Ever wondered why happiness can often feel like an elusive puzzle? Join Denise Russo and Sam Powell, as they unpack the teachings from "Solve for Happy" by Mo Gawdat, and take you through a journey that redefines your understanding of contentment. Amidst life's challenges and the inevitability of events such as death, we discover together how shifting our mindset and aligning our expectations with reality can lead to a transformative approach towards happiness.
In this heartfelt conversation, we bring the beauty of living in the moment to light with wisdom from "The How of Happiness." Sharing personal stories and insights, Denise and Sam reveal how being present in everyday interactions can unearth joy that we often overlook, and how this simple shift in awareness can enhance our happiness. They delve into the power of connection and how it elevates our consciousness, drawing upon John Maxwell's ideas on effective communication and the profound difference between simply 'being' and 'doing'.
As they wrap up this episode, Denise and Sam encourage you to join in removing the clutter from our lives - be that physical, mental, or emotional - to make space for growth and the new. They leave you with an invitation to reflect on your experiences with presence and awareness, and to look forward to the next discussion on minimizing distractions and deepening your appreciation for the time we have.
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.
Ever wondered why happiness can often feel like an elusive puzzle? Join Denise Russo and Sam Powell, as they unpack the teachings from "Solve for Happy" by Mo Gawdat, and take you through a journey that redefines your understanding of contentment. Amidst life's challenges and the inevitability of events such as death, we discover together how shifting our mindset and aligning our expectations with reality can lead to a transformative approach towards happiness.
In this heartfelt conversation, we bring the beauty of living in the moment to light with wisdom from "The How of Happiness." Sharing personal stories and insights, Denise and Sam reveal how being present in everyday interactions can unearth joy that we often overlook, and how this simple shift in awareness can enhance our happiness. They delve into the power of connection and how it elevates our consciousness, drawing upon John Maxwell's ideas on effective communication and the profound difference between simply 'being' and 'doing'.
As they wrap up this episode, Denise and Sam encourage you to join in removing the clutter from our lives - be that physical, mental, or emotional - to make space for growth and the new. They leave you with an invitation to reflect on your experiences with presence and awareness, and to look forward to the next discussion on minimizing distractions and deepening your appreciation for the time we have.
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 Russo and Samantha Powell.
Speaker 2:
Hi everybody, welcome back. It's another episode of what's on your Bookshelf. This is a life and leadership podcast where we are exploring the pages of the books that we've taken off of our shelves, that we are living out loud. My name is Denise Russo. I'm here today with my co-host, sam Powell. We're exploring the book called Solve for Happy by Mo Gaudet. We're actually a little bit more than halfway through this book. Last time we were together, we were talking about some different blind spots that we experience in our life, but we ended by talking about truths and that most of the time, the only thing wrong with our lives is the way we think about them. And then, if we can change our thinking, we can change our beliefs, which change our actions, which change our results, which ultimately bring us the ultimate truth and the solution to happiness. Sam, it's always a pleasure to be with you. Glad that you're here again with me today. Yeah, it's always a pleasure to be with you. Glad that you're here again with me today.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, always happy to be here. These are always so much fun for me. And this is interesting, right? He starts this section off by saying five ultimate truths are all you need to know to realize that life always behaves as expected, which is interesting, right? And you think back to this happiness equation. It's expectations meeting reality, right. As long as your expectations are greater than your, you know what's actually happening, then you're happy, right. That keeps you. It's when life doesn't meet the expectations that we have.
Speaker 1:
And so these are the what he calls his five ultimate truths, and he has caveat right that this is this is what he thinks are the ultimate truths. And he does caveat right that this is what he thinks are the ultimate truths, and you may or may not agree with him, but he's just. What he's requesting is that you're open to thinking about, you know, thinking about these ideas, right, because it's a lofty thing to say that there are ultimate truths, but for him, this is what he's found to be true, and so we're going to start with the first one, which is the ultimate truth of now, which is chapter 10, right here, right now.
