If you feel overwhelmed by war, start here | Mo Gawdat

0:00 To see the, you know, rockets on top of your head and the interceptors

0:04 trying to get them is your wake up call.

0:06 Okay?

0:07 This is real.

0:08 And we've seen children being bombed in 4K

0:11 on Instagram and then swipe through it.

0:13 I don't think people understand the repercussions of these decisions.

0:18 Calm is a better way of execution.

0:20 It's important not to lose our humanity in the process.

0:24 I can genuinely tell you that one of the things that parents should do,

0:28 instead of trying to explain the situation to their little kids...

0:33 Hi, and welcome to a special episode of With Loulou.

0:37 It's been a while, and I didn't expect this to be the conversation that would

0:41 bring me back but the recent aggression facing

0:44 the Gulf has made this conversation very necessary.

0:48 Since the war began,

0:49 I've been in countless WhatsApp groups with executives, founders,

0:52 investors, moms and dads all trying to make sense of what is happening,

0:57 assessing risk, protecting their families, staying sane,

1:01 and finding ways to make smart decisions in very uncertain times.

1:06 So I invited friend of the podcast, Mo Gawdat.

1:09 Mo is not only a brilliant technologist and former Google X executive,

1:14 he also has spent years studying stress,

1:17 the mind, and how human beings respond under pressure.

1:21 He is also fearless in his way of explaining the situation and how he views it.

1:26 While many of us are asking how bad this thing can get and when it will end,

1:31 there's another question we need to ask:

1:34 What is all of this doing to our brains?

1:36 War is not only physical, it is also psychological.

1:41 So how do we cope intelligently?

1:48 You're growing like two 200, 300% in the early years.

1:51 Yeah.

1:52 I never wanted to be an entrepreneur.

1:53 So I'm definitely an emerging market junkie.

1:55 I like to go to the frontier.

1:57 Okay.

1:58 Hint.

1:58 Give us the meat, Abdullah.

2:01 We need to be able to make the sacrifices that are required for this journey.

2:05 Take pride in your job.

2:07 This too shall pass.

2:09 Yes!

2:18 So, Mo, I'm so happy that you're here.

2:20 Happy is a good thing at this time.

2:21 Thank you for having me.

2:23 Yeah.

2:25 This is a special episode that we...

2:27 We thought, you know,

2:28 let's have this conversation given what's happening now around us,

2:32 the aggression that the Gulf is facing at this point in time.

2:38 We were thrown into the midst of an ugly war and the reason why

2:45 I wanted to have this conversation

2:47 with you is because obviously as an entrepreneur,

2:49 as a founder, as a mother, I think like many people in Dubai,

2:55 we've been on our WhatsApp groups that have been going on fire.

2:59 And I'm on multiple groups, by the way.

3:01 So I'm on groups for founders and investors.

3:03 I'm on groups with, like, the community where I live.

3:08 And I think everyone is trying to make sense of it all, including myself.

3:16 So you have studied the brain for a long time.

3:22 Not at war, but yes.

3:23 For a decade, you've written books- Yeah.

3:25 around the topics of stress and happiness and so on.

3:28 You're also an executive.

3:30 You've also managed companies and managed teams at the highest levels,

3:34 maybe not through a crisis like this.

3:37 You're a father.

3:38 So I felt it would be relevant to have a conversation with you, you know,

3:42 around this situation, not necessarily a political one,

3:45 but more of a crisis management one, right?

3:48 When things are eerily close to us,

3:52 when we felt that war is very abstract;- it happens to people...

3:57 On the screen, huh?

3:58 In other places.

4:00 Yeah, it's understood that everyone in this situation,

4:04 we're designed as a survival machine.

4:07 So everyone of us in this situation is attempting to...

4:11 to run away from the tiger, if you want.

4:14 Right?

4:14 Unfortunately, the tiger is inside your head.

4:17 It's not in front of you.

4:18 So to be able to give shape and volume to the tiger,

4:24 you keep incessant thinking all the time.

4:28 I want to start by the idea of the war being somewhere else.

4:35 Another address, you know?

4:38 And I want to...

4:40 I know people will find that really interesting but as an entrepreneur,

4:44 you know that every disaster is an opportunity, right?

4:47 And so I'll try to focus on the opportunities as much as I will

4:50 try to cover how to deal with the confusion and the disaster and so on.

4:54 But the opportunities here are immense.

4:57 You know, a very interesting one is that for many,

5:00 many years we've suffered what is normally known,

5:04 known as hypernormalization of reality.

5:07 So hypernormalization of reality is...

5:12 is that the media and the propaganda machine,

5:16 basically makes you believe that certain things that are not

5:20 supposed to be part of our life are very normal.

5:23 You know, it's absolutely okay for killing to happen as long as it's

5:28 on the screen and there is a lot of noise around you know,

5:33 around ideology and democracy and freedom

5:38 and freeing women and all of that crap.

5:41 Then, you know, your brain is sort of, like, this is just another movie.

5:44 And it's like Rambo used to go through the jungles and kill everyone.

5:49 But if that someone is an NPC, you know, you don't know them, you don't care,

5:54 and if it's someone that the movie director told you is a bad guy,

5:58 you go like, yeah, they deserved it.

6:00 Yeah,- Right?

6:01 None of that is true.

6:02 It's all hypernormalized in your head.

6:05 And the first thing to think about in this situation is, what is reality?

6:12 And, you know, I avoid talking about politics and for a very long time,

6:17 you know, we've been suffering from evil outright for the last few years.

6:22 It's always been there, but it's been explicit for the last few years.

6:27 You know, and we've seen children being bombed in 4K on Instagram,

6:33 and somehow, you know, some people are able to watch that when

6:39 they're having lunch and then swipe through it.

6:42 Put a like on it.

6:44 And put a like on it.

6:45 Now that hypernormalization of reality is not a coincidence.

6:49 It's a very, very intricate plan, and I'll say openly that to see the rockets

6:57 on top of your head and the interceptors trying

6:59 to get them and some succeeding and creating a massive

7:03 noise and some failing is your wake up call.

7:06 Okay?

7:07 This is real.

7:08 And so, the acceptance of that normalization should end today.

7:16 Okay?

7:16 You realize that you now,

7:18 for the first time have the ability to have the compassion

7:21 to be in the place of those other people who feel

7:23 exactly like you feel right now because they're helplessly being attacked

7:29 because of a reason that is not within their control at all.

7:35 Just a small comment on that.

7:38 So I've lived through war when I was younger in Lebanon.

7:41 Actually, the first ten years of my life were in war.

7:45 And when I grew up, I sort of had this idea in my mind

7:51 that no one who's never been through a war should start a war.

7:56 For sure.

7:57 I don't think...

7:58 It's so easy to say, oh, you know, we're gonna bomb this or that and so on.

8:02 As you said, it's morally justified.

8:04 It's like a videogame, yeah.

8:05 But living through one is incredibly terrifying,

8:14 and I don't think people understand the repercussions of these decisions.

8:21 You see, as I said, it is systemic.

8:25 The hardening of the human heart is a systemic plan.

8:31 But my first point is to say, now that you've seen it,

8:35 now that you've been part of it, kickstart your compassion, okay?

8:40 And kickstart your compassion with what

8:43 is normally known as, you know, metacognition.

