Solve For Happy: Engineer Your Path to Joy - Softcover

Gawdat, Mo

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1509809937 ISBN 13: 9781509809936

Publisher: Bluebird, 2017

Synopsis

Solve for Happy is a startlingly original book about creating and maintaining happiness, written by a top Google executive with an engineer's training and fondness for thoroughly analyzing a problem.

In 2001, Mo Gawdat, a remarkable thinker whose gifts had landed him top positions in half a dozen companies and who - in his spare time - had created significant wealth, realized that 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 his college-aged son, Ali - also intellectually gifted - died during routine surgery. 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.

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 six illusions that cloud our thinking (e.g., the illusion of time, of control, and of fear); overcome the brain's seven deadly defects (e.g., the tendency to exaggerate, label, and filter), and embrace five ultimate truths (e.g., change is real, now is real, unconditional love is real).

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.

About this title

About the Author

Mo Gawdat is a serial entrepreneur and former chief business officer of Google [X]. Through his twelve-year research on the topic of happiness, he created an algorithm and a repeatable engineered model to reach a state of uninterrupted happiness, regardless of circumstance in 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. Solve For Happy is the pillar for Mo's personal 'moonshot' mission, a mission to deliver his happiness message to one billion people around the world.

From the Back Cover

Despite staggering career success and a beautiful family, entrepreneur Mo Gowdat battled with depression. That is, until he brought his engineering brain to bear on the conundrum of human happiness. Mo came up with a formula: an algorithm for happiness, which proved highly effective. He and his family lived by it for a decade.

In 2013, it was put to the ultimate test when Mo lost his son Ali. On the brink of despair, Mo's wife gently reminded him of this formula that can actually deliver joy, and Mo and the family used it to help them cope with their grief and carry on. Mo's mission now is to share these principles more widely and further the cause of happiness wherever he can.

In Solve For Happy Mo Gawdat provides a practical option for the millions of people across the world on a quest for happiness.

Edition details

• Publisher: Bluebird
• Publication date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1509809937
• ISBN 13: 9781509809936
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 368