285. Nir Eyal | Beyond Belief

Hello, Book Thinkers family, and welcome to our personal development podcast, Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books. During each episode, we interview one of the world's top authors, and as a listener, you can expect to discover new books, new mentors, and new resources that you can use to achieve more and live better.

Hello, Book Thinkers family. In today's episode, we have the pleasure to interview Nir Eyal, author of Beyond Belief. Nir is a globally recognized authority on behavior change and human potential. He's a former lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and the bestselling author of Hooked, Indistractable, and Now Beyond Belief, with more than 1 million copies sold in over 30 languages. As a seasoned entrepreneur who has founded and sold multiple companies, Nir now advises and invests in pioneering organizations applying behavior design in the real world. In this episode, you'll learn why many of us misunderstand the role of luck in success, what fascinating research reveals about human behavior and belief, and how to practically shift limiting beliefs by examining them through a more intentional lens. We even walk through personal examples of how to redesign beliefs that may be holding you back. Now, get ready to learn and enjoy this incredible conversation with Nir Eyal. Nir, welcome back to the Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books Podcast. I'm excited to have you back on the show today to talk about your brand new book, Beyond Belief, which is launching on March 10th. Tell everybody, why did you decide to write this book?

Oh, thanks. First of all, thanks for having me back. It's, uh, it's always an honor when I get to come back on your show, so thank you. And why did I write this book? So I write books not because I have the answers, but because I need the answers. And what I realized is that We don't need another book telling us what to do, that in the age of AI, we already know what to do. And if you don't know, just ask ChatGPT, Google it. You can find out the answer. What's missing is that we don't understand motivation, that we are, we are drowning in information. We have so much information, but we're lacking motivation. How many books do we all have on our bookshelves that tell us what to do? And yet, for whatever reason, we're not doing it. Why is that? The reason is that knowing what to do isn't enough. The motivation we think is a straight line. If I know what to do, the behavior, and I want the benefit, well then I just do it. That's kind of classical economics in your job. Here's your job description. This is the behaviors you have to do, and here's the benefit. Here's how much you get paid. But that doesn't always work. Works a lot of the time, doesn't work sometimes. Why doesn't it work sometimes? Because something's missing. If it was just as easy as saying, hey, I want this, so I'm gonna do that. We'd all have 6-pack abs and be multimillionaires. But what's missing is belief that motivation is not a straight line. It's a triangle that you need to know what the behavior is that you're gonna do, why you're gonna do it. That's the benefit. But underlying all that is the belief. So for example, if I don't believe I'm gonna get the benefit, let's say I have a boss who I think doesn't have my best interests at heart. Well, how motivated am I gonna be to work for them if I don't believe I'm gonna get the benefit of the promotion, the, the raise, whatever? Then you've got the behavior. What if I don't believe in my own ability to do the behavior, even if I know what I have to do? Okay, I got to go to the gym. I got to work on that business. I got to write that book. If I don't believe that I can do it, it's not going to happen either. So what underlies motivation, sustained motivation, which turns out to be the critical component on who achieves their goals, is who persists the longest. If you could turn that on like a light switch, you could be much more likely to achieve what you want to achieve and reach your full potential. So I think what underlies that is not this woo woo. thinking of, you know, just think positive and believe in yourself and that's it. No, there's actually a science. There's a methodology to understanding the powers of belief so that you can use them to your advantage. And it turns out that's something any of us can learn.

Well, as I've had a chance to start reading your book, I believe that this subject is incredibly important for all of us because you're right. You know, I have this big audience of readers near— everybody is reading books to solve problems or build skills, to satisfy curiosities, to live up to their fullest potential. And you're right, there's not a knowledge gap. You can use ChatGPT to learn anything that you want, but people find themselves starting diets and then falling off, or starting gym exercises early in the year and then falling off. And so I think we're all really interested in how to create that sustained motivation that you talk about. Now, in chapter 1, you kick off the book talking about all of the different diets that you've tried Over the years, earlier in your life to lose weight, but later in life to just feel great. And so every diet worked until it didn't. Talk to us about that seemingly universal experience and how you were able to solve it. Yeah.