8:47 So smart people, not only tell you what they know.

8:52 The smartest of all of us, they tell you how they know what they knew.

8:56 Okay?

8:57 So if you if you asked me about some conclusion that I would give you and said,

9:03 but where did you get that from?

9:05 I provide an equation or a mathematical

9:08 proof or something that basically says, no,

9:10 no, it's because of A, B, and C, and then we can discuss the facts.

9:15 And so if the systemic approach

9:21 to our minds is to numb them through hypernormalization,

9:25 then the answer to that is what

9:27 is normally referred to in psychology as metacognition.

9:30 And metacognition is to be able to question what you believe.

9:35 It's to be able to tell yourself within this time of confusion,

9:39 what is the actual truth?

9:41 What is the genuine reality?

9:45 And most people will tell you, nothing is ever real.

9:48 There is no truth.

9:50 That's absolute crap.

9:51 Okay?

9:51 There are quite a few truths,

9:54 and knowing that something is not true is part of the truth.

9:57 Do you understand that?

9:58 So I want to explain that before we go back to metacognition.

10:03 In my mind for a very long time, because of the way that the system was

10:09 designed around right answers and wrong answers in school,

10:17 you tend to believe that everything is either right or wrong.

10:20 And that's the way the machine occupies your mind.

10:24 You know, they try to convince you that if

10:27 something with a subset within a, you know,

10:30 a superset is wrong and we focus enough on it,

10:34 you'll believe that the superset is wrong, right?

10:37 And you know, so in my mind, there were two compartments,

10:41 you know, right or wrong, true or false, black or white.

10:46 Okay?

10:47 And a lot of people will tell you there is grayscale.

10:49 Yeah, that's philosophically beautiful.

10:51 In my brain, I have something I call compartment two.

10:54 Okay?

10:55 And so, you know, in a lot of things, most things,

11:01 you do not know if it's right or wrong, okay?

11:03 Because it's not 100% right or it's not 100% wrong,

11:07 or because you don't have enough information

11:08 or because you cannot achieve a scientific enough proof,

11:12 or a factual enough proof.

11:15 Now, the problem with the world that we live

11:20 in is that we get distracted from the truth,

11:25 not by limiting what we see, but by overwhelming us with what we see.

11:33 Right?

11:33 So, you know, at any point in time,

11:37 if you want to ask yourself the simple question here

11:40 of who's the good guys and who's the bad guys,

11:44 that level of metacognition is the moment where you wake up,

11:46 and for most of us, the last 1112 days have been your wake up call, right?

11:52 So here is what happens in metacognition.

11:55 You cannot start to find the truth by sifting

12:01 through all of the input that comes to you, right?

12:05 I tried.

12:06 It's impossible.

12:06 As a matter of fact, that leads you to media fatigue.

12:09 And you basically...

12:11 And that's part of the distraction strategy.

12:15 The fog of war.

12:16 Yeah.

12:16 So, you know, I told you I'm working on two books at the same time.

12:20 And I also want to work on a third one called Propaganda,

12:23 which basically explains the tactics that propaganda uses.

12:28 One of the very, you know, interesting ways is ask yourself today,

12:34 how often do you look at something related to Gaza?

12:40 Not much.

12:41 Not as much as obviously I used to three years ago and two years ago.

12:45 Correct.

12:45 Is that because the people of Gaza stopped suffering?

12:48 No.

12:48 Absolutely not.

12:49 Correct.

12:49 What happened is that the machine got you to a moment of fatigue,

12:54 where the minute they gave you an out by saying,

12:56 ah, there is a ceasefire that is,

12:58 you know, broken 1600 times so far,- we forget.

13:03 Yeah.

13:04 Right?

13:04 We forget and we move on to the next thing.

13:07 If you want to genuinely be not only an authentic,

13:14 enlightened, but also intelligent person,

13:18 you want to tell yourself, where do I know the crap that I know from?

13:23 Okay?

13:23 And so you start vetting through the truth,

13:27 not from the input, but from the conclusion.

13:29 Yeah.

13:30 Okay?

13:30 So you take any concept that you've agreed to put in compartment one:

13:37 true or compartment three: false, okay?

13:41 And then you tell yourself, how did I agree to that?

13:45 Oh, so that word, the shiny headline that affected me

13:50 to believe in this crap is not true at all.

13:56 Right?

13:56 And I know this is a very demanding process, right?

14:03 Because it requires you to reflect on every concept that you've ever believed,

14:08 and it may take you the hours or days to actually find where

14:12 you got that concept from, and then you can finally start to say,

14:17 aha, hold on, hold on, hold on.

14:19 I'm going to revisit this one so give me

14:21 the actual data to simplify things to the very bare minimum.

14:26 First, the very, very, very bare truth is, is usually very simple.

14:31 Okay?

14:32 You find that first and then you build on top of it again

14:36 with data rather than the propaganda that erased your mind or shaped your mind.

14:43 Okay, so let's bring it back to the to the current situation at hand where,

14:48 again, I think a lot of us were thrown into this.

14:54 What you're saying is, you know,

14:56 go back to your own beliefs and question your own beliefs,

14:59 figure out where do these beliefs come from?

15:01 Yeah.

15:02 It's okay to have opposing ideas, I guess, in your mind as well.

15:06 Keep those in compartment two.

15:08 Because one is the truth, three is not true?

15:11 Yeah, one is true, the other is false, and the third is I don't know.

15:14 I don't know exactly.

15:14 Okay?

15:15 And I don't know is the best form of knowledge.

15:17 Okay.

15:18 Understand that.

15:18 So to tell yourself, I'm not sure if it's true or false,

15:22 that in itself is the ultimate form of knowledge because

15:25 then you don't put it in either of the compartments.

15:27 It's still pending for you to process it.

15:29 Yeah.

15:29 People are in this situation at the moment.

15:32 Never ever did anyone living here in the UAE

15:35 or in Dubai think that this will happen here.

15:39 And then again, there's a lot of chaos around it.

15:44 Yeah.

15:45 People process things differently.

15:47 So as a founder, business owner,

15:51 mother, father, what is the recommendation here?

15:56 So, obviously you're inundated with news

16:00 and interpretations and explanations and so on.

16:02 I think maybe smart people tend to think, the more I read,

16:07 the more I educate myself,- the more maybe I can...

16:09 The more targeted reading I read.

16:11 Yeah, but I think…- Very different.

16:12 You're trying to cast the net wide as well,

16:17 because you want to try to get different points of view.

16:19 At least that's what I'm doing.

16:21 Yeah.

16:21 I believe that's actually one of the reasons why you would be stressed.

16:25 Okay.

16:26 So, let's talk about that because, again, I think a lot of people are stuck

16:31 in this, you're trying to read different narratives,

16:33 trying to get signals from different places.

16:36 Yeah.

16:37 And in order to try to understand, okay, How do I live my life now?

16:41 You know, as a parent, do I leave the country?

16:44 Do I stay in the country?

16:46 Am I doing the right thing to protect my young kids?

16:50 You know, for me, for example, Mo,

16:52 I haven't honestly been able to work- all of last week.

16:56 Of course, yeah.

16:58 To me, I felt like everything is very trivial.

17:01 You know, like the things I'm working on are very trivial- Yeah, yeah.

