting. Most emotions are actually algorithmic as well. There is a logic behind them. Moment in the future, less safe than now. What do you feel? You feel fear. And a typical human response to fear is how am I going to deal with the threat? If you're afraid of something in the future and you start to work on the threat, you're okay, you're not stressed. As a matter of fact, when you're working on dealing with the threat or the anticipated threat, you're engaged and you're probably not feeling the stress, you're feeling the energy, right? The other three derivatives of fear are what breaks us, okay? One of them is worry, the other is anxiety, and the third is panic. Okay? And the reason they break us is because we deal with them as if they were fear. When they're not, we deal with them as if we know there is a threat. Worry is not that I know a moment in the future is less safe. Worry is I'm not sure if a moment in the future is less safe or not. I'm not sure if presidential candidate A or B is going to be chosen. And I'm afraid that if that one is chosen, I'm going to be in a bad place. Worry is I'm not sure if I'm going to lose my job or not. If I lose it, if I know I am going to Lose it. I need to react in a certain way. If I know that I don't, I need to react in a different way, right? And the problem with worry is when you treat it like fear, okay? Then you take a couple of steps and then you tell yourself, ah, there's nothing to be afraid of. And then you take a couple of steps back and then, oh my God, I'm afraid. So the answer to worry is not to treat it as fear, not to look at the reason that you're afraid. The answer to worry is to make up your mind, should I freak out or should I chill? Right? If you freak out, then treat it like fear. If you're supposed to chill, then don't even look at it. Drop it altogether. Anxiety, in my view, is the biggest reason for stress in today's world. And anxiety is the result, not of a threat in the future. Anxiety is the result of you reviewing your own capabilities and deciding that I am not equipped to deal with the threat. Okay? And so the more you try to deal with the threat, the more you start to get faced with the reality that you're not qualified, the more anxious you become. And so the cycle continues. So the worst thing you can do when you're anxious is to try to solve the problem. Okay? When you're anxious, you're supposed to work on your skills or on getting somebody who has the skills to, to come and partner with you so that you basically have enough skills to attend to the threat. If you treat it like fear, you're more anxious. If you treat it like anxiety, you can actually work on yourself. Finally, panic is also not about the threat. Panic is the threat is imminent, right? The closer you get to the threat, the more you panic. If you're running out of time, you panic, right? And so accordingly, again, if you treat it like fear, you suddenly get faced with, I'm running out of time, I'm not going to be able to do this. So you get more panicked. And so, and the cycle continues. When you panic, what you need to work on is time. Cancel other things. Give yourself more time to deal with this. Get someone to help you so that you can actually have double the time. You know, call the person that's expecting something from you and tell them that you need a little bit more time presentation 1:00 clock instead of 11:00am okay, so these are the reasons we break when we then are approaching those areas in our lives when we're supposed to break. Okay? The last four of the model. So remember we said three accountabilities limit Learn limit, Listen. Four sources a ton of stress. Three reasons we break, trauma, burnout, and anticipation of a threat. And then finally, the last of your accountabilities is listen. And listen is really the result of how stress is manifested in you, okay? And Alice and I realized this, and it shocked us that stress is normally discussed as one big topic. I am stressed. But you get stressed in four different modalities. You can get mentally stressed, emotionally stressed, physically stressed, or spiritually stressed. Each part of you, we as humans are made of a mind, heart, body and soul. And each of them gets stressed differently and speaks to you in a different language. And if you don't respond to it, it stresses you back differently, okay? So let's go through them quickly and then open for questions. Mind, heart, body and soul. Your mind. When you're, you know, mentally stressed, that's the time when you wake up at 4am in the morning with rushing thoughts, okay? When you're unable to stop thinking about something, when you keep trying