So for me, I was— I used to be clinically obese, not just overweight, but actually obese. Today I'm 48 and I'm in the best shape of my life. And the reason why is because I went through this 30-year journey of trying different diets. And it was this classic yo-yo of I try this and I fall off the wagon, then I try that. And why did that keep happening? You know, in the, in the 1990s, I was all about low-fat diets and I, you know, cut all the fat outta my diet. And then that didn't— then I stopped with that one. Then I went vegetarian. So it was all tofu and potatoes. And then I went keto and I threw all the potatoes and tofu away. And then it was just bacon all day. And then after that it was intermittent fasting and I had, elevated to a new plane of consciousness because I knew all about, uh, uh, the benefits of that program. And every diet worked. All of them worked until I stopped believing in them. Because as soon as there was some doubt, as soon as somebody told me, oh, keto's bad for your kidneys, or vegetarians don't get enough nutrients, or intermittent fasting doesn't even make a difference— as soon as I stopped believing in a program, I would quit. And I would say, well, you know what, I've had this pizza pizza, and instead of, instead of doing the right thing, what did I do? It's the what the hell effect. This is an actual psychological phenomenon called the what the hell effect. And so I would chase down the pizza with beer and French fries because what the hell, the diets don't work anyway. And so what this demonstrates is that in order to sustain a behavior, you have to have that belief. And it doesn't even matter about the one true diet. We still don't know what the one true diet is. And this is where we can delineate between facts, faith, and belief. And this is a really important distinction. A fact is a universal truth. Okay, it is an objective truth, something that is true whether you believe it or not. So the world is more like a sphere than it is flat. Sorry, flat earthers. Doesn't care what you think. That is what the world is. That is an objective fact. Okay, on the other end of the spectrum is faith. Faith is a conviction that does not require evidence. What happens in the afterlife? God rewards the righteous. No evidence is needed. In between the two is a belief. A belief is a conviction that is open to revision based on new evidence. And I'll say that again. A belief is a conviction open to revision based on new evidence. So a belief is not fact, it's not faith, it's something different. It's something you can change. It's a tool you can use. And so the big takeaway that I realized that changed my life is that beliefs are tools, not truths. Beliefs are tools, not truths. And so once you realize that beliefs are just tools, you can use the ones that are helpful to you without this requirement of, oh, I will only follow the one true diet. That's what I'm gonna do for the rest of my life. No, you can evaluate it. You can be open to revision based on new evidence, and you can use it as a tool. And it turns out that the more we look at reality through these beliefs and evaluate them for what are the limiting beliefs and what are the liberating beliefs, the better our life will become. So I've improved my relationships dramatically. I have a chapter in there where I talk about how I've, uh, changed my relationship with my mom. I have a chapter in there in terms of How we can change our, our, uh, health and wellness. You know, people who have positive views about aging live 7.5 years longer when they have some critical beliefs about how they age, which, which anyone can adopt if you know the right belief, that they actually live 7.5 years longer. And to put that in perspective, Nick, that's even more time than you would get if you stop smoking or if you exercise, if you're— if you diet. You know, as much as we talk about diet and exercise and all the things we can do to be healthy, Who's telling you about the power of changing your beliefs to live longer? It has a huge impact about how we can manage our pain, how we can improve our business success. All these things that we can do by understanding these limiting beliefs and turning them into liberating beliefs.

I love this subject so much.

And you know what, Nir?

I realized while reading your book that I've implemented a lot of these belief systems and structures over the years, but I didn't have the language to articulate them. And that's probably the product of reading and implementing hundreds of books in the positive psychology space over the last decade. And what I loved about your book so much is that I now get to share it with friends and family and say, this is why these books have been working for me.

Mm-hmm.

All these little shifts, like, I don't get sick. That's a belief. Now, it's not provable because every once in a while I do get sick, but I move through it faster than most people do. It's a, it's a core belief that I have. And why would I choose to believe anything other than that? That, oh my gosh, I get sick and that when I do, I move through it a little bit faster than most people do because I'm a healthy person. What's the opposite? I get sick all the time. I mean, that's a self-fulfilling prophecy that most people end up creating for themselves, right?

That's right. And man, I got goosebumps when you were telling me that. And that explains so much about why you're successful. And, and even just in the time I've known you over the years, you, you have this rare trait of what we call entrepreneurial alertness. That, uh, this is this phenomenon where certain people become more successful, not because they are lucky, right? It's not like the, they were just born under a lucky star and good things happened to them, but rather they have entrepreneurial alertness. They see other opportunities that other people do not see. I mean, literally do not see, because our beliefs have 3 powers: the power to change what you see, the power to change what you feel, and the power to change what you do. These are the 3 powers of belief. So when we start with that first one, the power to change what you see. We call this the power of attention. We know that people who are self-described as lucky or who have these, these liberating beliefs like you do, which may not be true, right? A lot of people, well, if you criticize my work, there's one good criticism, which is, are you telling me to lie to myself? I kind of am, because I would argue you're already lying to yourself. That someone who says something equally ridiculous to, I don't get sick, or if I do, I get through it faster, which is your liberating belief might be something like, this always happens to me. I'm outta time. I, it's, it's too late. I don't have any time in my day. The world is too crazy these days. Exercise sucks. People like me don't achieve this. I'm unlucky. I am not a morning person. I mean, I could go on all day with these limiting beliefs. We, so many of us carry, in fact, all of us carry a limiting belief in one area of our life or another. And so what you've demonstrated, this entrepreneurial alertness, let me just quote one study that really Blew my mind as to how people who have these limiting beliefs, as we all do, see reality differently. They did a study where they asked people who were self-identified as lucky or unlucky, okay? People who themselves call themselves either lucky or unlucky, okay? And, and many people say this all the time, right? You get into traffic, ugh, this always happens to me. Why does this always happen? Like, it's raining today. Oh, why does that always happen? I, I'm sick today. Oh, there's like, people have these, these scripts that we don't even realize we're telling ourselves. So they took people who said to themselves, I am an unlucky person, and they gave them a very simple task. They said, look at this newspaper and we want you to simply count the number of images in this newspaper. Okay? Just flip through the pages, count how many images you see. Unlucky people took 2.5 minutes to do that task. 2.5 minutes. Self-described lucky people took 11 seconds. Okay. Why? Huge gap. The lucky people, as soon as they flipped to page 2, saw that one of those images said, there are 43 images in this newspaper. Please collect your prize. The unlucky people sat there like dumb-dumbs and said 1, 2, 3, 4, and counted for 2 and a half minutes because they didn't even see the different reality that was in front of them. They couldn't picture it. They couldn't envision a different reality. And so this is just one example of how changing your beliefs and taking out those limiting beliefs and asking yourselves, wait a minute, is this true? Am I lying to myself? Is this really the case? Is it serving me or am I harming myself? Am I creating unnecessary labels and suffering in my life because of these beliefs that I'm holding onto like a dumb dumb? So that's what we try and do. We try and take out these limiting beliefs, look at them and assess whether they are serving us or hurting us.