17:04 To what really matters.

17:05 in comparison to the threat.

17:07 That's great.

17:07 Even though, as you said,

17:08 the threat isn't really that big vis-a-vis what's in my mind,

17:13 like, how many people really died here you know, from raining bombs and so on?

17:20 So it's a different...

17:23 Like the reality is different, but still...

17:26 Well done.

17:26 Yeah.

17:28 I haven't really been able to function.

17:29 I think a lot of people are like that.

17:31 And every time I see a friend of mine or like, you know,

17:34 other parents and so on, the first question they ask me is,

17:38 so what do you think's going to happen?

17:40 And I think everyone's trying to get some certainty.

17:43 We can we can talk about that too.

17:45 But it would turn very political.

17:46 It's game theory really.

17:48 But let's talk about the personal side first, if you don't mind.

17:51 Yes.

17:51 Right?

17:51 So, the interesting side of that personal side is where do you start?

17:57 So let me try to explain this the way I do it.

18:01 I don't know if that's right or wrong.

18:04 Remember...

18:04 You're not that old, but did you ever live in the time when we wrote

18:08 code and then you had what was known as memory overflow?

18:13 No, I don't know about memory overflow.

18:14 Okay, so we...

18:15 When we had very limited resources on our computers,

18:19 the one thing that you needed to manage very,

18:21 very clearly in the very early days was how

18:24 much information do you put in the short term memory?

18:27 Okay.

18:28 Right?

18:28 Because you basically had Kbytes at the time.

18:31 Yeah.

18:31 And when you were...

18:32 That I remember.

18:33 Yeah.

18:33 And when you were coding and your code was producing stuff in...

18:37 And not only your code, but the operating system were producing stuff,

18:40 we used to have a process that we used to call garbage collection.

18:43 So you go into the memory space and clean whatever you don't need, right?

18:46 Like cleaning your photographs on your phone today.

18:52 The human brain suffers the exact same things.

18:56 So, you know, you have a limited compute in your brain,

19:01 limited processing power, you can only crunch so much data,

19:04 some of us more than others, but you can only crunch so much data, right?

19:08 And you have a short-term memory capacity for what you can process.

19:11 at the same time, you have a lot of long-term memories,

19:15 but those long-term memories are not part

19:18 of your current processing of a problem.

19:20 So you may borrow from your experience in Lebanon when

19:23 you were a child and bring into your current analysis, right?

19:27 But you don't use the other bits of your life in Lebanon.

19:30 Great?

19:32 So the idea is to go the opposite way.

19:36 The idea is if you were genuinely

19:40 as a as an entrepreneur trying to create a strategy,

19:46 what you would do is you would be presented

19:48 with 80 things that seem to be concerns by your team,

19:52 challenges in the marketplace, things that are changing and so on and so forth.

19:56 And then you would say, okay, we can't solve 80.

19:59 What are the three we're going to work on first, right?

20:02 And that is the very first approach

20:05 to handling the flood of information that's happening.

20:08 You may actually want to swipe a little and open your horizons

20:12 to the point where you find out what the 80 are.

20:16 Okay?

20:17 But my technique is once I see something repeated three times,

20:21 not the same reel, but the same concept of a reel, I stop.

20:26 Because that means I'm now starting to get repetition,

20:28 and my incremental gain of new concepts to think about is over.

20:33 But that's not the point.

20:35 The point is, if you take the top one topic to work

20:40 on, you need to solve this in series, not in parallel.

20:45 So because you have limited compute and limited memory you

20:48 can't solve the top four problems at the same time.

20:52 You solve the first problem first,

20:54 at least with reasonable assumption about the other three, right?

20:58 And then you go and solve the second one.

20:59 And then you go to solve the third one.

21:01 I call this layering.

21:04 And layering, if you want to see it in a visual way,

21:09 you know, if I gave you a ball of wool that's entangled together,

21:13 nobody keeps playing with it and then suddenly goes like,

21:18 here are the seven threads.

21:20 Okay?

21:21 Most of us would take the red thread first and then,

21:23 you know, try to take it out and...

21:25 It's a very interesting exercise in terms

21:27 of your cognition of how to solve problems, right?

21:29 You know, if you look at when your gold chain or something is entangled,

21:33 one of my favorite hobbies is to how to untangle

21:36 it because there are like 16 knots in it,

21:40 but you can't solve all of the 16 knots at the same time.

21:43 There are...

21:44 Sometimes you can solve two together,

21:45 but your brain cannot do more than that, right?

21:48 Now, what is the top problem that we need to solve?

21:53 The top question one needs to ask is...

21:55 Today?

21:55 Yeah.

21:55 Well...

21:56 Is it safe?

21:57 For who?

21:58 For me?

22:00 Is it for you or for you and your kids?

22:03 I mean the family, obviously.

22:04 For you and your kids and your loved ones?

22:07 Yes.

22:07 For you and your kids and your loved ones and me?

22:10 Or do you not care that I'm safe?

22:12 It's okay if you say no.

22:13 But these are questions that you need to ask.

22:16 And then the second question is.

22:18 Is it safe?

22:19 Yeah.

22:19 Was it...

22:19 Okay.

22:19 Of course, your immediate engagement...

22:24 So your brain is a survival machine.

22:27 The reason why we're overthinking everything- is because it doesn't feel safe.

22:31 Yeah.

22:31 If you get it to the point where it's safe, it will stop thinking.

22:36 It will stop that incessant thinking.

22:37 It will start to… Right?

22:39 And the problem is its tendency, you know,

22:41 if you were in a jungle and a tiger is

22:43 on one side and an elephant on the other side,

22:45 you don't do what I'm now doing, which is saying,

22:48 solve the tiger first, then the elephant, right?

22:50 You just freaking panic, okay?

22:52 And that's what most people are going through.

22:54 I'm simply saying, look, maybe if I jump on the back of the elephant,

22:58 you know, I solve both problems at the same time.

23:01 But you said your question first is, am I safe?

23:05 And I wanted to ask you, who is I?

23:08 Okay?

23:08 Because...

23:09 That's the first question and I'll come back to it in a second,

23:12 and then the second question is, in the short term or the long term?

23:18 Yeah.

23:18 In the short term or the long term?

23:19 Because the strategy might differ drastically between what

23:23 you do in the short term to be safe, maybe go into your home, and the long term,

23:28 maybe, you know, emigrate or whatever.

23:30 Yeah.

23:31 Okay?

23:32 If you have those as your first problem,

23:35 that's actually really easy to solve, okay?

23:38 I choose to say, is the world safe?

23:41 Not, am I safe?

23:43 I don't think of myself as that important

23:48 as compared to everyone that's suffering.

23:51 Right?

23:51 Are the people in Beirut today safe?

23:54 Are the people in southern Lebanon safe?

23:56 Are the people in in Gaza safe?

23:58 Are the people in Yemen safe?

24:01 Are the people in Iran safe?

24:03 The missiles that are flying on top of the UAE are Iranian missiles, right?

24:08 But hundreds of children are being bombed in their schools.

24:12 You know, everyone is, you know,

24:15 smelling smoke or inhaling smoke- for the last three days.

24:19 Yes.

24:19 Are they safe?

24:20 Okay?

24:21 And I know this is very difficult for a lot

24:23 of people to be in that situation and say, I want everyone to be safe.