Speaker 2:
This is a really interesting chapter, because he writes this chapter from the perspective of where he was in that moment, and I think you made a really interesting point that these were his truths. Now, even as the author of the book, the owner of this book, these being his truths, it's possible that these things that he writes about in this moment could change as his circumstances change, as his life changes, as his life progresses. But he wrote this from a place of things that he wanted to set into his mind about some things that he believed were true, and so a couple of things that he pointed out that I highlighted were that loss, lack, pain and love, growth and inspiration those are all part of life that could be on one spectrum all the way to the other side of the spectrum. And then he also said something that really hit me, I think, the most, which it shouldn't have hit me that much, because we knew what the book was about, we knew who he was writing it about, but something that I not only highlighted, but I circled, was in this chapter he says death is very real and it should be expected.
Speaker 2:
And so what got me there, sam? Was me thinking about the fact that we don't sit around. I don't think most people sit around thinking that, well, any minute now my hourglass is going to run out, my carton is expiring, you don't know. You don't know when it's going to happen. But the reality is I think I heard this saying, and I'll probably mess it up when it's going to happen. But the reality is I think I heard this saying, and I'll probably mess it up, but something about there's only two things to be true that you will be born and you will leave the earth at some point. Everybody does.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, yeah. And when you think about right this in the context of this happiness equation, it's you know you might not like the reality, right, like nobody likes to think about the fact that we are all going to die. We are all going to experience a lot of death through the course of our life and the longer you live, the more death you will experience. But that's to be expected. And so if you expect those things to happen, they're not the blow that they are right when you know when they inevitably do. Right, you know, when I lost my son, I know that kids can die, I know that parents can outlive their children, right, those were things I already knew to be true and so it probably wasn't the blow that it would be to somebody who doesn't live in that reality. That right, you right, you know kids, parents are supposed to, kids are supposed to outlive their parents, right. But knowing that the reality is that's not always the case and there's a lot, a lot, a lot of times where it's not.
Speaker 1:
I think it changed. You're right, it changes the expectations of life, right, if you know that death is going to happen, if you know that certain things are going to occur, it just changes your expectation of you know, of heading I don't know, heading into those events and experiencing those events and it lets you I don't know approach it very differently and move past. Right, like one of they always say, one of the stages of grief is acceptance. Like, right, if you can, can pre accept some things as expected events or potentially expected events, then you don't spend a lot of time in that part of processing Right, you don't spend as much time. And then it helps you move in, you know, move back to recovery, move into thriving, you know, get into those spaces. That you know just help you, help you move forward.
Speaker 2:
You have such a healthy way of sharing that every time you share the story about your son and I'm curious if you're open to sharing when you saw this part in the chapter where he talks about how the truth is just a single dot on a long line of infinite possibilities. How do you get to the point, Sam, of moving away from suffering and moving toward thriving, knowing that there's only one of infinite concepts that really is the truth?
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I thought this was an interesting thing, right, and his visual is a whole bunch of dots on a line and like a point to like. One is the is the truth. And I don't know, I and I still think I'm struggling with this concept. Like I get what he's saying here, but I think I'm still, I don't know. I guess I still live in this place where, like, truth is a hard thing to pinpoint down into a truth. Right, there is only one truth, because I just think that we are all skewed through the lens that we, the lenses we use, right, we talked about all the blind spots, we talked about all of those things. So I think that I struggle with the concept of one truth, but I think it's like, I don't know, you can't really get down to it. But then when I think about that in the context of just accepting reality for what it is, then that makes sense. So I think I struggle a little bit with this concept that he's got, just in truth, I'm still working through it in my own mind.
Speaker 1:
But when I think about it in the context of accepting reality, right, accepting that, you know, in all the infinite spaces of things that could be happening, reality is really only one, is only you know is is something, and that something can be very complex and it can be a lot of things happening, but you know it is what it is.
Speaker 1:
And I think he's said in here a few times, right that, like you know, the fact is you know Ali is, is gone, he is dead, he is deceased and trying to reconcile anything other than that living in any other space where like he should be here, it should. You know you live in the spaces of like it should and that skews your reality of you know where you should be. And so when I think about it in that concept, it's really accepting the facts, accepting this is the situation that I'm in, this is the situation that is existing. And then what do you just do from there, right, and how do you work with that and incorporate all of that into your space? So that's kind of how I think about this, but again, I still think, I'm still thinking through this section quite a bit.