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I'll share a great example of this with you, and I think my audience will be hearing this for the first time. But my last name is Hutchison, and the abbreviated nickname that I always had growing up was Hutch. And so in my household, my parents did a great job at introducing us to this concept of Hutch luck, Hutch luck. And it displays itself all over the place. But my friends grabbed onto this idea that Hutch is always lucky. Hutch luck. Everywhere we go with him, there's never a line at Chipotle. There's never traffic where there usually is. I love it. The plane always takes off on time. And so when my wife adopted my last name, Hutchison, she went from self-describing as unlucky to, hey, I finally can access this Hidden Power of Hutch Luck. Now, you're right, I'm not lucky. I mean, it's not a statistical thing where I'm different than everybody else, but I'm constantly looking for opportunities to reinforce this belief that I'm lucky. And so, yes, behind the scenes, I know that when I walk into Chipotle, I'm not magically removing the people in line in front of me, but I'm always looking for opportunities to see life through a positive lens. And that's a great example that you had in the book about the images. It's just what you're looking for, isn't it?

It's, it's so true. And, and you could systematically adopt that. So I'll, I'll give everyone listening an opportunity to adopt something similar that I do in my family. We don't have such a great last name that you can create Hutchluck, but here's what you could do. So what we started doing a few years ago is that whenever something good happens to us, we say to ourselves, Everything good happens to us. Now, statistically, if we actually counted everything, it's about the same number of good things and bad things happen to pretty much everybody. But when we notice those good things, we become more aware of them, and then we see them, see more of them in the future. So we don't mention the time when there's a big line at Chipotle. We say, oh, look, everything good happens to us. There's no line today. Right? And so that actually changes what we see. There's another technique that my friend Vanessa Van Edwards told me. Which is that instead of telling people, how you doing? Right? Hey, how you doing? What are they going to say? Oh, busy. Oh, this. Okay, I'm fine. Good. Instead, she says, what's good? Like, what's good? Hey, what's good? And that actually prompts us to not only think about it for ourselves, the person asking, but ask the person to think a little different.

Hey, what is good?

You know, what did happen today that's kind of better than average? What's the last nice thing that happened to me? So there's dozens and dozens of these little techniques that at first might seem a little silly, might, but actually turns out to be well supported by the research to really improve our sense of well-being, our mental health, and reduce suffering.

Now, you have, you have a question early in the book which says, is this belief true or does this belief serve me? And so we get to choose what beliefs we adopt. Now, help me navigate something. What if we know something's not true, but it is more positive? How do we fool ourselves into believing it?

Well, I'll give you a good example of this with an amazing anecdote. So Serena Williams, the tennis player, was playing at Wimbledon one year, and her coach Patrick noticed that she was psyching herself out. She wasn't going to the net quickly enough. And you know what, if you don't rush the net in tennis, You know, those milliseconds matter. You, you will lose the point, you will lose the game, you'll lose Wimbledon. And so what does he do? He goes up to Serena and he tells her, Serena, I have some amazing news for you. He says, I've been keeping the stats and I just looked at them today, and it turns out that when you rush the net, you score 80% of the points. And she looks at him, she says, no way, that— I thought I sucked at the net. And he says, well, what do you want? The statistics say what the statistics say. That's the case. Okay, that 80% of the time you score a point when you rush the net. It wasn't true. It's completely a lie. Okay, he made it up. But here's what happened when he told her that. He erased the limiting belief, which was also a lie. The lie was that she was not good at the net. She had always been good at the net. She had that skill. But somehow, because her confidence was damaged in that moment, She had retreated into this passivity, which, by the way, is our default state, right? We used to think, you know, this concept of learned helplessness. That turns out that learned helplessness is exactly backwards, that the people who ran those studies, Seligman and Maier, completely changed their mind, that our default state, what we keep retreating into, is passivity. I can't. I won't. It won't work. Here's all the reasons why. And we try and gather evidence to show us, yes, yes, it won't work. I should be passive. But that wasn't true either. She was great at the net. She had just lost her edge. She had lost her confidence. So through this selective deception, he told her this lie, this new belief, which was much more useful because remember, beliefs are tools, not truths. And it turns out the lie became reality. She started making more of those points because she started rushing the net and she ends up winning Wimbledon. So again, I would argue you're already deceiving yourself. You're already lying to yourself based on these limitations that aren't real. So it's better to have these, these beliefs that serve you, that you choose, rather than the ones that have been programmed into you based on your upbringing, based on your background, based on your history. If they're not serving you, we can get rid of them and adopt better ones.

So let's—

I love that.

And let's dive into a practical example for the audience. Let's say for a long time, Nir, I've said I'm not a morning person. Yeah, but I'd like to shift that belief into something like I am a morning person. And I love waking up in the morning before everybody else and getting some work done. So how do I just lie to myself? I'm a morning person often enough in the form of an affirmation that eventually that becomes my default pathway. Or is there something else? Is there another tool at my disposal?