24:30 Because if everyone is safe, I'll be safe, right?

24:33 And remember, I always joke about this, I always say that humanity

24:38 didn't survive because we're the most intelligent species on the planet.

24:41 Humanity survived because we congregated in tribes.

24:45 Okay?

24:46 Einstein, which is, in my mind,

24:48 one of the smartest people ever that ever lived, even though only 163 IQ, right?

24:54 Einstein would have been eaten in the jungle in four minutes.

24:57 It's not intelligence that kept us alive.

24:59 Yeah.

25:00 Okay?

25:00 It's our ability…- Community.

25:02 Our ability to be one, okay?

25:04 And be one as what?

25:07 Be one as humanity is the safest way.

25:10 If you look at global politics, you'd see that there are two approaches to this.

25:15 In the bigger picture, you see the Western American led bully approach

25:20 of, for my people to be safe and fat, everyone else has to suffer.

25:24 Okay?

25:25 Or the Chinese approach that basically says for my people to be safe and happy,

25:30 everyone else needs to prosper.

25:32 Everyone else needs to drive fantastic cars,

25:35 and they need to buy amazing products, and, you know, a prosperous economy

25:40 for the whole world makes my people more prosperous.

25:43 And that selfishness of it's me against everyone else,

25:47 or it's me because everyone else rises is a very interesting place to think.

25:52 Now, this reflects deeply in the short term or the long term.

25:57 Because if you ask me, the right answer for all of us to be safe today, like,

26:02 if we wanted to really be safe this minute,

26:05 we would wish that this war ends right now.

26:08 Of course.

26:09 Right?

26:11 I'm not in that space.

26:13 Openly.

26:13 Okay?

26:14 I'm in this space where I want the war to end.

26:20 I want the constant triggers of war, that affected you in Lebanon,

26:26 affected people after you left Lebanon in Lebanon, affected people in Palestine,

26:32 affected people in Venezuela, affected people in Iraq.

26:37 There is a systemic mistake.

26:40 Systemic.

26:41 Okay?

26:41 And if you want your heart to be in the right place,

26:45 ask yourself, should I benefit...

26:47 Should I...

26:48 if I...

26:49 if God gave me a get-out-of-jail free card and He said,

26:52 you have one prayer to be answered, what would that prayer be?

26:56 Should it be this war needs to end or should it be all wars needs to end?

27:01 Okay?

27:01 And all wars need to end, is a very different target.

27:05 Now, if you ask me, we need to get

27:09 to a point genuinely where the word war stops.

27:16 Okay?

27:17 And if we don't, and I'm just saying where my heart is, if we don't,

27:21 then we're just going to take another 10 years breather or 5 years breather.

27:25 Okay?

27:25 And then your children are going to suffer that.

27:28 And, you know, in my book, in Alive, the entire theme of the book is a song

27:34 by a band called the manic the Manic Street Preachers.

27:39 If you tolerate this, then your children will be next.

27:43 Okay?

27:43 So I'm asking people to put their hearts in the right place.

27:46 I'm basically saying, think about the reality of where evil is coming from.

27:53 Okay?

27:54 And hope that nobody gets hurt in the process but even needs to stop.

27:58 I think the question I always ask myself,

28:01 ever since I was a child, actually, through the Lebanese war,

28:07 to what obviously the most recent wars

28:09 as well that have been happening around us is, why doesn't anyone care?

28:13 You know what I mean?

28:15 Like, I remember in Lebanon back in the day,

28:17 I always used to think like, why can't anyone stop this?

28:21 You know, it's just horrendous.

28:23 And I feel like, as you said, war in general needs to stop,- the idea of war.

28:29 War needs to stop.

28:29 I mean, it doesn't make sense,

28:30 but I don't see it happening because you see more and more countries

28:33 buying more weapons and developing more harmful

28:36 weapons and stronger weapons and so on.

28:39 So what can you do...

28:41 How can I maybe shield my mind, Mohammad- from maybe...

28:44 I'm not asking you to shield your mind.

28:46 I'm asking you to clear your mind.

28:48 Yeah.

28:48 Yeah.

28:48 Yeah.

28:48 By shield, I don't mean, like, I don't want to know what's going on.

28:51 By shield, I meant so that you don't become more hardened- Correct.

28:57 Well done.

28:57 and you don't become more inhumane, and you lose your humanity,

29:01 and you think they should all die, you know what I mean?

29:04 Nobody should die.

29:04 That's why...

29:05 Everyone to suffer or whatever.

29:07 That's the statement I'm saying, okay?

29:09 I'm saying nobody should die.

29:10 Even the people that started this war.

29:13 Yeah.

29:13 Okay?

29:14 They should be, you know, held accountable and prosecuted.

29:17 They should be held accountable.

29:18 Correct.

29:18 Yeah.

29:19 But the point is they shouldn't die.

29:22 If someone goes and, you know,

29:24 shoots one of the politicians tomorrow, I wouldn't feel good about that.

29:28 Justice is for the world to have an order, a form of order.

29:32 Okay?

29:33 And you can easily see…- Okay.

29:35 I told you, you can change things when, you know,

29:38 when you see something wrong, try to change it with your actions.

29:41 I don't think either of us can do actions that change anything,

29:46 with your words, that's what I'm trying to do right now, right?

29:49 With my writing, with my sharing openly what's in my heart, could be wrong.

29:53 It doesn't matter but I'm sharing it, okay?

29:55 Or with your heart.

29:56 And what I'm asking people to do is to start for the first time,

30:00 because now the compassion of being in the situation that you

30:03 saw on the screen when you pressed the like, okay,

30:06 now you're in that situation is to create the compassion in your heart to say,

30:10 no one should ever suffer that, my children or any children in the world

30:15 should not live under a sky where there are rockets flying by.

30:18 Okay?

30:18 And I think that statement is where our hearts should be.

30:24 And if our hearts are in that place, then we're aligned to do the right things.

30:29 Now, how do you do that?

30:32 What do you do for your family from now on?

30:34 It's to simply say, enough is enough.

30:38 Okay?

30:38 I'm not going to promote all of the propaganda.

30:41 I'm not going to listen to any of it, okay?

30:43 To distract me or to create fear within me.

30:47 I'm going to go back to reality compartment one or compartment

30:50 three or anything I know that I don't know, right?

30:54 And simply when you ask yourself, are we safe?

30:57 Yes, of course.

30:58 The UAE has done a great job.

31:01 You know, in all honesty, all of your fear is in your head.

31:07 Yeah.

31:08 Okay?

31:08 We do not know of a single person

31:11 that has been affected negatively by this, injured.

31:14 I think there were like just in the single figures people injured.

31:19 Yeah.

31:20 Right?

31:20 We know for a fact, if you look

31:22 at the data that they didn't target civilian infrastructure.

31:28 If you if you want the reality, we're safe.

31:30 And to be honest, the traffic is better.

31:33 Okay?

31:33 Isn't that wonderful?

31:35 And in a very interesting way,

31:37 it gets you to think deeply about what is true and what is not.

31:42 Even the rocket flying in front of you gets you

31:45 to feel that you're not safe, but am I safe?

31:50 And that metacognition, that ability to say,

31:53 why am I telling myself that I'm not safe when I am?

