The Real Reason You Can’t Focus and What to Do About It | Ep. 331 with Nir Eyal NYT Best Selling Author

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1:36It's so great to have you back, Nir. We had a phenomenal conversation last time, and I've watched so many of your recent videos. You have a new book that's out, Beyond Belief, which I have to say, when I was 12 years old, I was diagnosed with OCD. And part of having OCD, I think, majorly impacted my belief system. So to this day, if I looked at what is my trait, like the one thing that I want to change, the one thing I want to get better at, and if you ask my wife 100%, she would say, I definitely have a negative belief system that I think really holds me back in life. So I'm sure I'm going to learn a lot today, and I can't wait to dive in.

2:23But why right now is this book so important?

2:26Nir Eyal:Yes, I think this is the moment when I needed this book most. I don't write books because of what I know. I write books because of what I want to know. So I went on this six-year quest to try and answer this question about how beliefs shape our reality. Because I think that in a time of extreme uncertainty, where we have what's going to happen with AI, geopolitical uncertainty, economic uncertainty, we need ways to find control over our existence or else we go crazy, right? When we think about all the things that are outside of our control, when we believe we have to do something about those things that are uncontrollable, we can literally burn out.

3:06Nir Eyal:We can drive ourselves mad. And so what I was looking for was to access is what's the greatest point of leverage that I can have to improve my life that's in my control? And it turns out that if you can identify what we call limiting beliefs and turn them into liberating beliefs, that is the greatest point of leverage to accomplish your goals, to unleash what you're capable of doing, to meet your full potential, to decrease your suffering and increase your motivation. Wow. How do I do that? Where do I start? Okay. Well, I'll tell you what it is not about. So it's not about magical thinking. It's not about chakras.

3:47Nir Eyal:It's not about necessarily the vibrating at the frequency of the universe and all that. So I'm very science-based, and everything that I do is backed by peer-reviewed studies. There's over 30 pages of peer-reviewed citations. And so it's nothing magical whatsoever. In fact, unfortunately, I think the self-help industry has led many people astray by preaching this gospel of, well, just think positive, right? Just manifest. And I think that actually has some really negative consequences. And the research backs this up, that it's not just about the end goals, but rather it's about the means. That you have to prepare yourself for the inevitable pain that comes from that journey to get what you want.

4:28Nir Eyal:That if you just think about the ends, you're never gonna get them. They've done studies where they connect people to blood pressure monitors as they are thinking about a future outcome. I want a beach body. I want money. I want love in my life, whatever it is. And it turns out that you become less likely to do the things you have to do to get those things when you only think about the ends. When you think about the vision boarding and the manifesting, it actually can backfire. So a much smarter way and the way that I am promoting is called mental contrasting, where you're preparing for the pain.

5:04Nir Eyal:That pain is just a signal. It's just data, just information. And we have a tremendous amount of information at our disposal. In fact, our brains are processing 11 million bits of information per second. That's the equivalent of reading War and Peace every second twice. So you have tons of information entering your brain, but your conscious mind can only process about 50 bits of information. So you're seeing life through this tiny pinhole of attention, and you call it reality when it isn't. That in fact, that we don't see reality clearly because we can't. Reality is filtered based on our beliefs.

5:41Nir Eyal:And so if you get the right beliefs, if you're able to identify the beliefs that serve you rather than hurt you, that's how you unlock your real potential. And so it's a process. I like to call limiting beliefs are like your face. That your face, everybody has a face and you can see other people's faces just like you can see other people's limiting beliefs. You can probably say how your spouse and your coworkers and your parents, all of them, you can see their limitations, their limiting beliefs, but you can't see your own. Just like if I were to say, look at your face. How do you look at your face?

6:10Nir Eyal:You can't look at your face. You need a mirror. You need to reflect in order to see your face, in order to see your limiting beliefs. So there's a process to go through in order to uncover those limiting beliefs and turn them into liberating ones. I'm so glad you say this because I don't like to manifest. And I feel like - You don't have to. Thank you. Because people keep telling me to manifest. I'm like, I don't know. I manifest it. I recommend against it, actually. No, I appreciate that. I appreciate that. And something you've said too, beliefs aren't facts and they aren't faith. Right. They're tools.

6:42And something that got me thinking was, when I think of something, to me, it feels like a truth because I'm believing it. It feels like a truth. And I think that's held me back because my limiting beliefs feel like they're truth to me.

