He came up with an equation for happiness: "The equation says that happiness is greater than, or equal to, your perception of the events in your life minus your expectation of how life should be."
Yeah. The old "expectation game" can be a soul-killer, a wet-blanket for happiness. It's funny, our crazed, rampant, over-stuffed capitalist consumer culture teases us to always be needing, wanting, grasping for the next newest thing. Probably works against our well-being & ultimate happiness.
Also, how about this? Maybe we should stop listening to the voices inside our heads?
"We have a set of illusions. One of them is that we associate so strongly with the voice in our head when the reality is that it is just a biological function; it is exactly like your heart pumping blood around your body. It’s your brain’s way of delivering survival functions to you – its job is to scan the world around it using sensory input and then coordinate your muscle responses and take action so that you survive.
Thoughts have truly propelled our civilisation, and we think of the voice inside our heads as us. But that isn’t remotely true once you realise that you don’t have to obey your thoughts – I can accept them, I can reject them, I can ask the brain to go and get me a better one. You can do what people do in meetings: you ask me a question, I give you an answer, but you can say to me: “Mo, can you get me a better answer?”, and I go back to my brain and I say, give me a better answer. Treat your brain as a biological function and understand he is not the boss – you are the boss."
So much wisdom from Mo: "Yet we never give ourselves the luxury of living in now; instead, we are constantly living inside our heads looking in the past and the future, and as you do that you constantly suffer."
Right. Be here now. Cultivate happiness. Lower your expectations and thrive!