So this is an example of what we call identity foreclosure. Identity foreclosure. I didn't make up this term. It's a psychological term is when we let our diagnosis Become our identity. And we see it not just when people say, I'm not a morning person. We see it when people say, uh, I have ADHD, which I have, by the way. So I, I've been diagnosed with ADHD, and for many, many years, as soon as I would be distracted or forgetful or something would happen and my mind would go off track, there's my damn ADHD again. So my diagnosis became my identity. A diagnosis is very helpful when it's a map.

Mm-hmm.

Okay, here's— I have ADHD. Here's the steps I can take to change my behavior, to learn to overcome this challenge. But that's not what most people do. What I used to do was it became who I am. I am not a morning person. I have ADHD. I am limited in some way. And then that became what I conformed to.

Why?

Because I didn't expect better.

Hmm.

My label became my limit, and that is incredibly toxic. So this is the exact opposite. In the book, I talk a lot about placebo effects and how we can use these placebo effects, these, these productive deceptions to help us live better. We do also the exact opposite, these nocebo effects, where we have these beliefs, we, we have these practices that reinforce exactly the cage of our own making. And so when it comes to something like, I am not a morning person, or I have ADHD, or I'm a Sagittarius, or whatever, it doesn't matter if it's true. I know people are listening to this and saying, yeah, but I do have ADHD and I do have limitations. Fine. I agree it's real, but is it serving you? Is it serving you? Is there an alternative truth that could be just as true? Right? So if I say, well, I'm not a morning person, is there another perspective? Is there another perspective? Maybe I'm— I am a morning person if I get enough sleep the night before. Could that be true?

Right?

Yeah.

Right?

Mind blown. If I were like— you are like— if you say, you know what, I'm not ready to start my day until 10 o'clock. Well, if you shifted over a few time zones, you would technically be in 10 o'clock. So if you went to bed earlier, you probably would be more rested and then you could wake up refreshed. So it's not to like slap a smile on your face and just believe. It's to find alternative perspectives, which are just as true that you could try on. So the first thing to do is to take out that belief. Okay? I'm not a morning person. And to ask myself, is it true? Is it true? Then the next question, and by the way, I have to give credit. This is, comes from the work from Byron Katie. I didn't make this up, and she's channeled this from Aristotle who came up with this technique actually 2,000 years ago by testing our assumptions, by testing our, our, our limiting beliefs. So is it true? Yes, I'm not a morning person. Okay. Second question, is it absolutely true? Is it absolutely true in all circumstances? You know what would make me into a morning person? If I had an appointment with someone I really respected. Okay. Let's say, uh, you know, a business leader or a hero of mine or a sports star. Imagine if that person that you really admire wanted to have breakfast with you. Guess what? You probably all of a sudden will be a morning person. Wouldn't you? Because you'd be all excited, right? Weren't you a morning person on Christmas? You know, Christmas morning when you're all excited and you got presents? Yeah, you became a morning person because guess what? There were others. Oh, I'll tell you a great story here. A buddy of mine, a buddy of mine said the exact same thing. I'm not a morning person. And I was, because I, oh, I wanted him to get out to work out with me, right? I like to work out in the morning now. I do. I didn't used to. And I would ask him, hey, let's go work out in the morning. He said, no, I can't. I'm not a morning person. I'm not a morning person. And then he tells me a few weeks later, hey, you wanna come play golf? I don't really play golf. I said, all right, sure. Let, I'll play some golf. What time are we gonna play golf? I was thinking he'd say 2, 3:00 PM. Oh no, we have an 8:00 AM tee time. What the hell are you talking about? So when it was an activity he liked, all of a sudden he was a morning person. So the second question, is it absolutely true? Can you find any situation, any condition, any possible circumstance to change that absolute so that you can't find a point where that belief may not be true? Then the third question is, well, how do I feel, or who do I become when I hold on to that belief? Well, if I believe I'm not a morning person, I'm kind of annoying to my family. I'm groggy in the morning. I don't really feel myself. I'm not someone I'm proud of. Then the fourth question, who would I be without that belief? If I suddenly could wave a magic wand and poof, now I'm not that belief anymore. What, what, what, how would my life change? Now, the goal isn't to change your beliefs. I'm not asking anyone to change their beliefs. What I'm asking you to try to do is to collect a portfolio of perspectives, just like your, you know, baseball cards when you were a kid. Just collect a portfolio of perspectives. You have one belief: I am not a morning person. There's only one way out of that, right? Is just to complain and be annoying to everybody around you and make everyone conform to your reality. Okay? That's the only way out. What if there's other beliefs? What if there's an alternative? I am a morning person. Now, it doesn't mean you need to be cheery and smiley. But it's a perspective. What if you woke up for 5 days and tried on that perspective just like a pair of glasses? Okay, I'm gonna try on these glasses. Sometimes they fit, sometimes they don't. That's another perspective. So what you'll find is that you could collect 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 perspectives, 6 beliefs, and you could try them on for size and not care if they're true. People are gonna say, oh yeah, but my chronotype, and there's a lot of evidence that people, you know, just have a certain type of DNA. Maybe. Or maybe not, because a belief has to be something that is useful. It doesn't necessarily have to be true because beliefs are tools, not truths. So you can try on an alternative perspective and see if it works for you.