6:59Nir Eyal:It's so common. Now, you are not alone at all, Daniel. This is super common. Why is this? Because it turns out the brain hates changing its mind. The brain hates changing its mind. Why? Because what has evolution given us? Evolution has given us a brain that doesn't want you to flourish. It doesn't want you to be happy. It doesn't care about any of that stuff. All it wants to do is to keep you safe, to keep you alive so you can procreate. That's it. So your default state is not to get you to a point where you're fulfilling your full potential. Now, thankfully, we know that how to do better than our hardwiring would indicate.

7:40Nir Eyal:That in fact, if you just go back to your defaults of, well, that belief served me in the past, so that's what I'm gonna continue to believe, where you never do anything great, right? Because everything worth having in life is on the other side of some difficulty. You wanna have a fit body? You know, I used to be clinically obese. Let me tell you, it takes work. It takes some discomfort. You wanna build a family? I got a 17-year-old and I've been married for 25 years. It's gonna take some discomfort. You wanna build a business? you want to write a book, it takes effort. Now, the good news is that pain is not suffering.

8:12Nir Eyal:This is a super important concept that blew my mind. It took me a long time to understand. Pain is not suffering. Remember we talked about that 11 million bits of information, that war and peace every second that your brain is conscious of, the light entering your retinas, the sound of my voice in your ears, the ambient temperature of the room. Your brain can take in all that information, but it can't see reality clearly. And so it's processing all that information. It's just not aware of it. So instead, you can use that pinhole of attention to decide what you let in and what you don't let in to your conscious awareness.

8:44Nir Eyal:And so that actually is very much in your control. So what that allows you to do is to say that pain, that difficulty of doing that hard thing that gets me what I really want, that's just data. Just data. It's just information. It's my interpretation of that signal that causes suffering, that causes me to quit, that causes me to give up, that causes me to not get my long-term goals. And so you think it's just mindset and woo-woo and hocus pocus. It's not. That it literally can define who feels physical pain. We know that chronic pain, it turns out, is caused by exactly what I'm describing. It's called the fear-pain-fear loop.

9:27Nir Eyal:that you have some kind of fear, typically caused by actual damage, then that fear perpetuates pain, that pain perpetuates more fear, which perpetuates more pain. And so it turns out that we can actually create pain and suffering in our lives, where it doesn't necessarily have to exist. And that's psychological as well as physiological. And I know you've said labels become our limits, which kind of makes me when you talk about pain, this, this makes me think of, of the limits I've been putting on myself, like, it's just my luck, or that's just how I am. I feel like we do that a lot. And so how do I, how do I rewrite the script, I guess?

10:08Or how do I not automatically go to this? Like when something happens, I'm like, well, that's just my luck. Yeah, yeah.

10:14Nir Eyal:So so, you know, I didn't answer your last question, but this brings it up perfectly. What is the difference between fact, faith, and belief. So a fact is an objective truth. It is something that is true whether or not you believe it. The world is more like a sphere than it is flat. Sorry, flat earthers. It's a fact. Faith is a conviction that does not require evidence. God rewards the righteous. There is no amount of evidence that I can give to someone who has faith in that statement because no evidence is required. Belief is somewhere in the middle. Belief is not a fact. Belief is not faith.

10:47Nir Eyal:Belief is a conviction that is open to revision based on new evidence. So unlike facts and faith, beliefs can change. The problem is that too many of us think that what we take as faith is a fact and don't understand that what we think is a fact is nothing more than a belief. So someone's saying, that's just my luck. I'm no good at this. I'm not a morning person. I'm a Sagittarius. I'm a whatever. I have ADHD even, which I do. You start to create that as a label, whether or not it is true. So I would tell myself, let me tell you about my ADHD diagnosis. So I got an ADHD diagnosis. And for years, I would say, I have a chronic condition.

11:30That's not going to get better because that's what I've been told,

11:33Nir Eyal:that it's a chronic condition. Now, I'm not a doctor. From what I understand of ADHD, looking at the literature. There's a lot of controversy out there. And yet we fill people with these diagnoses unchecked. There's nobody saying, hey, maybe we should cool off on these diagnoses. If you go try and go get an ADHD diagnosis, you can do it on the app these days. It's incredibly easy to get one. Did you know in the United Kingdom, more people are neurodivergent than not? That a third of Stanford students are neurodivergent? Stanford students. Is that not surprising? Like we've tossed around these labels.