31:56 There are no tigers here.

31:58 I mean, look at you and I, we both drove here.

32:00 We paid our parking.

32:02 We came upstairs, we shook hands with so many people.

32:05 The place is busy, right?

32:07 And here we are.

32:08 Yeah.

32:09 Truth sets you free.

32:12 And the truth is on one side, this is an awakening.

32:18 Genuinely.

32:18 I've never in my entire old life seen a moment of awakening like now.

32:25 Okay?

32:25 Whether it's the Epstein files at the beginning of the year,

32:28 whether it's all the lies around, you know, the stability of the US dollar

32:33 and the economy and you know, all of that.

32:36 When you when you dig deep into that, you start to see the truth.

32:39 The world is starting to wake up, okay?

32:41 And the world is starting to reject what's wrong.

32:46 Of course, there has been configurations and setups and so on that are very,

32:52 very difficult to tangle like that ball of wool, right?

32:56 They're very difficult to untangle.

32:58 But we will once...

33:00 Now that we see where the red thread is okay, we will.

33:04 But we shouldn't submit to the to the brainwash

33:10 and we shouldn't settle for, Okay, okay, okay.

33:13 Just make me safe for another few weeks.

33:16 That's not the way it should be.

33:18 The way it should be is: This needs to end.

33:21 It needs to end.

33:23 Well, so this is a wakeup call.

33:25 I agree, I think to all of us, and also more so I mean you and I,

33:30 we've talked quite a bit about like AI and the changes

33:34 that has been ushering and will continue to do so.

33:39 And this is a wakeup call in a different sense.

33:41 And, you know, as a mom, I had to explain to my kids what's going on and what's

33:48 this sound and why and why is this hitting that and so on.

33:52 And you started this conversation by saying,

33:55 we've become hardened, we've lost empathy or compassion.

34:01 If this is a wakeup call, what is your...

34:05 What would you do as a, as a parent at this point in time?

34:08 Like, maybe, what are certain things that we can try to instill in our children

34:14 at this point that may be 20 years down the line they might get up and say,

34:20 you know, enough is enough?

34:22 I don't know if we're able- to say enough is enough today.

34:24 That's so beautiful.

34:25 You can, that might not mean that you change anything, but you can say it.

34:29 You can feel it.

34:30 Okay?

34:31 Yeah.

34:31 I'm a parent, my daughter's 30, so not a kid, but we chat all the time.

34:39 And I hope at my current age, I'm a parent to many others, through my work,

34:45 and, you know, in a very interesting way,

34:48 every time I hear a bomb, I say three things, okay?

34:53 I say, Thank God I'm safe and the ones I

34:56 love are safe because it's a fact, I am safe.

34:59 There was a bomb, but I'm safe.

35:01 That really tells your operating system, your entire body that no, no,

35:07 no, no, no, no, your, your amygdala is kickstarting your cortisol,- you know...

35:13 Chill.

35:14 This is all over, you know.

35:16 You're okay.

35:17 So number one, I'm safe.

35:18 Number two, I hope every other innocent human is safe.

35:23 Remember to get that in your heart and teach that to your kids.

35:27 Every time you hear a bomb say, I hope every innocent human is safe.

35:32 Every one of them.

35:33 I don't want any child anywhere in the world,

35:35 any innocent woman who is not part of the war,

35:38 any man who's walking to his work, I don't want anyone to be hurt, okay?

35:43 Anywhere in the world.

35:45 And third, which is really interesting,

35:47 and I hope that bomb gets the evil ones that started it.

35:51 And I say it in my heart openly.

35:53 Okay?

35:54 And I may not know who are the true evil ones,

35:57 but I'm hoping, I'm hoping somehow that gets to them.

36:02 And when you really think about it, when you really think about it,

36:07 our kids learn from us, from how we feel.

36:11 And if this is not how you feel, you know, if your only reaction to this is,

36:16 oh my God, oh my God, I hope we're safe, I hope we're safe, you're scaring them.

36:20 Actually, I would say point three.

36:23 You know?

36:23 I wouldn't say I hope it gets to the evil person that deserves it

36:27 because I feel that's why we're here

36:32 today because obviously evil is subjective, right?

36:35 Depending on which side you're on.

36:37 Evil is not subjective.

36:38 You...

36:39 Evil is not subjective.

36:40 No.

36:40 You can convince yourself that...

36:42 No.

36:43 Killing a child is evil.

36:44 No, absolutely.

36:45 Okay?

36:45 Regardless of which side you're on, evil is not subjective.

36:49 Evil with a small e is subjective.

36:51 Evil with a capital E isn't.

36:53 Yes.

36:53 Okay?

36:53 Evil with a small E is someone you know,

36:56 is traumatized as a child and as a result became a criminal.

37:00 That's evil with a small e, right?

37:02 That's subjective.

37:03 The evil with a capital E is systemic.

37:07 It's systemic.

37:07 It's like running Google.

37:10 It's a very big organization with people reporting

37:12 to people with plans being put in place,

37:15 with people carrying OKRs and objectives and executing on them.

37:20 Right?

37:21 No, that's not subjective.

37:23 Okay?

37:24 And once again, the easiest way is to...

37:26 If you don't mind, I mean, we're close.

37:29 So I'll say that openly.

37:31 Go ahead.

37:32 Take that concept of evil is subjective and tell yourself,

37:35 how was I ever made to believe that?

37:37 What I was trying to say is that, you know,

37:40 depending on where you live in the world and who you are,

37:44 you might have a different narrative in your mind.

37:47 All of them are evil.

37:48 That justifies basically whatever you're doing.

37:50 We talked about that, right?

37:51 If they're not pro-humanity at large as one family with no racism,

37:57 with no differentiation, with no greed, they're all evil.

38:00 Okay?

38:01 And by the way, that doesn't mean that everything that's happening is evil.

38:07 Understand?

38:08 So there are many decisions that happen in our world,

38:11 especially by our leaders, because they're solving a very complex puzzle.

38:16 Okay?

38:16 You know, they know that if they did

38:19 this instead of that, which you might want to do,

38:23 they would actually harm their own people.

38:26 Right?

38:26 And so they may make certain decisions that are not perfectly right sometimes.

38:32 They sometimes make other decisions that are amazing.

38:36 And the mix of those two are the reality that we live in.

38:40 But at the end of the day,

38:41 if they made it with the intention of the good of everyone, that's not evil.

38:46 Evil is the people that make it

38:48 with the intention of the good of very few people.

38:52 Okay?

38:53 And so my...

38:54 I don't want to...

38:56 Again, I'm speaking my heart.

38:58 So edit whatever you want out.

39:01 But the truth is there is an opportunity to calm our kids down,

39:07 but there is also an opportunity to hopefully get them

39:10 to grow up not as numb as we have been.

39:13 Okay?

39:13 And you know, that doesn't mean they need

39:15 to be aggressive or violent or angry or whatever.

39:18 It means they need to learn to see the truth.

39:21 Okay?

39:21 And the truth is not very difficult to find when you look for it.

39:25 Yeah.

39:25 To question.

39:26 Yeah.

39:27 To question.

39:27 And by the way, part of the truth is: I'm not really sure.

39:31 Yeah.

39:31 Okay?

39:32 Now let's talk about what can be done because it's important for people.