So in— I love that lesson that usefulness is more important than provability when you're trying on your portfolio of new perspectives. And you mentioned this early on in your answer to my question here, but It's the greatest example. When you live in Boston and you wake up at 7:00 AM and then you fly to LA, 7:00 AM is now 4:00 AM. And so you wake up at 4:00 AM ready to go because your circadian rhythm and your sleep schedule is kind of fixed at this point. And now you're the earliest morning version of yourself possible with the same amount of energy. And so oftentimes it is just about that amount of sleep.

And, and of course, the more you believe that, that negative belief, right, the more you believe that limiting belief, the more it becomes true. That's a guaranteed path, right? I can't tell you that every liberating belief will work, but I can promise you that every limiting belief works. Because when you believe it's a fact— I'm not a morning person— guess what? That's exactly what you will always be.

One of the greatest examples in your book that I've seen so far about shattering limiting beliefs was this story of I might pronounce his last name wrong, but Daniel Gissler.

Perfect. Yeah, that's right.

Can you tell everybody that story? Because mind blown. I even told my wife about it after I read it. I was like, this is amazing.

Isn't it amazing? It's so crazy. Okay, so Daniel Gissler was this commodities trader, uh, very buttoned up, no nonsense kind of guy, you know, very analytical. And he had this terrible freak accident where he shattered the bones in his fibula and fibula, fibula, tibia. Anyway, the bones in his ankle, uh, and he had to get metal screws put into his ankle. And then a few years later, it was time to get them taken out. And this is a pretty involved operation. It takes about an hour. And he somehow stumbled across this technique that turns out thousands of people do called hypnosedation. Hypnosedation uses the power of beliefs, the power of focusing your attention to separate pain from suffering. And this is, this is true. I mean, I, I'm very analytical. I don't believe in any of the woo-woo stuff. I mean, I, I had to see the video for myself and I have seen it. What he is able to do, and turns out tens of thousands of people have done this before him. It's a very common practice in Switzerland and parts of France and Italy. Lots of people do this, not so much in the United States because of liability, all kinds of reasons. He had trained himself to be able to go under the knife of this operation where metal screws were wrenched out of bone, where scalpel was cutting into flesh for 55 minutes. With zero general anesthesia, zero topical anesthesia, nothing, only through the power of his mind. And it wasn't like he was faking it. He wasn't just biting the bullet. In fact, his heart rate stayed stable, his, uh, uh, blood pressure totally stable. All the vitals that you would expect to go crazy during such a painful operation, none, none of that happened. And so why do I tell this story? Why, why is this so important? What I'm trying, trying to demonstrate, I'm not trying to convince people to go under hypnosedation. I don't think I would do it myself either. But what I'm trying to demonstrate is if the power of the mind can control the pain of surgery without anesthesia, what else can we do? I mean, we are just scratching the surface of what our brain is capable of. Oh, you're not a morning person. Oh, that must be so hard. It must be so painful, so hurtful. Yeah, but Daniel Gistler was able to go under surgery for 55 minutes without anesthesia, right? And so everything that we want in life, everything that is worth having—a great relationship, raising wonderful kids, starting a business, a good Having a, a beach body, all these things that we're trying to accomplish in life, guess what? They're on the other side of hard. It's just on the other side of hard. And so if we can learn to manage that pain and discomfort, if we can stay motivated through that, that pain without letting it become suffering, just in the same way that Daniel Gisler did with this incredible pain of surgery that he was somehow managing to control through the power of the mind, wow, what else are we capable of?

Yeah, I might start asking myself the question, what would Daniel Gisler do? Yeah, whenever I'm facing a difficult situation. Here's another thing I don't think I've ever shared on the Book Thinkers podcast in like 300+ interviews, Nir, is that when I was in college, I became fascinated with pain, the idea of pain, how it works in our body. And I was not aware of hypnosedation. So I had a situation where I cracked a tooth, and then because of the crack, it developed a cavity, and I had to go in, get the cavity drilled out, and then the tooth capped and filled. And I said no Novocaine, and I thought I could just willpower myself through this experience, which I suppose I did, but I cried the whole time, and it was pretty traumatic.

Wow.

So picture me in the dentist chair, mouth like wired open, they're drilling, and I'm just screaming, you know, holding onto the armchair. And, uh, just what a goofy experience I put myself through. If only I had known about this back then.

Yeah. Well, it's, it's not something you can just jump into. I'll tell you that, that these are, these are, and you know, sim— it's a similar metaphor to how I think we went wrong with positive thinking. There's a lot of literature out there of, you know, just manifest, uh, just will the energy of the universe to bring you good things. I think that is actually the equivalent of hopping into the dentist chair and asking for no Novocaine.

Yes.

And if you don't prepare the mind, if you don't do this properly, it will hurt and it will cause you suffering. And I think there's no better example of this than the frankly bullshit out there around positive thinking, uh, that positive thinking tells you, you know, just think positive thoughts. And if bad things happen to you, it's because you vibrated at the incorrect frequency and quantum this and that. And now you have to send me a check so I can tell you the next level to do. No, that's, that's wrong and harmful. Rather, what we now know is that there is a right way and a wrong way to visualize and manifest. That the right way to do it is, is not to just think about what you want. It's not about the end results. It's about doing it properly. And the proper way to do it is called mental contrasting. Mental contrasting is when we contrast the outcome with the obstacle in our way. So when people have these vision boards and, and they, they, uh, have— they manifest the future they want and they send out cosmic vibrations or whatever.