to solve over and over and over. It's all happening up here, okay? Mental stress happens for one simple reason that I know Tony teaches you all the time. So please remember it, okay? I'll say it in a more blunt way if you want. Your brain has never, ever, ever, ever once in your life told you the truth, ever, okay? It tells you what it thinks is the truth, okay? Informed by it, by all of its scripts and all of its memories and all of its assumptions and all of the blind spots that it doesn't see. It just tells you the negative side of the truth more often than the positive, okay? Mental stress is all about how to remember that the stress is not the fact. The way you look at it is the fact. And when you really think about that and you leave your mental stress if you don't attend to your mind, when your mind is spinning, what happens is that in itself stresses you more, so your mind spins more, okay? So one very simple view of mental stress is what we call the happiness flow chart. To ask yourself if what you're thinking about is true, if you can do something to fix it, or if you can accept it and do something to make your life better despite its presence. Emotional stress, once again, okay? We feel emotions. We're told in the modern world of success not to show those emotions. And so what happens is we bottle them in, right? Emotions, when they're bottled in, they don't go away. Did you realize that? Okay, when they're bottled in, they shout louder, okay? And then when they shout louder, you get More emotional, and then you shout louder and so on, and then one day they explode sooner or later. So the answer to your emotional stress in a one line is acknowledge your emotion and find out what it's trying to tell you. Okay? If an emotion is telling you I am, you know, worried about my future, that's a very good message. Like, let's sit down and understand why. And if there is something that can be done about it, we do it. If there isn't, then at least we acknowledge it and we allow ourselves to feel it. Because we all feel we're only alive when we feel your body. I think that's very clear, okay? Your body is supposed to be your instrument that gets reconfigured when you have cortisol so that you can run through the world and achieve, okay? That same body, when you stress it, it communicates back to you in aches and pains. Okay? How many of you have aches and pains, if you don't mind? Yes. And how many of you, like I did for so many years, told yourself it's normal, I'm traveling too much, Right? It's not normal at all. I will absolutely tell you. In the last three years, so Alice and I wrote different chapters and we edited each other's work. Alice wrote physical stress. I read the chapter and I texted her as I was editing. I said, alice, are you mocking me? Like, are you writing about me? Because every single symptom, every single behavior was within me, right? And she said, yeah, I've been trying to tell you. And I changed my habits, okay? And I promise you, I'm a different human being, right? So bodies speak in aches and pains. When you feel aches and pains stop or the body will kill you. Okay? And then finally spiritual stress. And then we open for questions. Spiritual stress is an acknowledgement whether you're spiritual or religious or not, but that you're not just made of your body. There is a non physical side to you. Call that your consciousness, call it your spirit, if you're religious, call it your purpose, if you're driven, okay? Whatever that non physical side of you is, it's communicating to you through your intuition, okay? It gets you the things that your mind doesn't sense, doesn't comprehend, that your emotions might not sense, doesn't that your body is not even living within. And when you're disconnecting from that non physical side of you, it gets very stressed. And when it gets very stressed, it stresses you in terms of really making you feel empty. Emptiness is the sign of spiritual Stress. I'm not sure where the gentleman that spoke about his family becoming wealthier and feeling more unhappy. Yeah, that part of that is that this connection. I mean, there could be many other reasons, but it's very common that our purpose in life is not to become rich. Becoming rich is the method to realize our purpose in life. And so accordingly, you start to get very, very stressed and sometimes unhappy because as a result of that disconnection between you and the real you, if you want the non spiritual, the non physical side of you, you. I can speak about this for a very long time, but I think we have enough. 3, 4, 3, 4. That's 6, 14, 10, 14. So, yeah, we spoke quite a lot. So maybe. Questions? Yes.

