Gawdat - Solve for happy: engineer your path to joy

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Copyright 2017 by Mo Gawdat

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address North Star Way Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First North Star Way hardcover edition March 2017

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Interior design by Renato Stanisic

Jacket Image by 123Rf

Author Photograph by Khaled Gawdat

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN 978-1-5011-5755-4

ISBN 978-1-5011-5759-2 (ebook)

The gravity of the battle means nothing to those at peace.

For Ali

I am sure youre happy wherever you are now

S eventeen days after the death of my wonderful son, Ali, I began to write and couldnt stop. My topic was happinessan unlikely subject given the circumstances.

Ali truly was an angel. He made everything he touched better and everyone he met happier. He was always peaceful, always happy. You couldnt miss his energy or how he affectionately cared for every being that ever crossed his path. When he left us, there was every reason to be unhappyeven miserable. So how did his departure lead me to write what youre about to read? Well, thats a story that started around the date of his birthperhaps even earlier.

Since the day I started working, I have enjoyed a great deal of success, wealth, and recognition. Yet through it all, I was constantly unhappy. Early in my career with tech giants like IBM and Microsoft I gained an abundance of intellectual satisfaction, plenty of ego gratification, and, yes, I made a bit of money. But I found that the more fortune blessed me, the less happy I became.

This wasnt just because life had become complicatedyou know, like that rap song from the 90s, Mo Money mo Problems. The issue was that, despite the rewards both financial and intellectual, I was not able to find any joy in my life. Even my greatest blessing, my family, didnt give me the joy they might have because I didnt know how to receive it.

The irony was that as a younger man, despite the struggle to find my path in life and often just trying to make ends meet, Id always been very happy. But by 1995, when my wife and I and our two children packed up and moved to Dubai, things had changed. Nothing against Dubai, mind you. Its a remarkable city whose generous citizens, the Emiratis, truly made us feel at home. Our arrival coincided with the breakout point of Dubais explosive growth, which offered astounding career opportunities and millions of ways to make yourself happy, or at least try.

But Dubai can also feel surreal. Against a gleaming landscape of hot sand and turquoise water, the skyline is crowded with futuristic office buildings and residential towers where multimillion-dollar apartments are snapped up by a steady stream of global buyers. In the streets, Porsches and Ferraris jockey for parking spaces with Lamborghinis and Bentleys. The extravagance of the concentrated wealth dazzles youbut at the same time it tempts you to question whether, compared to all this, youve actually achieved much of anything.

By the time we arrived in the Emirates, Id already fallen into the habit of comparing myself to my superrich friends and always coming up short. But those feelings of one-downs-man-ship didnt send me to the shrink or to the ashram. Instead it made me strive harder. I simply did what Id always done as a geek whod read obsessively since childhood: I bought a pile of books. I studied technical analyses of stock trends down to the basic equations that plotted every chart. And by learning them I could predict short-term fluctuations in the market like a pro. I would come home after finishing my day job at just about the time the NASDAQ opened in the United States and apply my math skills to making serious money as a day trader (or more accurately in my case, a night trader).

And yetand I expect Im not the first person youve heard tell this talethe mo money I made, the more miserable I became. Which led me to simply work harder and buy more toys on the misguided assumption that, sooner or later, all this effort was going to pay off and Id find the pot of goldhappinessthought to lie at the end of the high-achievement rainbow. Id become a hamster on what psychologists call the hedonic treadmill. The more you get, the more you want. The more you strive, the more reasons you discover for striving.

One evening I went online and with two clicks bought two vintage Rolls-Royces. Why? Because I could. And because I was desperately trying to fill the hole in my soul. You wont be surprised to hear that when those beautiful classics of English automotive styling arrived at the curb, they didnt lift my mood one bit.

Looking back at this phase in my life, I wasnt much fun to be around. My work was focused on expanding the business of Microsoft throughout Africa and the Middle East, which, as you might imagine, had me spending more time in airplanes than not. In my constant quest for more Id become pushy and unpleasant even at home, and I knew it. I spent too little time appreciating the remarkable woman Id married, too little time with my wonderful son and daughter, and never paused to enjoy each day as it unfolded.

Instead I spent most of my waking hours being driven, nervous, and critical, demanding achievement and performance even from my kids. I was manically trying to make the world conform to the way I thought it ought to be. By 2001 the relentless pace and the emptiness had led me into a very dark place.

At that point I knew I couldnt go on ignoring the problem. This pushy, unhappy person staring back at me in the mirror wasnt really me. I missed the happy, optimistic young man Id always been, and I was tired of trudging along in this tired, miserable, aggressive-looking guys shoes. I decided to take on my unhappiness as a challenge: I would apply my geeks approach to self-study, along with my engineers analytical mind, to digging my way out.