Mm-hmm.

What they don't realize is that they're actually becoming more relaxed. And we, we have seen this. Gabrielle Oltujan did these experiments where she connected people to heart rate monitors and blood pressure monitors. People actually become more relaxed when they do these exercises, and they become less motivated to go out and do the work to get what they want. And so the right way to do it is to contrast what you want with the obstacle in your way. Why? Because this is how we prepare the mind. For the pain, because everything, again, everything worth having in life is on the other side of difficult, is on the other side of that pain. But what you have to learn to do is to separate the pain from the suffering, because pain is a biological response. Suffering is a psychological interpretation. And if Daniel Gisler can do it for the pain of surgery, and I'm sure you could learn it as well through hypnosedation, we can, we can do it in all kinds of areas, various areas of our life. But if we're not prepared for it, ugh, we're gonna be in a world of hurt.

Yeah. And here's a great example. In 3 weeks or so, I have my first Ironman 70.3 swim, bike, run. And if I just sat back and drew myself swimming, biking, and running on a vision board and thought about it and just said, you know what, I'm going to show up on March 15th in Puerto Rico and I'm just going to be able to do it, I'd be in for a world of hurt. On March 15th. But instead, I can say, what are the obstacles between where I am today and achieving that Ironman 70.3 with some level of confidence? And it's quite a bit of swimming and biking and running, right? And so, I put a strategy in place to take action. I followed that strategy and now, I'm very confident. My belief is that I am a triathlete. I am an Ironman. And I'm going to show up and prove that in a couple of weeks, not because I put it on a vision board, but because I took the necessary action to make that reality possible.

Exactly. Exactly. And that's all about the power of agency, that the way we do this, we still know that the most effective technique, I hate to say it, is exposure therapy, that the things that we are most scared of require us in order to get over them, it requires us to experience them. Now, we don't have to do it all at once. We don't have to jump straight. We should not jump straight into the dentist chair with no Novocaine. But through gradual exposure, this is how we, we learn to, to separate pain from suffering, because we know that the same exact pain signals that one person will find debilitating, another person thinks is no big deal. Uh, and the, the mind has these capabilities to separate pain from suffering. A great example, you know, where we started the science of placebo studies came from World War I, where during World War I there were cases of soldiers Dragging their buddies from the battlefield to the medic and telling the medic, medic, medic, you need to help my buddy. My buddy's been shot. You gotta help him. You gotta help him. And the medic will turn to the soldier and say, soldier, your arm is blown off. And the guy won't even notice that half his arm is missing because the brain, especially in times of stress, has this amazing ability to separate pain from suffering. And if we can learn that skill, if we can turn it on or off, There are so many things that we think are in our way, you know, the, the, the muck in our life, the relationship that doesn't heal and continues to annoy us, that, that goal that has been on our to-do list forever and ever, New Year's resolution after New Year's resolution, whatever the case might be, whatever those obstacles are that we can't seem to get unstuck from, turns out it's always a limiting belief. There's something in your way that's causing you pain that you have accepted as a fact that is nothing more than a belief.

And when reading this book, you get excited because you realize all of your dreams, like you said, whether it's beachboard abs or it's a mansion on the water, or it's anything in between, a healthy relationship, healthy relationship with your kids, your spouse, whatever, it's just on the other side of removing limiting beliefs and adopting new belief sets that are more useful. to the reality that you'd like to create. And so that, that's, that's the energy that I got reading your book so far. And I think I'm actually going to ask my wife if she'll start a weekly book club just with me where we can read books that would be useful for both of us. Because I think that when I was reading through your book, Nir, I, I just kept thinking about my relationship with my wife and how we could adopt a lot of these new useful belief sets together.

Mm-hmm.

And be unified in them. And so I'm just throwing this out there to the audience as well. Buy 2 copies, not just one, because I think that this book should be read with the people around you.

Thank you.

And, and it, it definitely has my relation— changed my relationships. I mean, it's changed my relationship with my family for sure, with my daughter in particular, with my mom in particular.

Yeah.

And, and that's, that's, you know, it's amazing how those type of relationships feed into all various areas of your life. You know, If you find yourself scrolling too much on online or drinking too much, or, you know, looking for escape from reality in one way or the other, again, the source turns out to be these, these uncomfortable, these icky sticky truths that we're looking to escape from. And when we can heal those things, when we understand what's causing us this harm, it's a cascade effect. When we learn how to change how we perceive reality, because again, beliefs are these perceptual lens that literally shape what you're able to see. And if you can control them rather than letting them control you, Then you can live the life you deserve.

Well, this next question, since you brought it up, uh, is, is a specific, uh, I guess you would say area of expertise for you. But these mobile devices, man, like, I, I understand all the literature. I read your book. I've read your past work. I know these platforms are so addictive and I still get stuck. I still find myself scrolling sometimes daily when I know that I have more important things to do. So give me, give me the best tricks in the bag. Like, what are some things that I can implement so that I fall victim— I'm not a victim— so that I choose to use these less?