Thank you. Thank you for all your information. About a week and a half ago, my home was hit with a couple of hurricanes and I lost everything. My. The memento is that you can never get back. My reaction was I was in a daze. I would stand in front of. I couldn't find my clothes to put on, even though they were right in front of me. I couldn't find my shoes. I had trouble walking on the sidewalk. I might fall out. I kept trying to fall off of it. I just wasn't really functioning. But yet I could call power companies and I could do all those things. Since then, things have gotten a lot better. But the days is still sort of there. I never was to the point where I just wanted to sob. I just don't know how to get rid of the days. By sobbing, by subbing? By sobbing.

Oh, no. First of all, I know how you feel. I'm really sorry that you went through this. Loss comes in so many different ways. Loss is not just the loss of a loved one. It's the loss of something I'm attached to and. And trust with. Life is lost when life, so unexpectedly, out of the blue, shows up and takes something away. I think the reason why the loss of a loved one is so painful is because of its finality. It's because we haven't succeeded in bringing anyone back yet. So you suddenly go like, that's it. So I can't solve that problem. I cannot bring them back. I will have to say though, if I may, you have not lost everything.

No, I have my health and my family's health. So no one was hurt, which I am so grateful and thankful for. And I know that they're just things, but they were my child's baby pictures and the. Everything that he ever made for me. And.

Yeah, so. So this is gonna. This Is gonna hurt for a very long time, may even hurt forever. Okay? And that's okay, by the way. That's absolutely okay. The. The. The. The thing that really is. Is very unusual about us is that. Is that we can. We can choose to focus on the pain of it, what was lost, but not the joy of it, what was given. So the fact that your child made those pictures for you is what you're celebrating with that picture. Okay? So I'll give you my own personal example. I lost my son when he was 21, okay? And Ali. Ali was everything. I mean, he was to me, everything. And my. I have the ability to observe how my brain treats me. And every morning for months on end, I would wake up and my brain would say, ali died. Okay? Ali died is true. Can't argue that with my brain. Ali is gone. It's fine. It's not coming back. No more hugs, ever, by the way, because we're not going to meet in our physical form ever again. But think about that a few months in. And by the way, it's absolutely the best thing you can do to grief. Okay? Absolutely. Go ahead and grief whatever you lose. Because emotions, if not expressed, will be bottled in, and they will either eat us from inside or explode eventually. Okay? But think about this. A few months in, when my brain. I woke up and my brain said, ali died. I said, yes, brain, but Ali also lived. Ali also lived. Okay? Ali lived. Ali lived. Is the same fabric of the thought. It's the same canvas, but it's a very different feeling because Ali lived is all the jokes we joked, all the hugs, all the conversations, all the video games we played together, the music we played together. It's the reminder that, by the way, we never planned for Ali. We never did. I was making love to my wife, and Ali showed up. Okay? And, oh, my God, what a freaking miracle that boy was. Okay? Completely didn't deserve it. Completely didn't ask for it. As a matter of fact, had she asked me if we were ready to have a baby, I would have said no. Okay? And yet when he leaves, we focus on he left. Okay? The reality is what life actually was doing is he came, okay? And if you focus your life not on the fact that those things were lost, but those things were given to start, I think you'd see the world very differently. Okay?

I'm O. Ken from Los Angeles. Thank you so much. So I really resonated with what you said. Lost five family members and friends in the last 60 days.

Oh, my God.

So my question is, since you classify that as trauma, and people go on to experience post traumatic growth. How do I go on to enjoy that post traumatic growth?

You don't, you don't, you don't, you don't ever make that your objective. So there is a logical view of life that doesn't help here, okay? And the logical view of life is that we come here, we meet here, and it ends here, right? I don't believe that to be true, okay? And I don't believe that to be true. Not because of my religious background, not because of my spiritual teaching, but because of my very deep understanding of quantum physics and theory of relativity, okay? Let's just simply understand that. All of science tells us that the world we live in is the Big Bang, followed by expansion, followed by Earth, followed by life, followed by me, okay? And my son Ali, followed by is a property of time, okay? But Einstein tells us that time doesn't exist. That all of space and all of time has already happened. That if you have a different vantage point of this space time continuum, you could slice it differently and see different slices of time. True, right? You could look at a slice of time where my mom died, my son died, and my son was born are at the same slice. Complex physics, but it's actually very true, right? That means that our perception of space and time is the perception of an observer, okay? That your physical avatar lives within the space time continuum, but the real you lives outside the space time continuum, okay? The real you and the real essence of every one of the five family members that I will not say died, but I will say left their physical forms behind, right? Quantum physics will tell us that nothing exists until it's observed by life. We all agree that. We know that experiments prove that, and yet physics will tell us, Cosmology will tell us. It was the Big Bang theory, right? A small mass that exploded and over 13.7 billion years we came here. Life is 3 million of those years. How can that be? Who observed all of that for it to exist? Okay? Who observed the mass? Who observed the dust? Who observed the earth forming, okay? Who observed all of this? Life always existed, okay? Life is not the opposite of death, okay? Life is the opposite of birth. Sorry, Death is the opposite of birth. Death is the opposite of birth. Life happens before, during and after, okay? So we come into this physical video game, if you want, through a portal called birth. We play the game, then we leave the game through a portal called death, and we're alive before it, we're alive during it, we're alive after it. Okay. And if you grieve the loss of the physical forms of those that you love, there's nothing you can do to take that away. I'm really sorry to tell you this. Ali left 11 years ago. It tears my heart apart. When Tony played the video at the beginning and I saw Ali, I teared up. It doesn't go away. It never goes away.

