Rebel Book Club: Solve For Happy

x+why are proud to host regular Rebel Book Club Meet-ups at our Chiswick and Whitechapel spaces. RBC are not your average book club - they’re for the rebels, non-fiction lovers and learners. A global community of likeminded thinkers and doers, they’re for turning curiosity into action one book at a time. The February event on Tuesday 22nd is exploring the engineering of happiness with Solve For Happy author Mo Gawdat!

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Review your happy list and explore the big questions in life with fellow book-lovers and purpose-driven leaders. You can purchase tickets to all RBC events and stay up to date on their website or on their eventbrite page.

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"RBC is the coolest book club I am aware of. I have read 10x more since joining. But reading more is just the start of the benefits - there is a strong, highly engaged community of likeminded readers to discuss the current book, other books and all other related and interesting themes and topics with. Joining RBC is one of the best things I’ve done in 2020." - Frankie, founder TCA Fit

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About The Author: Meet Mo

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Mo Gawdat is the chief business officer for Google and a serial entrepreneur. He has an impressive combined career of 27 years, starting at IBM Egypt as a systems engineer before moving into a sales role in the government sector.

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Mo joined Google in 2007 to kick-start its business in Emerging Markets. He is fascinated by the role that technology plays in empowering people in emerging communities and has dedicated years of his career towards that passion. Over a period of 6 years, Mo started close to half of Google’s operations worldwide.

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In 2013 he moved to Google's infamous innovation arm, Google [X] where he lead the business strategy, planning, sales, business development and partnerships. [X] does not attempt to achieve incremental improvements in the way the world works, but instead, it tries to develop new technologies that will reinvent the way things are and deliver a radical, ten fold 10X improvement!

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This leads to seemingly SciFi ideas such as: Project Loon, which aims to use high-altitude balloons to provide affordable internet access to the 5 billion people on every square inch of our planet, Project Makani, aiming to revolutionise wind energy generation using autonomous carbon fiber kites as well as Self driving cars, Google Life Sciences, and many more.

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The business team under Mo’s leadership has designed innovative business models analogous to the disruptive technologies [X] creates, and has created deep partnerships and global deals that enabled [X] to thrive and build products fit for the real world. Alongside his career, Mo remained a serial entrepreneur who has cofounded more than 20 businesses in fields such as health and fitness, food and beverage and real estate.

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He served as a board member in several technology, health and fitness and consumer goods companies as well as several government technology and innovation boards in the Middle East and Eastern Europe. He mentors tens of start-ups at any point in time.

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In 2017 he authored ‘Solve For Happy’. Through his 12 year research on the topic of happiness, he created an algorithm and a repeatable well engineered model to reach a state of uninterrupted happiness regardless of the circumstances of life. Mo's happiness model proved highly effective. And, in 2014, was put to the ultimate test when Mo lost his son Ali to preventable medical error during a simple surgical procedure.

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Solve For Happy is the pillar for a mission Mo has committed to as his personal moonshot, a mission to deliver his happiness message to 10 million people around the world. Mohammad speaks Arabic, English, German. Outside of work, when he’s not writing or reading up on business and the latest technology innovations and trends, Mo spends his time drawing charcoal portraits, creating mosaics, carpentry and indulging in his passion for restoration of classic cars.

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Solve For Happy

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Society is enamoured with the notion of happiness - with almost everything we do, from entertainment to fulfilment, being in some way geared around this very human emotion. Mo leverages his engineers mind to take a scientific approach to problem solving - and explores what it takes to both create and maintain ‘happiness’. When we feel better, we do better, and in the midst of a mental health crisis it’s easy to see why books that take a strategic approach to emotional regulation are gaining popularity.

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Mo’s writing comes from his own personal experiences with health, wealth and loss. A remarkable thinker whose gifts landed him in top positions in half a dozen companies - he created significant material gain and achieved most of what society believes to be necessary in order to live a happy life.

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However, he was desperately unhappy. A lifelong learner, he attacked the problem as an engineer would, examining all the provable facts and scrupulously following logic. When he was finished, he had discovered the equation for enduring happiness. Ten years later, that research saved him from despair when he lost his son to medical complications.

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In dealing with the loss, Mo found his mission: he would pull off the type of 'moonshot' that he and his Google [X] colleagues were always aiming for: he would help ten million people become happier by pouring his happiness principles into a book and spreading its message around the world.

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One of Solve for Happy's key premises is that happiness is a default state. If we shape expectations to acknowledge the full range of possible events, unhappiness is on its way to being defeated. To steer clear of unhappiness traps, we must dispel the illusions that cloud our thinking (including the illusion of time, of control, and of fear); overcome the brain's deadly defects (such as the tendency to exaggerate, label, and filter), and embrace a few ultimate truths (including that change is real, now is real, unconditional love is real).

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A Rich Life Over Riches

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By means of several highly original thought experiments, Mo helps readers find enduring contentment by questioning some of the most fundamental aspects of their existence. Applying an engineer’s systems analytical thinking, alongside examining many existential and religious concepts, Mo helps to bring us back to the bigger picture - and what it really means to live a good life.

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