39:37 So you would get into those kinds of situations.

39:40 And you and I almost every time find

39:42 a reason to talk about the feminine and masculine.

39:45 And you get two very different reactions

39:47 of the feminine and the masculine when we're in crisis.

39:51 The masculine… Again, feminine and masculine are not body parts.

39:54 So if you, Loulou, you know, lean on your masculine side,

39:58 you're going to behave in a certain way.

39:59 If you lean on your feminine side, you're going to be in a different way.

40:02 One of my favorite bosses ever used to teach me that when times are tough,

40:11 we tend to do more of what we know how to do best.

40:16 Not necessarily the most effective.

40:18 Okay?

40:19 But what what we know how to do best.

40:22 So we lean on our comfort zone.

40:24 I call that habitual regression.

40:26 Habitual regression is when times are tough.

40:30 You don't address the situation with the best strategy.

40:32 You address the situation with your best skills.

40:35 Okay?

40:35 So the masculine in situations of stress tends to do,

40:39 like those people that just quickly run

40:41 away and rush to the airport or whatever, they are in a state of doing.

40:47 The feminine is a state of being,

40:49 which has a lot of sensuality in it, a lot of emotions in it.

40:53 Okay?

40:53 And so usually in times of stress, the feminine would have more emotions.

41:00 You get a lot of volatility, in what you feel.

41:04 Neither of those is good for you.

41:06 Neither of those is good for you, right?

41:08 What is good for you is to, first of all,

41:12 if you're subjected to someone else who's

41:15 in their masculine or in their feminine,

41:17 please understand that this is very instinctive, okay?

41:22 And so have space for it.

41:24 When, you know, if your husband is all about,

41:26 let's do something, let's move, let's,

41:28 you know, reorganize the home, let's whatever,

41:32 yeah, that's their way of saying I'm stressed.

41:35 Okay?

41:36 If your wife is, you know, popping up in volatile emotions,

41:41 that's her way of saying I'm stressed,

41:43 I'm trying to go through this situation, right?

41:45 And having open space for this, you know?

41:48 But then what do you do?

41:51 What you would do starts with, in my mind,

41:54 a very deep understanding of the value of calm.

41:58 Okay?

41:59 And it's not...

42:02 You know, so I normally would ask people and say,

42:05 if I gave you two choices, and you can choose and I'll just make it happen,

42:10 one is to go through this feeling anxious

42:14 and the other is to go through it feeling calm.

42:16 Which would you choose?

42:18 Nobody will say, make me feel anxious.

42:19 Of course.

42:20 Right?

42:20 Calm is a better way of execution.

42:23 It's a better utilization of your human machine, right?

42:28 Because simply, if you want the mathematics of it, when...

42:32 If you have limited compute and limited memory

42:35 capacity that you need to analyze the situation,

42:39 anxiety and worry and all of those stuff,

42:42 they burn 30, 40, 50% of your brain capacity.

42:46 Okay?

42:46 So this is why, you know, as a business leader,

42:49 if my team comes in and, you know, is panicking about a crisis,

42:53 the first thing I do is in the first ten minutes, I'll tell them,

42:56 okay, so what's going on and get them to let it all out.

42:59 Then the second ten minutes, I'll say, okay, so what's going right?

43:03 What is working in our favor?

43:05 And then the third ten minutes, I'd say, what can we do about this?

43:09 So, you know, the first is emotional.

43:10 The third is action.

43:12 But in the middle there is an exercise of finding the truth, right?

43:15 And calm, believe it or not, is very achievable.

43:19 Okay?

43:20 Why?

43:21 Because anxiety, stress, fear, unless there is a bomb landing next to you

43:26 or a tiger attacking you is happening in your head.

43:29 Yeah.

43:29 It's not happening out in the real world.

43:31 It's your interpretation of the real world.

43:33 So we spoke about doomscrolling, you need to limit that.

43:38 You need to stop, you know, you can get updated.

43:42 But what I do is I go to long form.

43:45 So what I do is I have, you know,

43:48 several podcasts that talk about geopolitics and economics and so on.

43:52 And on daily basis, I'd watch 2 or 3 of them for them

43:56 to have done the doomscrolling and update me on the actual outcomes.

44:00 Yeah.

44:00 So more context than headlines.

44:02 Yeah, exactly.

44:03 So and I want analysis and I want depth and I want

44:05 a conversation and I want argument and I want this view and that view.

44:09 And my limit is very straightforward.

44:11 I don't watch… In times of crisis,

44:13 I don't watch anything that's shorter than 50 minutes.

44:16 Okay?

44:17 Yes, I do scroll, you know, early in the morning.

44:20 I do scroll a little bit in the evening

44:22 just to find out if there is anything new.

44:24 But as I said, the minute I start to get the same thing three times, it's done.

44:29 Anyway, and short form,

44:30 you also know it's designed to get your attention- in an unhealthy way.

44:35 Correct.

44:35 Correct.

44:35 Yeah.

44:36 So two things happen.

44:38 One is you're no longer incessantly ingesting information.

44:43 And the second is you're actually getting insight.

44:46 Okay?

44:46 so this is the first thing.

44:48 The second thing, which I believe is really important is what,

44:52 you know, Franklin, what was his name?

44:55 Covey?

44:56 Yeah.

44:56 The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People?

44:58 So, he really popularized it,

45:01 but it's a stoic teaching from the ancient Greek times,

45:07 which is known as the dichotomy of control.

45:10 He used to call it your area of influence and area of control.

45:14 The dichotomy of control is an understanding and an acknowledgment

45:18 that not everything is within your control, right?

45:21 And that wasting brain cycles, it's all about your resources.

45:24 Wasting brain cycles on things that are in your area of...

45:30 Not in your control.

45:31 Not in your, yeah, not in your area of...

45:34 What was it?

45:35 Influence or control, anyway,

45:36 that are not within your control is not only making you, you know, spin out,

45:42 but it's also wasting your brain cycles,

45:44 which you can utilize doing something useful that you can control, right?

45:48 And so when you started from what do you want?

45:52 Right?

45:52 Then went through the cycle of, and what is the truth?

45:56 What is the data that feeds me so that I can decide what I want?

46:00 You know, very interestingly, one of the exercises I do very,

46:04 very often in crisis is I take a paper

46:06 and pen and write down everything that's concerning me, you know, 50 things.

46:14 And then literally highlight them red and green.

46:18 This is within my area of control.

46:20 This is not.

46:21 These are things I can influence.

46:23 These are things I cannot.

46:25 Okay?

46:25 Whatever they are.

46:27 Oh, you know, the UAE will run out of food.

46:30 Fine.

46:30 Okay.

46:31 If it's within your area of concern, so, if it's concerning you...

46:36 By the way, area of concern and area of influence,

46:39 If it's concerning you and you genuinely believe it's concerning you,

46:43 it's green, you can do something about it, you know?

46:46 By four cans of tuna.

46:48 Fine.

46:48 Right?

46:49 And the minute you do that, you take it out

46:52 of what I normally call brain time and practical time.

46:55 Very, very important hack.

46:57 Okay?

46:58 When your stress is related to something that's not in the present moment,

47:05 something in the past,

47:06 or something in the future, in our case, most of it is in the future.

47:09 Is the future going to be safe?