Yes.

Okay. What is certain, however, is that you will be where they are sooner or later. Okay. That you, too, will leave the avatar behind. Okay. And that you, too, when you leave the avatar behind, will look back at this and say, oh, my God, that was fun. Okay? Believe it or not, 99.3% of those who had near death experiences went to the other side and said, oh, my God, this is so cool. This is wonderful. Right? I had a near death experience myself. Okay? And I will tell you, I was so angry at the person that brought me back. Okay? I will tell you, hands down, they are not struggling. They're not. We are. We are, okay? We are struggling because of losing them. And if you ask me, there are ways where you can make them live. And those ways are to actually take their essence and make that essence continue. Take their stories, take the times you lived with them. It won't bring them back. Okay? So the other side of what I was talking about, Ali died and Ali lived. I call that a joyful thought. Okay? The other way to think about an event like this is a useful thought. A useful thought is, what can I do with this? That makes it slightly better. Losing something like your home or your loved ones is unfortunately, Jedi Master level of happiness. Okay? And the answer to that Jedi Master level is what I normally refer to as committed acceptance.

Okay?

And committed acceptance is when life hits you with something you cannot change. By the way, sooner or later, you're going to have to accept it.

Yes.

Sooner or later, you're going to sit down one day and say, ali is not coming back. Right? The Jedi masters of happiness will say, if I know that I will never be able to change it, I might as well accept it right now. Okay? But I don't want to be here. Last hug. I promise you. Ali was taller than me. He was white shouldered. He was so freaking wise, right? And I hugged him before he went into the surgery room. And I will tell you, hands down, that was the highlight of my life. Top point. Okay? Four hours later, we lose him. I'm here, right?

Yes.

There needs to be acceptance. And acceptance is, can't have him back. Can't bring my mom back. Done. But I don't want to stay here. Right. Okay. What I want is, I've accepted this, but I don't want it to be my baseline.

Right.

So after acceptance, you need to commit, very simple commitment to do one thing every day that makes today a little better than yesterday and tomorrow, you know, a little better than today and after tomorrow a little better than tomorrow. Tiny, like tiny thing. But do it every day. And most of those things, by the way, is to make their memory live, their essence, their beauty. Okay? To forgive everything that went wrong. Okay. To remember everything that went right. To talk about them lovingly. To sit. I know this sounds horrible when I say it, but please think about it. To sit in gratitude that they came. To sit in gratitude that they hugged. And I don't know what to tell you. There is no answer to what you're going through, but it is how the design of life is.

You know, what you said helps. And the. You know, putting my dad in the ground was the hardest thing I've ever had to do in my life.

I know.

Climb mountains. I've started companies, I've written books. You know, I've done. Went through a seven year divorce. You know, that was the hardest thing. And putting my dad in the ground, I didn't want to do it. And the only thing that got me through it was just finding the peace. I somehow found the peace in myself and I just was able to. Just to do it. So I was able to overcome that. And now maybe that's a path for me. And so I connect that with the gratitude that you said and the incremental happiness that you mentioned. Every day, something more.