Speaker 2:
I'm going to think about it through the lens of business, because you and I, as people leaders, would often share with our teams that you can only control the controllables. Everything else is outside of that, and so one of the things that Mo says is that when nothing is certain and nothing ever is you still can take the choice to be happy. And that leads us into the beginning of this chapter 10, where he says that all of life is here and now. So why do most of us live in the there and the then instead?
Speaker 1:
Right, right, exactly. And you know he's calling that, you know this is what is one of his things he's calling. The ultimate truth is that now is now, is it right? Being fully aware of the present moment considerably increases your chances at being happy.
Speaker 1:
And I thought there was a lot about this chapter and actually all of these chapters in these five ultimate truths that just pull back to the book. We just read, right, the how of happiness, because this was a lot of, like, you know, living in the now. That was a lot of what she talked about, right, drawing that awareness, getting into, you know, the space of gratitude for where we are and all that kind of good stuff that this was this hearkened back to that. So much for me of, yeah, if you want to experience happiness, it's sit in now. Sit in what's happening, right, like, observe what's going on around you, be grateful for what's going on around you, just be aware of what's going on around you, and that can get you out of future worry and anxiety. And, you know, thinking about the past and all of that sort of stuff and living in this, in this, now.
Speaker 1:
And I, like he talks about awareness, right, awareness being the sense of, you know, perception of a situation, it's our ability to grasp the world at any given moment. But he's got like a layer, like a I don't know like a scale of awareness that he has. It's for anybody who has the book. It's on page 227. He has lots of great like visuals and pictures in this book which I just appreciate. It just makes me smile as I read through it. But he talks about, you know, coming into the state of now, coming into the state of awareness. There's different sort of levels. It's like rejection, reception, perception, awareness and then connection being the top level. And I, what did you think of that when you read that part of it? Because I've never seen awareness broken down like this. But I loved it.
Speaker 2:
I really loved it as well, and so I think a couple things came to my mind when I was reading this. Have you ever talked to somebody or talked with somebody and you could be looking right at them, right in their face, and they're talking, and then you think I don't know what at all what that person just said, maybe because you were living in the then and the there, yep.
Speaker 1:
And I always feel so guilty and so bad about it. I'm like, oh no, I just zoned out.
Speaker 2:
This happened to me the other day and I literally said to the person I'm so sorry, but I promise you I really wanted to be listening to you but I just wasn't and they had to repeat it Now. What a waste of space and time, because now that person can never get that time back, nor can I, and so this talks about really being very present. In fact, mo talked about, right before this diagram in the book, a study that was done by another company, and you have to get the book because there's some free resources in the book that lead you to the study. But what he found with interviewing thousands and thousands of people is that they were noticeably happier when they were fully present. And so, to answer your question about where the scale was in, the awareness scale is it's about your perception and awareness when you're fully immersed in a moment and fully aware of what is happening. And so I wrote in the margin that what happened for me which is funny now that I'm reading it, because I read this book a while ago wrote a story in it. Now I'm having this conversation with you, rereading my own story and having to remember what the story was about, and so I had an example here of.
Speaker 2:
I was on an airplane maybe a couple of months ago and I was watching this show called what the Health? And it was basically just about. It was such a great documentary. What the hell Such a great documentary? Well, here's the funny thing when I was scrolling through the channels on the airplane because it was a long ride I was trying to figure out what I wanted to watch, and when I saw it I thought, oh wow, this looks really interesting. Let me watch this show. Had no awareness in my mind that I had already watched this documentary before. So I started watching the documentary and I started to think to myself I think I've seen this man.
Speaker 1:
this is familiar. I think I've learned this before.
Speaker 2:
So it wasn't until I awakened my consciousness halfway through the movie that I realized, yeah, I did see it before. Halfway through the movie that I realized, yeah, I did see it before. But why did my consciousness not have a connection, not have an awareness, not have some sort of acceptance of what I saw? To do something about it? Because the movie basically goes through really some disgusting storylines around why you should never eat meat. And the first time I watched the movie, this is what jarred my memory. The first time I watched the movie, this is what jarred my memory. The first time I watched the movie, I was so grossed out I became a short-term vegetarian, so somewhere along the line I craved a hamburger again, I guess. But in any case, it awakened my consciousness.