47:11 What you need to do is your brain tends

47:15 to process that in what's known as brain time, I used the term in my first book,

47:20 brain time is an incessant cycle of trying to analyze

47:24 that situation over and over and over until it's solved,

47:29 repeatedly, incessantly.

47:29 It's like white noise in the background.

47:31 Okay?

47:32 Practical time is to turn every future concern into a plan.

47:37 Even if the plan is not perfect, you turn the future concern into a plan.

47:41 Okay?

47:41 So you know, my close family, my ex Um Ali,

47:46 you know, Nibal ex-wife, my daughter, both live here in the UAE.

47:51 And we said, look, after Eid, if it's still here,

47:54 we're going to convene again and decide if we want to leave.

47:57 That might be the worst plan or the best plan in history.

48:01 It doesn't matter.

48:02 But there is a plan.

48:03 But there's a decision on that.

48:04 So that topic doesn't come up in our conversation anymore.

48:07 Do you understand?

48:08 And so, you know, turning things from brain time to practical time...

48:14 And by the way, just for the sake of it,

48:16 if it's in the past, you turn it into learning and you stop.

48:20 You archive it.

48:21 Incessant.

48:21 You archive it, right?

48:22 So, this is really important.

48:23 Understanding the dichotomy of control genuinely frees you

48:28 up from 80% of what you're struggling with.

48:32 The trick though is to accept what's not within your control, right?

48:38 So there is an emotional overflooding is what I call it.

48:42 When you're spinning out, you tend,

48:46 if you're a doer, you tend to overdo everything.

48:51 Like, you know, you'd even work more in the times where things are uncertain.

49:00 And if you're emotional and you're struggling with emotional regulation,

49:04 all emotions pop up.

49:06 Once...

49:07 Because remember, what happens is every emotion

49:09 you've ever felt is either processed or suppressed.

49:15 And suddenly, because it's almost as if the gravity

49:20 of the situation leads you to, you know,

49:25 an overflood of opening your heart, everything comes out, okay?

49:29 And so that's absolutely normal.

49:30 And all of this is wonderful.

49:32 It's all opportunities to reflect and to sit with yourself and say,

49:37 seriously, how effective am I in protecting myself and my family?

49:42 And another thing that I have to say

49:46 people genuinely miss the opportunity of is oxytocin.

49:53 So, you see cortisol and adrenaline...

49:57 If you just look at the human machine as a machinery,

50:01 the way stress works is very biological.

50:04 It's almost like an internal combustion engine.

50:07 It's exactly systemic every single time.

50:10 Your unaware system, your amygdala detects a threat, it triggers your...

50:23 A very long cycle that basically eventually ends

50:27 up in your adrenal glands and your adrenal glands,

50:31 you know, pour cortisol into your bloodstream, right?

50:36 And the cortisol, you know,

50:37 may lead to adrenaline if there is a fight or flight response needed.

50:41 But that hormone cocktail basically is there to reconfigure you into superhuman.

50:47 So if you need it to run because there was an actual threat,

50:52 we've reconfigured your body so that most of your, of your energy-

50:57 can go to your muscles, and so on.

51:00 Yeah.

51:01 That reconfiguration is almost mechanical.

51:04 Biological, yes, but it's almost mechanical.

51:08 There are other processes in the human body that also are mechanical.

51:12 A hug will give you oxytocin.

51:15 Simple as that.

51:16 And, you know, remember we always spoke about

51:19 safety is not related to how intelligent we are, how well we're doing.

51:23 It's always related to, are we in a community that's standing for us?

51:26 So, you know, I can genuinely tell you

51:29 that one of the things that parents should do,

51:32 instead of trying to explain the situation to their little kids, is hug them.

51:36 It's biologically 100% bulletproof.

51:41 Bulletproof, no pun intended.

51:44 And simply, you know, works every time, and in a very interesting way,

51:49 it's an opportunity, when things slow down a little bit...

51:52 I mean, I used to...

51:55 Again, my brain is weird, but when COVID was happening and everyone

51:59 was complaining about not being out there, you know, partying and so on, to me,

52:04 it was an opportunity to be with someone I really loved,

52:08 with closeness with, enough space for me to write for enough space with me.

52:16 This is when I wrote Scary Smart, for example,

52:17 which I think have made a big dent in the AI world.

52:21 And again, it's an opportunity.

52:24 It is the ability to deal with the world as it is instead

52:29 of complaining that the world is not what you want it to be.

52:33 And that's, by the way, called growing up.

52:36 Children, when there are things that are happening that they don't like,

52:41 they, you know, stomp their feet and they cry.

52:46 We're not six year olds anymore, right?

52:48 Yeah.

52:49 Simply when things happen that we don't like, we look at the situation,

52:52 we analyze it, we say, how can I make it better?

52:55 How can I make it better for me?

52:57 By being rational, being analytical, being emotional,

53:01 but processing my emotions in a regulated way.

53:06 Or how can I be there for others?

53:10 How can I call my daughter, check in on her, send her a joke, hug her?

53:14 Okay?

53:15 You know, if a friend is spinning out a little bit, be there for them.

53:21 You know, and if a friend invites me to share my views,

53:25 say the truth so that people, you know, hear us.

53:32 Okay, so if I had to sum it up, I guess, we are...

53:41 Let's see.

53:42 I'm trying to remember the beginning- of this conversation.

53:46 It was a flood of information.

53:47 I apologize.

53:49 No, I think I want to maybe leave the audience,

53:51 the people who are listening now again,

53:53 who might be dealing with whatever is going on in different ways.

53:58 Is that: Not everything is in your control.

54:03 Try to...

54:05 Almost nothing is, very little.

54:06 Except that there is no black and white.

54:09 And there are things that are in the middle that maybe you

54:13 should educate yourself more on to try to get to the truth.

54:17 And it's important not to lose our humanity in the process.

54:24 It's important to wish for a better world

54:27 where there is no war,- across borders, everywhere.

54:32 Everywhere.

54:33 It's a wakeup call for all of us to rethink and maybe try

54:40 to understand why we've been numbed and hardened for such a long time.

54:44 Please.

54:47 It's an opportunity for us to look

54:49 at our information diet and see and understand

54:52 that the 5 to 10 second clips we're

54:55 seeing on social media are designed to aggravate us.

55:00 And that perhaps the best way to get the right context is to look at long form,

55:05 long podcasts where there is more context- and more research and analysis.

55:09 And no heightened emotions.

55:11 Yeah.

55:11 And no drama.

55:12 No heightened emotions.

55:13 So if you see a very long podcast of someone very angry and cursing, that's...

55:17 Yeah.

55:18 I guess we don't want to fall for the hook.

55:21 Yeah.

55:22 You're looking for a truth.

55:22 You're looking for a truth.

55:23 In those hazy times, you're looking for truth.

55:27 And you know, I always attempted...

55:31 because my life in business, I very rarely ever ran a steady business.

55:37 I always built a business in a very confusing time,

55:40 you know, a new product, whatever.

55:42 And then when it became stable,

55:43 I became bored and I handed it over and I used to teach my teams.

55:47 I used to say, when you're in times of uncertainty,

55:52 treat your life as a quest, not a journey.

55:55 There's a massive difference.

55:56 And this is a very, very important skill in the time that we're in right now.