12:10Nir Eyal:Not that I'm anti-diagnoses, right? I think that they do have a place and people, I'm going to get kicked off your show soon for saying something that's going to be very unpopular, but I'm telling you, we're going to look back in five, maybe 10, hopefully not 20 years. And we're going to realize that this was a huge mistake that we way over diagnose and do not prepare people for how harmful, how harmful these labels can be. that we need to be very careful because our labels can become our limits. So for me, here's what happened. I'll just tell you personal experience. I would spin myself out about the label, about the diagnosis.

12:44Nir Eyal:There's my ADHD again, and it's always going to be a chronic condition, and what if I never get better at this? Am I always going to struggle? Am I always going to be behind? Is this always going to be harder for me? And I would make up these limiting beliefs about what I could do. And now what happened, Daniel, instantly as I'm thinking about my limitations? I'm not thinking about the work. I'm not thinking about the thing that I actually need to get done. And every time I was distracted, my brain would go over to this limitation. As opposed to, it's a map, right? That a diagnosis is a map. It's you're here, you're trying to get there, and yeah, you're at a different place than other people might be.

13:20Nir Eyal:Okay, we all are. Now, it could be that you have certain conditions that make it a little bit more difficult here and there, so your path might be a little bit further. The problem was, I was becoming the map. This diagnosis became my identity. but it's not useful. It wasn't helping me. As opposed to now, I don't tell myself, oh, I have ADHD. It's a chronic condition. I'm never going to get better. I'm never going to start spitting out. Instead, I say, I'm learning another skill. This is an opportunity to get better. Eventually, I would learn that skill and get better. For example, I learned, I've written three bestsellers.

13:52Nir Eyal:You know what I learned? That when I'm really into a topic, I'm in it. I'm hyper-focused. When I find a topic, I'm in. Now, when I have to do boring stuff I don't want to do? Okay, yeah, I get distractible, but also so does everybody. It's a skill you overcome. It's a skill you can learn. Not that I'm anti-diagnosis or anti-pills or whatever. I'm not a doctor. This isn't medical advice, but it's a great example of how our beliefs can actually become our biology. Let me tell you a very quick story that I think will illustrate the point. There was a guy in the medical literature who was anonymized, and he's called Mr.

14:23Nir Eyal:A is how he's named in this study. Now, Mr. A has a very bad breakup with his girlfriend, and he decides he wants to commit suicide. So he takes an entire pill jar of antidepressants. He downs them all. And just as he finishes swallowing the last pill, he decides he wants to live after all. He runs to his neighbor's house. They take him to the ER. When he gets to the hospital, he collapses on the floor. He's rushed to the operating room. They're trying to figure out what medicine did he overdose on. and they notice that his blood pressure is dangerously low, his heart rate is falling, and they take the pill jar that he brought to show them what medicine he took, and they look on the jar of antidepressants, and it doesn't say what brand of antidepressants, it has a phone number.

15:09Nir Eyal:They call the phone number, they get the person on the line, the person on the line tells them that Mr. A was enrolled in a clinical trial of antidepressants. And in fact, he hadn't taken the antidepressants at all because he was in the placebo group. And yet the idea that he had overdosed on antidepressants had caused these physical symptoms of dangerously low blood pressure, falling heart rate. He was falling in and out of consciousness because he believed that something was happening in his body prompted from these antidepressants, which he hadn't taken. and he had taken placebo pills, which were completely inert.

15:50Nir Eyal:They tell him this, that he'd taken just placebos, in 15 minutes, Daniel, he's off the gurney, his heart rate is stabilized, his blood pressure is fine, he walks out the door completely healthy, maybe a little embarrassed. So if the idea that our biology is doing something, whether or not it is, is so powerful that it can make a man sick this way, are you telling me that putting in these notions of our labels that we're this or that also doesn't have similar effects? Of course it does. We know it does. Yeah. I think when it's easy to label somebody when you don't have that label, but when you're labeled, I think you're like, I don't want to be labeled.

16:32A therapist told me that a long time ago. They said you might have been diagnosed with something. The Bleacher Report app is your destination for sports. Right now, the NBA is heating up, March Madness is here, and MLB is almost back. Every day there's a new headline, a new highlight, a new moment you've got to see for yourself. That's why I stay locked in with the Bleacher Report app. For me, it's about staying connected to my sports. I can follow the teams I care about, get real-time scores, breaking news, and highlights all in one place. Download the Bleacher Report app today so you never miss a moment.