Speaker 2:
And so I think that for me, when I looked at this diagram and he talks about if you're not plugged into what's going on around you and in you and through you and out of you, you're going to lose your sense of awareness and you're going to. You can't just turn your awareness on and off. He says awareness isn't an on and off switch, it's a dimmer switch. When you choose to crank it up, you become more aware. And so when I saw this film the second time, it became much more conscious to me. It's almost the same with our podcast, isn't it? We read the book, then we talk about the book, and then you and I listen to the episode of us talking about the episode, and then we write a post about what we talked about.
Speaker 1:
Right, exactly, yeah, and it's. It's bringing that consciousness no-transcript around me, like blocking it out, pretending it it's not happening to where. Then I'm like, okay, I'm open to receiving what's going on around me, but then I'm open to perceiving it like really like, okay, like I heard the noise and then I paid attention to it. Right, like, and again I think about this dimmer switch turning up and then it goes into awareness, like, okay, I heard, like I'm open to accepting that things are happening. Then I like let the sound come in and then I turn my attention to it and then I really notice it. And then, like, I love that this top level is connection. Right, like, when think about I never have thought about awareness and connection together before, but when I think about when am I most present? Right, it's those conversations where, like me and the person are so engaged with each other. Right, we're really paying attention, we're really connecting.
Speaker 1:
You know, I think I like it made me think of a bunch of John Maxwell's books, right, he's got Everybody Communicates, few Connect, right. Right, and talking about how the goal of communicating with people is to really connect. But when I think about the goal of awareness of my life, of being present in the now is also about connecting, like, yeah, I sat with that for a minute. I was like, wow, that is, that's absolutely it. That is when I feel like I'm really living in the present right. I'm fully experiencing the joy of sitting down with my husband, sitting down with my son, sitting down with my friends and, like you know, talking to them or you know, really experiencing this, this moment of connection with them and being so aware of you know, really everything that's going on in and around and between us.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, what I really loved about what you're talking about and how he describes it here is a cool exercise. Again, friends, if you don't have this book, get the book. It's more than just a book. There's such so many good things in it, but there's ways that you can really elevate your awareness, as we're talking about. So one of the exercises that he says really got me because he says don't look at the bottom of the page, but do this exercise.
Speaker 2:
I'm not going to give you the secrets to the page, but I am going to tell you the exercise and see what you end up doing with it. So the exercise is that you just take a moment, and or maybe more than one moment, and think about what are some of the things you can do to become more fully aware. So I thought about that question what are some things that I could do to become fully aware? And I wrote them down. I wrote them down in the book. I'm not telling you the rest of this chapter to find out what the answer is. Did you do that, sam, like when you read this part of the book before it got into connection?
Speaker 1:
did you write down things that you thought these are things I could do to become more aware of came around to what he, what he gives us like in a, in an inadvertent way of like I was just like I don't know, I don't know what I could do. But what's so interesting, right, is he goes on in this chapter and definitely read the book, so good. Um, he goes on in this chapter to really differentiate this idea and this concept of the difference between doing and being right. And we live in this constant world of doing. We are always doing, especially if you live in the western culture, which I think most of our audience does or works for the western culture of we are constantly trying to achieve, we are constantly trying to do, we are constantly trying to get things done. When I think about my life, like if I zoom out on a week of my life, it is do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, like right, moving from one thing to the next, to the next, to the next. But what he talks about is if you're really trying to get into this level of like connection with the world around you, with the world inside of you, with the broader you know, broader sense of being. It's moving into this state of just existing, of just being present, of really sitting in all of that, and so that's what he really encourages us to do in this chapter is to to not do, to not do, to take time to just be right. He talks about meditation and you know, like the awareness that you know we can drive from you know some meditations and things like that, but really becoming like a fanatic of being and being aware, right, of just taking time. And he says, you know, like, schedule it in and it reminded me of of um, uh, is it um? She was a speaker at the last uh conference I went to. Is it julian fund? Yes, but yes, she, um.
