“Being honest with yourself is the single most important thing you can do.”
This is just one of the countless gems of career and life wisdom and inspiration dropped by Mo Gawdat at Nick James’ Expert Empires event in November 2023.
I exhaled slowly when I heard this one… and knew that I didn’t want to keep the experience to myself. Hence, creating and sharing some content about careers and life inspiration from Mo Gawdat with you here.
While Mo Gawdat appears to have been doing phenomenal work for decades, I first heard about him and his work over the past few years – in relation to AI… and more specifically, warnings around AI from an insider within the tech industry. In case you too need an introduction, here it is (in his own words – i.e from his website!)…
Mo Gawdat, former Chief Business Officer of Google [X]; host of the popular podcast, Slo Mo: A Podcast with Mo Gawdat; author of the international bestselling books Solve for Happy; Scary Smart; and That Little Voice in Your Head; founder of One Billion Happy; and Chief AI Officer of Flight Story.
Mo Gawdat, dear Your Career And Future community, is one of the wisest, most memorable speakers I have come across in recent times and while I didn’t anticipate understanding everything he’d share – some simple takeaways are powerful and here are a few.
Bitesized nuggets of wisdom from Mo Gawdat
When it comes to entrepreneurship and work:
- Set a crazy ambition and a series of realistic targets
- When it comes to Artificial Intelligence (AI) – it can be a saviour if used ethically. It’s a challenge if evil people use it in evil ways until good people use it in good ways (and we may see more of the bad before we see the good)
- Everything comes with as much opportunity as threat
- Remember the value of the “toothbrush test” – a test used by Larry Page, CEO of Google, to decide which companies he likes. According to the New York Times, when Page looks at a potential company to acquire, he wants to know if the product is, like a toothbrush, “something you will use once or twice a day.” Mo addressed the value of this as something the entrepreneurs in the room could consider.
- A book recommendation is Malcome Gladwell’s The Outliers
- Even the most wonderful people, when driven by a mission, people can miss a few things
- Build something that is going to make your daughters life better
When it comes to life in general:
- Discover the reality that your heart is smarter than your brain
- As long as you are not hurting anyone, do what your heart feels instead of your brain
- Manifesting is not that difficult at all – The Secret is the worst book ever written but an amazing concept – i.e. about manifesting
- We are in the ultimate perfect storm and Mo has not seen anything like what is coming. This includes challenges economically / with inflation (Covid made us print so much money). The closest we have seen to this was 1929.
- When it comes to economic challenges there are “no other solutions for governments apart from hyperinflation or a war”
- Signs of what is to come in term of war started with Russia and Ukraine and it showed that the “Big boys can hit the small boys and the world will remain silent”
- In this perfect storm – there will be a massive concentration of power
- What’s about to happen as technology becomes so accessible, the concentration of power and wealth will become unheard of
- In the middle of all of this we have created a world where truth has become distracted, distorted, blurry…
- Overflow of information is taking away from what matters
- “Can we please stop killing children” (This is something Mo repeated multiple times, to enthused agreement from the audience)
- Though he believes he can form equations for all of life’s emotions, the one emotion he could not find an equation for was love. Love is not in this realm
There’s a plethora of wisdom and reflection from Mo Gawdat here however if you feel even remotely overwhelmed with some of these ideas – start and end at the core of what I considered to be Mo’s main message at Expert Empires (November 2023):
“Each of us is capable of changing the world in a positive way – if ethics is at the centre”
- Be an ethical human
- Be happy
- Have the compassion to make others happy
- Love and be loved
Happiness. Compassion. Love.
Much complexity ultimately simplified by something that could be a slogan on a t-shirt.
Thank you Mo Gawdat for the profound experience of being in your presence and essence.
Thank you Nick James and team for another brilliant Expert Empires event.
Your Career And Future community… Let’s go forth and do our bit to make our community and world a better place.