56:00 A journey is, you know, you and your husband say,

56:03 so we're going to take the kids to France on, you know,

56:08 July 17th until the 27th.

56:10 And then you say, no, no, I can't do the 27th.

56:12 It's the 26th, and everything is pre-planned

56:14 and which hotel and which car you're renting.

56:18 That's a journey.

56:20 A quest is you're in the fog, you're in the dark.

56:24 You know, you're in an uncharted territory, which, by the way,

56:29 is exactly where the world is today, what you do, you take one step forward.

56:34 You look left and right.

56:36 You assess the next step, then you take another step.

56:39 Then sometimes you may take a step back and go

56:41 left and then take another step and so on.

56:44 When you're in a quest, it's all about your ability to say,

56:48 I'm not going to try to control the world.

56:51 I'm going to control my passage through the world.

56:53 My next step, maybe.

56:55 My next step or two.

56:56 And there's always that ability to assess and reconvene

57:00 and discuss and agree and so on and so forth.

57:03 So in, in my mind, this is a massive

57:06 difference for people who value control and routine and predictability.

57:14 They struggle heavily in this.

57:17 For me, it's like, oh, another startup!

57:20 It is very, very natural to the way

57:22 I operated my whole life to work through uncertainty.

57:26 And it's simple, if you're safe where you are right now, take one step forward,

57:31 check that you're safe, check for all alternative passages that you can take.

57:35 Then take another step to the left then and so

57:37 on, or two steps or one step and so on.

57:40 And be flexible, responding to the realities that you find out,

57:44 very, very different than just saying, okay, let's plan this out.

57:49 Yeah.

57:49 You did mention at the beginning of the conversation as well that there

57:53 could be a lot of opportunities- that arise out of the situation.

57:57 A hundred percent.

57:58 Especially for entrepreneurs that are listening now.

58:00 A hundred percent.

58:01 That, you know, in times of uncertainty,

58:03 I think maybe the people that can adapt in the way

58:06 that you're describing could ultimately benefit

58:10 from the opportunities- that will arise.

58:14 Countless opportunities.

58:15 I mean, again, you have to think about it with certainty.

58:18 Mathematically, either this is going to go really, really, really bad.

58:21 So it doesn't matter what your effort is, okay?

58:24 Or it's not, and it's going to come back and it's always come back.

58:27 And when it comes back,

58:28 those who have made the correct decisions find themselves in a good place.

58:31 Is there a better way of looking at things?

58:34 I mean, because you touch now on something important because yes,

58:37 at least in my mind.

58:39 This could get really bad.

58:40 Correct.

58:40 Like we could all die- if it gets really, really bad, yeah.

58:43 100%, 80% bad.

58:43 Yeah.

58:47 Like my husband, for example,

58:49 he wouldn't even put that scenario,- like, what's the point?

58:52 Correct.

58:53 So do you have maybe a formula or a framework for that?

58:56 Like, should you even put the negative scenario as a scenario?

58:59 Area of influence and area of concern.

59:01 Okay.

59:01 And address things that you are concerned about positively.

59:05 So it's very simple.

59:06 Yes, in my calculation,

59:08 there is a 15% chance that someone is going to do something really

59:12 weird in a couple of weeks time or in a month's time or whatever,

59:15 and you know, it's going to affect the entire world.

59:18 Yeah.

59:18 Right?

59:18 Yeah, I cannot control that 15%.

59:21 I may be able to control it if this podcast goes super viral

59:26 and 400 million people see it and they stand in front of the white House,

59:32 but that's, you know, very unlikely.

59:36 What I know is it's not within my area of control.

59:40 It's not within my area of influence.

59:42 And if it's not within my area of influence,

59:44 why should I waste brain cycles on it?

59:47 Okay?

59:48 Instead I invest brain cycles in it positively.

59:53 If something really bad could happen in three weeks time,

59:58 I might as well hug my daughter daily every day of those three weeks.

1:00:03 I might as well invest heavier in my ice cream machine

1:00:07 and make ice creams that actually have sugar in it, right?

1:00:10 It is a very interesting way of looking at it.

1:00:13 It's not within my control, but it's now within my ability to design the rest

1:00:18 of my life based on it, based on it.

1:00:20 Again, I know this is really weird the way my brain works,

1:00:24 but every decision you make that's

1:00:27 not uncertainty should be based on probability.

1:00:30 And the whole idea is when we are analyzing

1:00:35 a ton of inputs in a situation of uncertainty,

1:00:39 what normally ends up happening is we treat all of them equally.

1:00:43 No, they're not equal.

1:00:44 So think about probability.

1:00:45 A hundred percent.

1:00:47 What...

1:00:48 And I did that math with a few of my friends and my daughter.

1:00:53 I basically calculated the probability of a debris landing

1:00:56 on my apartment during the times of, you know, the interceptions and so on.

1:01:02 It's less than dying on an airplane if

1:01:05 you just calculate the square area of Dubai

1:01:07 and the number of rockets and the probability

1:01:09 that this thing lands on my apartment.

1:01:13 Yes, of course it lands on someone's apartment.

1:01:15 But what is the probability of that?

1:01:17 And if it's lower than dying on an airplane,

1:01:21 I should probably stop flying before I ever fear this.

1:01:25 Do you understand?

1:01:27 And those things just anchor you in compartment one.

1:01:32 Everything you want,

1:01:34 all the success in decisions and uncertainty to bring things to compartment one.

1:01:39 It's to say, I know that is true,

1:01:41 or I know that this has a 10% chance of being true.

1:01:45 Or I know that this has 17% chance of being true.

1:01:48 And accordingly, what am I going to do about it?

1:01:51 In your business, you look at this and you say,

1:01:55 I know for a fact that the market is going to decline a little bit, right?

1:02:00 There is no doubt about that.

1:02:02 This is a 99% probability.

1:02:05 Now from there onwards, for example,

1:02:08 if you look at every crash in the real estate market in the UAE, since,

1:02:12 you know, freehold started to happen, it crashes for seven months and then it

1:02:18 recovers and then it overshoots the original support level.

1:02:25 And so, yeah, there is data.

1:02:29 You can say to yourself, there is 100% probability that it will happen.

1:02:33 There is a, you know, a 10% probability that it will recover in a month,

1:02:37 but a 90% probability it will recover in 7 or 8.

1:02:41 Okay.

1:02:42 And that's it.

1:02:43 And you know, it's all about stopping the madness

1:02:47 and just genuinely putting the things that matter down.

1:02:51 And so I'm asking people every time they scroll

1:02:53 and they see a rocket that hits or misses to say,

1:02:57 I really in my heart pray for that to end.

1:03:01 Yeah.

1:03:01 I pray for it to end so that my kids grow up

1:03:04 in a world where they don't have to deal with that anymore.

1:03:07 And it is possible.

1:03:09 I promise you.

1:03:10 it's the first time in my lifetime where I actually believe it's possible.

1:03:15 It is possible that there will be a change that happens as a result of this.

1:03:20 Okay?

1:03:21 Let's hope so.

1:03:22 I totally believe it.

1:03:23 Let's hope so.

1:03:24 Thank you so much, Mo, for doing this on such a short notice.

1:03:28 Oh my God, I'm very grateful that you have me here.

1:03:31 Thank you.

1:03:31 Thank you.