Speaker 1:
She talks about white space and inserting white space into your day, which, like, if you think about, like having a big calendar on your desk of, like your schedule that you're writing out, it's, you're looking to insert white space, space where you're just being just existing right, where you can take that moment to realize I have to go to the bathroom, I need a drink, I need to eat, I'm hungry or, oh, I'm feeling kind of weird and I need to work through that, and just making sure that you purposefully insert space in your day and your life and your week to just be so that you can have that awareness connection to your life and to the world around you yeah, yeah, you don't have to always be doing to be being, and I wish we, I wish that our episode was fully on video because if you could see well, I know my camera's a little bit dark I have almost the entire chapter highlighted so I'm trying to pick out what are the things I liked best, and I'm thinking I liked all of it the best, and I have so many notes on here.
Speaker 2:
But one of the things that I put here because I am a creature of doing, that is just what I. What I do is I do. I do doing more than being. And so I wrote on the page that you cannot fill a glass that's already full. And when you think about that white space, I'm the person that's always looking at oh, I gotta fill that, I gotta fill that, I gotta fill that, instead of thinking wouldn't it be better if it wasn't filled? And what would my life be like if it wasn't filled with the doingness. And so you and I have talked about oh my, how many episodes on Marie Kondo's life-changing magic of tidying up, which I so want to do on one of our series. Maybe next year, maybe next year, our series will be something around tidying up our minds and our houses.
Speaker 1:
We'll see I like that.
Speaker 2:
So but he says in here, by removing clutter Now, this could be clutter in your home, or it could be clutter in your mind, or clutter in your heart, clutter in your relationships, clutter in your inbox, clutter whatever it is to you.
Speaker 2:
By removing clutter, we become present, we pay attention, we start to receive. You have to throw away those things that are cluttering your space to open up. I think I said this in another episode where I was, I remember being in church one week and our pastor was talking about how, if we clench so tightly to the things that are important to us, that means that we only have the space that's within our hands to hold on to the things we're clenching. But when you open up your hands, it can be scary because some things will be let go, but it also opens up your life to let so much more in. And how much more fulfilling would your life be if you didn't have clenched fists but that you had them open up to the world. And so for me, kind of rounding out this part of this chapter was around the result, that awareness is around that you, you maybe, have nothing that you have to do.
Speaker 1:
You have something who you, you have something that you need to be yeah, and I he says that's um, you know, be aware of the journey. This is where all of life happens, right, there's that famous quote. That's like it's about the journey, not the destination, right, and it's like you're saying it's about kind of letting go of all of this like doing and stuff and things that we think we have to hold on so close to right, we've got to keep running the rat race and, you know, moving forward and doing, doing, doing, doing. And even in this world of, like, electronic stuff, we don't take the time anymore, like, even when we have the space to do nothing, we choose to scroll through social media, we choose to do something and what. I think he's really encouraging us, right, if you really want to, I mean right, this is a life of joy, of real, deep connection, like awareness to the level of connection. That is a beautiful, beautiful life, and those are the moments that are the most beautiful in in my life.
Speaker 1:
I remember, I remember the day of my wedding, walking from the room I got dressed in to like I had to go down through the basement of the church, up the steps, right with my dad walking with him, and I just remember taking like the doors are shut, the music started playing, I'm about to walk in, right, like I know the doors are gonna open and I'm gonna see my husband, or what was about to be my husband, right, and I just remember taking this moment to like observe, because you know, those days where there's these are so big days in our life, right, things just rush by and it's like okay, we have to be the church at this time and then do this.
Speaker 1:
And then, like there's this tight, tight schedule, and I just remember, like taking this moment with my dad to just sit there and observe, like, say nothing, do nothing, just take this deep breath, get into this beautiful moment of awareness and like again, like I've been married for 14 years, 13 years at this point, like I still remember that moment of like me consciously coming into myself and consciously thinking like I'm about to open these doors to like this future, that I've chosen this person, that I've chosen this life, that I'm, you know, hoping for and wanting, and you know all of those sort of good things.