Yeah. Okay. So the first and most important step, I'll give you 4 steps. The first and most important step is to understand The deeper reason why that we love to blame the phones. And in fact, I think there's a bit of a conspiracy theory going on right now. You know, I don't know if you saw, uh, there's a bunch of movies out there that tell you how terrible social media is. And of course, many of them are on Netflix. So I don't think that's a chance. I think, I think that's not a coincidence. I think they are, they are perpetuating this belief that you don't have agency, that there's nothing you can do about it. Because what do you do if you think there's nothing you can do? Nothing. And that's exactly what they want. So the best thing you can do is to believe you have agency, okay? Whether it's true or not, just believe you can do something about it. Because when you give up, you become completely passive. And, but that is our default state, is always to retreat into passivity because passivity is safe, right? So number one, believe you can do something about the problem. Okay? Then what you wanna do is to find the internal trigger that 90% of the time that we get distracted, 90%. It's not because of the external triggers, the pings, the dings, the rings. It's because of an internal trigger: boredom, loneliness, fatigue, uncertainty, anxiety. It is discomfort that causes, that drives us towards distraction. And so the, the, the biggest mind shift that I can give you is to realize that there's nothing wrong with pain, that there's nothing wrong with the urge of, I really would like to check my phone right now. And I'm just gonna sit with that urge. What's gonna happen? I, I really want to. Okay. And then what? Nothing's gonna happen. You're not gonna, you know, spontaneously combust because you didn't check your phone. So if you can find comfort, peace with that discomfort by changing your mind around that limiting belief that when I feel the urge, it must be acted upon, that's— this will absolutely change your life. Okay, thinking about the pain differently, just like Daniel did, that, that it's just a signal. It's just, it's just data coming into my brain that I am interpreting as suffering. But that's a choice. You don't have to suffer from it. So that's step number 1, is understand the root of that discomfort. And there's a bunch, there's a dozen different tactics you can use about how to manage that discomfort. Mantras, surfing the urge, 10-minute rule, all kinds of techniques you can use that I, I describe in further detail. The next step is to make time for it. Okay, that we want to turn our values into time. This is the number one thing that will change your life that people don't want to do. People like to keep to-do lists. To-do lists are awful. To-do lists are one of the worst things you can do for your personal productivity because there are no constraints to to-do lists. So it's not that getting things out of your brain and writing them on a piece of paper, that's great, right? Get them out of your brain. But if you run your life on a to-do list, what are you going to do? You're going to do the easy stuff. You're going to do the urgent stuff. You're going to do the fun stuff. Are you going to do the hard work you have to do to move your life forward? No, because that's hard and you haven't dealt with that pain. So it's not— unless you move those items from your to-do list into your calendar on a time-boxed schedule, if you haven't done that, what are you doing, right? If you can't tell me what you got distracted from, you can't say you got distracted. If you can't say what you got distracted from, what did— how can you say you got distracted? Because everything's a distraction if you have a big open calendar. So you've got to plan your time boxes to turn your values into time, not just about work. How are you gonna be with your family? Do you wanna work out? Do you wanna read a book, for God's sakes? If that's one of your values, oh, you know, knowledge is very important. I'm a person who values knowledge. Well, do you make time to read books? If you don't, I'm guessing you're not reading many, many books these days because if you're not making time for it, it's not gonna happen. So that's step number 2. We, we make a, uh, We turn our, uh, um, we make time for traction. Step number 3, we hack back the external triggers. This is where, you know, the 10% of those distractions that come from our devices, this is kind of kindergarten stuff. We can all do this. You know, the changing the notification settings, that's easy stuff. What's much more difficult is assessing the external triggers that we don't think about. The emails that didn't need to be sent or received, the stupid meetings that didn't need to be attended. These are these external triggers that we don't really think about. So there's a systematic way to go through those. And then finally, the 4th step is to prevent distraction with pacts. And there are different kinds of pacts we can use, which are essentially the, the, the last line of defense, the firewall against distraction. So I wish I could just give you a bunch of tactics, you know, stupid stuff like grayscale your phone doesn't work. Use a fancy new app doesn't work. None of that stuff works unless you understand the strategy. Tactics are what you do. Strategy is why you do it. So first understand the 4 strategies. Make sure that you master those internal triggers or they will become your master. Make time for traction, hack back external triggers, and prevent distraction with pacts.

Thank you. I, I, I need to think a little bit more about the internal triggers.

And that's the most important step.

A little bit more aware. Yeah. Yeah, that's the most important step. I believe I have agency for sure. Like, that is, that is a 100% belief. I don't think there's enough awareness of when I'm opening Instagram and I start scrolling, like, what is, what is the internal trigger? It's not fear or insecurity. I think it's probably boredom. I mean, now we're just talking. Yeah, it could be a little bit of boredom. It also could be a version of procrastination where I don't want to deal with certain emails that I find annoying. For instance. Yeah. And, uh, so thank you for that. I'm going to go do the internal work now. Back, back to Beyond Belief as we wrap up the podcast near. For somebody who's on the edge of their seat, they're like, you know, I think I should go preorder this book or buy this book, but I'm not really sure. Give us one more case for why somebody needs this book in 2026.