A tiny bit. A tiny bit more, but also a tiny bit that makes him happy that you're doing what you're doing in life. I don't know what to tell you any. Any easier questions. Can I, Can I just. We'll take more questions, but can I just highlight one thing? Nobody is without pain. Look at the person next to you, they're in pain, okay? Which is a horrible thing to say from one side, but it also makes you know that you're not alone. Nobody's without pain. Okay? From one side, it makes you feel you're not alone. And from the other side, believe it or not, it makes you want to hug everyone. I mean it in every possible way. Next time. I married the love of my life a year ago, okay. And yeah, actually she said yes, exactly. Yesterday. So the thing is this, okay, through it, we went through some interesting times. And through the interesting times I wondered in my head if she doesn't like me that much anymore. Okay? And she wondered if I didn't like her that much anymore. Okay? But the truth is she was in pain, I was in pain. Do you understand? Okay. And once we spoke about it, like Robert was saying, once we spoke about it, once we sat down and we said, oh, this is not about you. I love you. This is not about me. She loves me. Okay? This is about what we're going through. Everything changes. Nobody comes to work in the morning to annoy everyone. Something going on, right? Yeah. Okay, one more. So we'll go one, you know. Yes.

Well, first of all, God bless you. Thank you so much. A couple of statements spoke deeply to my heart. I have two questions for you. Two things that I'm dealing with. Question number one. Attending all these many events and I believe in prayer. Pray every morning. I'm in absolutely amazing alignment. But I come from the country where my family is still in communist country. And when we talk, it becomes very heavy. Especially when I deal, try to deal with my brother. He's very strong, alpha man, seven feet. And his energy over the phone, sometimes it just turns me up. It's just so deep. I don't know how to deal with it. Puts me in very sad state. And even before I call him, I say the incantation, I say a prayer. I try to get myself in a positive state, create that aura around me. But still, I don't know how better to deal with. Every time he pick up the phone or if he calls me, I know it's gonna be an avalanche of negativity and it hurts. I don't like. This is one question. And second question. In the past 14 years, in the past 14 years, I had a dog. I know to somebody sounds funny, but it was a pitiable and the pits. They're huge, big boys. But he was the most loving and protective. He passed this year in May. I actually had to put him down. It was the most difficult thing I had to deal with. It's the love and connection we shared was so deep that at this point, I think I'm searching for. I don't know where it is. So two things.

Didn't we say easy questions? So I wrote. I told you. I wrote about love. I wrote. I didn't tell you. I told you. I wrote about the empowerment of the feminine. I also wrote about love just for the fun of it. And I actually don't believe love is of this world. Love. Love is not a physical thing. So if anyone doesn't understand how you could love a dog or a dog could love you back. I don't think they really understand love, right? Love is not between the physical beings love. It's between the souls manifested in the physical. So it's two souls longing for each other, but we're not. If you. I don't know how to explain this without going into a bit of spirituality, but please, if you understand the soul journey, you're not supposed to be with one soul in this life. You're supposed to have a journey that goes through multiple souls to complete you, to enrich you, to show you, to reflect for you. Okay? Losing. So I, you know, I write about, when I wrote about this in terms of love and romance, I, you know, I usually when someone comes to me crying and saying, I broke up, I say, congratulations. It's amazing, right? Because in, in a very interesting way, that means it wasn't working. And more interestingly, it means your journey now begins right now. Moving to love again doesn't mean you stop loving before. It just means that this incredible human need of our souls connecting should not be blocked because it connected before.

You know the interesting thing, I understand this intellectually, but emotionally a part of me is just go, go to the missing.

Go to the third pet shop on the left from your home. I promise you, I promise you there will be someone waiting for you there. Third on the left. Okay? Now, about your brother, seven foot. Is he ever going to listen to this? Because I can't answer if he does.

No, he doesn't.

