For a long time in his life, the Egyptian-born tech whizz Mo Gawdat struggled to feel happy, despite materially, professionally and personally having everything to be delirious about. Currently Chief AI Officer at the marketing and communication company Flight Story, he was Chief Business Officer at Google X (known as the “moonshot” factory, where his team worked on self-driving cars and other innovations). 

But you may know Mo Gawdat as the mental health and happiness guru with 136,000 followers on Instagram, an international bestselling author of three books, the Slo Mo podcast host and founder of non-profit organisation, One Billion Happy. His latest book, Unstressable, was published in September. 

Rewind a couple of decades, and he was in the depths of depression. “I was working in Dubai as a stock trader and tech executive, and I was a nervous wreck,” says Gawdat, now 56. “I was stressed like crazy about life, endlessly going from goal post to goal post, demanding with my colleagues, snappy with my family, clinically depressed for sure.” 

Gawdat began investigating his problems the only way he knew how – by collecting data. “I started by documenting every incident where I’d been happy,” he says. “I called it my happy list.” 

Helped along by his son, Ali, and after hours of mapping and plotting, of reading, science and discovery, he formulated an “equation for happiness”. Gawdat’s central tenet of his “happiness formula” is this: once our basic needs are met, happiness is not created by external events or material possessions, but by the meanings we give them and, most importantly, our expectations. 

Then tragedy hit. In 2014, 21-year-old Ali died during a routine operationon his appendix because of a series of medical errors. The operation, which should have taken 45 minutes, lasted 11 hours. Gawdat and his wife were called in to say their goodbyes. “It was impossible to comprehend that I was losing my son at his prime to an unpredictable, unexpected, preventable medical error, that he had been healthy one minute and soon he would be gone. It just blows your mind.

“You’re in a state of shock, you can’t make sense of things. I could have – and I very much wanted to – put my head down and cry for the loss of Ali for the rest of my life. If you’d hugged him once, you would understand why.  But the thing is, all the grief in the world wouldn’t have changed a thing. It wouldn’t have brought him back.” 

Gawdat’s research on happiness then took on a new and more personal urgency. Just 17 days after Ali’s death, he began writing his first book, Solve For Happy, published in 2017. “I wrote endlessly,” he says. “In my blurry mind, I had a goal, a mission, a gift. I wanted Ali to change lives, to reach everyone everywhere.” The book was an instant bestseller. Gawdat has since made it his mission to spread his happiness formula. 

As children, our default state is happy, Gawdat believes. But once we start to compare and expect, then that happiness becomes more fragile. Happiness then requires us to accept that life may throw anything at us. Working on our thoughts, our responses and expectations is the key. “There is an expectation that life will give us what we want and ‘what we deserve’ but anyone who is grounded in reality will realise that is rarely the case,” he says. “It comes in jolts of alignment, then life will continue to test us and push us  forward.” 

Though he still works 14 hours a day, to Gawdat, it doesn’t feel like work. He no longer owns a multi-million-pound property or a fleet of vintage cars. Instead he rents wherever he happens to be – London, Canada, Dubai – ploughing all his funds into his happiness mission. His marriage ended after Ali’s death, but Gawdat remains close to his ex-wife and extremely close to their daughter, Aya, an artist. “I love every minute of my life,” he says. “It starts with understanding that happiness is a choice. You can actually achieve it and that there is a method to make it happen.” 

Gawdat’s top tips for lasting happiness 

Reframe your thoughts, even when terrible things happen

“Your brain doesn’t always tell you the truth, it tells you what it thinks is the truth,” says Gawdat. “My brother is a surgeon and I remember calling him [after Ali died] and telling him what happened, asking ‘Is this even possible?’ He said, ‘Yes. It happens.’ When my brain started to tell me that this surgeon had murdered my son – I had to force myself to debate that. What happened was that the surgeon was attempting to cure or heal my son. He wanted to end Ali’s pain or suffering and he made a mistake. That’s the accurate statement.”

Learn from children 

“My late son Ali was my mentor and my confidante, gifted with an innate understanding of happiness. He didn’t need ‘stuff’ and wasn’t interested in the next big thing. When he was four or five, we bought him a Casio G-Shock and he loved that watch. Then, years later, his mum got him a new and better one for his birthday. He made her return it. His response was, ‘Mine is fine. Why would I want another?’ When Ali became a teenager, I’d say, ‘Take the Ferrari! Take the Rolls!’ He didn’t want to. I’d tell my friends, ‘When I grow older, I want to be like Ali!’”

Only have joyful or useful thoughts 

“I have a simple deal with my brain – my thoughts should be joyful or they should be useful,” says Gawdat. “Of course, other thoughts pop up all the time, such as ‘You should have driven Ali to another hospital’. That’s not joyful and it’s not useful. There’s nothing I can do about it. When my brain wakes me up every morning saying ‘Ali died’, that isn’t useful, it isn’t joyful. I answer, yes, but Ali also lived. He gave me 21 incredible years of pure joy, wisdom and love. Let’s talk about all the games we played together, let’s talk about the jokes, let’s talk about the learning and the love.” 

Understand life only wants to be lived 

“Don’t personalise it or believe life is out to get you,” says Gawdat. “Don’t feel that ‘life’s not fair’ or ‘that shouldn’t have happened’. We feel unhappy when life is not how we want it to be or how we think it should be – it’s our expectations that make us unhappy. Life is just giving us experiences and some will be painful. Harsh, overpowering events are a fact of life. That pain can help us change direction or teach us something new.” 

Write your happy list 

“Identify the habits and people that make you happy and spend more time with them. Then pick out the ones that make you unhappy and remove them from your life,” says Gawdat. “I choose not to watch the news as it’s constant training for my brain that the world sucks. It doesn’t show the incredible acts of kindness and courage, joy and hope that are also happening every moment.”

Dealing with grief, there are only two roads to choose from

“One is to curse the world, get angry and let it consume you,” says Gawdat. “The other is to accept it and commit to making your life better. Acknowledge the fact that there is pain left behind and a feeling of missing them – and that it’s OK to feel that way. Embrace the emotion but separate your actions – your actions should be virtuous. Ask yourself, what is the best expression of love for that person?”

Mo Gawdat’s BBC Maestro course on Happiness can be purchased at bbcmaestro.com 

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