Speaker 1:
And that moment to me is so beautiful. And it was little and it was tiny and it was probably 30 seconds, right, the music was already playing, it was probably really quick. But those moments where we take this minute to connect, we take this space to like, really drive into the connection of awareness is beautiful. And when you become aware of the journey that you're on right, it's this pause in the middle of it like that's when you can get into gratitude, that's when you can get into the beautiful I don't know just the beauty of what the journey of life really really is.
Speaker 2:
What an absolutely beautiful memory that you have for that and this.
Speaker 2:
You did exactly what he describes in the book, which is being an awareness fanatic and being able to remember that moment, and that'd be a core memory. Like we've talked about Inside Out by Pixar before and how it's about making core memories that stick. I think that that's such a beautiful story, but for not all of us do we remember those moments, and when they happen, what can we do about it? And so one example that he gives is that you can start something called a positive events journal, and I I never was a journal fan, but I loved this idea because I've become a journaling fan later in my life, and when you do this, it's to stay alert all day long, looking for good parts and writing them down. Now, remember, I said I read this book long before we had this episode today, so in the margins, I was writing down everything that was happening that day and I even wrote at the end of it all. This has been such a good day, and it was only because I was just aware.
Speaker 1:
Uh, huh, yeah. And I think bringing those awareness of those moments right, taking that second to notice them, right, it's like when you I don't know when you buy a new car or something and then all of a sudden you notice all of the kinds of that car, right, it's when you focus your attention on something, then you see a lot more of it. When you focus your attention on the positive and you start to write them down in this journal, then all of a sudden your life is full of positivity, it's full of moments of joy. You just have to bring your awareness to it because it's there, right, and we know we've got blind spots about being negative and like focusing on those things. Right, that's our safety brain flipping on, and so it's you flipping that off a little bit and focusing all that positivity and right like right, especially writing it down, you can go back and look at the great thing from that day, right?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I have a little comment in here that was saying that when I was at a hotel, when I was reading this book in Las Vegas, and when we checked into the hotel, I just noticed how beautiful the flowers and the plants and the smells were. And when I read that just now, which is months later, I can instantly go back to what that was like. I remember now seeing those flowers and the plants and the smells and how just incredible of an experience it was. So this positive events journal is such a great idea to do. It's difficult to do until you become consciously competent in doing it.
Speaker 1:
And we talked about not being able to habit of doing it Go back to last year last year, atomic habits.
Speaker 2:
What I, what I think I'd like to end on for today, because I know we're out of time is something for us to think about, which is what he says in this chapter, that the black belt. So if you think of karate or my kids were in Taekwondo, the black belt, the ultimate belt, the top level, the expert level, is the presence to notice when you're not aware. And that struck me as well because, like I said, I had this experience just recently where I was not paying attention to a person, that I was physically looking in their eyes and didn't hear a word they said. And it hurt me because I knew that I was taking that time away from that person. And it hurt me because I had to tell the person. I didn't listen to them, but I admitted it and I think that we were able to. You know, it was like for the person I was talking to they love me.
Speaker 2:
No-transcript is exactly what he said this week, which was you don't have to be always doing, to be being and to be embracing the time that we have. So what else for you as we close up this part of the chapter for today?
Speaker 1:
No, I think that's great. I love the black belt thing, right the ultimate, when you know you've mastered this. You know it's because you're now aware of when you're unaware, and I think that that's such an amazing, hard thing to strive for.
Speaker 2:
Absolutely Well, as always. I always become more aware, I always become more happy, I always become more focused and I always become more happy. I always become more focused and peaceful. And I don't know, my blood pressure goes down when I talk with you.
Speaker 2:
So, grateful and I hope the same for you listeners. Thanks for being with us. If you are enjoying this, would you consider subscribing, sharing and sharing with us what you're thinking about this and what you're experiencing? It sure would be great for us to learn how you're living these pages out loud as well. But for today, we'll end on this note of the black belt of presence being the notice of when you are not aware of something, and next week we'll talk about reducing the distractions and really, really taking a love for the time that we've been given, which we don't know when it expires. So this has been another episode of what's on your Bookshelf.