Frankly, I don't know how you can survive without this book in 2026, to be honest. Like, I write this— I write these books not because I have the answer. I write books because I need the answer. And, uh, for me, like, I don't know how you get through this age of unbelievable uncertainty. I mean, I, in my lifetime, uh, I'm 48. I don't ever remember such a time of uncertainty where, uh, you know, we don't know what's gonna happen with AI. We don't know what's gonna happen with, uh, the economy. We don't know what, what— there's so many things to be worried about these days, to have peace of mind, to have peace, like real peace. And that's all I'm looking for, by the way. I, I'm not looking to be right. I'm not looking to win arguments. I'm over those days. I'm looking for peace.

That's what I look for too, by the way. That's, that's like my word. I use that every day.

Yeah, exactly. Like, peace is so important. Like, having that, that calm, that, that feeling of, I control what I can control, and I'm okay Leaving the rest alone, that I don't feel compelled to have to do everything all at once, all the time. That's a new sensation for me. Like I I think I used to be very high strung. It's still that's still my default state, right? I still tend to run hot, and I have to constantly fight that because if I if I if I'm if I get back to my defaults, if I retreat back into passivity, I'm not myself. I don't feel good about myself. I feel crummy at the end of the day. So. So to me, understanding those beliefs that we do have control— we don't have control about what happens in the outside world. We control very, very little. But we always have control about what's happening inside of us, that we have that luxury, we have that freedom if we know how. And so to get that peace of mind, to get that, that, that freedom from suffering, you have to gain control over your limiting beliefs.

Really well said. Really well said. I have one more question for you, but before I ask that, where can people go to preorder or order a copy of this book and learn more about you?

Absolutely. So if you go to nearandfar.com, it's my website. Nir is spelled like my first name, so nearandfar.com. And if you, if you are looking for the book, it's called Beyond Belief. It's available wherever books are sold. And we have a special bonus for your listeners if you go to nearandfar.com/beyondbelief. forward slash belief-change. We actually have an absolutely free 5-minute belief change plan. So this helps you reinforce your new liberating beliefs by helping you find what your limiting beliefs are, change them into liberating beliefs, and then reinforce them so that you actually start living these liberating beliefs. Totally free. You don't have to buy anything. And that's at nearandfar.com forward slash belief-change.

Okay. Thank you so much. Mm-hmm. And we'll have those links in the show notes. So if somebody's still with us, Thank you for listening or watching and check out the show notes. Get a copy of the book. This is an amazing read. You'll also see it all over the Book Thinkers channel soon enough. Okay. Last question for you, Nir. If this book was accidentally deleted, like wiped off the face of the earth, it disappeared tomorrow, but you could leave the world with just one simple message or tactic from the book. What would that be?

Okay. Do I have time to tell you one, one quick experiment?

You do.

Okay, terrific. So there's a, one of my favorite studies came from Curt Richter back in the 1950s.

That was a good one.

It's a good one, right? So, uh, Richter takes these rats, wild rats, and he wants to measure how long a wild rat can swim in a cylinder of water. So he puts a wild rat in the cylinder of water. He has, stands there with a timer and he measures how long the rat can swim for. And it turns out wild rat can swim for about 15 minutes before it gives up and dies. Okay, so now he knows this. He takes a new group of, of rats. He puts them in a cylinder, and right before the rat is about to give up, right at that 15-minute mark, scoops in, pulls out the rat, dries it off, let it, let it catch its breath, and then plunk back into the cylinder it goes. And he does this a few times. He conditions the rat to now expect that salvation might be possible. There might be this magic hand that rescues the rat. And so now the question is, how much longer can the rat swim for now that the rat has been conditioned? How much longer can it persist? So, you know, there's a trick. There's always a trick. So people— some people think, okay, the rat goes twice as long, 3 times as long. Maybe it swims for an hour, 60 minutes. Wouldn't that be amazing if you were 4 times more persistent, right? If you were taking a big exam and you could persist 4 times longer, you're running that Ironman, Nick, and you can go 4 times longer. That would be amazing. That would be revolutionary. But the rats didn't swim 4 times longer. They swam 240 times longer. They swam for 60 hours, not 60 minutes, 60 hours. From 15 minutes to 60 hours of swimming. What changed? Their bodies didn't change. Same exact bodies. The experiment didn't change. The environment didn't change. It was still the same cylinder, same cylinder of water. Nothing changed there. We can't ask the rats what they believe, but we think the only thing that changed was their minds, that there was this flip of a switch in their brains that all of a sudden unlocked their real potential. So this is the message I wanna leave people with. It's not magic, it's not, uh, anything, uh, pseudoscientific. It is really there within you. You have this potential, but your beliefs are keeping you back. So what is that thing that you're working on that you think you're limited at 15 minutes, that really you have no idea about your untapped potential? You actually have those 60 hours within you.

That fires me up. It really does.

It's there, buddy.

All right. Well, thank you so much, Nir. It was an amazing conversation today.

All right. My pleasure. Thanks so much for having me, Nick.

That is a wrap. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of Book Thinkers, Life-Changing It would mean the world to us if you could write a review and share this episode with a few of your friends. I mean, these books truly have the power to change people's lives, and by reviewing or sharing our podcast, you're helping us make an impact. If you have any recommendations for future guests or any constructive feedback for us on how we can improve our show, please feel free to submit a form on our website, www.bookthinkers.com, or send us a direct message on Instagram @bookthinkers. With that, I am signing off, and I hope you have a wonderful day. Don't forget, go read something.