17:07This is Mike Bolo of Lexicon Valley. And I'm Bob Garfield. Are you one of those people who sometimes uses words? Do you communicate or acquire information with, you know, language? Hey, us too. So join us on Lexicon Valley to chew over the history, culture, and many mysteries of English. Plus some lice cracks. Find us on one of those apps where people listen to podcasts. Doesn't mean you are that something. And that really changed my mind. I think I was like 18 years old. This changed my life of like, maybe I don't have to be something. So I'm with you. And like you're saying, I'm not a doctor, nor do I give medical advice.

17:49But I do also agree that we over label things. And it's way different when you are the one being labeled, which then is like limiting you to being this thing. You talk about this Yale study when it comes to aging and positive thinking. I couldn't believe that this was true. Can you tell me about it?

18:11Nir Eyal:Of course. Yeah, absolutely. It's shocking that there was a study done at Yale that people who have positive views of aging in their 30s end up living seven and a half years longer. Now, to put that in perspective, seven and a half years longer, that is greater than the effect of diet. It's greater than the effect of exercise. It's greater than the effect of stopping smoking. It is an incredibly powerful effect just by having positive views about aging. Now, what does that sound like? A negative view of aging would be something like, I'm having a senior moment. Aging involves inevitable decline.

18:47Nir Eyal:We've all heard that or thought that all the time. We just say it all the time in society. Whereas a positive view of aging is something like, growth is possible at any age. Something as simple as that. Growth is possible at any age. Now, which one's true? Aging involves inevitable decline or growth is possible at any age? They're both true. But here's the difference. That one of them leads to certain types of behaviors and the other leads to other behaviors. That if I have a positive view of aging, that growth is possible at any age, how likely am I to volunteer in my community, to go to the gym, to go see friends, to take care of myself in a way that's different?

19:30Nir Eyal:So it's not that there's some kind of magic, you know, the mitochondria in my body are changing because I have, you know, positive vibrations. No, that's not what's happening at all. It's that people who have a positive view of aging behave differently and their behavior becomes their biology. I'm learning a lot today. I have to say I'm learning a lot and I appreciate this because I want to have more positive thinking. I feel like every time I have positive thinking, something happens and I go extreme. it's crazy near like like really great things could happen and i'm my positive thinking slightly goes up right like if i'm at a 40 it goes to a 50 one bad thing or what i think is bad happens i go from 50 down to negative 20 zero to 100 so fast and it drives people around me crazy and they don't get it they can't understand but for me when something bad happens or something happens I automatically think of the extreme to where I'm like, I'm thinking 15 steps past that.

20:32Let's just say something happens in business. I automatically think like, oh my gosh, if this one partnership doesn't go through, that means I'm not going to make revenue for this month and next month and three months. And if I don't make revenue, that means I'm going to have to go out of business. And I might even be homeless. That's how my mind thinks from one thing. Yeah.

20:54Nir Eyal:All right, let's do it. Let's do it. So what's the limiting belief there? What's the belief that you think is a fact that is causing you suffering? I guess the limiting belief is that I won't be successful. Okay, that's awesome. That if I'm not successful, that's bad. Is there any way the opposite could also be true? I guess it could be a learning thing. Failure could lead to learning or something happens and I lead to learning. But also, I guess it hasn't equated to not being successful. It's just one small thing. Oh, okay. Amazing. I mean, so you could start with the surface level thing, or you could go as many layers deep as you want.

21:34Nir Eyal:Like literally I've, you know, using this technique, it's called inquiry-based stress reduction, which is where we keep inquiring down, down, down. Okay. What's, what's really the thing that's causing me suffering. You know, you could do this all the way to, I could be homeless. And, well, I won't have any friends. And, and I could die. And, you see, it's just data. It's just data. It's our ceaseless desire to judge, judge, judge. This is bad. This is bad. This is bad. I don't like this. I don't like that. I don't like this. I don't like that. Because our brain's doing it for us. Our brain wants to protect us.

22:08Nir Eyal:Our brain is trying to keep us safe. So it tries to keep us as far away from anything potentially bad and we become less because of it. We worry. We're anxious. We don't try. We don't put ourselves out there because we're so judgmental about everything. Let's take the worst case scenario. You die. Okay, you're dead. It already happened. So? That's how far you can get. We're not wishing that. We don't want that. But literally, let's take it to the logical conclusion. Okay, now let's zoom up. Zoom up. That business deal doesn't go through. Okay, you're miles away from homelessness and death. You're in a different planet.