I get very scared of 7ft people. Look, everyone is on their own journey, okay? Family is one of the biggest tests in life because we think that because they're family, they're supposed to be like us. Of course they're not. Right? As a matter of fact, I think in the design of the video game, family was there as an obstacle. Okay? Right. It's like you have to overcome that thing called family. Now the thing, however, is you remind me of a very dear friend of mine who texted me, she's tiny, okay? Texted me one day and said I was backing up with my car and there was a seven foot something person behind me, okay? And so I almost hit him, but I stopped. She lives in Lithuania, okay? And so I came out of the car to apologize to him and he looked down at me and shouted in anger for almost five minutes, okay? And I said, oh my God. And what did you do? And she said, and then he took a breath and I hugged him, okay? And I said, please don't shout, okay? And he cried, okay? And that story. I wish I can show you her picture. She's literally this tall, okay? And he's seven feet. And she probably hugged his thigh or something, right? But she basically completely. Again, when someone is shouting, they are in pain, okay? And if you can see through that, you can't fix it. Don't ever make it your responsibility, okay? But just within your heart, have the compassion that he's feeling some kind of pain.

How can I over. Not overcome what kind of statements, questions? What can I do in those moments? Because when he starts.

You want my honest advice?

Please.

Okay. I. I follow a very interesting technique I call cliches, okay? And cliches are when I have a difficult relationship with someone, I remember 10 good moments we had together, okay? And I constantly bring them up in different linguistic skills that basically all go back to I like you, I love you, I miss you, I. I had a wonderful time with you. Love breaks everyone, okay? Sooner or later he's going to look at himself and go like, why am I doing this? Okay. By the way, when he's shouting at you, he's not shouting at you. He's shouting at himself, at his life, at his world. Okay, we have. Thank you. We have. We have zero minutes. I don't know when I am supposed to go off the. Of the stage, but there was another mic. Yes. Kick me off the stage when it's time. Okay.

One more question.

Yes.

Thank you. Thank you. Hi, Mo. Thank you for doing what you're doing. Appreciate it. My question is about loss that is not finite. I had to mourn my relationship with my father and my sister. It made me a better version of myself. We're not going to get into the details, but there's guilt associated to that. And I. I'm not exactly sure what my question is, but it's around there.

Guilt is the. Is. Can I say that with love? Please don't get me wrong. Guilt is the most stupid emotion we have.

That makes me feel better, actually.

Yeah. Let me. Let me explain why I say this, because had you, if I gave you the same you that you wear when you did certain things with the same information you had then, with the same circumstances you were put in, then you would behave exactly the same way. Okay? It's a very interesting way when you look at it algorithmically, that you feel guilt now because you're different now, okay? But what you did then, you can't be blamed for at all. As a matter of fact, with the resources you had then, with the knowledge you had then, with the situation you've been put in then that was the absolute rational thing to do, right? So as a matter of fact, when I feel guilt, I celebrate my progress, okay? I suddenly realize I'm interesting. That means I am a more aware person now. That means I am a better person now. That means at least I recognize. I'm able to tell myself. Because a lot of people don't have that, okay? I'm able to tell myself that I did something wrong in the past. Now, if you feel the guilt and you can correct it, correct it, okay? For them. If you cannot, correct it for you, for your heart. And you correct it for your heart by saying to yourself over and over, I wish I could do different, but I did the best I can, okay? What can I do now to make everything better? Either for me, for them, for those that they love, or for their memory, for whatever. Okay? But don't ever get. That's. I think that's a general statement when you feel guilty. What. What does that mean? Like, I didn't know better then.

Is loving them from afar. That's what I've been telling.

Are they. Are they still with you?

Yes, they are.

So this is what.

It's not a finite loss.

Yeah.

Is loving them from afar, in my mind, is better for everyone. We're all happier for. For it.

Yes. If that's what you can do right now.

Right now.

But do it good. Like, really love them. Like, totally forgive them. Like, honestly, genuinely in your heart. Okay? Find what you like about them and make that the center of your relationship with them. And if you do that enough, I think eventually you'll send them a text message. Okay?

Thank you.

Thank you.

Let's give it up for Mo, everybody. No, let him hear you.

It's Mo.

Sa.